A small mask cast in copper with the features of a Maya merchant god supplies the first incontrovertible evidence that the Maya cast copper. As it has been in the British Museum for nearly a century, its authenticity cannot be doubted. One detail makes it virtually certain that the piece was cast in the lowlands. A large stone mask, collected in Mexico over 50 years ago, can be assigned with some confidence (despite previous doubts as to its authenticity) to southern Veracruz. It reveals attenuated Olmec influence and also has attributes of a merchant god.

This paper presents data on the age and origin of the dugout canoe in Ontario derived from Indian informants and Euro-Americans, from the literature, and from information in the files of the Department of Ethnology, Royal Ontario Museum, University of Toronto. Accounts of two dugouts from Ontario have been published, but the problems of the age and origin have not been investigated. Indians and Euro-Americans both made and used dugouts during the last century and the first part of this one. It is suggested that the Euro-Americans brought the idea with them from Europe. The Indians, it is believed, adopted the dugout either from the Euro-Americans or from Indian immigrants from the south, where the dugout is known to have existed since the time of contact. The Indians were now leading a more sedentary life, negating the necessity for an easily portable craft, such as the birchbark canoe. Another factor was the increasing difficulty of getting adequate supplies of birchbark for canoe-making because of the destruction of the forests by lumber companies. Furthermore, the recently acquired iron tools facilitated their manufacture.

Thorne Cave is a site in Cliff Creek Canyon, north-eastern Utah. Between 5000 and 2000 B.C. alluvial fill in the canyon reached the level of Thorne Cave and formed its floor. At this time, and intermittently for perhaps the next 200 years, peoples with a Desert Archaic cultural tradition camped on a dune near the cave mouth while the canyon and the cave continued to fill. Stratified camp debris was washed into the cave, and alluvium accumulated well above the cave brow, leaving a dead space in the dome area of the cave roof. Dissection of canyon alluvium later re-exposed Thorne Cave and washed away much of the evidence of human occupation. Radiocarbon-dated charcoal indicates that the site was occupied as early as 4230±250 years B.P. Materials recovered from Thorne Cave include redeposited charcoal and food-bone scrap; projectile points, small choppers and scrapers, manos, and grinding slabs; bone awls, needles, a pendant, a flaking tool, and a scapula seed-header; and impressions of twined basketry.

Sahagún's General History of the Things of New Spain, a Nahuatl text completed in 1555, contains an ethnographic description of cire perdue gold casting. Aboriginal copper casting was not described. However, it is believed that his gold-casting description also constitutes a basically valid description of copper casting. To test this, experiments were undertaken to cast copper bells following Sahagún's description of gold casting and using native materials whenever possible. From the resultant successful casting of several copper bells it is inferred that the above belief is valid.

Neutron activation analysis has been used to determine manganese in a series of potsherd chips from sites in the Valley of Mexico. The application of this technique and the use of laboratory-scale commercial equipment is described. Such equipment can give results in this application that are comparable to those obtained with the much higher fluxes characteristic of large reactors.

Geologic interest in Thorne Cave stems from its link with valley alluvium along Cliff Creek, which accumulated to a height of 48 ft., continued to build up another 13 ft. while men lived here, and then reached 30 ft. higher — sealing in the signs of man. Mineralogic study shows that ground water then circulated through the cave deposits for a considerable time. The alluvium is correlated with the lower part of the Tsegi Formation of the Navajo country. Cutting of a terrace at mid-depth in the valley alluvium reopened Thorne Cave, probably before the Christian era, and desert varnish then began to form on the cave brow. Radiocarbon dates from presumably correlative deposits suggest that the cave debris is about 4000 years old — a conclusion consistent with dates of 4230 and 4170 years from Thorne Cave.

Recent ethnographic work among the Tzotzil Indians in Highland Chiapas has revealed the presence of cosmological concepts and patterns of behavior that may have an important historical relationship to the ancient Lowland Maya. While these data offer exciting possibilities for inferences concerning the ancient Maya, we need to proceed with caution and to take account of a number of critical methodological problems before we project these patterns back into the prehistoric past. We know that all cultural systems are in a constant state of change; hence we should not assume that we are finding any exact survivals from the past, but rather hope that the trends of change in the Tzotzil area have been consistent enough to make inferences possible and productive. We also know that there is a great deal of variation among Tzotzil municipios (and even within municipios), so that statements about “Tzotzil cosmological concepts” need to be treated with caution. Finally, the hypotheses I have advanced in previous papers — such as the possible relationship between sacred mountains in contemporary Zinacantan and pyramids in ancient Maya archaeological sites, or the possibility that some system of rotation in priestly roles was functioning in the ancient Maya ceremonial centers — should be treated strictly as hypotheses and not converted into statements or propositions as Holland did in his recent paper.

