In the course of an archaeological survey of the Point of Pines area, San Carlos Apache Reservation in east-central Arizona, E. W. Haury and E. B. Sayles, of the University of Arizona, noted the presence of a number of depressions which held surface water for a considerable period of time beyond the normal time for runoff. Furthermore, these depressions, or basins, appeared to be associated to some extent with specific archaeological ruins. The possibility that these depressions were made by the aboriginal inhabitants for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a water supply, led the writer in 1948 to excavate several of the depressions to determine their nature and date of construction, length of usage, time of abandonment, and other cultural information. The work was carried on during the 1948 season of the University of Arizona archaeological field school.

This will report the results of several years' search for historical sites in Simcoe County, Province of Ontario, in the area where the historic villages of the Huron were located. In the course of this work, certain aboriginal artifacts were found to be numerous on many sites but did not occur on others. In view of the current assumption of homogeneity for Iroquoian material in this area, the presence of a multiple artifact complex presented an interesting field for archaeological activity. Evidence of two cultural horizons accumulated as more sites were visited and more material marked and segregated, until finally in the summer of 1949 artifacts of two types were found in a stratified position on the Fallis site. Herewith I wish to give a brief description and grouping of the sites, and of their aboriginal material.

Since the excavation of Bat Cave and the location of Cochise implements in situ along the banks of Wet Leggett Wash in western New Mexico, it has seemed likely that one or more of the Cochise periods might be represented in the Middle Rio Grande area where living conditions would have appeared very attractive to hunters and gatherers. In 1949 Bruce T. Ellis collected a series of artifacts, spalls, and cores in and along the surface of a wash in the Atrisco Grant, lying some 3 to 5 miles west of the city of Albuquerque. Most of the 72 possible implements were of such irregular and haphazard design that both Ellis and E. B. Sayles (who examined a representative group of specimens) felt that their identification as objects of human manufacture was open to considerable question. But the remaining group of pressure flaked blades and scrapers, the single point, a slab metate of volcanic scoria with slightly concave surface, and a number of one-handed grinding stones led to hope that further search might locate such materials in position, with the small manos, especially, suggesting Cochise affiliations.

During a trip to greenland in the summer of 1948 Hans Mosegaard, a well known amateur archaeologist, visited Sarqaq in the Ritenbenk District of the northern part of Disko Bay. Directly west of the present settlement near the low cliff along the beach Mosegaard located remnants of an old midden layer, of which he excavated a surface area of 12 sq. m. with a culture stratum reaching a depth of 30 cm. The find consists of 182 artifacts; stone refuse is plentiful, but only a few bones, none worked, were preserved. No house ruins occur in connection with the culture layer, and Mosegaard was unable to establish any regular arrangement of the many stones scattered at the area.

The viru valley Project of 1946 was undertaken as an intensive and integrated study focusing the research of a number of anthropologists on the problems of a single, relatively small valley on the north coast of Peru. The ideal of the project was an analysis of the cultural history and prehistory of the Viru Valley from the time of earliest human occupation to the present. The final reports of the participants are now beginning to appear (Ford and Willey, 1949; Ford, 1949; Bennett, 1950) and these document the very substantial success of the project.

Before rushing into a revision of archaeological chronologies based upon the dates recently published in Memoir 8 of the Society for American Archaeology, the possibilities for the contamination of carbon should be considered. The dates given so far are from specimens found in widely divergent deposits and environments; they come from caves, bogs, Egyptian tombs, lake beds, deep deposits, shallow deposits, wet deposits, dry deposits, exposed deposits, and excavations; from material carefully removed and from other material which may have been molding in storage for years. The recognition of this diversity alone should produce caution in accepting radiocarbon dates as unassailable. Contamination of samples for dating can occur at a variety of times. It could happen prior to discovery or during excavation and removal, or in the archaeological laboratory, or even in the laboratory where the dating is done.

Archaeologists, by and large, have been too much engrossed with the problems of their own specialty to give much thought to pedagogy. So long as archaeological teaching remained largely in the graduate schools, where the training of would-be specialists is supplemented by museum projects and apprenticeships in the field, the situation did not greatly matter. The spreading popularity of anthropology has led to the establishment of undergraduate programs in anthropology, with the frequent inclusion of one or more survey courses in archaeology. In the light of this development it seems advisable to take stock of current methods of teaching the subject and give thought to the possibility of making our methods more effective.

In the superb Dieseldorff collection, located in the Guatemala National Museum is an effigy vase hitherto unpublished which is thought worthy of description and comment.

This vase, Museum number 5923, represents,a kneeling monkey; most probably a spider monkey (Fig. 81, a, b). The pear-shaped vase represents the body. The head and arm projects in full relief from the wall of the vessel, while the legs and a part of the tail are in somewhat lower relief. The monkey is clasping his long, curled tail by both hands above his head. Part of the rim, the left arm, and part of the tail are broken off (see Fig. 82, a, b.) Minor details such as fingers, eyes, and mouth were made by incising and grooving. The height of the vase is 14 cm. It is of unknown provenience but is thought to have been found near San Pedro Carcha (Alta Verapaz) by the late E. P. Dieseldorff.

