Two generations of intensive archaeological work conducted in great part by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in the Southern Maya area have resulted in a wealth of factual information and the establishment of a fairly comprehensive and continuous cultural sequence. In spite of the many facts, few attempts have been made by Middle American archaeologists to synthesize this data and present it within a coherent conceptual framework. The reluctance of Middle Americanists to extract from the factual data theories regarding the recurring regularities of human behavior may be due in part to the feeling that such “theorizing” is purely speculative and unscientific. The picture is further complicated by the fact that in the Maya area the great bulk of the archaeological material collected and studied consists of artifacts from the excavations of mounds and tombs in the large ceremonial and urban centers. This material understandably does not represent the totality of the culture concerned.

Large accumulations of shells can be found in flat coastal regions and along the lower course of big rivers all over the world. Many of these shellmounds have been investigated by archaeologists and have been found to contain, besides shells, considerable quantities of ash, numerous artifacts of stone and bone, occasionally potsherds, and often a relatively large number of human skeletons. Their contents and stratification reveal these mounds to be deposits of kitchen refuse, accumulated on prehistoric dwellings sites by tribes whose main source of food was fish and mollusks.

In Brazil such shellmounds can be found not only all along the Atlantic coast and up the Amazon, but even in Mato Grosso, along the banks of the Paraguay River. No systematic survey of Brazilian shellmounds has yet been made.

The course of Maya archaeology has been characterized for the most part by an intensive interest in large ceremonial centers, and justifiably so in view of their clearly rich and rewarding content. Yet the nature of these excavations has necessarily restricted knowledge of preconquest developments in this region to a highly hierarchic level, as witnessed by work in such sites as Kaminaljuyu, Copan, Uaxactun, and Piedras Negras. Remarkably little is known of conditions on a less spectacular level, but a recent trend in this direction is evident in the house-mound and population studies by Carnegie at Mayapan and by Gordon Willey in British Honduras. And we hope that Nohoch Ek, about as insignificant as Maya sites of this type come, may help to illustrate the evolution and workings of an obviously minor ceremonial center.

The present article is an attempt by zoologists to draw conclusions from the vertebrate and other remains found in certain midden sites. Some of the remains have been discussed in papers presented at meetings of the Florida Anthropological Society (Brodkorb 1953; Gut 1952).

Two of the authors have been interested in local archaeological problems, as such. In addition, helpful advice was had from Ripley P. Bullen, Curator of Social Sciences at the Florida State Museum; from John M. Goggin, of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Florida; and from John W. Griffin, of the St. Augustine Historical Society (Florida). Thanks are due to these archaeologists; also to Barney R. Beck, owner of the Lemon Bluff site; to Bernard S. Good, owner of Good's Shellpit; to J. E. Price, owner of the Bluffton site; to Jerry Allen, manager of Silver Glen Springs at the time excavations were made there; to James B. Gut and Marjorie A. Briggs for assistance in collecting; and to E.

Examination of aerial photographs of the Teotihuacan region for indications of abandoned irrigation canals revealed the traces of a small system just to the northwest of the modern road connecting the town of Atlatongo with the ceremonial center of Teotihuacan. The system lies along a stream flowing southeastwards in the tributary valley formed by Cerros Maravillas to the west, Tenextlacotla to the north, and Malinalco to the east (Fig. 123). The aerial photograph used had a scale of 1:10,000. It was taken by the Compañia Mexicana de Aerofoto and is identifiable as Sheet 50 of the aerial survey “Cuautitlan to Estacion de Irolo” (Fig. 124). Although the photograph was not taken for archaeological purposes, its utility in locating remains on the ground demonstrates once again that the systematic use of aerial photographs in settlement archaeology — used to such advantage elsewhere — could also yield promising results in Mesoamerica.

In the fall of 1954 the undersigned had occasion to investigate the discovery of an eastern fluted projectile point in an excavation being made for the erection of a flagpole memorial to the man who originated the Tadpole Club. In preparation for this expedition to a Boy Scout camp near the Delaware Water Gap we decided to build a motor-driven sifter. This machine has operated so well on this and succeeding trips that it seems to warrant a brief description.

The accompaning sketch (Fig. 128) shows the basic principles. The screen, mounted at a slant on 1/4-inch thick plywood legs, is free to move back and forth due to the flexibility of the plywood. A little experimentation demonstrated that about 150 strokes was right for most sifting operations.

