San Nicolas is a small island located off the coast of southern California some 75 miles southwest of Los Angeles and 55 miles from the nearest point of the mainland. It is the most distant from the mainland of eight islands referred to collectively as the Channel Islands. San Nicolas is about 8 miles long by 4 miles wide and is 32.2 square miles in area. According to Norris (n.d., pp. 67-74), San Nicolas Island is a faulted asymmetric anticline composed of Pleistocene sediments lying unconformably on Eocene sandstone and shale. Original deposition during the Eocene was followed by anticline development and faulting in Eocene-Oligocene times. Miocene volcanic activity probably accounts for the several small diabase dikes on the island and for rhyolitic Begg Rock 7 miles northwest. The Pleistocene sediments were laid down during the first half of that period when the island was nearly or entirely submerged.

Very Little has been written about the archaeology of central and southern Bolivia, the attention of students having been concentrated on the Tiahuanaco area. I began exploring this great unknown region in 1940-44 and am now continuing the project in my present capacity as Director of the Archaeological Museum of the University of Cochabamba. The present report is a summary of the results of this work to date. The best described Bolivian culture outside of the Tiahuanaco area is the one called Mizque-Tiahuanaco by Nordenskiöld and Bennett which I am calling Yampará. I have found tombs in an earlier variety of this style without any Tiahuanaco influence. A characteristic of Yampará pottery is the presence of tripod bowls which resemble Mexican ones; this trait is entirely un-Tiahuanacoid.

The Yampará style extends to the whole of the Department of Chuquisaca, except for Cinti and the southern part of Azero, and it occurs also in the Province of Cornelio Saavedra in Potosí.

Recently renewed interest has been focused upon the occurrence in the Plains area of the archaeological complex often termed the “Southern cult.” This complex is found over a wide geographic area and in association with varied cultures. It occurs throughout the southeastern United States, and extends north and west along the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys. It has been found in eastern South Dakota, eastern North Dakota, and in the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada. The complex is characterized by specific art motifs and ceremonial objects, including masklike whelk shell gorgets, and the cross, forkedeye, and hand-and-eye motifs. The complex was apparently fundamentally dependent upon a horticultural base, and is associated in nearly every case with platform mounds. Sites often thought of in connection with the Southern cult are Etowah (Georgia), Moundville (Alabama), and Spiro (Oklahoma). The author has recently examined materials in the collections of the North Dakota State Historical Museum for artifacts related to the complex.

During the summer of 1950, from June through August, the authors made an archaeological reconnaissance in south - central Quebec. All traveling was done by canoe. This work was made possible by grants from the Robert S. Peabody Foundation for Archaeology, Andover, Massachusetts and from Stephen Phillips of Salem, Massachusetts. The survey was started at Senneterre, Quebec (Fig. 54) and carried northward by way of Lac Parent and the Bell River to Lake Mattagami. At this point, we began working upstream by way of the Waswanipi River to Lake Waswanipi, passing through Lakes Olga and Goeland. After spending a few days looking about Lake Waswanipi, we continued on our way to Lake Mistassini. The route took us through Lakes Puskitamika, Malouin, Lichen, and Opawica. We then ascended the Opawica River to Lakes Doda and Bras Coupé. From Kere, we crossed the height of land to Lac Presqu'ile and continued up the Obatogamau River to Lake Muscocho.

In 1940, while on a commission for the Ecuadorian Government to the site of La Tolita in the province of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, the author had an opportunity to examine and photograph a few specimens in the collection of Sr. Yannuzzelli. Sr. Yannuzzelli maintained a ranch at the archaeological site of La Tolita which is located a few miles up the Rio Santiago from the coastal town of Limones and is not far from the Colombian border. Several large flat top mounds (Fig. 56, 1) and about 25 increasingly smaller ones comprise the present site. It had been visited about 30 years previously by both Uhle and Saville, but neither one conducted adequate excavations there. It is a favorite site for local inhabitants to pan gold, and in 1940, Sr. Yannuzzelli was actually engaged in carrying out extensive, large scale, placer mining operations within the archaeological zone.

” North of the watershed between the Ohio River and the St. Lawrence drainages, Ohio is a fiat plain. It is an old lake bed, rising in shallow steps from the present shore of Lake Erie. The north edge of each “step” is marked by a “Lake Ridge,” a fossil beach marking a stage in the recession of the post-glacial lake. In a few places wave, action has cut a slight terrace where the old shore line met steeper than average terrain, but along most of the extent the “ridges” mark barrier beaches between the lake and a lagoon. Here they are as distinct as a railroad embankment would be.

There are three main ridges continuous across the state; these mark the longest pauses in the recession. In prehistoric times these were the main east and west trails, and today are followed along much of their length by the main east and west highways.

As we read the archaeological reports of recent years, many of us are becoming slightly appalled at the vast store of information that is coming to us each month ffpm the laboratories processing radiocarbon specimens. This material is rapidly being absorbed into the archaeological literature where, in its present form, it presents a slightly confusing picture. Most of us learned our archaeological chronologies in the old Gregorian calendrical system and to have, for example, a date of 8431 ± 475 B.P. suddenly thrown at us gives our delicate nervous systems quite a shock. Undoubtedly many archaeologists will confess that they must mentally subtract 1950 years from such a radiocarbon date to be able to fit it into their long-established chronological systems.

A more serious criticism is this: the literature is rapidly becoming flooded with radiocarbon dates, dating back at present from the years between 1948 and 1953. The physicists seem to feel that time stopped somewhere around the year 1950, and thus all historical dating in the future can be made from that date.

