From mantles cave, in Dinosaur National Monument, in the northwestern corner of Colorado, Burgh and Scoggin (1948) report a buckskin pouch which contained a remarkably well preserved flicker-quill headband turned up with miniver. The similarity of this ancient ceremonial headdress, apart from its fur trimming, to the ethnographic flicker-quill headbands of California, raises a challenging culture-historical problem. The evidence suggests that the similarity may rest on cultural connections and that the flicker-quill headband may be an important key for the understanding of Californian-Great Basin relationships during the first millennium of this era.

Until the past few years the Poverty Point horizon was known solely through its manifestation at the type site, Poverty Point Plantation, on Bayou Macon, West Carroll Parish, Louisiana. Webb (1944), in connection with the description of a cache of stone vessel fragments found near the large Poverty Point mound, pointed out the apparent cultural content of the site, which had previously been mentioned in archaeological literature by Moore (1913), Fowke (1928) and Ford (1936). In 1948, in a description of nonpottery cultures in the state, a further attempt was made (Webb, 1948) to clarify the Poverty Point cultural period as expressed at this site.

The unusual opportunity of excavating a Huron ossuary presented itself to the Royal Ontario Museum of Archaeology in 1946. The fact that probably less than a half dozen such sites still remain, coupled with the possibility that the ossuary in question was the one which the French Jesuit, Jean de Brebeuf, saw in use in 1636, led the Museum to decide upon excavation. A special grant from the Province to the Museum for archaeological purposes enabled work to begin.

The site was situated on a small sandy plain about one hundred acres in extent (Fig. 115), on the farm of Mr. Charles Daoust, in the north half of lot 14, concession 7, Tiny township, Simcoe county. The nearest stream is one-half mile to the west. Remains of historic Huron villages lie one mile north and one and one-half miles northwest of the site. When first seen by the writer, the ossuary was visible as a broad, saucer-shaped depression in the ground, whose maximum depth was about two feet, with a slightly elevated rim marking its borders. The owner said that he had long known the place for what it was, since he had once attempted to bury a sheep in itr but he believed it had not previously been disturbed. After finding human bones, and recovering them, he had not again touched the pit (Fig. 116).

Cremation pits were discovered in the Yakima and Snake River valleys and on the Columbia at Wahluke and at The Dalles before 1927. Recently one has been described from the John Day region in Oregon by Cressman (1950). The cremation complex which the pits represent appears in the late prehistoric period and was undoubtedly widespread and important in the cultural development of the region. In the Dalles-Arlington area, at least, it lasted into historic times. Recent evidence associates the cremation complex with Sahaptin groups inhabiting the region above The Dalles until late historic times. This new evidence controverts an earlier theory, largely based on ethnological traditions, that the Salish were the early inhabitants of the area. The finding of burials below the cremation level at Sheep Island (i.e., a stratified burial site) has particular bearing on the problem.

Since the scientific recognition of a paleo-Indian occupation of the Southwest and high Plains, beginning with the Folsom discoveries in 1927 (Roberts, 1940), the presence of man in the eastern United States prior to the earliest demonstrated cultures of the Archaic period has been suspected on the evidence of random surface finds of fluted points. Some of these artifacts have typologically been equated with the Clovis Fluted form (Krieger, 1947, pp. 10-13), while the greater number, showing considerable stylistic variability, have provisionally been designated “Ohio Fluted points” (Shetrone, 1936, pp. 240-256; Wormington, 1949, pp. 33-35).

Excavations in deeply buried paleo-Indian sites of late Wisconsin age in the Medicine Creek Reservoir area, Nebraska, have resulted in the appearance of a number of preliminary statements in recent years. The present statement, anticipating publication of a complete report of the work, has been prepared in order to make available certain data not hitherto reported.

This report is concerned with data from two stratified sites, the Lime Creek site (Ft-41) and the Red Smoke site (Ft-42), in both of which artifact assemblages including Plainview points have been found. These two sites are on Lime Creek, a small western tributary of Medicine Creek. They are near the Allen site (Ft-50) on Medicine Creek, source of the Frontier complex (Holder and Wike, 1949). As yet no specific relationship has been found to exist between the Frontier complex and the material from Lime Creek and Red Smoke, and therefore the Allen site will not be discussed in this paper. Geologically the situations of all three sites are very similar.

In a recent issue of this journal (Vol. 17, p. 151) Donald J. Lehmer protests against the coefficient of agreement used by W. S. Robinson in his paper on “A Method for Chronologically Ordering Archaeological Deposits” (American Antiquity, Vol. 16, pp. 293-301). Lehmer's objection to the coefficient

As a means of celebrating the four hundredth anniversary of the great Spanish expedition through our southern states led by Hernando de Soto and Luis de Moscoso in the years 1539-1543 a Commission was created in 1935 by act of Congress. The members of that Commission were appointed by President Roosevelt and included the writer who was made chairman by vote of the others. This Commission was authorized “to make a thorough study of the subject of De Soto's expedition” and report back to Congress “its recommendations for a suitable and appropriate celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of said expedition.” The latter part of the instructions being entirely outside of my experience or training, I devoted myself, along with certain of my fellow members, to a study of the career of De Soto, and particularly of the route pursued by his army, so as to determine what communities would be interested in the proposed celebration. This study was carried on for several years and its results incorporated into a “Final Report of the United States De Soto Expedition Commission” which was printed in 1939 by the Government Printing Office, as House Document Number 7.

