The principle that the objects accompanying a burial are in most cases things which were in use at the same time was first stated by J. J. A. Worsaae in 1843. This principle rests on several assumptions, among them that it was customary to place objects beside the dead only at the time of burial, and that the objects so placed were ones owned or used by the occupant or his friends at the time of his death. There is at least one area, the Andean sierra, where we have historical evidence for the renewal of offerings in tombs, and in some cases renewal may have continued periodically for as much as 200 years. In the light of this example it is clearly necessary to determine the burial customs prevailing in the area and period concerned before using grave associations as evidence for contemporaneity. There is also a number of special circumstances which may produce exceptions to the conditions assumed in Worsaae's Law, and to cover the possibility of such exceptions the archaeologist must work with a sufficient number of grave lots so that he can establish rules of consistent association and identify exceptions to them.

Worsaae's Law may be extended to state that the objects accompanying a burial were in most cases not only used at the same time but made within a few years of one another. Heirlooms and antiques, the kinds of objects which would not conform to this statement, can be expected to be rare enough so that they would be recognized as exceptions to the prevailing pattern of associations.

The evidence of contemporaneity which grave associations provide can be used in two ways. If no stylistic sequence has yet been established for an area, grave associations can serve to check hypothetical sequences suggested on the basis of external evidence. Grave associations provide no evidence of sequence as such, but they do provide a means of testing the validity of the stylistic units or phases which any sequence implies. If a stylistic sequence is already established, the evidence of grave lots can be used to extend it to kinds of materials not included in the original sequence. Fuller utilization of burial associations for both purposes could lead to the solution of many problems in archaeological dating.

Nearly all writers on the antiquity of man in America assume that the oldest archaeological sites contain chipped-stone projectile points and therefore cannot exceed an age of some 12,000 to 15,000 years, the estimates usually given to such projectile-point types as Sandia and Clovis. Suggestions of older sites, with radiocarbon dates ranging from some 21,000 years to as much as “greater than 37,000 years,” with simpler artifacts and an absence of stone projectile points, are generally viewed with suspicion if not abhorrence.

A recent paper by E. H. Sellards considers seven localities in the western United States and Baja California which, because of geological position and radiocarbon dates, are probably too old to contain stone projectile points. The writer agrees with Sellards that these localities are archaeological (except for that at Texas Street in San Diego, California), but disagrees that those in coastal locations are different from those in inland locations for “ecological” reasons such as food supply and availability of stone. The differences may be explained in that those sites on the shores of extinct lakes were never covered by overburden, whereas those which were covered by alluvium or sand are known to us now only by varying amounts of exposure by erosion or excavation (or both).

The hypothesis of an Intermontane Western tradition is advanced as a conceptual framework within which it is possible to achieve a greater understanding of the cultural histories of the Plateau, Great Basin, and Southwest culture areas, including broad and specific relationships and also the developing differences.

Geographically, the Intermontane Western tradition extended throughout the intermontane region between the Cascade-Sierra Nevada ranges on the west, and the Rocky Mountains on the east, and from southern British Columbia on the north to northern Mexico on the south. Temporally, the Intermontane Western tradition existed throughout the post-glacial period.

Within the major tradition, the Southwest Agricultural, Desert, and Northwest Riverine Areal traditions are seen developing, partly in response to environmental changes.

The major problem in studying Early Man in northwestern America would appear to be the definition of adequate criteria for the identification of cultures. What is needed is recognition of cultures rather than technological tool-making traditions. A useful approach is to establish a model of relationships between environments and cultures. A basic assumption is that both environment and culture are continuous and that present environments permit recognition of past cultures. The identification of multiple environments in northwestern America permits the deduction that there were also multiple early cultures. Some proof of the models is to be seen in the presence of archaeological continuums rather than in layer-cake sequences. In the Northwest the layer-cake sequences should be expressive of intercultural relationships, and such relationships should occur on the margins of environmental areas. As a consequence of the models, three basic early cultures have been defined, with one potential culture as yet undefined. These are: (1) Old Cordilleran culture, (2) Mountain-Plains culture, and (3) Bitterroot culture, which may have been antecedent to the Desert culture. All three cultures are virtually equal in geologic time, though not necessarily in absolute time. A number of problems remain, but the approach is suggested as a means of recognizing that there are cultures probably equivalent in time to any previously recognized elsewhere in the New World.