Many archaeological sites in the Missouri Valley have produced large quantities of unworked animal bones. Most of these “food” bones are mammalian, with some bird, turtle, and fish. Recent studies by Lehmer (1952; 1954) and the series of studies by the author in American Antiquity (Vols. 17, 19, and 21) indicate that this material has important cultural implications which should not be overlooked. First of all, it is desirable to review briefly some of the questions which can be answered by study of the unworked bone.

1. Did the people exercise any choice in the age of the animals they killed? This question can be determined with a fair degree of probability only with the mammals. An estimate of the age can be determined from the teeth (whether they are deciduous or permanent, and by the amount of wear) and from the relation of the epiphyses to the diaphyses. Criteria for these estimates, applicable to the larger game animals, are given in standard textbooks of the anatomy of the domestic animals.

If a man who merely amuses himself by flaking flints ventures to offer advice to professional archaeologists, he may be set down as loutish or impertinent. But I will take the chance. I should like to ask the professional brethren to restudy some of the North American sites and look carefully for blades or lamellar flakes. For I am persuaded that blades will be found wherever long, thin, and shapely projectile points are found.

In spite of Holmes (1919, Chapters 13 and 19), it is extremely difficult to make a pretty projectile point by nibbling down a core, whereas it is easy to make one by trimming a blade. The circumstantial evidence indcates that any workman, early or late, who wished to make a long, thin, and delicate point would begin with a blade rather than with a core. The most successful of the contemporary fakers, indeed, have simplified the process by sawing out flat blades with a lapidary saw.

The following survey is intended to cover that portion of Asia lying nearest to the New World and hence presumably most closely related thereto historically and culturally — that is, the lower Lena basin and the region lying east of it, forming the northeastern extension of the continent. For the sake of precision we will set as limits the 110th meridian on the west and latitude 62°, roughly that of Yakutsk, on the south.

As in comparable regions of our own continent, vast portions of this area still remain archaeologically unknown. However, significant work has been done in recent years which merits the attention of Americanists, in particular that by A. P. Okladnikov along the Lena River.

In this day when, according to perhaps too sanguine recent reports, physical anthropology, ethnology, linguistics, folklore, and archaeology are happily converging, it was a shock to hear that a relatively well-known archaeological site on the north side of the Grand Dalles of the Columbia River in the state of Washington is commonly referred to as Wakemáp (rhymes with “lakemap”). According to John M. Corbett of the U.S. National Park Service who has recently visited this old site, originally described in 1805 by Lewis and Clark, such a completely anglicized pronunciation is now common currency among the various archaeological field parties who have been working at or near the site during the last few years, and he never heard of or thought of it as being pronounced otherwise.

Actually, the near-correct pronunciation is Wakemap (rhymes with “knock ‘em up”). (For a phonetic rendering see Spier and Sapir 1930: 164.) The name is Wishram in derivation, as given by Sapir (1909:201), and the traditional site was so identified and designated by Schenck and myself in 1924 (Strong, Schenck, and Steward 1930: 6, 8), and by the Indians in that vicinity.

In the October, 1954, issue of American Antiquity (Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. 174-5), A. McL. Howard called attention to a type of cruciform artifact which occurs sporadically through northwestern Mexico and southeastern Arizona. The writer would like to make note of a similar find from a site in west-central Sonora.

This cross (Fig. 135) was found on an extensive village midden in the vicinity of the pueblo of San Jose de Guaymas, approximately 3.7 km. northeast from the Guaymas airport. The site has temporarily been designated 53:F-71. The object was but one of many obsidian and basalt artifacts found scattered over the site area. It is possible that this cultural occupation represents the predecessors of the surviving Guaymefias Indians whom Father Kino encountered in 1687.

The artifact is of polished obsidian, with fine secondary chipping along the arms. It measures 39 and 41 mm. tip to tip, and 8 mm. in thickness. This cross supports the highland-coastal relationship already suggested by Ekholm's finds at Guasave and Topolobampo, Sinaloa.

Several Southwestern archaeologists who have seen the mat pictured in Figure 136 consider it unusual enough to merit description in print, despite a scarcity of information about its provenience and associations.

