Two long series of samples from Tikal, Petén, Guatemala, have been dated by the radiocarbon method for the purpose of limiting the range of possible correlations of the Maya calendar with the Christian. These samples from lintel and vault beams were selected from latest-growth portions of the beams which were presumably cut at times corresponding to Maya dates carved on lintels of two temples. Christian dates for dedicatory Maya dates of the lintels are calculated according to five correlation hypotheses, and are compared with radiocarbon dates for ten beams from Temple IV and six from Temple I. These new radiocarbon dates are shown to be closely related to “absolute” ages by means of radiocarbon counts of tree-ring-dated samples of the same period. The radiocarbon results support the 11-16 (Goodman-Thompson-Martinez) correlation. Attention is given to previous radiocarbon tests by other laboratories of beams removed from Tikal many years ago which seemed to favor the 12-9 correlation in Spinden or Makemson variants. With the aid of new radiocarbon dates for similar samples, reasons for the differences in results are discussed.

The problem of the age of the pyramids of the Sun and Moon at Teotihuacán is considered in the light of evidence from an extensive and hitherto unreported Tzacualli or Teotihuacán I occupation to the northwest of the Pyramid of the Moon. Material from a small excavation in this new zone is commented upon briefly. Previous analyses of the age of the pyramids are discussed in the context of the new evidence, the conclusion being that the Pyramid of the Sun and probably also the Pyramid of the Moon were built in the earliest phase of the occupation of Teotihuacán rather than later as commonly assumed. The relationships of the Tzacualli phase to other sites in the Valley of Mexico are discussed and it is concluded that the pyramids were probably built in about the last century before Christ or earlier. Since the building of these enormous pyramids implies a relatively complex level of social integration, this new level must have come into being some several hundred years or more before the building of the pyramids unless a large-scale migration was involved. For this it is contended there is no good evidence. Linné's new chronological placement of Tlamimilolpa before Xolalpan rather than after is discussed. Comments are made on the significance of this reversal of chronology for the growth of the city and for the expansion of its “influence” to other parts of Mesoamerica.

All species of Cucurbita (which includes squashes, pumpkins, and the common, small, yellow-flowered gourds) are native to the Americas. Their center of origin lies in Mexico where most of the 26 wild and cultivated species still grow. Chilicayote (C. ficifolia), a perennial and probably the oldest cultivated species, is grown from Mexico to Bolivia and known archaeologically only from coastal Peru (3000 B.C.). Oldest archaeological cucurbits are C. pepo and Lagenaria siceraria, the bottle gourd. Specimens of these species were recovered from Tamaulipas in cave material dated 7000-5500 B.C. Pepo and Lagenaria spread over most of the United States probably with the advent of agriculture. Cucurbita moschata appeared in coastal Peru at the same time as C. ficifolia (3000 B.C.), but it does not occur in the Ocampo Cave cultures until 1400-400 B.C. when pottery and village life entered, and corn, cotton, pepo, and beans (common, lima and jack) were being grown. While the earliest dates for moschata in southwestern United States are about A.D. 1100, it probably entered the same time as cotton, perhaps as early as A.D. 700. Cucurbita mixta, the cushaw, is the most recent of the cultivated species. It is found mainly in Mexico and in post-A.D. 1000 sites in the southwestern U.S. Prehistoric C. maxima is known only from Peru and to the south and east in Chile and Bolivia. Its ancestors probably were carried there by man from the Mexican center, and the weedy C. andreana may have been taken along at the same time.

The bottle gourd is most variable in the Old World. It probably originated there, and was carried to the New World in pre-agricultural times by ocean currents. A number of other cucurbits and the tree gourd, Crescentia cujete, not a true gourd but a member of the family Big-noniaceae, are briefly mentioned. Parts useful in identifying the cultivated cucurbits are the fruit stem or peduncle, seeds, rind, and leaves. A list of the collections of Cucurbita and Lagenaria which have been studied is given, with estimates for the date of each site.

No archaeological remains which the majority of specialists will accept as Archaic have been found in the Mississippi Valley from the mouth of Ohio River to the Gulf of Mexico. Despite this, the literature reflects a general acceptance of the belief that the Archaic stage is well represented in the Lower Valley. The presence of concentrated Archaic populations in northern Alabama and western Tennessee and Kentucky has given comparative support to these expectations and has provided part of the source for some of the hypothetical statements in the literature of what the Lower Valley Archaic ought to be like. Although the failure of writers to agree on a definition of Archaic which will satisfy the evidence in all of the areas of Eastern United States has contributed to the problem of identifying Archaic materials in the Lower Valley, the lack of these remains can best be explained by the geology of the region. The cutting and filling of the Alluvial Valley during the Pleistocene changes in sea level have removed or buried all of the surfaces that might have been occupied by Archaic peoples. The surface of the Alluvial Valley is everywhere less than 5000 years old. Possible Late Archaic sites are located on old stable beach ridges or near enough to the Pleistocene terraces not to have been included in the general pattern of Recent coastal subsidence. It is concluded that Archaic or earlier materials are absent in the Lower Alluvial Valley of the Mississippi River. Neither Tchefuncte nor Copell are accepted as Archaic; Poverty Point is viewed as transitional from an Upper Archaic tradition to some phase of the Formative stage. Poverty Point materials may not be expected to be found in quantity along the Gulf Coast of the Mississippi Delta region.