Tabular stones, either with parallel sides or sides that taper to a blunt point at one end and bearing a wide notch on the other end, have been found in situ in or resting on floors of structures over a considerable area of the Southwest. Sites which have yielded these stones and data pertaining to them are listed in the accompanying figure. Sources for these data are contained in the bibliography.

In 1932, Haury suggested and demonstrated that the notched stones at Roosevelt 9:6 in the Tonto Basin, Arizona, held logs which supported an elevated floor. Since that date these stones periodically have been recovered from sites distributed over a wide area in association with structures dating from before 500 A.D. to 1100 A.D. and possibly later. However, in no case have they been found in such quantities on or in house floors as at Roosevelt 9:6. When the circumstances of these finds are considered it seems quite likely that the notched slabs of all other sites excavated since 1932 were put to a different use.

In a brief report, which was read before the 8th Conference for Plains Archeology by George Metcalf, 1 attempted to reconstruct the procedure by which the carcass of an antelope was prepared for food. The inferences thus drawn were based upon the ratio of the various elements to each other and to the greatest number of individuals represented, as well as the location of the breaks or cuts in the bones. Since the antelope is one of the smaller food animals and could be moved to a convenient butchering place, the question immediately posed itself: “How would size affect the butchering technique since a bison must necessatily be butchered where it is killed?“

The bison bone which provides the basis for this study was collected during the excavation of two archaeological sites near Pierre, South Dakota. The Dodd site was a multi-component village, but there was evidence of only a single cultural complex at the Phillips Ranch site (Lehmer, 1952).

Interest has recently increased in problems of pre- Conquest contact between the two foci of high culture in the New World, Mesoamerica and the Andean Area. In approaching this question, three major categories of culture diffusion should be recognized at the outset, since each requires a different methodological approach on its own level. The first category would include such basic foundation elements as the cultivation of maize and other closely associated plant staples, pottery, metallurgy, weaving, architecture, etc.; the second, such considerably more specific traits as highly specialized technological processes in various crafts, distinctive art styles, unique design motifs, etc.; and the third, actual trade objects manufactured in one region and imported into the other. There has been more agreement concerning the actuality of diffusion of at least some first category traits than of those in the second, where the claims when critically examined often turn out. to be founded on highly subjective criteria. As for the third category, the striking thing here is the marked paucity of claims of finds of this type.

Archaeological research in Chihuahua, Mexico, is something that has been talked about a great deal recently, but little in the way of field work has been accomplished. During the 1930's there was a spurt in archaeological activities in that area which saw a number of individuals conducting surveys and small scale excavations mainly in the northwestern part of the state. Reports on much of this work, and upon field work accomplished earlier, appeared in this same period. But since that time very little has been accomplished. As more knowledge of the prehistory of southern New Mexico, southeastern Arizona, and central Mexico became available, attention was focused on north central Mexico, including Chihuahua, as a key area in which might be found answers to many existing problems, especially those dealing with Southwestern-Mexican connections. In the period since World War II, J. Charles Kelley has reported upon work in southern Chihuahua in the Rio Conchos drainage, and the University of New Mexico conducted investigations in the Bolson de Mapimi in southwestern Chihuahua. The latter work, however, is unreported.

My notes on the Brown mound (Br. 3) of the Spiro site filed at the University of Oklahoma were misplaced and therefore not available to Kenneth Orr at the time he prepared his preliminary Spiro report. (American Antiquity, Vol. 11, No. 4, 1946.) The following data are from a personal copy of the original notes.

When I visited the Spiro site in August 1935, members of the Pocola Mining Company were “exploring“ the Brown mound. Using a team and slip, they had put one trench about 20 feet wide almost completely through the mound from the north side and a side trench from the west to the center of the mound. The clay subsoil was exposed in both trenches, less than a foot of it having been removed from the north-south trench. These trenches, with the spreading of the fill around the north, south, and west sides of the mound, had all but obliterated its original shape and size.

J. H. Connery (1932, p. 516) reported a supposed association of artifacts and extinct vertebrates at the Bon Terra Farm, in Flagler County, Florida. It was stated that an arrowhead was found beneath the jawbone of a mammoth elephant. The arrowhead was not described or illustrated. E. B. Howard (1940, p. 309), who tested the site, thought the association questionable, but did not elaborate on his reasons for so thinking. Recently, through the cooperation of Connery, I reexamined the Bon Terra site (Fl 5) and the material found there. A drawing of the arrowhead was made, the outline being traced and the chipping indicated by freehand sketch. The artifact is small, thin, and flat; it was ovate before notching. The diagonal notches resulted in a barbed projectile point with a wide tang. The edges bear fine pressure retouching. The tip had once been broken and the artifact then reworked into what would usually be called a stemmed scraper. This type of point is unlike anything attributed to the paleo-Indian, and has not been reported from the Archaic of Florida.

I am indebted to my former Galapagos colleague, Mr. Joseph R. Slevin, Curator of Herpetology, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, for the following data which may have some pertinence in the moot problem of Amerindian archaeology in the Galapagos Islands. Mr. Slevin, recently in London, excerpted portions of the original logs and diaries of early voyagers to the Galapagos for his book on that group.

From the log book of the Ship Rattler, Captain James Colnett, R. N., April 26, 1794, referring to James Island: “At several places he [the chief mate] stopped found numbers of jars, old iron, and a decayed dagger and several other articles decayed with time and which we still conjecture was left here by the buccaneers.” The whaling master of the Rattler also found broken pieces of jars.

Apropos of buccaneers leaving supplies are the following quotations from the diaries of buccaneer Captains Davies and Ambrose Cowley.