In this paper the results of several pollen analyses and related invertebrate studies are utilized in an attempt to reconstruct the nature of the Great Plains environment prior to and during the advent of man. A large sample of Early Man sites is then examined and conclusions are drawn concerning man's use of this environment. Specific problems considered include: the types of sites, where the sites are located, the types of animals hunted, hunting techniques, butchering techniques, and tool manufacture. It is concluded that the environment consisted of a savanna grassland with abundant ponds and streams bordered on the north and west by pine and occasional spruce trees. The stream valleys sheltered galleries of junipers and oaks. On this grassland lived large herds of Pleistocene animals now extinct. Climatic indicators suggest that the summers were cooler than today, with winters warmer than at present. A Paleo-Indian cultural tradition adapted to the utilization of this environment, primarily through big game hunting, was practiced on the Great Plains during the time interval represented by the Llano, Folsom, and Parallel Flaked horizons. During this entire interval, the type of sites, site situations utilized, hunting techniques, butchering techniques, and most of the tool inventory remained constant.

Archaeological remains from the southern Californian desert region, spanning a period from 7000 B.C. to historic times, are segregated into four broad cultural horizons. The earliest certain evidences of human occupation consist of stone tools and weapons from the shore line of ancient Lake Mohave. The Lake Mohave artifacts comprise types designed primarily for hunting and related activities. Next in sequence are the lithic materials from Pinto Basin and other localities that demonstrate a mixed hunting-gathering economy. The third or Amargosa period is inadequately known. Triangular arrowpoints, pottery, and numerous seed-grinding implements distinguish the closing aboriginal phase. The major research needs are indicated.

U-shaped objects of shell or stone that occur commonly in northern and western Mexico have usually been identified as nose or ear ornaments. It has been found, however, that shell objects of this type appear as lashed-on finger-loops on two Mexican atlatls preserved in European museums, and this serves to identify the whole class of objects. A brief survey of the distribution of such finger-loops is given.

Excavations at the site of G-110: La Cabuya provide significant new data on the content and chronological position of the Machalilla culture. Trade pottery establishes its contemporaneity with the late period of the Valdivia culture, estimated at between 1800 and 1500 B.C. While seafood appears to have provided the main subsistence in both cultures, the ceramics and other artifacts are distinct. Machalilla pottery is well made, with thin walls and a high frequency of polished surfaces. Vessel shapes include carinated bowls and stirrup-spout jars. Typical decoration is by incision or thick red painting, separately or in combination, in simple but distinctive patterns. The Machalilla culture cannot be related to any of the known Formative complexes in Mesoamerica or South America, so that its origin cannot be suggested. Its termination was brought about by Mesoamerican contact, which added new traits to the Machalilla complex, producing the combination of elements characterizing the Chorrera culture.

This study makes a comparative evaluation of geological and biological evidence, on the one hand, and of plant pollen data, on the other, bearing on late Quaternary climates in southeastern Arizona. The findings support the conclusions based on the former and reject the contrary claims based on pollen by Martin, Schoenwetter, and Arms. The increase of pine pollen in the Cochise-Sulphur Spring and the Cochise-Cazador beds at Double Adobe from a few per cent to 28% was much too sudden to be accounted for by the spread of pine from the mountains to Double Adobe, and does not prove a change of the climate from arid to subhumid. The beds themselves indicate a subhumid climate throughout. The low frequency of pine may be due to such causes as scanty production, decomposition, and failure of the pollen to settle in flowing water.

