Geologic-Climatic dating of archaeological finds in the arid and semiarid western United States is based on geology, on the relationship between moisture, vegetation, and geological processes, and on climatic history. The procedure of dating includes 4 main steps, namely, (1) study of beds and geological features, (2) climatic interpretation of beds and features, (3) assignment of the bed with the human record to a particular regional climatic age or phase, and (4) correlation of the regional relative chronology with a dated climatic history. The geological study of the site includes texture, structure, and appearance of the beds or terrace deposits, their modes and conditions of formation, their sequence, fossils, and artifacts, the soil zones, caliche incrustations, and erosions. The climatic interpretation of the beds and features is made in conformity with the delicate regional relationship between climatic conditions and changes and geological processes and deposits.

This Study deals primarily with the pottery from a series of 8 Middle Woodland village sites in the central Illinois River valley (Mason, Tazewell, Fulton, Peoria, and Marshall counties in Illinois, see Fig. 62). Comment regarding 3 other sites is also included. All of these sites but one are either directly associated with Hopewellian burial mounds or have Hopewellian pottery and other artifacts scattered throughout the debris. There are numerous other sites known with material similar to these sites, but they are not included here due to the small number of sherds in each of these sites (for example, F°77, Fv88, and others reported on by Cole and Deuel in 1937).

The purpose of this particular study is twofold. First of all an attempt is being made in this report to present indications of changes through time and style preferences in a rather well-known culture. It is hoped that these indications will help us to understand the temporal position of the different sites and to build up a body of information that will allow better understanding of the various cultural forms, in this particular case, pottery.

On a Wooded Hilltop overlooking Sheguiandah Bay on Manitoulin Island is one of the most remarkable Indian sites ever discovered in Canada. It was found in the course of archaeological survey work in 1951 (Lee 1953). Extensive surface collections were made; the materials indicated that the site might be one of the earliest known in Ontario. Hundreds of large quartzite blades were obtained and their apparent connections were with the George Lake 1 site at Killarney, some twenty miles away on the mainland (Greenman 1943). The Sheguiandah site, vastly richer in material, gave promise of yielding valuable information about the nature and cultural connections of the people who had worked and perhaps lived there. Further, despite the fact that the site had thus far escaped the attentions of souvenir hunters and relic collectors, it was believed that any delay in investigations might subject it to the destructive forces which have fallen upon so many important prehistoric features.

The Past Decade has witnessed a phenomenal development of historical archaeology in America; concomitantly, there is an upsurge of interest in the European artifacts found on the sites which have been excavated. On sites which were exclusively European in occupancy, these goods had served domestic purposes only; on Indian sites, they represented the new needs of the aborigines, the policies of colonial administration, and numerous other facts which it is not necessary to detail here. These European artifacts, and particularly the ones found on sites occupied by Indians, have aroused the interest of archaeologists, partly for their own sake, and partly because they seem to offer a new means of dating. It is with the last-named possibility that this article is concerned.

Indian sites of historic vintage frequently yield European artifacts, especially along the coastal areas. Many of these villages, however, are otherwise unknown to history. If some means of accurately dating them could be devised, they would at least be assignable to some specific period.

The Presence in the southern California coastal region of prehistoric cultures showing considerable use of milling stones has been recognized for some years. Attention was called to this fact by the publication in 1929 of David Banks Rogers’ Prehistoric Man of the Santa Barbara Coast. Rogers distinguished a sequence of three aboriginal cultures in the Santa Barbara area, the earliest of which (Oak Grove) was characterized by the employment of this form of grinding implement almost to the exclusion of other artifacts. In the same year Malcolm J. Rogers noted a somewhat analogous complex (now La Jolla) in western San Diego County (M. J. Rogers 1929: 456-7). Occurrences of similar assemblages have been reported upon since (Treganza and Malamud 1950; Walker 1952).

An investigation conducted at the Little Sycamore site (Ven 1) in Ventura County by a class in archaeological field methods from the University of Southern California uncovered evidence of yet another milling stone complex.

Arecent Paper by Sears (1952) calls attention to an overall time trend in the design changes of various complicated stamped pottery styles in the southeastern United States. His analysis raises the question as to whether certain principles implied might not have more general application for the understanding of historical phenomena.

A number of years ago I ventured a definition of what seemed to be a kind of entity in the history of aboriginal Peruvian ceramics. This was termed a “pottery tradition.”

Several Early man hunting sites have been discovered and excavated by various institutions in and near the High Plains region of Texas and New Mexico, including the Folsom, San Jon, and Clovis, or Blackwater Draw, localities in New Mexico, and the Miami, Plainview, Lipscomb, and Lubbock localities in Texas. To the west and north are similar sites in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas. This large region, including a part of the great interior plains, was indeed for early man a big game hunting area of the North American continent.

A new hunting site in this region, located in the southern part of Roosevelt County near Milnesand, New Mexico, about 40 miles south of Portales, is here described. This locality, containing artifacts, a bison-bone bed and charred bison bones, is in a sand-dune region about 3 miles northeast of Milnesand post office. (The name Milnesand is derived from “mill in the sand,” a term formerly applied to a windmill and watering place located near the present town.) The first artifacts obtained from the locality were collected by Ted Williamson of Milnesand.

