Inquiry concerning the matter of prehistoric wooden bows of all varieties, from various institutions of the Southwest, has revealed an outstanding dearth of such articles from this section. Most museums of the country are blessed with only a fragment or two, or at best a few specimens of such bows. It may be, then, that the collection herein described is unique both as to numbers and variety of bows represented.

The problem of the “plummet-stone” is a general one, as can be seen from its widespread distribution. They are found in New England, the Middle Atlantic States, Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, California, and it would seem that they are likely to occur in other localities in the United States. They also have been recorded for all eastern Canadian provinces as well on the Northwest Coast. In addition, the Eskimo in many cases have “plummet-stones” which in instances are very similar to the bola stones.

In October, 1937, Mr. Frank M. Harvin, Jr., of Columbia, South Carolina, presented me with sixty-three stone artifacts that he had collected on various visits to a plowed field overlooking the Congaree River near West Columbia, South Carolina. In Mr. Harvin's collection were two fluted points of the type known as “Folsom.” Later I looked through the Babcock Collection of Indian artifacts from Chester, South Carolina (now in the University of South Carolina Library), and found another fluted Folsom point among the hundreds of chipped implements in that exhibit. Inspection of my own collection and the Simpson Collection in Rock Hill, South Carolina, failed to reveal any other examples of this type, which has a wide distribution in the East and South, although I do not remember having seen any reported from South Carolina.

A little more than a decade ago, the term “Folsom points” made its first appearance in the literature. It signifies a stone implement characterized by a wide, shallow groove, usually found on both sides (Figure 25:1, 2, 6, 7). Previously these implements, known from surface finds only, had aroused no particular attention. Their true significance was established by the Colorado Museum of Natural History, when these artifacts were discovered in direct association with a number of extinct bison (B. antiquus taylori) and other animals. The undoubted association of fauna and artifacts was confirmed by Barnum Brown, A. V. Kidder, and F. H. H. Roberts, Jr. All finds of this particular grooved blade were henceforth called “Folsom” points, after the nearby town of Folsom, New Mexico.

Of interest to archaeologists is a recent paper by J. D. Laudermilk and T. G. Kennard on the little known subject of lightning as an agent of weathering of exposed rocks. As a locality for field study of this natural phenomenon, they chose an area in the Mohave Desert near Yermo, California, which is known as a place of a great deal of electrical display. Here they found rocks of various sizes and materials, such as jasper, silicified lava, chalcedony, rhyolite, and quartzite. Many of these had apparently been split by some force other than great fluctuations of temperature, or by man in the production of stone artifacts. A great abundance of flakes and spalls was found on the ridges, usually in more or less circular or oval areas from one foot to five feet in radius. From the arrangement of these fragments it appeared that they had been spread from a common center in each of the areas.

During the past two years the field activities of the Nininger Laboratory (now the American Meteorite Laboratory, Inc.) have brought to light four new meteorites on old Indian camp sites in eastern Colorado (Plate 5) and western Kansas. The mere fact of these several associations strongly suggests that the aborigines recognized a special significance in these fallen stones. However, it must be admitted that, without additional evidence, these associations could be regarded as accidental.

The theory has been advanced that the pierced-tablet type of “gorget” may have served the prehistoric Indian as an arm guard to protect against the lash of the bowstring, in contradistinction to the ornamental pendant type. Most frequently surface finds, these artifacts are at times reported from burials, where their position in relation to the body may give some inkling as to their use. In only two such instances can we find records of their being in such association with the arm bones as to lend support to the arm-guard theory. Moorehead, in : Stone Ornaments of the American Indian (1), describes the skeleton of an adult in the Storey Mound, Ohio, with slate gorgets on each wrist. Lemley (2) found a double-perforated stone tablet beside the arm of a skeleton in a Ouachita River mound near Malvern, Arkansas. It may therefore be of interest to record our finding of a bone gorget (Plate 12, Figure 1) attached to the arm bones of an adult male in a mound burial, apparently Caddoan.

That part of Maryland which lies east of the Chesapeake Bay has always, since the founding of the colony (1634), been known as the Eastern Shore; so, too, the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Most of it is a flat country of tidal rivers occupying “drowned valleys” into the heads of which flow sluggish freshwater streams. A low divide, or height of land, separates streams emptying into the Chespeake from streams flowing into the sounds of the Atlantic Ocean, or into Delaware Bay.

In 1936 a monograph appeared dealing with corner-tang artifacts (Bibliography, 1). Although nothing definite is known as yet about the age and associations of these peculiar artifacts, the author believed them to have developed from spear-points and to have been associated with the chase (skinning knives ?). He furthermore concluded from certain indications that these artifacts belonged to an early horizon. Typologically he distinguished six sub-types (Figure 18).

During the past few years, two attempts at usable methods of classification of archaeological cultures have been made. One is by Harold S. Gladwin, of Gila Pueblo, Globe, Arizona; the other was worked out by a group of students at the instigation of W. C. McKern, Milwaukee Public Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The present paper does not propose a different form of classification, but is a suggestion for applying the McKern system to local (Oklahoma) conditions.

Chalk Bluff Rock Shelter is located on the southern end of Chalk Bluff in Section 2, Township 10 South, Range 3 West, nine miles southwest of Murphysboro, Jackson County, Illinois. The bluff in which the shelter is located is an unbroken sandstone escarpment nearly one mile long and having an almost uniform height of 250 feet. This escarpment, lying in a north-south direction and paralleling the Mississippi flood-plain, has a westerly exposure. Here, where the shelter is located, is a conspicuous overhanging cliff offering the shelter ideal protection from the elements. The shelter itself is about sixty feet long and about forty feet wide. This rock shelter is situated about thirty feet above the flood plain. At no time during our work was there any evidence found of stratification suggesting water deposit in the dirt fill. This would substantiate the idea that the shelter was above highwater at all times.

Archaeological reconnaisance work along the ancient shore lines of desiccated Lake Mohave, located south of Death Valley in California, has been interpreted by Mr. and Mrs. Campbell and their associates. Groups of implements were found along the old beach line located above the present playa. These were found at approximately the same vertical elevation. Most geologists, including D. G. Thompson, O. E. Meinzer, and E. Antevs, are concurrent in the belief that the desiccation of this lake took place in late Pleistocene times; although Thompson believes the antiquity to be uncertain. The age of the lake, together with neighboring lake beds which are also desiccated, was interpreted by geologists before archaeologists became interested in the problem; however, it is possible that the groups of implements found exposed in the beaches might be considerably younger than the Pleistocene phase of the lake's existence. The presence of modern camp sites containing materials typologically different than those mentioned above was determined at the southern portion of the lake near existing or recent springs.

In the summer of 1936, while travelling on Reindeer Lake in northern Saskatchewan, a collection of potsherds was brought to me by a trapperprospector, William Douglas. These sherds were found in what appears to have been a well-established camp site on an island about one third up the lake. The lake itself is approximately 140 miles long and, like most lakes of the Precambrian Shield, filled with thousands of islands. The find was quite a random one but because of the high latitude would seem of particular interest. The position of the site is approximately 56°35" north latitude. To complicate the problem is the fact that both historically and in the tradition of the Crees and Chippewyans the lake has always been the almost exclusive territory of the “Idthen-eldeli,” Caribou-Eater branch of the Athabascan-speaking Chippewyan. The Churchill River, into which the outlet of Reindeer Lake flows seventy miles to the south, has traditionally and historically been the dividing line between these two peoples.

During the summer 1934, my wife and I were faced with the problem of excavating a dry cave that gave promise of being unusually valuable in the study of the ancient Indian cultures of southern Nevada.