No pollen data are at hand from the mid-postpluvial or Altithermal age of erosion. The preceding and the succeeding beds have long been referred by Antevs to the pluvial/postpluvial transition and to the relatively moist early Medithermal, respectively. The most typical features of the age, arroyo cutting and accumulation of caliche, are most competently explained by a long sharp drought. There seems to be no evidence for the view of Martin and associates that the Altithermal was an age of intense summer precipitation.

The entire synthetic postpluvial pollen profile is alternately dominated by composites and chenopods-amaranths. The last shift to chenopods-amaranths occurred at times ranging from about 4000 years ago to the 19th century. The dominations are apparently controlled by unknown edaphic conditions and are therefore of little or no use for correlation, dating, or climatic conclusions. Still, because of their great numbers, these pollens together with pine pollen are used as the main basis for the division into pollen zones. This leads to incorrect dating of Medithermal deposits and to disregard of documented arroyo erosions and droughts. Schulman's finding, that the radial growth of the ponderosa (yellow) pine, which is completed by the end of July, shows best agreement with the October-July precipitation, implies that the ring width is in accord with some 75 to 80% of the annual rainfall. Thus normally a narrow ring means deficient rainfall. The Great Drought of the 1200's did exist and caused arroyo erosion.

The long-standing interest of the Indiana Historical Society in archaeological methodology has led to a program designed to evaluate the applicability of the proton magnetometer to the location of certain subsurface features. Early trials at the Angel site in southern Indiana, which offers a variety of controlled experimental conditions, have shown that the instrument is capable of detecting the rather slight magnetic anomalies arising from the trench in which the stockade that once surrounded the village was set. While preliminary research has met with some success, a full report of the findings and problems encountered is reserved until completion of the project.

Steps taken to clean copper objects from the Etowah site, and to eliminate malignant patina or “bronze disease,” are discussed. The objects are considered in terms of paraphernalia attributed to the Southern Cult. One bilobed hair emblem bears representations of figures in ceremonial dress. One of the figures may be an impersonator of the Long-Nosed God.

It is argued that archaeology has made few contributions to the general field of anthropology with regard to explaining cultural similarities and differences. One major factor contributing to this lack is asserted to be the tendency to treat artifacts as equal and comparable traits which can be explained within a single model of culture change and modification. It is suggested that “material culture” can and does represent the structure of the total cultural system, and that explanations of differences and similarities between certain classes of material culture are inappropriate and inadequate as explanations for such observations within other classes of items. Similarly, change in the total cultural system must be viewed in an adaptive context both social and environmental, not whimsically viewed as the result of “influences,” “stimuli,” or even “migrations” between and among geographically defined units.

Three major functional sub-classes of material culture are discussed: technomic, socio-technic, and ideo-technic, as well as stylistic formal properties which cross-cut these categories. In general terms these recognized classes of materials are discussed with regard to the processes of change within each class.

Using the above distinctions in what is termed a systemic approach, the problem of the appearance and changing utilization of native copper in eastern North America is discussed. Hypotheses resulting from the application of the systemic approach are: (1) the initial appearance of native copper implements is in the context of the production of socio-technic items; (2) the increased production of socio-technic items in the late Archaic period is related to an increase in population following the shift to the exploitation of aquatic resources roughly coincident with the Nipissing high water stage of the ancestral Great Lakes; (3) this correlation is explicable in the increased selective pressures favoring material means of status communication once populations had increased to the point that personal recognition was no longer a workable basis for differential role behavior; (4) the general shift in later periods from formally “utilitarian” items to the manufacture of formally “nonutilitarian” items of copper is explicable in the postulated shift from purely egalitarian to increasingly nonegalitarian means of status attainment.