Paleolithic remains, mostly surface finds from blowouts, are known from 63 sites in the Trans-Baikal, one of the five large regional subdivisions of the Siberian Paleolithic. Most important recent discoveries are the stratified sites of Oshurkovo and Sannyi Mys and the Pleistocene faunal sequence on Tologoi Mountain. Characteristic stone tools are made from whole or split pebbles and from blades removed from prismatic cores. Bone artifacts, known only from Oshurkovo, include slotted points and knives and flat antler harpoons. The Trans-Baikal finds, all Upper Paleolithic in time, are tentatively arranged in five chronological stages. The earliest period is based on the lower levels at Sannyi Mys in which microblades, but no pebble tools, are found with woolly rhinoceros and mammoth. The next period is represented by large pebble tools and cores from Ust"-Kiakhta Locality 3. Typical Siberian pebble tools found with horse in the upper levels at Sannyi Mys are assigned to the third stage. The fourth is best known from Oshurkovo where all the common Siberian Paleolithic stone tools are found along with bone artifacts in deposits which contain abundant fish bones. A number of sites are assigned to the fifth stage, but it is best represented by the uppermost level at Oshurkovo where flakes, flaked pebbles, and small blade tools of regular outline replace the large blades and pebble cores of the earlier periods. This tentative sequence is strengthened by correlations with the Angara and Yenisei areas to the west and with Mongolia and North China to the east. The Trans-Baikal is seen as an area in which the prismatic core and blade tradition of Eurafrican origin and the split pebble-tool tradition of eastern Asia were in contact from the earliest known period.

A series of large structures termed great kivas has been excavated at Point of Pines, Arizona. To add to the sequence of these kivas a site was excavated in 1959 on one of the upper tributaries of Eagle Creek, 16 miles northeast of Point of Pines. The site complex included a great kiva and five attached rooms, a U-shaped masonry pueblo, scattered storage units, trash deposits, a reservoir, and agricultural terraces. The kiva was rectangular with an encircling bench, a stepped entrance, two possible floor resonators, and a post pattern suggesting a polygonal roof support. The ceramic content of the site places it late in the Reserve phase which is dated from A.D. 1000 to 1150.

This particular kiva type appeared during late Three Circle phase and had a distribution centered in the upper San Francisco and Blue River valleys. The antecedents for the structure seem to lie in the general Mogollon great kiva tradition. The surrounding areas were examined for possible contributions to the complex; ceramic evidence of contact was present but no definite source for the introduction was found. The presence of a number of Anasazi traits plus the direction of Reserve phase cultural change suggests a northern source for this kiva form.

Site 52, a possible platform mound, is unusually situated near the bottom of a draw rather than along the ridge of Chapin Mesa. Complete excavation of the small surface structure yielded two distinct levels of construction and several architectural phenomena which previously had not been reported from San Juan Anasazi sites. A rectangle of multiple-coursed masonry was built on a sloped, irregular ground surface. An interior crosswall with a floor level opening, a raised circular floor feature, two peripheral stepped abutments on opposite sides, and a complex of masonry walls and external alignments on the third side were added to the basic rectangle. The second construction level utilized what appeared to be intentional interior and exterior fill as a base, and two alignments further subdivided the rectangle. Two rubble-filled abutments were appended externally to the fourth wall of the rectangle. Artifacts were rarely found. Solid, continuously built coursed masonry, construction techniques, and pottery types suggest that Site 52 was built during Pueblo III and may have been a platform mound of ceremonial significance.

Stratigraphic interpretation rests on two principles: the principle of superposition and the principle that deposition units can be identified by cultural content. The sequence of deposition units derived from a case of superposition may not give a true cultural sequence if mixing, filling, or collecting has affected the cultural contents of the units. There are two kinds of seriation: evolutionary seriation, done on the basis of an assumed general law of cultural development, and similary seriation, done on the basis of similarities and differences in objects or deposition units compared. Similiary seriation assumes only that cultural change is normally gradual. Of the two kinds of seriation, only similiary seriation can give credible results. Some evidence of archaeological associations is necessary to control the possibility of non-gradual change resulting from sudden outside influence or archaism. If the conditions for success can be met, either stratigraphy or seriation can provide a credible sequence. Each method provides a check on the other; the most credible results are achieved by combining the two.