Harrington has called attention (American Antiquity, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 251-52, 1948) to pottery from Roanoke Island having shell temper and a simple-stamped surface, presumably a heretofore unknown combination. It may consequently be of some interest to note further the occurrence of such a type from a mixed Colonial and Indian midden at what is thought to have been the site of a Colonial trading post at Kecoughtan, near Hampton, Virginia (Joseph B. and Alvin W. Brittingham, Sr., The First Trading Post at Kicotan [Kecoughtan], Hampton, Virginia, Hampton, 1947). In 1945 this site, threatened by rapidly expanding housing developments in the area, was partially excavated by the Brittinghams, aided by a grant from the Mariner's Museum, Newport News, Virginia. The material recovered from the site has since been donated to the United States National Museum.

When in the past I have listened to writers of scientific reports bewailing the fact that their writings have been misunderstood or misinterpeted, I have been inclined to pass severe judgment: An author should be able to express what he thinks in a clear manner—no reader can be expected to read with the report in one hand and a crystal ball zeroed in on the author's mind in the other. Consequently when, on re-reading Wauchope's recent (1950) stimulating attempt at coordinating the welter of data on Mesoamerican ceramics, I find myself in the unhappy situation of having been misunderstood, I cannot but feel embarrassed. Wauchope obviously cannot be blamed for not being able to guess what I had been thinking while writing on the stratigraphy of Tres Zapotes pottery. It seems important to clarify the matter in order to avoid perpetuation of my error.

In the summer of 1947, Levoshin (1950) found a group of objects on a terrace of the Yakitikiveem River in the central part of the Chukchi (Chukotski) Peninsula (approximately 66° N., 175° W.), which forms the Asiatic shore of Bering Strait. These objects are as interesting for their typology as for their geographic location. The announcement of the find had been foreshadowed by Beregovaya (1948), where reference was made to an oral report by Okladnikov. In this report, Okladnikov had referred to a Neolithic station in the valley of the Amguema River in the Chukchi Peninsula. Shimkin (1949), in a recent review of Soviet anthropology, has made note of the discussion to that point. Now, the brief communication by Levoshin, and a further comment by Okladnikov (1950) himself help to bring the information on these finds up to date. It is almost certain that the Amguema Valley reference is the same as the Yakitikiveem River site reference. Yet, while existing maps show the Amguema River as emptying into the Arctic Ocean in the Chukchi Peninsula, the Yakitikiveem River is not reported on any known map or chart.

In November, 1949, a fluted point was found in possession of a family at San Joaquin in Baja California. It was not possible to procure the point or photograph it, but a drawing was made. The drawing is accurate as to scale, form, and extent of fluting. The individual flake scars are illustrative rather than an attempt at exact representation. The point seemed to be made of very fine grained, almost glassy, basalt and the flake scars are considerably worn (Fig. 86).

Although fluted points are not very numerous in New York, it was there that they were first recognized as a distinct type under the name of “Seneca River Points” (Beauchamp, 1897, p. 21, Fig. 13, 14).

The majority of the New York finds have been in the central section of the state and along the shores of Lake Champlain and Lake George. A search of the literature, and correspondence with both professional and amateur archaeologists, has revealed no known finds of fluted points closer to the coastal area than one at Colonie in Albany County, New York. This was of an exotic quartz (Ritchie, 1951, personal communication). Therefore the finding of a fluted point in eastern Long Island extends the known range of the type.

In 1903 C. V. Hartman excavated archaeological materials in Costa Rica for Carnegie Museum and also purchased several local collections. In June 1950 the unpacking of a portion of the collection not reported by Hartman (1907), disclosed a fluted projectile point of dull black flint (Figs. 88, 89) with these measurements: length, A to B, 58 mm.; width, C to D, 32 mm.; maximum thickness, 5 mm. The point was made from a curved flake so that one face exhibits the fluting while the other retains the smooth, unworked original surface. The sides of both faces exhibit carefully controlled secondary chipping. The basal edge and the edges from C and D toward the base have been smoothed, either by intentional grinding or by the wear of successive rehaftings. Basal thinning is pronounced on both faces.

In 1946 Gifford published a brief account entitled “Archaeology in the Punta Penasco Region, Sonora” (American Antiquity, Vol. 11, pp. 215-21). Subsequently we both spent considerable time examining sites in the region, upon which we purpose to publish once we have a Carbon 14 date for the prepottery horizon.

In January, 1951, we examined sites in the vicinity of San Felipe, Northern Territory, Baja California, across the Gulf from Punta Peñasco. There we found numerous sites similar in type to those of Sonora. They were situated on dunes and terraces of the desert coast. All were marked by the presence of shells and potsherds. The former were largely of .the species found in Sonora, the latter of undecorated “Yuman” type, both of Mountain and Desert styles as described by A. E. Treganza in his paper entitled “An Archaeological Reconnaissance of Northeastern Baja California and Southeastern California” (American Antiquity, Vol. 8, p. 158, 1942).

In a brief article on the Cape Alitak petroglyphs of Kodiak Island (Heizer, 1947), two incised slate tablets were shown and analyzed with the intent to suggest a relationship in the treatment of the face on the slate pieces and the pecked petroglyphs. The two flat incised slate pieces referred to above came from the Uyak Bay site excavated by A. Hrdlicka in 1931-1938. No similar specimens had been published, and so far as could be determined, they were unique examples of incised art.

Recently Mr. Donald Clark of Kodiak City kindly sent to me for inspection a series of 25 closely similar slate pieces, of which 17 are shown in Fig. 90. They range in thickness from 2 to 6 mm., and are variable in outline. Some are incised on both surfaces, but the majority have the lightly incised lines only on one face. They are made of natural flat slate beach pebbles which can be found all over the island. The pieces shown here are from the vicinity of Kodiak City.