David Baerreis’ review of The Effigy Mound Culture of Wisconsin, by Chandler Rowe (American Antiquity, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 320–1), includes certain criticisms of methods and procedures underlying the author’s treat’ ment of his subject that raise important questions as to the general status of archaeological concept and methodology.

For example, commenting on Rowe’s rejection of the early guess that effigy mound shapes represent clan symbols, Baerreis appears to argue that at some time, some tribe or tribes could possibly have possessed totemic patterns that might account for effigy mound shapes.

In an article in this journal some years ago, Heizer (1944) brought together a number of recorded instances of the transport of artifacts by migratory animals. These instances consisted entirely of cases in which a bird, a sea mammal, or a land mammal had been wounded by man and, surviving the wound, had carried part of the weapon imbedded in its flesh, to some area many miles away. The eventual killing of the animal elsewhere led to the discovery of an exotic arrowhead, spear point, or harpoon head in the old wound. The occurrence of undetected instances of this phenomenon would naturally result in the deposition of artifacts far from their native area where, on the basis of ethnographic and archaeological evidence, they would not be expected to occur.

Alaskan pottery techniques are distinguished by considerable use of a variety of organic tempering materials, in marked contrast to the rest of aboriginal North America. So pronounced a focus on the threshhold of the New World would suggest that the practice might have been borrowed from Asia. It will therefore be of interest to ascertain the status of organic tempers in northeastern Asia as compared with Alaska.