The village site, which is the subject of this report, has been known for at least three-quarters of a century. Its large size, the abundance of surface materials, and the nearby presence of a conspicuous earthwork, combined to attract attention to the site. Prof. G. C. Broadhead, of the University of Missouri, explored the region in 1872, and gathered a number of sherds which form part of the present archaeological collection at the University. During the '70's and '80's there were quite a few pseudo-scientific excavations on the site, the published reports of which are more tantalizing than illuminating to the modern student. Fowke was there in 1907; and local amateurs have long made a practice of gathering specimens there, and sending them to scientific institutions.

In 1913, Spinden published his monumental work on the artistic forms in Maya culture. Since that time, many of his statements have assumed axiomatic character in the literature and discussion of Maya archaeology. However, as was to be expected, new information has tended to modify some of the generalizations put forward in 1913. In the present paper, I would like to offer evidence to support the hypothesis that certain artistic compositions, treated separately by Spinden, actually are members of a single complex, and then to review some of his generalizations in the light of this evidence and Maya chronology.

The complex which I propose to demonstrate consists of the Ceremonial Bar, the Bar Pendant, and the Frieze-mask. It is my thesis that the Bar Pendant is the conceptual equivalent of the Ceremonial Bar and, in actual practice, is substituted for the latter. Similarly, the Friezemask is conceptually connected with the Bar and, thus, directly or indirectly, with the Pendant.

For many years the people of Maine, parts of New England, and the Maritime Provinces have been told that an ancient group of Indians lived in the northeastern part of the United States and later moved into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. These ancient people have been called the Pre-Algonquian Group, The Red Paint People of Maine, and the Beothuk of Newfoundland, by various archaeologists who have excavated their graves.

These archaeologists have come to the conclusion that the graves represent a very old group of Indians, but they have not agreed on who they were, where they came from, or where they went. Mr. Charles C. Willoughby shows the distribution of the pre-Algonquian culture as covering all that portion of North America east of the Great Lakes, along the Saint Lawrence River and as far south as the tip of New Jersey.

The word “Jicaque” or “Xicaque” appears repeatedly in the literature of Honduras. It is a term that came into being through the Spanish use of Mexican interpreters. The Mexicans, both those brought to Honduras by Cortez and his followers, and those whom the Spaniards found colonizing the country, spoke some form of their own language which the Spaniards, freshly arrived from Mexico, understood. The Central American speech, on the other hand, naturally was foreign. The word “Xicaque” or “Jicaque” in Mexican means the “former inhabitants” and was applied to the people upon whom the Mexican colonists were encroaching or whom the newly arrived Spaniards were conquering.

Recently I published a brief notice on constructional methods in pottery making, which occasioned a number of interesting comments. The majority of the communications and verbal discourses centered upon the seeming error, on my part, “to exclude the paddle and anvil manipulation from the suggested classification.” It will be recalled that the notice in question stated: “On the basis of the work thus far accomplished, the following classification of strictly manual building methods of constructing pottery vessels may be suggested.” The emphasis on hand manipulation and the express limitation to building procedures appear to have made little if any impression on some readers. It seems in point, therefore, to outline briefly the function of the paddle and anvil in pottery making, as derived from my studies of literature and specimens, as well as from certain empirical knowledge. Admittedly, this note does not pretend to settle any problem nor to be conclusive; rather its aim is to call attention to the need of accurate technical detailing.

This paper represents an attempt to correlate, as far as is now possible, the ceramic sequence of the southern Maya area with that established in the Guatemalan Peten. The southern Maya region includes the Republic of El Salvador from its western border east to the lower Lempa River and the Republic of Honduras from its western border east to an arbitrary line slightly beyond the Ulua River and Lake Yojoa. Generally speaking, there have been defined in this region two principal ceramic phases, one stratigraphically below the other. The lower phase contains monochrome and bichrome wares and handmodeled figurines. The upper horizon consists of the polchrome pottery typical of the region, plus mould-made figurines and whistles.

In order to secure accurate information on the distribution of artificial cranial deformation, both in time and in space, as an aid to cultural reconstructions, and to the allocation of burials and archaeological features associated with burials, a series of diagrams illustrating six types of deformation found in the eastern United States are given in Fig. 37. Another type, the lambdoid deformation of the Chaco Canyon region of New Mexico, is merely included for comparison with natural lambdoid flattening and obelionic deformation. All these finer distinctions of types of artificial deformation and a number of others have been previously recognized and have appeared in print, but only those that were found to be characteristic of groups of people have been accepted, thereby eliminating individual variations. No distinction has been made between unintentional and intentional deformation since it is often difficult to decide this question in series of crania of groups of people who deformed the skulls only mildly, nor are the various cradling practices producing the different types of deformation considered here.

The Gay Head people make two types of product, namely unfired clay receptacles and fired ware. The craft is surviving because there is a fairly profitable tourist trade demanding a supply of souvenirs.

The peculiar varicolored clay banks provide raw material of unique merit. The individual clays—red, white, green, yellow, etc.—are dug, with shovels or sticks, and kept separately. The preparation of the paste and the building processes are the same whether the finished piece is fired or not. The clay is first allowed to dry, then broken up into fine particles and sifted through a household sieve to rid it of lumps. There are no megoscopically discernible inclusions in the clays, and the adding of temper is unknown. The mixing of the paste is done in an iron receptacle, usually with a wooden pounder, and invariably with the aid of a roughly whittled wooden spatula.