Heavy jungle growth prevented economical surveying of Aguacatal (Campeche, Mexico) and the adjacent area despite the efforts of two brief seasons in the field. Aerial photography was used to supplement and expeditiously complete the ground survey work. The operation was inexpensive and utilized readily available equipment such as the K-20 aerial camera. Super-XX, infrared, and color films were used on an experimental basis to determine which film was best suited for archaeologic purposes. All films were found to have special values: Super-XX — the best general film for gray tonal renditions of vegetal differentiation; infrared — for the delineation of wet areas and water courses; and color — for the maximum readability of color differences. Photographic interpretation proved reliable and allowed the archaeologist to extract topographic, ecologic, and archaeologica data from the photographs with little laboratory study.

Portions of two recently observed prehistoric wells at the Blackwater No. 1 locality in Roosevelt County, New Mexico, furnish additional data on features first described by Evans (1951). These wells were exposed by gravel-quarrying operations which have removed the last major remnant of ancient pond deposits containing artifacts of the Llano and Folsom cultures and the Portales complex. The time of well-digging occurred during an erosional interval between Beds 3a and 4; and on the basis of comparisons with the Lubbock Reservoir site, this interval is equated with the Altithermal stage of Antevs, and it is suggested that the wells were dug sometime between 4000 and 5000 years ago.

The X-ray spectrometer method as an archaeological tool is discussed with special reference to its limitations as a chemical analytical instrument. Qualitative results are presented for six North American copper samples, one European trade brass, and nine artifacts from the Great Lakes region. From this pilot study it is concluded that the most fruitful results in the problem of the determination of provenance of copper artifacts will be obtained from semi-quantitative optical spectographic analyses of carefully collected artifacts and raw materials. The largest inherent error in this problem is that of meaningful sampling techniques. The only recourse is to treat such chemical data statistically and determine the probabilities that given specimens came from the various possible sources.

The interiors of two large Kentucky caves — Mammoth Cave and nearby Salts Cave, both within Mammoth Cave National Park — were much visited and utilized by prehistoric Indians. Large quantities of artifacts and numerous other evidences of human activity are still present in both caves, especially in undisturbed portions of Salts Cave. Most of the remains comprise perishable materials of vegetable fiber and wood, and plants or plant parts carried into the caves by the aboriginal inhabitants of the region. Several collections of artifacts gathered 40 or 50 years ago from the surface in the Mammoth Cave area have recently been examined by D. W. Schwartz of the University of Kentucky. One such collection hints at a village site of the late Archaic-Early Woodland time range somewhere near the entrance to Salts Cave. In 1961, specimens of the black-brown ceiling and wall deposits which are quite extensive in parts of both Salts and Mammoth caves were collected and analyzed. The deposits were found to be soot, presumably from aboriginal torches and hearths whose remains occur plentifully in some areas of the caves. A sample of soot from Salts Cave was submitted for radiocarbon determination; the resulting date is 3075 ± 140 B.P. Two dates had been previously obtained by the National Park Service from artifacts in Mammoth Cave: 2230 ± 40 B.P. and 2370 ± 60 B.P. These three dates support the suggestion of a late Archaic-Early Woodland placement for the prehistoric activity in Salts and Mammoth caves.

A cumulative graph which shows percentages of artifact types in assemblages is a useful tool for seriating large numbers of site samples when the chronological order of the appearance of types is known. This type of seriation has a distinct advantage over the bar-graph and Brainerd-Robinson techniques in speed and in the elimination of subjective judgment in ordering the assemblages.

Experimental work has demonstrated the practicality of extracting sufficient organic carbon for Carbon 14 dating from sherds tempered with crushed charcoal sponge spicules (cauixi), and siliceous bark (cariapé). The sherds were from ceramic complexes on the Napo, Orinoco, and Amazon Rivers that had been stratigraphically excavated and could be cross-checked.

Two carved stones depicting human heads are currently to be found at Huaylas in the Callejon de Huaylas, Peru. They represent a style so far unreported from the Callejon. The closest stylistic similarities are to be found in the Chavin style and in the unique monoliths at Cerro Sechin Temple in the Casma Valley.