Archaeological investigations were carried on by the Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas, from June 19 to August 20, 1948, in the Kanopolis Reservoir area on the Smoky Hill River in Ellsworth County and also along the Little Arkansas River in Rice County, Kansas. The River Basin Surveys of the Smithsonian Institution had undertaken the preliminary reconnaissance and had found more than twenty sites in the area of the Reservoir. William O. Leuty of Ellsworth was helpful in guiding the field parties of both institutions to most of the sites; also he gathered surface collections which were turned over to us.

The Kanopolis Reservoir is situated in the highly dissected terrain which marks the Plains border along the 98th meridian of longitude in central Kansas. The Smoky Hill River meanders eastward, fed by many tributary streams and canyons. Outcrops of Dakota sandstone are common on the bluffs bordering the valley and trees are limited to the edges of the streams.

On the night of July 5, 1948, under circumstances which may never be explained, John Haynes Bailey “shuffled off this mortal coil.” Some two years previously he had undergone a major surgical operation from which, insofar as his family and his friends were aware, he had recovered, but the incubus of ill health offers the most probable solution to the enigma of his tragic death.

Born on May 22, 1909, in the western New York village of Dansville, as the only child of James Albert Bailey, an attorney, and Marie (Haynes) Bailey, he was early taken to Caledonia, also in the Genesee Country, where he received his pre-collegiate schooling. In 1933 he was graduated from Cornell University with a bachelor's degree in physics.

The excavation and restoration of Zaculeu, now in progress, is a project of the United Fruit Company, under the direction of John M. Dimick. The site of Zaculeu is in the western highlands of Guatemala about 3 kilometers from the town of Huehuetenango. At least one more season's work is planned, but the general outlines of the archaeological picture are already emerging.

The most important contribution which the work at Zaculeu will make to the archaeology of the Highland Maya is in furnishing a continuous record of architecture and pottery from Early Classic times to the Conquest, a period of nearly 1000 years (PI. XVI). The initial occupation of the site was contemporary with the Early Classic (Tzakol) phase of the lowlands and the Esperanza phase at Kaminaljuyu, to judge from several pieces of pottery found in graves. There was intensive building activity and many burials were incorporated in or dug through the stairways of terraced platforms.

Julio César Tello, outstanding Peruvian archaeologist, was born on April 11, 1880, under humble circumstances in the Indian village of Huarochirí, Department of Lima, in the high Andes. He died on June 3, 1947, in the city of Lima and was buried with the pomp and pageantry accorded to a Minister of State. Tello was of almost pure Indian blood, of which he was proud. His father, Julian Tello, evidently was a man of local importance as he became alcalde, but the family was poor and Julio Tello's first memory was of playing on an adobe floor. His mother was María Asunción Rojas de Tello, a descerident of the last Inca curaca who governed Huarochirí. During his childhood, Julio's father made periodic journeys to the coast where he visited relatives in the small fishing villages south of Lima. He often took his son with him on these trips.

The death of Sylvanus Griswold Morley on September 2 brought to a close a brilliant career and probably also an important phase of Maya research. His achievements are outstanding in the fields of archaeological exploration and epigraphy; and he had a talent for imparting to others his intense concern for everything pertaining to the Maya people, whether ancient or modern. All was grist that came to his mill, if it had any bearing on this subject; and where there was an application to the hieroglyphs, he ground to exceeding fineness. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that he has done more to spread an intelligent interest in Maya civilization than anyone since Stephens, over a century ago.

He was a winning and sympathetic person and made friends in every quarter. He was open-handed to a fault, not only with his material possessions, but also with unpublished scientific data that he had acquired the hard way, even when he knew it would be used to question some cherished thesis of his own.

One of the consequences of the Missouri Basin development program will be the virtual obliteration of the Missouri River between Yankton, South Dakota, and the Montana-North Dakota line. The lakes to be created by the various dams proposed or under construction by the Army Corps of Engineers will inundate all but short stretches of the terraces on which are situated literally hundreds of fortified and unfortified earth-lodge villages and other, earlier, occupational sites. Situated near the northern limit of agriculture but heavily populated by sedentary, horticultural people for a period of several hundreds of years, this anthropologically fascinating area has been barely touched scientifically.

Since its inception by Ritchie1 the term “The Archaic,“ or “The Archaic Pattern,” has seen considerable usage. However, it appears that the definition or delineation of this pattern, as it exists, is not serviceable. If this be true, there is then an anomalous situation in that: (1) Manifestations which have been classified by Webb and Dejarnette, Webb and Haag, Fairbanks, and Lewis and Kneberg, as components or foci of the Archaic, are thereby correlated at the pattern level. (2) The concept in terms of which they have been so correlated is inaccurate.