For the past eight years, stories have appeared concerning a vast collection of animal and human figurines of great antiquity, gathered in the vicinity of Acambaro in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. Senor Waldemar Julsrud possesses some 32,000 of these artifacts in his private collection. These ceramic figures consist of such forms as Brontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Stegosaurus, Trachodon, Dimetrodon and other Mesozoic reptilian life-forms. Also included in the collection are a number of modern life-forms such as cow, horse, hippopotamus, elephant, rabbit, and dog. Even more fabulous is the number of miniature Egyptian sarcophagi found in the collection.

In his systematic analysis and delineation of a Lalonde focus in southern Ontario, Ridley (1952) has made an important contribution to our knowledge of the prehistoric Iroquoian occupations of a region as yet ill-represented in the archaeological literature. However, the writers do not find themselves in agreement with Ridley's inclination to consider the Lalonde diagnostic high collar ware “to be the ancestor of the late Mohawk, Onondaga and Susquehannock collared vessel” (p. 205). Evidently considerable antiquity would have to be assigned to Lalonde if it were to be the prototype for such a profound metamorphosis. On the other hand, it is felt that the possibility of a late prehistoric status for this focus and a cultural position as a stage of “developmental Huron” should not be rejected despite the clear cut differences between Lalonde and contact Huron which Ridley has shown in his trait analysis. The remarks which follow are offered to substantiate this point of view. Some of the data presented have not yet been published and were largely unknown to Ridley (Emerson, 1952).

The discussion of pit houses in the Old World and in North America by Hiroshi Daifuku (American Antiquity, Vol. 18, pp. 1-7) prompts me to add a note concerning certain pit house sites which I explored in northern Japan during the spring and summer of 1951.

While searching the Yamagawa River Valley near Furumaki-machi in Aomori Prefecture for early Jomon sites, I encountered several pit house village sites. I had previously been advised of the general location of these by Major Howard McCord, formerly of Misawa Air Force Base, who had done considerable archaeological work in that region.

In the months of July and August, 1950, excavation at the Aztalan Village site was carried on by the Wisconsin Archaeological Survey under the field supervision of Chandler W. Rowe. Additional information was gathered concerning this Middle Mississippi village; this information is being prepared for publication. However, it seems advisable to record the peculiar situation encountered in three of the refuse pits (features 76, 74 and 83) in the hope that correlative information may be forthcoming.

A remarkable resemblance exists between a pottery figurine from Tennessee, representing an infant strapped to a cradle board, and two figurines from Mexico.

Figure 74 is taken from Thruston's “Antiquities of Tennessee.” He says of it:

The ceramic material from the Bintz site, as MacCord has indicated, belongs to the Madisonville focus of the Fort Ancient aspect. He has given the Ceramic Repository for the Eastern United States at the University of Michigan a representative sample and in addition has allowed me to examine the negative painted specimens from the site. The pottery which is now available for study and my impressions of the site at the time I visited it indicate that it is more closely connected to Fox Farm than to Madisonville. The fabric impressed salt pan is more common at Bintz than at any other Fort Ancient site, and in this regard conforms more to the rare appearance of fabric impression on salt pans at Fox Farm. A common decorative style at Bintz is on vessels which can be called Madisonville Cordmarked. The incised decoration on these specimens is similar to that at Fox Farm (Griffin, 1943, Pl. CVI, Figs. 1-5).

A unique stone bearing a number of rude linear cuts (Fig. 44), some in a design, was found in the course of routine fieldwork during the summer of 1950 by a party of geologists of the U. S. Geological Survey, Navy Oil Unit. This field party, to whom the credit for the discovery belongs, was under the leadership of Charles L. Whittington. Also present at the discovery were John Stevens, Leonard Rolnick, Bruce Thompson and Francis Minard. Although petroglyphs as individual items are not uncommon elsewhere on the continent, its occurrence in northern Alaska is singular enough to be worth recording.

In the upper Piedmont region of North Carolina, along the Yadkin River, specimens of copper have been found at three village sites.

As illustrated, the largest specimen appears to be a copper breast plate. Five tubular beads are represented. Seven pieces are roughly cone-shaped and could be classified as decorative bangles, although those which are more proportional and smoothly finished could have been used as arrow tips. The two triangular pierced pendants were found at sites forty miles apart. The copper hawk's bell, a trader's piece evidently of English origin, still rings merrily when shaken. A broken half of the same design was found forty miles away at a other site. Two fragments of unfinished copper are illustrated (Fig. 135).