A thin layer of pebbles and flinty artifacts isolated during the summers of 1948 and 1949 at the bottom of a site on Cape Denbigh, on the north Bering Sea coast of Alaska, furnishes concrete evidence in support of theories of a Bering Strait gateway to America in remote times. The flint complex from the old layer holds little in common with what we think of as Eskimo. For descriptive parallels it will be necessary to draw upon sources far removed from the Bering Strait and out of the general range of recent cultures. This specific cultural horizon appears to furnish a strong linkage of American archaeology with that of the Old World.

This paper is a preliminary descriptive report of an archaeological reconnaissance undertaken during the summer of 1949 in southern Labrador and northern Newfoundland. The project will be continued in the summer of 1950, but since the prehistory of the area is both interesting and relatively unknown, I have thought it worth-while to write a brief account of the work as far as it has progressed.

The general purposes of the investigation are to delineate the culture of the Beothuck, or Red Indians, who once inhabited Newfoundland, and to trace their derivation; to clarify the manifestations of Cape Dorset Eskimo culture first noted in Newfoundland by Jenness (1929) and Wintemberg (1939, 1940); and to check on the possibilities of contact between the Beothuck and Dorset Eskimo with a view to tracking the diffusion of certain traits which, it is believed, occurred during the Archaic period.

As a result of work on Santa Rosa Island during 1947-1950, the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History has completed a survey which includes 142 ancient Indian village sites. On the California mainland intensive cultivation, construction and pot-hunting have pretty well eliminated the natural surface conditions of Indian sites, but on Santa Rosa Island, due to its isolation, there are many sites untouched by modern man. Consequently, it was possible to set up a system of classification of the sites undisturbed by civilization on a basis of natural physical conditions.

Several years ago, the writer prepared a paper (Lothrop, 1941) on the gold objects of Chavin style found in two graves at Chongoyape near the north coast of Peru. At that time reference was made to a third group of Chavin gold work which the owner, the late Mr. Joseph Brummer, did not then wish to have published. (Five Brummer specimens were illustrated in Kelemen, 1944, seven in Larco Hoyle, 1941.) Since Mr. Brummer's death, the nineteen specimens in his collection have passed into the hands of the Hon. Robert Woods Bliss and Doctor Vladimir G. Simkhovitch, who have granted permission to publish their beautiful acquisitions and have most kindly provided photographs. I am also indebted to a friend in Lima for permission to illustrate a Chavin specimen from his collection and to Professor W. C. Root for analyses.

Collections of nearly 20,000 copper implements of twenty-one general types, heavily patinated, all surface or near surface finds without apparent pottery association, found in maximum concentration in Wisconsin, have raised questions of their relative age and probable cultural affiliations. In 1942, after Ritchie's discovery of copper implements in pre-pottery Laurentian levels, W. C. McKern (1942, p. 167) formulated a provisional hypothesis. He defined the tools as the production of a pre-Woodland, preceramic people, centered in Wisconsin and spreading into adjacent territory, and subsumed all copper implements, not attributable to known cultures, as cases of the Old Copper Industry.

It is generally accepted that the specialized agricultural implements and techniques, and domesticated plants (with a few possible exceptions) of the Old and New Worlds are unrelated and independently developed. Parallel developments in agricultural accessories have occurred; the hoe and irrigation are obvious exemplars. The hand sickle, used to harvest cereal crops in the Old World, and to cut wild grasses in the New World, may now be pointed out as occurring in both hemispheres. The forms, materials, and function of the Old World sickle distinguish it from that of the New World, and it would appear that there is no specific connection between the Afro-Asian sickle used in farming and its North American counterpart used predominantly by incipient or non-agricultural native groups.

Recent reports on Alaska by Solecki and by Giddings. have mentioned the presence there of Mongolian-type lames and cores already noted some twelve years earlier by Nelson and by Rainey. In this connection, it may not be out of place to summarize the findings of Hitoshi Watanabe, a Japanese archaeologist, on the characteristics that distinguish a lame from an ordinary flake. Although the primary purpose of his research was to clarify some misconceptions created in Japanese archaeology by somewhat indiscriminate application of the term lames to relatively long and narrow flakes, found in both the main island of Honshu and the northernmost island of Hokkaido, much of the data is relevant to Alaskan archaeology.

With the addition of Carbon 14 dating to the archaeologist's repertory as a technique for determining the actual age of archaeological specimens, this phase of archaeology in America has been put on a more exact basis.

