Dr. McKern's recent remarks on “Taxonomy and the Direct Historical Approach” serve, though no doubt unintentionally, as a red herring to my plea for the importance of the direct historical approach. Since much attention has been devoted recently to the matter of research tools in anthropology and the social sciences, I should like to comment briefly on what seems to me increasing confusion of tools, methods, approaches, and theories in archaeology. For I do not conceive the direct historical approach to be a tool. And I am not wholly clear how the taxonomic method is a tool adapted to further a historical objective.

There are two general levels or types of procedure in archaeology: collecting and interpreting data. Much is said about the permanent solidity of sacred fact and the ephemeral nature of theory. But facts are totally without significance and may even be said not to exist without reference to theory.

Four legends of subterranean passages in as many parts of Middle America have recently been reported or cited by J. Eric S. Thompson (Apuntes Sobre Las Super sticiones de Los Mayas de Socotz, Honduras Britanica, in Los Mayas Antiguos, Mexico, 1941). They range in time from the present back to 1580, and in space from Zapotecan to eastern Maya country. He concludes that they were general among Mexican Indians and mixed bloods and may have been carried to New Mexico by Spanish-speakers, citing Kidder as authority for existence of a local belief in a passage connecting the ruins of Pecos with Taos.

The following note regarding pottery-making may be of interest to archaeologists who are not already acquainted with it. It is an entry made by John Bradbury when he was at an Arikara village on the Missouri in May, 1810.

“I noticed over their fires much larger vessels of earthen-ware than any I had before seen, and was permitted to examine them. They were sufficiently hardened by the fire to cause them to emit a sonorous tone on being struck, and in all I observed impressions on the outside, seemingly made by wicker work. This led me to enquire of them by signs how they were made? when a squaw brought a basket, and took some clay, which she began to spread very evenly within it, shewing me at the same time that they were made in that way. From the shape of these vessels, they must be under the necessity of burning the basket to disengage them, as they are wider at the bottom than at the top.

Mr. Alex D. Krieger's (pp. 355, 359) reference to the late J C. Jones’ date for Lake Lahontan calls for some clarifying comments. Lake Lahontan, the ancient lake in northr western Nevada which occupied 8500 square miles and reached several hundred feet above the modern lakes in its basin, Professor Jones believed, was not, as generally held, contemporaneous with the extensive Pleistocene glaciations in the adjacent mountains,1 but “the Lahontan stages occurred during the present era, with the survival of the fauna till the last thousand years” (1933, p. 96). The extinct fauna referred to included horses, elephants, camels, and Felis atrox (1925, p. 49; 1929, p. 539). Jones (1925, p. 4) did not correlate Lake Lahontan with other ancient lakes in the Great Basin, did not discuss their relationship, and objected to my introducing the obvious sister-lake in western Utah, Lake Bonneville, into the discussion.

There are different methods of interpreting Maya time counts. The Tun-Ahau method means that the Ahau element of an inscription refers to the tun; the Katun-Ahau method means that the Ahau element of an inscription refers to the katun.

The Initial Series inscription at Chichen Itza has been interpreted by a Tun Ahau method.

While there has been a great deal of archaeological excavation in the area now included in the Boulder Dam National Recreational Area in southern Nevada and northwestern Arizona, comparatively little of this material has been written and published. Within this area, which encompasses about 2,700 square miles of desert and mountain land, there has been extensive occupation by various peoples throughout most of the past two thousand and more years.

On many sites in the Pease and Red river section of Wilbarger County, Texas, are found numerous “drum” bones of fish. They occur on the surface of camp sites, which are on sandy terrain along river banks or on the slopes of nearby sand dunes, along with the average run of artifacts, including flint projectile points, scrapers, manos, and potsherds. Other fish remains do not appear. The question which has interested the writer is whether these strange bones owe their presence on the sites to their inherent durability or to the attention and care accorded them by the Indians.

This area is noted for its Gaspergou or Drum fish. Within a cavity in the skull of this fish are located a pair of bones which the river folk term “drummers.” A three pound fish will produce a pair the size of a ten-cent piece. One side is convex, the other side is an irregular plane.