A recent paper by Neil M. Judd in the Swanton Anniversary Volume, Essays in Historical Anthropology of North America revives an idea that should be corrected. This has to do with what has been done and what is being done concerning the archaeology of the Colorado River Valley and adjacent desert areas of western Arizona and southeastern California. Judd writes on page 434: “Although this region has long been inhabited by Yuman and Mohave groups, it is still terra incognita to archaeologists.” He mentions the woric of the Gladwins, of Hargrave, and of Cotton but fails to make any reference to other important papers that contain material on the region. Some of these are listed in the brief bibliography accompanying this note.

A very important southwestern pottery type, well dated by tree ring studies, is called Deadmans Black-on-white by Colton, and Black Mesa Pueblo II Black-on-white by Morss. When the Handbook of Northern Arizona Pottery Wares (Colton and Hargrave, 1937) was being written, and there were two descriptions of the type, the question arose which name to choose. The original description of Deadmans Black-on-white appeared in Bulletin 104 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, which carried a printed authorization date of Feb. 17, 1931, and which appeared in 1932. Morss published his description of the same type in 1931, calling it Black Mesa Pueblo II Black-on-white (Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology).

In Vol. VI, No. 1, of American Antiquity is a communication by Charles Fairbanks discussing the occurrence of the “salt pan” type of vessel in his early Middle Mississippi horizon (Macon Plateau) at the Ocmulgee National Monument. These specimens show some variety of manufacture and surface treatment, namely, coiling, fabric marking, leaf marking, and complicated stamping. Fairbanks contrasts this variety of handling with the relatively consistent fabric marking and distinct “clubbed” lip in the salt pans of southern Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, where the type seems to have met a definite functional need, i.e. the evaporation of salt at salt springs. Fairbanks accordingly postulates: “The variation of decoration and possibly construction in peripheral areas suggests an acculturation process in which the basic form was retained but the function may have been lost.”

Interest in the evidence of early scalping in aboriginal America was stimulated by Georg K. Neumann in an article which appeared in American Antiquity. Since then, another specimen coming from prehistoric Middle Mississippi horizons a t Mound State Monument, has been described.

It came to my attention, quite accidentally, that a specimen from the Earth Mound Ruins, Nebraska, described by HrdliCka, presents such a markedly similar appearance to that found at Moundville, that a comparison of the two is in order.

In the recently published paper Two Sites on Martha's Vineyard, the section devoted to the Squibnocket Cliff site included speculation as to the manner of accumulation of the midden deposit, and included a statement that of the portion of the site remaining, the most complicated in structure lay near the edge of the cliff. It was further implied that the center of the deposit had vanished into the sea, and that only the outer fringes remained.

Doubtless these passages created an impression that the authors felt that there was a center of occupation on which the site grew up, perhaps not in concentric layers, for it was specified that horizontal overlapping of strata occurred, but in eccentric overlapping layers. Certainly the cross section through the site shown in our Fig. 13 suggests that the center of occupation had been in the south end of the trench, shown in the upper part of the figure.

Recently, two fluted points from Wisconsin were brought to the writer's attention by W. F. Spengler, a student at Phillips Academy. They are the property of his father, Mr. S. L. Spengler of Menasha, Wisconsin, who very kindly sent them to Andover for the writer's inspection. Both finds were surface finds, but in spite of this fact it seems worth recording them, since both are known to have come from the vicinity of Madison. The smaller of the two (PI. XXXVII, Fig. 2, a-a′.) is from the farm of TomHalverson and was found on a field close to the inlet of the Yahara River on the west shore of Lake Kegonsa. Its base, as is shown by the photographs, has the slight prominence characteristic of the type illustrated in Roberts' Fig. 3a and Plates 5b and 6b. Fine retouching has been used to finish the base. The channel flake., which is an extremely shallow one, runs to the tip without hinge fracture.

In the last issue of American Antiquity, Cressman and Laughlin describe probable artifacts in association with mammoths in the Williamette Valley, Oregon. This association reminded me of a queer detail picked up in Puget Sound, Washington.

While giving incidental vocabulary, a Puyallup informant named one too many members of the local cat family: cougar, panther, mountain lion, and a fourth, lion. The Salish term for the latter, he explained, was currently used for the maned lion seen in zoos, etc., but had previously referred to a much larger animal with enormous teeth. In his boyhood, people had told of the ferocious attacks of this cat on children and adults, although actual encounters, he insisted, had ceased “long, long” before.

In the Edwards Plateau and Trans-Pecos regions of southwestern Texas are a large number of archaeological sites which have been referred to as “burnt rock mounds.” Although this name is now well established in the archaeological literature of Texas, one looks in vain for a satisfactory statement concerning the origin and nature of these rather unusual sites. Quite a number have been excavated, but as yet few detailed reports on individual sites have appeared. The authors of recent reports assume that the term “burnt rock mound” is well understood and, although implying that it represents a distinct culture trait, do not explain what it means. It is evident that many archaeologists do not understand its meaning, for at recent archaeological meetings outside of Texas the writers of this paper have frequently been asked, “Just what is a burnt rock mound?” In view of this, it seems advisable to put on record a brief summary of what is known at present about the formation of these sites.

A large quantity of fabric impressed pottery was found during the excavation of the Elizabeth Herreli Site in Jefferson County, Missouri, by the Academy of Science of St. Louis.

Inasmuch as variations in weaving technique have proven of value in distinguishing and in indicating the connection between ethnic groups this study has been made in an effort to aid archaeologists in comparing the finds at the Herreli Site with the results of other expeditions.

The Herreli Site is a village site which belongs to the Middle Mississippi phase of the Mississippi pattern. The reasons for designating this site “Middle Mississippi“ and a full description of the site are given elsewhere.