Ritchie's most concrete formulations are:

The long postulated archaic level in New York recently confirmed by intensive work in the Southeast consists of an aggregate of discrete foci, sharing a hunting-fishing-gathering economy. Its chief characteristics are the absence of horticultural traces, ceramics, and the smoking pipe. (Italics mine.)

In the summer of 1937, a new paleo-Indian site was discovered at the south end of Odell Lake in Oregon. Odell Lake (PI. VI), lies in a glacial trough just east of the divide in the Cascade Mountains, in T 23 S, R 6½ E, Willamette Meridian. The elevation of the lake is 4,792 feet (Deschutes National Forest Map, Willamette Meridian, 1947).

In the summer of 1946, the proprietors, Wilson J. Wade and Charles A. Porter, were excavating for the foundations and basement of a lodge on the south side of the outlet of Odell Lake on a bench or terrace at the east end, about 25 feet above the lake. Richard P. Bottcher, Engineer of the U. S. Forest Service, Deschutes National Forest, was present. The excavation went through a bed of pumice and into the glacial moraine on which it rests. Bottcher picked up points which he thought came from under the pumice. He showed these to Mr. Phil Brogan of Bend, Oregon, Managing Editor of the Bend Bulletin, who was aware of the previous finds under Crater Lake pumice. Brogan shortly afterward called my attention to the site.

The University of California instituted on August 1, 1948, a statewide archaeological survey. Supporting funds are from the State Legislature and are part of the regular University budget. The financing is adequate, and assurance of the Survey being a permanent institution has been given. Work will be done by the Archaeologist, F. Fenenga, and Assistant Archaeologist, F. Riddell, and will entail site survey and mapping, excavation, and publication. Headquarters are in the University of California Museum of Anthropology, and the Survey activities will be integrated with those of the Museum. Close cooperation is envisaged with other institutions which include the University of California at Los Angeles, Santa Barbara College of the University of California, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, the Los Angeles County Museum, the Southwest Museum, the San Diego Museum of Man, Sacramento College, and the Archaeological Survey Association of Southern California.

A recent paper by George R. Horner, covering work done by Wheaton College at the Fisher site, Will County, Illinois, contains several statements requiring comment. In order to comment on these points it will be necessary to outline certain material contained in an unpublished manuscript of the writer.

The well-known Fisher site, consisting of 12 mounds and over 50 house pits, was initially excavated by George Langford. Later work was conducted by several University of Chicago field parties, and a W.P.A. expedition. The site is located on the point of land formed by the Des Plaines and Kankakee rivers as they approach their confluence and unite to form the Illinois. Four cultural horizons can be recognized at the site: (1) long-headed burials without grave goods in the gravel beneath the mounds, (2) three periods of Upper Mississippi occupation, (3) Late Woodland, and (4) Historic. We are only concerned with the Upper Mississippi occupations in the present note.

The Thomas Riggs village site is located along the east bank of the Missouri River on the ranch of the late Thomas L. Riggs in the SW¼ NW¼ Section 27, Township 112 North, Range 81 West, Hughes County, South Dakota (Fig. 74). It is approximately 10 miles above the proposed site of the Oahe Dam and will fall well within the limits of the basin of this huge reservoir when it eventually becomes filled. This particular site, unlike many others in the area, shows little evidence of depredation.

This may be due in part to the fact that evidences of occupation are only faintly discernible on the surface. No conspicuous pits or mounds are visible, and the site is covered with a luxuriant growth of native grass which not only conceals the usual telltale surface accumulation of refuse but also obscures the minor surface irregularities.

Harold S. Gladwin in a recent publication voiced a question of vital importance to Southwestern archaeology. Can dendrochronology tell us anything concerning the effects of climate on aboriginal agriculture?

Both Douglass and Schulman have claimed that correlations can be established between tree-growth and winter precipitation, but each of them has been explicit in saying that summer rainfall has little, if any effect upon the growth of trees. Since it would seem that summer rainfall, during the crop-growing months, is the only season of moisture which could effect the agricultural well being of Pueblo peoples, I do not see how narrow tree-rings can be regarded as providing any indications of economic disaster in ancient times.

During the month of May, 1948, Dr. Douglas Leechman of the National Museum, Ottawa, spent some time on the northern Plains. Included in his Manitoba itinerary was a rapid survey of the more important sites in the southcentral portion of the province. While on the Lowton site (S. W. Sec. 26, T. 5, R. 16, W. 1st.), one of the party, Dr. R. D. Bird of Brandon, Manitoba, recovered from the surface the curved knife with the deliberately fashioned scraper end illustrated in Figure 21.

