Facts and opinions are given that contest Berlin’s specific condemnation of a single excavation at Tikal, Guatemala, and his general censure of the Tikal Project.

An unusual Maya stela in the St. Louis Art Museum has a number of distinguishing characteristics: (1) The cylindrical shape is comparatively rare for a free-standing Maya monument. (2) Thegtyphic inscription contains four previously unnoted glyph groups. (3) The inscription includes a rare glyph group of which only a very few examples are known. (4) The shape of the glyphs and the placement of the numbers seem to be governed by aesthetic considerations, although the variations of the tun glyph may have semantic implications.

One day, in the spring of 1937, while looking at some Indian artifacts in Peabody Museum at Harvard University, I saw a card of flaked stone objects that had been made by Mr. F. R. Whitney of Tacoma, Washington. The card stated that more information concerning these pieces might be obtained in the Museum Library. I promptly went to the Librarian and asked about them. She told me that if I were interested in the manufacture of stone arrow points I should get in touch with Mr. Charles E. Snow, who was then a student of anthropology at the University.

Many Mesoamericanists today accept the fact that much Mesoamerican art, in various media, depicts historical events and persons. Much of this evidence has come from hieroglyphic texts. This paper attempts to demonstrate the value of using non-glyphic attributes of depictions of personages and of interaction scenes to investigate the same problems. Non-glyphic attributes of scenes and individual dress and ornamentation are treated as coded cultural information that reflects patterned sociocultural phenomena. This approach is applied to Cotzumalhuapan sculpture from Coastal Guatemala. It is demonstrated that there are two distinctive facial types in interaction which seem to represent two different socio-political groups.

Recent reports on Alaska by Solecki and by Giddings. have mentioned the presence there of Mongolian-type lames and cores already noted some twelve years earlier by Nelson and by Rainey. In this connection, it may not be out of place to summarize the findings of Hitoshi Watanabe, a Japanese archaeologist, on the characteristics that distinguish a lame from an ordinary flake. Although the primary purpose of his research was to clarify some misconceptions created in Japanese archaeology by somewhat indiscriminate application of the term lames to relatively long and narrow flakes, found in both the main island of Honshu and the northernmost island of Hokkaido, much of the data is relevant to Alaskan archaeology.

Between 1956 and 1960, 20 ceramic figurines were discovered in Mound 42Ut111 at the Hinckley site west of Utah Lake in northern Utah. Circumstances of the discovery are discussed, as well as two other finds previously made in Utah Valley. Comparisons are made with figurines from the Fremont and Sevier areas, particularly from sites just north and south of Utah Valley. On the basis of these comparisons and a consideration of other items, such as ceramics, house type, and ecological setting, it is hypothecated that Utah Valley was a cultural center for northwestern Utah. It is proposed that this area be called the Provo culture area.

Davis has theorized that Paiute raids on the western peripheries of the Pueblo region caused withdrawals toward the central Anasazi areas, which in turn forced the Anasazi, who were also troubled by drought, to retreat eastward. Paiutes could have contributed to Puebloan migrations, but the evidence for movements toward the east is inconclusive. Contrary evidence, such as late Mesa Verde migrations to the south and west, the sequence of abandonments of Anasazi centers from east to west, and the probability that the Anasazi area was never populated to capacity argues against this theory.

J. Alden Mason (1951) described two soapstone figurines which seemed to be of Chinese manufacture that have turned up in Mexico and Guatemala, respectively. In connection with these, I should like to call attention to still another object of the same substance, discovered in Yucatan, which is undoubtedly of Chinese manufacture.

Gann (1918) illustrates a “soapstone lamp” which he had found in a mound near Bacalar in Quintana Roo. He describes this “lamp” as decorated in front with a floral design and at the back by wing or feather-like ornaments possibly meant to represent the tail and halffolded wings of a bird, and remarks that its pleasing design and flowing lines are totally unlike the cramped and highly conventional style found in “similar small objects of ancient Maya manufacture.”

Site acquisition or placing of preservation easements on archaeological sites are the best means currently available for insuring site preservation for future research. The examples presented are intended to inform the archaeological community about agencies involved in the acquisition of archaeological sites.

Notations on the discovery of a figure of Kokopelli, the hunch-backed flute player, on a Pueblo I sherd in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, and speculations on the place of this figure in the prehistoric pantheon, brought forth a series of items of hitherto unpublished and illuminating data. It is hoped that this note on a second find of a human figure on a sherd in Chaco Canyon may likewise lead to some controversy and new information.

This new figure, discovered during the 1937 field season of the University of New Mexico, was that of a woman with squash-blossom headdress, the old fertility symbol of the Hopi maidens. The potsherd was of La Plata Black-on-white, a typical Basket Maker III type, dating probably some time before 700 A.D. Similar figures with the squash-blossom headdress have been noted from time to time as petroglyphs on boulders or on cliff walls in the northern part of the Southwest; but the Chaco sherd provides the best opportunity that I know of for dating this interesting coiffure.

One of the eleven known colossal stone heads attributed to the Olmec culture of southeastern Mexico has not been previously published. It is now in the town of Santiago Tuxtla, Veracruz, and was brought there in 1951 from a locality about 2 mi. north of the village of Tres Zapotes. It is designated as Tres Zapotes Colossal Head No. 2, even though it is probably not associated directly with the Tres Zapotes site which produced Tres Zapotes Colossal Head No. 1. The sculpture weighs about 8.5 short tons and is made of a distinctive olivine-and augite-rich basalt from the Cerro el Vigia not more than 5 mi. away.

During recent excavations in the archaeological deposits in Russell Cave, Jackson County, Alabama (Miller 1956), we reached a depth of 13 feet. From this level we collected a large sample of charcoal found in association with chert projectile points whose shape suggests a placement at the end of paleo-Indian times and the beginning of early Archaic times.