The literature of anthropology contains so many references to the fire hardening of arrow and spear points, digging sticks, and other pointed implements of wood that the assumption has become dogmatic and almost fixed. It is needless to refer in particular to specific writings which contain references to fire hardening.

Since fire hardening is assumed to be a culture trait of importance, I decided to make a series of experiments to determine to what extent wood was altered by being charred in a fire.

From several sites within the John H. Kerr (Buggs Island) Reservoir area of Mecklenburg County, southern Virginia, a number of stone artifacts have been identified as burins or gravers. (The term “burin” will be used rather than “graver” as the latter term implies a limited use for such tools as engraving implements rather than for other purposes as well.) Associated with these burins are various types of projectile points, scrapers, borers or perforators, choppers, and a few cleavers or “coups-de-poing” comparable in chipping traditions to Old World examples. These burins occur not only on lamellar but on rough percussion flakes of chert.

While in Europe such tools occur chiefly in upper Paleolithic industries, Burkitt (1933: 59) considers: “For a tool to be classed as a graver it is necessary that it should have at least one graver facet… . When secondary work is done on a blade or flake as, for example, when an edge is trimmed, vertical blows are dealt on the edge, the flake or blade itself being held horizontally.

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.

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 attention given to the details of pottery description has of recent years absorbed so much of the interest of specialists in Southwestern archaeology that to the outsider it often appears an unduly exaggerated, if amusing, preoccupation which consumes a great deal more time and effort than it deserves. To those who have tried to work in the area, however, it is not necessary to point out the importance which this relatively imperishable trait holds. This is especially true in the case of exploration of new areas by means of surface survey, where broken pieces of pottery make up the larger part of the diagnostic material available, and in the excavation of the less well-preserved sites, especially in the peripheral areas.

A recent article in American Antiquity entitled “Symposium on River Valley Archaeology” summarizes the present status of one of our most important and urgent problems in American archaeology today. Additional information concerning this subject, particularly with reference to the progress made in the Colorado River Valley, should be mentioned at this time.

The National Park Service has been concerned with survey and salvage operations in proposed reservoir areas along the Colorado River and its tributaries for many years. Long before final construction work was completed on Hoover (formerly Boulder) Dam in 1935, several C.C.C. archaeological crews were at work under National Park Service direction in the areas to be inundated, particularly along the Virgin and Muddy rivers in southeastern Nevada.

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.

Karen Harry's study indicates that agricultural marginality is an unlikely explanation for ceramic specialization in the prehistoric U.S. Southwest. Economic theory provides an alternative model for the exchange of pottery for food.