In the January issue Robert Merrill reviews a study of mine called Concepts and Structures of Maya Calendrical Arithmetics. Considering the flinty nature of the material I wish he had noted that there is a section devoted to “Summary.” Two “Appendices” also failed to get mentioned, but the other sections are characterized briefly. Section XV was mistakenly grouped with others as dealing with “analysis of various moon formulae.” In it, a moon formula is simply assumed, and the subject is a theory, admittedly incomplete, as to how the Maya computer of the Eclipse Table on pp. 51-8 of the Dresden Codex may have been able to do as well as he did without understanding the celestial mechanics involved. Thus, this short section has a bearing on just how “gifted” the much-praised ancient Maya astronomer-priests really were.

In shell middens bones and shells are surviving indicators of the diet of the former inhabitants. Unless carbonized, the plants consumed leave no obvious trace.

A comparison of Californian and Fijian (Viti Levu Island) shellmounds reveals a striking similarity in the quantity of bone and an even more striking dissimilarity in the quantity of shell. In both areas bone constitutes less than onehalf of one per cent of the weight of the mound mass. In Fiji shell constitutes on the average 13 per cent by weight, whereas the average in California is 52 per cent—four times as great. The following speculations are based on these facts.

Two burial mounds on the east bluff overlooking the left bank of the Sheyenne River, east-central North Dakota, were excavated between June 25 and August 1, 1948, by a field party of the University of North Dakota, working in cooperation with the North Dakota State Historical Society. The archaeological resources of the area of the Baldhill Reservoir had been appraised in 1947 by a party of four, headed by M. F. Kivett, for the Missouri Valley Project of the River Basin Surveys. This survey resulted in the mapping of ten sites, three of them mounds or moundgroups, and the partial excavation of one mound to salvage skeletal material already partly exposed.

Construction of Baldhill Dam, about 9 miles north of Valley City, was already far advanced in 1948, and several occupational sites in the Sheyenne River bottomland were in danger of flooding within a few years (see Fig. 81, a and b).

Since publication of the manuscript “Crania of the Warren Mounds and their Possible Significance to Northern Periphery Archaeology,” it has become necessary to call to the reader's attention important data overlooked in the original report by both Mr. Enger and myself.

As was stated in the general summary of the Warren crania, “The Warren crania have the following characteristics: cephalic index, brachycephalic; height-length index, chamaecephalic fo orthocephalic; height-breadth index, tapeinocephalic; facial index, mesene; high orbits; a fairly well-developed occipital region; and no occipital deformation.” It is this last descriptive statement which, in view of recent studies, is in need of elaboration.

The illustrated blade fragment (Fig. 22) turned up in a purchased lot of archaeological specimens at Kotzebue, in 1941. It appears to be the tip of a long, thin blade broken clean near the middle. It is diagonally flaked from translucent, smoky chalcedony, a material which shows up occasionally in sites of the Kobuk River region. The Yumalike flaking, in some cases all the way across the blade leaving each face rounded rather than longitudinally ridged, is not, however, reported from other sites in Alaska.

This object was offered for sale along with various artifacts of types common in our excavations. The Eskimo to whom they belonged said they had been all collected and saved for some time by members of his family.

Early in May 1947, a United States Geological Survey field party of five was flown by ski plane to the headwaters of the Utukok River in northwestern Alaska, about 200 miles southwest of Barrow. Three 18–foot canvas boats of a special folding design were taken in along with enough equipment for four months. Food caches had been flown in to six localities on the 200–mile–long river a short time before the group landed. When the “break–up” came late in May the party started down the river working out the geology of the area from a series of 18 camps which were established before reaching the Arctic Ocean in August.

During the season 17 archaeological sites were discovered. It is believed that most of these sites are of Eskimo origin and are probably fairly recent. However, an important exception is a well–made Folsom point, announcement of which has been made.

In the Missouri River Basin, as elsewhere, the need for an accurate chronological framework for the understanding of archaeological relationships and cultural development is of primary importance. Because of the vastness of the area, the great diversity of materials from its various regions, and the relatively limited systematic work so far performed, no general Basin-wide chronological scheme of any preciseness is yet feasible. About the best we can do is to try to correlate a few locally developed sequences, and then if possible fit into this general picture some of the “floating” sequences and horizons. Complete coverage of the known archaeological remains of the Basin is manifestly impossible within the limits of a summary paper. It is hoped, however, that the remarks which follow may help to suggest trends developing as the evidence accumulates.