However, preoccupied as we seem to be with “dates,” a method of chemical analysis useful in archaeology and evolved twenty years ago by Arrhenius (1930) and applied by Schnell (1932) in northern Europe has remained unnoticed in this country, although Clark (1936, pp. 19-22) mentions it.

The two specimens here illustrated (Fig. 83) were found in 1925 by E. H. Morris and the writer in a cave opposite and a little above the White House, Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. They lay together about 50 cm. deep in loose sand. They are doubtless Anasazi, but as no other artifacts were found in association it is uncertain whether they are of Basket Maker or Pueblo manufacture. Made from bird bones, apparently ulnae of a large species, they are of identical workmanship, the ends cut squarely across, the shafts polished as if from long handling. The ends of each one's single oval perforation are sharply edged. Directly below the perforation is a little mound of a dark brown, gummy substance, troughed lengthwise (Fig. 84). This throws trough-canalized air, blown from either end, up against the sharp edge at the opposite end of the perforation, producing a shrill whistling note.

The Amerind Foundation, Inc. spent the first three weeks of December, 1948, excavating a ball court at the archaeological site of Arizona:BB:15:3, which is located in Cochise County, Sec. 20, T15S, R20E. The actual village area is located on the west bank of the San Pedro River twenty-two miles north of the city of Benson at an approximate elevation of 3300 feet.

The ball court was located in the north half of the village on a terrace some forty feet above the river channel. It appeared as a shallow but conspicuous oval depression which was overgrown with mesquite trees and other desert flora of the Sonoran plateau type. Fortunately the court had not been disturbed by any previous excavations nor by erosion (Fig. 86, a).

Up to the present no fluted points have been discovered in Ontario. A small number having some affinities to the type have been found in various parts of the Province, but none has come to light under conditions of controlled excavation. It is with a view to making available what information there is concerning those we have that this note is submitted and the illustrations published. The originals of all those shown, in addition to three not illustrated, are in the collections of the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology at Toronto.

This is written as a warning to archaeological field workers whose excavations may yield pottery decorated by the resist-painted technique. Such a technique, often called negative painting, consists of painting a design on a slipped vessel in some substance, presumably hot wax, that is resistant to paint. The vessel is then painted over in another color, or smoked. The resistant substance is removed, and the design stands out light against a dark background.

There is little doubt that the archaeologist in marginal areas who attempts to interpret his finds may be led to false conclusions if he accepts at face value statements concerning ranges of species whose remains he discovers in village refuse. He should remember that in nature living beings are not subject to marshalling behind sharply defined limits, but will almost inevitably be found outside the accepted “range,” either because of migration or isolated occurrence which has not been recorded.

Our findings to date indicate that the archaeology of the Fraser Delta region is far more complicated than Harlan I. Smith or even Philip Drucker anticipated. Every major site investigated so far has a distinctive character. At some of them culture sequences are clearly apparent.

Harpoon points are being recognized as important diagnostic elements. Three main classes can be distinguished: 1, barbed harpoons with tang (Pt. Grey, Marpole); 2, one-piece toggles (Locarno Beach); 3, twopiece toggles (Whalen, Musqueam). Two-piece toggles are present at sites with historic (Musqueam) and protohistoric (Whalen) horizons, but conspicuously absent at sites where very old (500 + years) coniferous trees grow on the deposits (Pt. Grey, Marpole, and probably Locarno Beach).

In 1937 Gila Pueblo reported on its excavations at Snaketown, a large Hohokam site in southern Arizona, in which a time range from 300 B.C. to 1100 A.D. was assigned (Gladwin, et al, 1937). Gladwin (1942) then presented a revision, based on his own comparative treering research, in which he raised the beginning date for the site up to 600 A.D. In his latest publication Gladwin (1948) brings a second revision in which additional time and cultural alterations are offered. These are again based on his own dendrochronological studies. These results he correlates in turn, on a broad scale, with the Mogollon development.

When a synthesis such as Stephenson's appears, those concerned with it had better speak up, lest silence be mistaken for approval. Synthesis can only be helpful to the rest of the profession if done as accurately as available information permits. “Culture Chronology in Texas” is not entirely accurate. A line-for-line criticism of this article would require a good deal of explanation and documentation; hence I will confine my remarks to what seem to me the principal faults – those which may mislead those not well acquainted with Texas archaeology.