The foot-turned parador or mobile pottery support used at Acatlán is very similar to the kabal used at the Maya village of Mama, Yucatán. It is viewed as an extension of the Maya kabal technique into the mold-technique area of central Mexico. It is suggested that the principle of the Maya kabal and its Acatlán counterpart may have been known and used by the Olmec of La Venta. Several vessels from La Venta which resemble the Mama type of kabal offer evidence for the possible antiquity of the kabal-parador technique of pottery making.

A significant working difference between the mode and type is seen to lie in the greater tendency of the former to reappear on different time levels. In part, this is because more opportunity exists for the chance reduplication of an isolated feature than for a group of integrated attributes. Consideration of the flange-and-ridge and the everted-rim traditions in Maya ceramics focuses attention on additional factors which may help to account for the reappearance of modes. The possibility is recognized of refuge zones where traits continued, later to diffuse back to the centers of the investigation. Primary theoretical consideration is given to the modification of traits through the elaboration of traditions and the possibility that this process sometimes led to the reinvention or resurgence of once popular forms. Such a process is based on the potter's wish to create something slightly different while working within the technico-stylistic bounds of a tradition. This may occasionally lead to a recombination of elements that approximate older forms (low level reinvention) or to a twist that imparts fresh interest to a dying form — hence renewed recognition of the mode by the investigator following its complete disappearance in his archaeological samples.

Field trips in 1953-54 and 1958 and the checking of about 150 sites provide the background for these preliminary sequences. El Salvador is divided into three cultural regions. Western El Salvador is strongly linked with Guatemala and Mesoamerica while the eastern region is basically Central American. The central part of the country is heavily influenced by both of the other regions with the Mesoamerican component predominating. In the western sequence the Atiquizaya phase is connected with the Las Charcas or Providencia phases in the Guatemalan Highlands and the Cuyagualo phase with the Full Classic material at Copán. The latest complex in the western region, the Majahual phase, possibly flourished during the conquest period on the western shore. The central sequence begins with the Tovar complex about 700 B.C. and ends with the Cihuatan phase which demonstrates the Pipil domination of this region in later times. In eastern El Salvador, where archaeological knowledge begins with the footprints of La Rama at about 1500 B.C., several complexes with wares made in the Usulutan technique developed. The eastern sequence culminates in the Lower Lempa culture about A.D. 1000.

A cache of nine miniature mushroom stones and nine miniature metates with manos from the Verbena cemetery at Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala, date from the Verbena subphase of the Miraflores phase of the Preclassic, 1000-500 B.C. All of the mushroom stones are of Type B with a circular groove around the base of the cap. This type has been found in a Verbena tomb in Mound E-III-3 at the same site. The cache of nine miniatures demonstrates considerable antiquity for the “mushroom-stone cult,” and suggests a possible association with the nine lords of the night and gods of the underworld, as well as the possible existence of a nine-day cycle and nocturnal count in Preclassic times. The association of the miniature mushroom stones with the miniature metates and manos greatly strengthens the possibility that at least in some areas in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica metates were used to grind the sacred hallucinatory mushrooms to prepare them for ceremonial consumption.

Shifting cultivation, which is the technique commonly followed by tropical agriculturists, while wasteful of land use in requiring a long fallowing period, will support variable population densities depending upon crops grown, farming tools used, and soil fertility. Twenty persons per square kilometer is accepted as the density for the region around the Preclassic La Venta site which was begun about 800 B.C. and abandoned about 400 B.C. The occupation area of the La Venta culture group is believed to lie between the Coatzacoalcos and Tonalá rivers and amounts to about 900 square kilometers, thus yielding a population figure of about 18,000, of which 3600 are family heads. The total man-days of labor required to build the La Venta site is estimated to be 1,100,000, and the four major rebuildings of the site features are suggested as having been done at completion of 52 and 104 year calendar rounds.

The results of seven months of archaeological reconnaissance in the Tzeltal-Tzotzil-speaking area of Chiapas are described. Occupation is found to have consisted only of a few, small, widely dispersed centers during the Preclassic period. During the latter part of the Early Classic period there is evidence of a considerable increase in population, and by Late Classic times nucleated ceremonial-dwelling centers were widely distributed on steep, easily defended headlands. Despite great variation in the size of individual settlements, it is argued that independent communities rather than regional coalitions were the prevailing form of socio-political organization. This pattern was replaced gradually during the Postclassic period by one in which more intensive use was made of the larger, more strategically located valleys. Closely spaced, functionally interdependent groups of communities emerged, and probably were increasingly subject to new and more coercive patterns of political, as well as religious, control. At the time of the Spanish conquest hostilities and trade with other Mesoamerican groups were increasing rapidly, but the region as a whole still remained relatively tarriant and isolated.