Archaeological, geological, and biological observations, including a quantitative midden analysis, of a shell midden on the Connecticut shore support the inference that a Woodland manifestation, probably of the East River aspect, was preceded by an Archaic, possibly Transitional, horizon. The deposit was formed during a lower sea stand; both global and regional sea-level data are cited in support of chronological placement.

Neutron activation was used by Johnson and Stross to determine the manganese content of the clay used in 11 sherds from Cuicuilco and Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico. The results indicate that three distinctive sherds of negative ware from Cuicuilco differ from local Late Preclassic wares but are similar to pottery of the Tzacualli phase made locally at Teotihuacán. Trade between the Chimalhuacan settlement at Cuicuilco and the Tzacualli town at Teotihuacán is thus indicated.

Between 1956 and 1960, 20 ceramic figurines were discovered in Mound 42Ut111 at the Hinckley site west of Utah Lake in northern Utah. Circumstances of the discovery are discussed, as well as two other finds previously made in Utah Valley. Comparisons are made with figurines from the Fremont and Sevier areas, particularly from sites just north and south of Utah Valley. On the basis of these comparisons and a consideration of other items, such as ceramics, house type, and ecological setting, it is hypothecated that Utah Valley was a cultural center for northwestern Utah. It is proposed that this area be called the Provo culture area.

An exceptionally fine and significant stone figurine of the Ohio Hopewell Culture was found recently among the items in the collection of the late James L. Wright of Rochester, New York. Purchased by Mr. Wright's father in 1882, this figurine was found in one of the mounds of the famous Newark (Ohio) earthworks group in August 1881. The figurine is that of a shaman or priest masked by the head and skin of a bear, the probable totem of his clan or group. The shaman holds in his right hand a human head. The presence of typical Hopewellian earspools on both the shaman and the head indicates the possibility that the shaman is performing one of the rites in the ceremonies concerned with the dead and that the head is that of a fellow clan or group member.

The identification of a phalanx of a barren ground caribou (Rangifer arcticus) from the Holcombe site in southeastern Michigan is perhaps the earliest association of man and an animal species in the eastern United States. This phalanx was excavated from a small pit which contained four fragments of unifacially worked artifacts, a number of plano-convex spalls typical of the Holcombe lithic complex, and a small amount of beech charcoal. Association of this site with a beach of glacial Lake Algonquin places its occupation at approximately 9200 B.C.

Preliminary investigations at White's Mound, Richmond County, Georgia, have revealed a stratified sequence of cultural material that begins with Stallings Island fiber-tempered pottery and is followed by Deptford, which occurs coincident with a more popular cord-marked type and minor amounts of a fabric-impressed type. The cord-marked pottery is assumed to be indicative of the timing and impact of the Northern tradition on this area. The last test square excavated on the site yielded evidence of possible cannibalism in the form of redeposited fragmentary bones, most of them cooked and a few calcined. With the deposit of bones, some of which had been cut, were a boatstone, a bear-claw necklace, and Deptford bold check-stamped and simple-stamped sherds. An alternative explanation is redeposited cremation which does have precedence in the Georgia area and in the Northern tradition.

It is not true that stirrup-spout bottles are absent in the Old World. The Brooklyn Museum possesses an ethnographic specimen of a stirrup-spout bottle collected in 1930 among the Mangbetu in the northern Congo. This bottle is strikingly similar in many features to Cupisnique style stirrup-spout bottles from the north coast of Peru. There is another Mangbetu style stirrup-spout bottle in the R. H. Lowie Museum in Berkeley.

Using the Tlatilco-Cupisnique case above mentioned as an example, it might be argued that a stirrup-spout bottle is a perfectly natural ceramic form to invent more than once; if so, then one would expect to find it in those parts of the Old World where vessels were used to store liquids. On the contrary, this form was evidently unknown in the Eastern Hemisphere, suggesting diffusion from a single point of origin as the most reasonable hypothesis to account for its distribution in the Western Hemisphere (Coe 1963: 103).

In 1962 a perforated, picklike antler object was found in a deposit with late Pleistocene fauna in Delta County, northeastern Texas. Charcoal from a burned area in the same deposit yielded a radiocarbon date of 9550±375 B.P. Two possible quartzite artifacts were also found in the same deposit.

A radiocarbon date of A.D. 1015 for the Macon Earthlodge, Ocmulgee National Monument, has recently been determined. The material dated was part of a charred roof beam. This date, and another from the Brown's Mount component, agrees with generally accepted dates for the Macon Plateau period in central Georgia.

The reinterpretation of the Mabaruma phase, British Guiana, by Lathrap does not introduce new evidence that requires abandonment of the original estimate of about A.D. 500 for its introduction from the Orinoco delta.

The archaeological record of the Cochise culture does not support the theory proposed by Martin that no major climatic fiuctuations have occurred in the Southwest during the past 10,000 years.