This is the second in a series of 3 articles describing recent finds by the writer in northern Honshu, Japan. The first article (AMERICAN ANTIQUITY, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 12- 31) was devoted to an introduction to the series and to the description of sites and materials of the Jomon (Neolithic) period. This article is a description of the protohistoric (Haji period) sites found and explored in Kamikita Gun, Aomori Prefecture, Honshu. These sites are primarily those of small villages, in 3 instances fortified by a ditch or an earthen wall. The outstanding characteristic of all these sites is that the old house pits can still be located by the circular, saucer-like depressions showing on the present surface. In addition to the concentrations of house pits which represent villages, many individual house pits may be found scattered about the region.

On October 17, 1947,1 read a paper, “A Critique of Some Archaeological Field Methods,” before the Anthropology Section of the Indiana Academy of Science. The occasion was the annual meeting of the group at Ball State Teachers College, Muncie, Indiana. The paper in its entirety was accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the Academy. I later withdrew the paper because I did not believe this to be the proper medium for its dissemination. The Proceedings for 1947 has now been issued and since it contains an abstract of my paper1 I think it proper to proceed with its publication with some minor changes.

The study of a large amount of chipped material from the seven largest sites excavated at Wetherill Mesa has yielded a pattern of change (as shown in graphs) in chipping methods and materials used that correlates well with other aspects of cultural change.

There has been, of late, much ado in archaeological circles about amateur and professional relations. Actually, there is no new problem here; there has always been an area of strain as well as an area of amicable cooperation between these groups. The tension, it is true, grows more acute with the rapid decrease in number of good sites and is, therefore, simply another manifestation of the competitive friction associated with increasing population pressures on resources of all kinds. Moreover, the spread of amateur interest in archaeology has been tremendous, but the number of jobs for professional prehistorians remains, as always, small.

The accompanying map (Plate 10), prepared by Mr. Ignacio Marquina, Chief of the Direction of Prehispanic Monuments, Ministry of Public Education, Mexico, gives a graphic idea of the coordinated research carried on by government and foreign agencies in Mexico. Formal excavation and reconnaissance are being combined to study the origin, development, and diffusion of Mexican cultures, and the burden of the work is being borne by the government archaeologists.

This article proposes a sequence of rulers for Machaquilá, as south-central Petén site which flourished in the Late and Terminal Classic periods. A number of articles on this matter about other Maya sites have appeared since Tatiana Proskouriakoff’s publication on Piedras Negras, in which she identified initial and inaugural glyphs. While Machaquilá’s monuments lack such event glyphs, the date patterns involved, as well as the identification of name glyphs and titles, permit the establishment of a sequence of rulers, an explanation for the fall of Machaquilá (usurpation or conquest by a non-Classic Maya ruler), and a possible reason for the collapse of Tikal.