The mat has catalog number 943/7 in the collections of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum at Canyon, Texas. It was donated to the Museum by Henry Crain of Canyon in 1942. Mr. Crain informs me that he found the mat in a multiroomed cave about 1/2 mile above the mouth of Mule Creek, a tributary of the San Francisco River in the Mogollon Range of southwestern New Mexico, not far from Clifton, Arizona. He and several hunting companions removed the mat and other archaeological materials from the cave in 1899, when he was ranching in the Mogollon region. Other items included 2 small brown pottery bowls, 2 wooden bows 4 or 5 feet long, and a number of obsidian-tipped arrows.

The Statewide Archeological Survey of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah was recently informed of a site 12 miles east of Ferron, Utah, which has yielded at least one fluted point. Homer Behunin, the local collector who reported the site, found the point (Fig. 137 a) protruding from the wall of Silverhorn Wash about 15 feet below the surface.

The Silverhorn Site (42EM8) proved, upon examination, to be a shallow rock shelter in a protected bend of the wash. The shelter contains at least 12 occupation levels separated by sterile alluvial deposits. The upper-most occupation level is covered by about 10 feet of hard, compact alluvium which reaches to within about a foot of the shelter roof. The occupation levels are easily detected through the presence of small pieces of charcoal which have been somewhat disturbed by the inundations which brought in the alluvial materials.

The Woodruff ossuary (14PH4), a prehistoric communal burial site situated just south of the Nebraska line in Phillips County, Kansas, was excavated for the Smithsonian River Basin Surveys in the late summer and fall of 1946. In the report on this work (Kivett 1953) the findings were correlated with earlier observations in Nebraska and the site was assigned to a recurring complex called the Keith focus. The Keith focus is but one of several variants — and perhaps an early one — of the widespread Woodland culture of the Central Plains. It is distinguished chiefly by the following: calcite-tempered pottery designated as Harlan Cord-Roughened; small to large stemmed and barbed projectile points, often serrated; small chipped celts; triangular and crescentic shell pendants as grave offerings, along with great numbers of shell disc beads and bead blanks; perforated canine teeth and unperforated rodent teeth; incised tubular bone beads; and secondary burial of disarticulated bodies in communal pits.

This is a plea for caution in using recent and important radiocarbon results as controls in correlating the Classic Maya Long Count with our own chronology. A final choice among alternative day-for-day hypotheses must condition one's view of the meaning of the calendar and of astronomy in Mesoamerican cultures generally. More is at stake than the firm dating of archaeological periods, important as that is, and in our desire for a decision there is danger of oversimplifying the problem. Already there has been a press report that the Spinden 12.9.0.0.0 correlation has been established, though equal support in the new evidence can be claimed for an alternative 12.9.0.0.0 hypothesis of Makemson. Nonspecialists wishing to form opinions as to specific correlations must still study the evidence as a whole. Three excellent summaries, well-spaced in time, have been published by Thompson (1935, 1950) and Andrews (1940).

Through the kindness of H. R. Crane and the Radiocarbon Laboratory, Michigan Memorial, Phoenix Project, ages of 2 samples of charcoal submitted by us have been determined. The samples in question were secured by us at the Smith Farm, Ellsworth Falls, Maine, during the summers of 1949 and 1950. Sample M89 was run twice and assays at 4150±450, and 3800±400, average 3959 ±310 or 2005 B.C. Sample M90 assays at 3350 + 400 or 1400 B.C.

These samples were gathered and brought in under circumstances that would be frowned on today. Pieces of charcoal were put in cloth specimen bags which had been used several times and laundered in a washing machine. Workers had not at that time received instructions regarding methods and containers, and it is certain that some of the pieces were brought in in sandwich bags. Whatever the method of collecting, results are consistent with other radiocarbon dates for comparable horizons in the northeast.

Speculations concerning the origin of the American Indian began almost as soon as it became known that America Septentrional was inhabited. Most current theories favor an Asiatic origin, with migration through northern Kamchatka and Alaska. This is supported by rather plentiful evidence. A few anthropologists postulate an island-hopping trans-Pacific migration at relatively low latitudes. This theory is supported by conclusive modern proof that such voyages are possible. Other proposed origins include Palestine (“The Lost Tribes of Israel”), Argentina (Ameghino's “Hombre Terciaro”), various lost continents (such as James Churchward's Mu), and other planets, some no longer extant. These latter theories are based either on misinterpreted evidence (such as the Hombre Terciaro), or overactive imagination (such as Mu), and merit no further consideration here.

Although the theory of Asiatic origin of the American Indian is the most widely accepted today, its first proposal seems quite difficult to locate, particularly as Columbus and his crewmen believed that the inhabitants of the New World were Asiatics.