Archaeologically, the east coast of Hudson's Bay is an unexplored area. There never has been scientific excavation undertaken in this region, although the Eskimo inhabitants have been plundering the “Tunit” graves and old tent sites for many years. However, some archaeological information based upon collections from the Belcher Islands and Port Harrison, is available. In 1921-24 Dr. Knud Rasmussen and Dr. Therkel Mathiassen obtained, collections from the Belcher Islands and Port Harrison for the Fifth Thule Expedition. Mr. J. Kenneth Doutt of the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, secured additional artifacts from the Belcher Islands in 1938, which have been described and analyzed by Dr. Diamond Jenness. In the summer of 1939, the writer secured archaeological materials from Eskimos on Tukarak and Inetelling Islands in the Belcher Group.

Although all of the artifacts from the east Hudson's Bay region have been excavated by Eskimos, the reasonably specific provenience, and lack of other data lend some scientific value to these collections.

At Sitio Conte, province of Code, Panama, the 1940 Pennsylvania University expedition led by Dr. J. Alden Mason resumed, after seven years interruption, the field excavation begun by the Peabody Museum of Harvard University and described in the monumental memoir by Dr. S. K. Lothrop.

The use of every time and labor saving device (even a transit) was justified by trench temperatures at times exceeding 120 degrees. However, this description will assume that no transit was available: limiting working tools to a level, an opera glass, plumb lines, lantern, and measuring tape. A compass might have sufficed for laying out the north-south reference line but stars are more accurate.

Forty centuries before telescopes made possible a greater precision, the ancients were able to orient a pyramid true north within 3 minutes 23 seconds of arc, the error being about one part in a thousand. Ordinary engineer's transits are accurate to the nearest minute.

During the summer and fall of 1938 the writer made several trips into Arizona and while there visited various museums in the central and northern part of the state. In each of these he encountered numerous artifacts made of a red shale material which varies in color from a light pink to a dull red. This is often referred to locally as pipestone. On more than one occasion the writer was asked if these rock samples were catlinite and was astonished to find that he could not answer this query, nor, indeed could he define or properly describe catlinite. It was quite apparent, moreover, that much confusion prevailed concerning many of the red-stone artifacts incorporated in the museum collections and that some few people were drawing far-reaching conclusions as to the extent of commerce and trade indulged in by our North American predecessors. Regrettable as this tendency is, it is not entirely unexpected since research with pipestone has been neglected.

Chavín de Huántar is a small village located in the Department of Ancash in the high mountains of central Peru. Near the modern town is a vast, partly subterranean temple, dating from prehistoric times, within and near which have been found numerous stone carvings of distinctive styles. The name Chavín has thus been applied to a very ancient culture which apparently once dominated the northern interior of Peru and, in places, emerged in the coastal valleys.

The existence, if not the status, of Chavín culture was brought to the attention of the outside world many years ago by Antonio Raimondi, whose name clings to the celebrated stone carvings seen in Fig. 27, b. Charles Wiener has left a description of the great temple at Chavín and the huge dagger-like stone carving that was its chief idol. Plans and photographs have been recently published by Cornelius Roosevelt. In 1919, Dr. Julio C.

Harlan Ingersoll Smith, former Chief Archaeologist of the National Museum of Canada, died on January 28, 1940. He was born in East Saginaw, Michigan, February 17, 1872. As a boy he became interested in the many evidences of the former Indian inhabitants scattered over the fields near his home and he formed a small collection of archaeological material. The first opportunity to do actual field work came in 1891, when the late Professor Putnam, Chief of the Anthropological Department of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, employed him to assist Dr. Charles Metz in the exploration of the well-known Madisonville Village Site in Ohio. This was followed in 1892 by field trips to other sites in Ohio; in 1893 to mounds near Madison Wisconsin, and in 1894, as explorer for the Archaeological Institute of America, to Kalamazoo, Michigan, to investigate the so-called “gardenbeds” near that place.

In the Fall of 1939, the writer picked up a number of stone tools which have been called hand-axes, choppers, etc., around the ruin of Kuaua, in the Coronado State Monument, New Mexico. These tools are varied in type and workmanship. They were shaped from river boulders, apparently gathered from the gravel terrace upon which the ruin is situated. On all specimens found, one face of the tool was the original surface, and often the nodular surface is to be found on both sides, with the butt also left smooth (Plate XXI).

Further occurrence of these tools was noted by the writer at the former Indian and Mission ruin of Abo, where the tools recovered were similar in every aspect to the above illustrated specimens. Of particular note is the similarity of these tools with those recovered by Sayles in Texas and the Campbells in the Southern California Desert.

Mr. A. T. Jackson, in his extensive report on picture-writing of Texas Indians, calls attention to twenty-three square-shouldered human figures found in the course of his survey. According to the report, thirteen Texas counties and one New Mexico county possessed this type of figure. It is mentioned that several hundred miles separate the Texas sites from the typical Southwestern culture with which they appear to be linked. The farthest east that pictographs have been found is Concho County, Texas.