In an attempt to establish an archaeological chronology for northwestern Costa Rica, excavations were carried out in 1959-60 in the coastal region and Tempisque River drainage of Guanacaste Province. Four periods have been defined: Zoned Bichrome, Early Polychrome, Middle Polychrome, and Late Polychrome. These are roughly equated in the Maya sequence with Late Formative, Early Classic through the beginning of Late Classic, the latter part of the Late Classic through the early Postclassic, and late Postclassic, respectively. The Zoned Bichrome period has been established on the basis of three geographically separate but coeval phases: Chombo on the Santa Elena Peninsula, Monte Fresco in the Tamarindo Bay zone, and Catalina on the middle Tempisque. All three phases are linked to each other through trade pottery; a radiocarbon date on Monte Fresco is within the first century of the Christian era. Outstanding characteristics of the period are bichrome zoning, dentate rocker-stamping, wavy black lines produced by a multiple brush, engraving, and incising. Considerable fishing and hunting was carried out, and intensive maize agriculture is inferred. These village materials indicate that lower Central America was participating in at least some of the trait diffusion which linked remote areas of Nuclear America in Formative times.

Between May 11 and June 10, 1959, the Arizona State Museum conducted salvage excavations along a section of U.S. Highway 66 from the Arizona-New Mexico state line westward through Lupton for about 5.8 miles. Work in 10 sites with heavy equipment and a large crew of Navajo laborers resulted in the excavation of 16 pit houses, 43 surface rooms, 7 kivas (two only partially excavated), 6 trash deposits, 18 burials, and 21 miscellaneous architectural features. These ranged from Basket-maker III to Pueblo III, with no Pueblo I representation, and included an early Basketmaker III village with Mogollon affiliations. It was possible to clarify the definition of the White Mound phase and to demonstrate a specific front-oriented village plan for the Wingate phase. This intensive excavation produced a large quantity of material and data, thus raising the problems of how to accomplish the analysis of them and the publication of the results. This preliminary report is only a partial answer.

In 1959 the Neville Public Museum, Green Bay, Wisconsin, discovered and excavated a cremation burial site near the base of the Door Peninsula in northeastern Wisconsin. Associated with the cremated remains of a human being were fire-cracked rocks, the fire-shattered fragments of large quartzite bifacial implements, and projectile points of Eden and Scottsbluff types. A possible Turin type of side-notched flint projectile point was also in association. The site is on the crest of a fossil beach equatable with the Main Algonquin lake stage of the Green Bay-Lake Michigan basins, thus establishing a maximum possible age for the cultural features. That the artifacts and burial are post-Lake Algonquin by not more than about 2500 years is indicated by typological comparisons of the artifacts with radiocarbon-dated assemblages in the High Plains, usually regarded as the center of the Eden-Scottsbluff complex. An age of 6500 to 4000 B.C. is suggested for the burial.

A series of superimposed structures spanning the Preclassic, Classic and Postclassic periods was uncovered in 1959 in the Oztoyahualco zone of the ancient city of Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico. Superimposed structures spanning so long a period have not previously been found in the Valley. The earliest structures in the sequence are earth floors of the Tzacualli (Teotihuacán I) phase, beneath which were found a number of caches of broken pottery and other objects. These are followed by massive, concrete, ceremonial structures of the Xolalpan (Teotihuacán III) phase and above these are structures built after the fall of Teotihuacán. The nature and distribution of these successive structures is such as to suggest that the locality became sacred in Tzacualli times and maintained this sacred character even after the fall of Teotihuacán. The Tzacualli structures receive primary attention in the discussion because of their importance.

Cogged stones are one of the few classes of artifacts which are limited in occurrence to the “middle” period of southern California's prehistory. They are stone discs, 6⅛ inches or less in diameter, characterized by grooves or indentations in the edge. On the basis of the nature of the latter and of the presence or absence of perforation they are described in four types. Some of the variations may have historical significance, but this cannot be proven with the data at hand. Few specimens have been excavated under controlled conditions. The distribution is virtually limited to the coastal drainage south of Ventura County and appears to center along the Santa Ana River Valley. According to the interpretation of coastal chronology employed, cogged stones were made during the period 6000-3500 B.C. Their use is unknown, but the absence of any pattern of wear and the conjunctions of certain of the specimens suggest that they served some ritual function.

Eden and Scottsbluff points and Cody knives were found in situ in a sand deposit with an estimated geological age of 10,000 to 7000 years. Numerous other Cody complex artifacts from the surface of the site are described. Fragmentary remains of a mammoth in a marl bed are stratigraphically older than the Cody artifacts.