Centering in Georgia and extending to the adjacent portions of the states of Tennessee, Alabama, North and South Carolina are a series of archaeological complexes characterized by pottery with a complicated stamped decoration. These complexes have not yet been sufficiently defined. This paper will attempt a partial statement of the resemblances and differences between the major divisions of the group. It will not attempt to evaluate the excavations in a detailed manner. This material is what Holmes (1903, pp. 130-137) called the South Appalachian Province in which he lumped all the stamped pottery from the southeastern area. The Swift Creek Complicated Stamped material as defined in a preliminary paper by Kelly (1938, pp. 25-31, Pl. 11, a) will not be considered here. It has become evident in recent years that subdivisions of the rest of the material could be made and that they would have temporal or spatial significance.

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.

Although southwestern archaeologists have for years been greatly interested in the classification and description of pottery, their investigations have been primarily centered on the pottery of the Pueblos and other sedentary groups, and comparatively little attention was given to the ceramics of the nomadic or semi-nomadic southwestern groups. Within recent years some studies have been made on Navaho and Western Apache pottery, but as yet there have been no detailed studies of the pottery of such peripheral nomadic or semi-nomadic tribes as the Ute and Southern Paiute. Therefore, it seems well worthwhile at this time to present the following brief notes concerning the results of several years of archaeological field work in the Southern Paiute area.

The study of the so-called juegos o corrales de los indios comprises one of the most interesting aspects of West Indian archaeology. The Archaeological Research Center of the University of Puerto Rico has devoted special attention to their study in the belief that these juegos stand in intimate relation with a number of problems of Caribbean archaeology, the solution of which cannot but lead to a clearer and more exact view of the aboriginal culture.

During the 1948 summer field session of the University of Arizona Archaeological Field School, located at Point of Pines, Arizona, two painted stone slabs were excavated in a late Pueblo ruin designated as Arizona: W:10:47.

Arizona: W: 10:47 was believed to be a small single-phase pueblo occupied during the Point of Pines horizon, ca. 1350 to 1400 A.D. It was decided during the course of the summer's work to investigate this ruin, in an attempt to locate wood specimens for dating purposes and to gather information concerning the architecture, ceramics, etc., of this late horizon. The task of sinking the te.st trenches necessary for the investigation fell to the author and to R. E. Gerald of the University of Arizona.

This brief statement is presented as a summary of the archaeological sequences as they have been postulated to date in the Texas area. It is a compilation of the results of investigations by.several dozen archaeologists who have worked in the area during the past quarter century or more. Necessarily it is brief and only a bare minimum of description of each cultural group has been included. Also, the sequential alignments are for the most part tentative. Only in rare instances has extensive field work established definitely the positions suggested. The McKern system of culture designation has been used to indicate groups and subdivisions of groups throughout, although the term aspect tends to have more of a temporal than spatial implication.

On the 11th of September, 1948, a farmer was ploughing on his farm near Lac du Bonnet, roughly fifty miles northeast of Winnipeg, Manitoba. His ploughshare turned up a stone hammer and at the same time laid bare an object which, at first, he took for a piece of wood or a potato, because of its size, shape, and colour. A moment later he realized that no potato could be there, and, investigating further, discovered that the object was the end of a large bone which had been artificially shaped.

During a field trip to British Honduras in the summer of 1950, the carved representation of a serpent sketched in Figure 116 was seen in the private collection of Mr. Eustace Evans of Belize. Esthetically, the piece is designed and executed with a skill that makes it an outstanding example of aboriginal art. The specimen is also deserving of description because it is stylistically unusual for the Maya area, being quite different from the traditional Maya artifacts.

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.

Hammering and embossing are the most primitive forms of metalworking and they appear at the beginning of the history of Peruvian metals, but they have maintained their popularity in that country during all periods until the present. It is an archaeological characteristic of the coast of Peru that most copper or bronze objects were cast and that most gold and silver artifacts were hammered to shape. The Peruvians not only hammered flat surfaces but hollow'goblets and even hollow figures of men and animals. These were made in various sections and were joined by solder, an art mastered at a very early period.

Rowe (1950) in his review of Andean Culture History by W. C. Bennett and J. B. Bird, 1949, makes certain critical observations on the use of the horizon style concept as a unifying device in the reconstruction of Peru-Bolivian prehistory. Not only Bennett but Kroeber (1944) and I (Willey, 1948) are included in these analytical criticisms. As this is a subject of general importance to Andean archaeology, and in view of my stand on it, I would like to call attention to some of my previously expressed ideas.

The shell object, illustrated in Fig. 56, was excavated on the Lowton site, Manitoba, (S.W. Sec. 26, T. 5, R. 16, W. 1st). The date of recovery was September 18, 1945; it was found in Excavation 3, lay at a depth of 15 inches below the surface, and was associated with common Lowton site material.

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.

In a recent note Baerreis (1950) has given critical amplification to the question of possible cultural relations between the southeastern United States Archaic and the archaeologically known culture, or cultures, of the lower Parana River, Argentina. A paper of my own (Willey, 1949), on which Baerreis centers his discussion, focused attention on the Caribbean area and the north of the South American continent, giving only brief mention to interesting southeastern resemblances which may be found along the Parana and in the Sambaquis of southern Brazil. I agree that Baerreis has strengthened the case for cultural connections over and beyond the casual comments which I or others have offered.