In March, 1939, the writer published a report on a prehistoric rock-shelter site in Pontotoc County, Oklahoma. The most outstanding feature at this site was a squareshouldered figure in one of twenty pictographs which adorn the shelter walls. It is likewise the best preserved of the group. It was suggested in the report that a Southwestern influence was responsible for the figure. Five hundred miles separate the Pontotoc County site from Concho County.

E. H. Sellards’ recent paper, Early Man in America, was intended to be an index to all localities in which human remains are reported to have been found associated with extinct animals or in deposits that appear to be of an age equivalent to those that elsewhere contain extinct animals. The author states that some localities doubtless have been overlooked that should have been included.

It so happens that prior to writing the Folsom paper to which Sellards refers, I had outlined a general discussion of Early Man in America. In so doing I came across a considerable part of the literature which was never reproduced in the abbreviated Folsom paper as published. A check with Sellards’ paper allows me to add the following sites for which the same reservation holds which Sellards made, insofar as some of these sites might not meet the requirements of bona fide antiquity.

“Salt pans” commonly occur throughout the Mississippi drainage area, especially in Southern Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee where they often are associated with salt springs. Most frequently referable to numerous foci of the Middle Phase, Mississippi Pattern they are typical especially of the Gordon-Fewkes Aspect. Recent work under the sponsorship of various governmental agencies (Work Projects Administration, Tennessee Valley Authority, National Park Service) has somewhat extended the known range of this ware to include almost all of the region west of the Appalachians and East of Central Arkansas.

Projectile points and other small artifacts chipped from cryptocrystalline silicate minerals constitute a rather difficult photographic problem, for which there is no single solution. Reviews of both photographic and archaeological literature disclose little information on the subject, but show that better photographic methods are badly needed.

When the artifacts to be photographed are opaque, dull-surfaced, and of a single color, standard photographic methods, skilfully used, will produce satisfactory illustrations. General discussions of these methods are numerous in photographic literature: a good summary is given in Ridgway's Scientific Illustration.

Many small artifacts are translucent at the edges or elsewhere, transparent, multicolored, or have shiny surfaces. Good figures cannot be secured from these by “straight” photographic methods. Several special techniques, largely adopted from other branches of science, will be outlined here.

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.

Serrated edges, and wonderful chipping techniques, are commonly displayed on chipped stone objects of the Pacific Coast region from California to British Columbia, but the greatest ultimate perfection of serration obtains in the so-called Stockton type points, peculiar to the delta and flood plain region near the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers. The distribution of these specialized forms seems to approximately conform with this great flood plain, which is, generally speaking, not much above sea-level. This area was called by the early Spaniards the “Tulares,” because a great part of it was an impenetrable swamp, covered by a rank growth of tule reeds.

The interesting discoveries in northern Alabama of a series of mounds which can be attributed to the Hopewellian Phase have focused attention on the copper reel-shaped gorgets. Webb refers to one such in the National Museum that was sent in by a resident of Portsmouth, Ohio. It is possible that this is the copper reel-shaped gorget mentioned by Rau that came to the National Museum from the Hopewell group in Greenup County, Kentucky, opposite the mouth of the Scioto. The donor, a Mr. W. Kinney of Portsmouth, Ohio, reported that “On one occasion half a bushel of these ornaments was found in the same mound and sent to the smelter.” A possible reel-shaped gorget or modified breast plate came from an Adena-Hopewell mound near Mt. Sterling, Montgomery County, Kentucky, and has been described by Putnam. In the same publication a brief report is made on the finds from a mound in Franklin, Williamson County, Tennessee. This description suggests a Hopewellian affinity.

For several years I have been using a composite material for the restoration of museum specimens of many kinds. It has proven useful in the repair of a wide variety of substances, including pottery, stone, oxidized metals, bone, and ivory. It may be used wherever a strong substance is needed to fill in missing parts and to make a bond with the original pieces. It is easily prepared and used, and has many advantages over the usual repair materials. The chief of these is that it is very strong, though light; and when dry, very hard, yet completely reconvertible without damage to the specimen. Moreover, it does not shrink in drying.

I refer to this composite material, for want of a better name, as plastic clay. It has two ingredients: polymerised vinyl acetate (a synthetic resin which is described in detail at the end of this article), and powdered clay or muddy sand of 200 mesh fineness.

Polished stone artifacts, found in many parts of the world, are widely cited as evidence of the patience and manual dexterity of primitive man. Investigation of the polishing scratches on the surfaces of a number of stone hammers strongly suggests that the polish is of natural origin, a conclusion supported by the difference between this polish and that in the hafting grooves, known to be man-made. (Fig. 7)

In view of the fact that barbed bone “projectile” points are extremely rare in the Southwestern archaeological area and because such artifacts have a generally northern and arctic distribution in North America, the present specimen from Utah is offered in the hope that other material of a similar nature from the Southwest may be published and that, perhaps, someone may be attracted to the elucidation of the problems implied. The present writer is unaware of other published specimens of bone projectile points from this area, although, of course, bone artifacts of several other types are fairly numerous.

The present specimen was recovered in the summer of 1937 by the Peabody Museum-University of Utah joint expedition, of which the writer was field director. The point was found at a site, near Ephraim, Utah, locally known as Witch's Knoll.