Along the eastern side of the Great Valley of California is the Sierra Nevada, a great mountain chain 500 miles long and 75 wide. The Sierra Nevada has a gradual western slope and an abrupt eastern face fronting the arid Great Basin. The long western side, which contains the main timber belt, was heavily populated in its lower elevations in the pre-Caucasian period. In contrast, the High Sierra above 5000 feet was visited only seasonally by aboriginal groups. The archaeology of this latter zone is little known because it has been assumed that archaeological remains are scanty, and, as a consequence, little work has been carried on. Recent investigations have demonstrated, however, that at some of the seasonal campsites repeated occupation over a long period of time resulted in fairly extensive accumulations of occupational debris.

During the late fall of 1953, exploratory excavations conducted at Vermilion Valley in the High Sierra of Fresno County provided evidence of an extended period of intermittent habitation at an aboriginal camping place.

One of the greatest problems confronting southwestern archaeology in its aim of interpretive reconstruction of the cultures of prehistoric peoples lies in filling the gaps where little or no information exists concerning significant periods of development in particular areas. One such interval, of considerable duration, exists in the middle Rio Grande Valley. We have known for some time that this region was inhabited by some of the early hunting groups (Hibben 1941, 1951) as well as the later Pueblo peoples. But who the people were, if any, that lived here during the interim between these extremes has been, until recently, largely a matter for conjecture. No ecologic reason has been presented to show why this river valley could not have supported its share of inhabitants, whether hunters, gatherers, or agriculturalists, during these thousands of years.

The Classification of pottery types has apparently already reached a satisfactory degree of descriptive accuracy. Although problems remain, numerous site comparisons and important cultural connections have been based upon pottery. Classification of stone artifacts is not in so happy a state. Wheat has also recently called attention to this fact (1953, p. 196): “If cultures predominantly lithic in complexion are to be correlated satisfactorily with each other … we must pay the same attention to artifacts of stone, bone, shell, etc., that has yielded such valuable results in the study of pottery.” Considerable difficulties are inherent in the classification of stone implements but close inspection shows that these are further increased by a terminology which occasionally serves as much to confuse the picture as to clarify it.

Such phrases as “leaf-shaped” or “triangular” blades are common in archaeological literature. Yet the descriptive accuracy of these terms rests upon a meaningful and generally accepted contrast between leaf-shaped and triangular which is not substantiated by the inquiry into their use as presented below.

Although the basketry of many parts of California is known ethnographically and a few archaeological descriptions are appearing, the textiles of the Santa Barbara region remain relatively unknown. The ethnographic information available on the historic occupants, the Chumash, has been limited by the early missionization and subsequent disintegration of native culture, and most archaeological reports of basketry from this area have been sketchy. It is hoped that the following discussion of twined water bottles from archaeological sites in northern Santa Barbara County will supply some needed information and indicate the relation of these water bottles to twined ones of the Great Basin and Southwest.

A few of the specimens described herein have been pictured by Kroeber (1925: 561, PL 53) with a mention of some weaves employed in their manufacture.

With one possible exception, all of the specimens are from the Sierra Madre Mountains of northern Santa Barbara County. This range, stretching in a general northwest-southeast direction, is bounded on the north by the arid Cuyama Valley and on the south by the precipitous Sisquoc Canyon.

Proposed Construction of Table Rock Dam and Reservoir on White River in southwestern Missouri threatens with destruction a vast region of unique and important archaeological remains in the rugged Ozarks region. Every indication of prehistoric life both within the actual reservoir area and its perimeter is of extreme importance in reconstructing human activities of the region in ages past. Because of its geographical location, the Ozarks region is most promising from an archaeological standpoint. Bounded on the east by the Mississippi River, on the north by the Missouri River, and on the west by the Great Plains, the Ozarks were probably in prehistoric times a melting pot for a great many cultural traditions. The Ozark Bluff Dweller culture, with its apparent early agriculture, is only one of the many problems that need a great amount of additional work within this area. Recent investigations by the University of Missouri indicate that the history of man within the Ozarks may very well go back to a time comparable with some of the earliest occupations of the Great Plains.

In the Summer of 1949 an archaeological; field group, sponsored by the University of Texas, excavated a large house structure at the Polvo site (57D2-3) in western Texas. The previous summer J. Charles Kelley had excavated 2 structures at this site, which he reported in 1949. The site itself he identified as a component of the Bravo Valley aspect.

The Polvo site is located in southern Presidio County, Texas, some 8 miles south of the junction of the Rio Grande and the Rio Conchos, in what is referred to as the “La Junta” region of the Big Bend. The site lies about one mile to the southwest of the modern village of Redford, at the edge of the old Mexican pueblito Polvo. Physiographically, the site is located in the Redford Vajley, through which the Rio Grande flows into the Canon Colorado. Midway in the valley, an arroyo, known locally as the Arroyo Bayo Nuevo, enters the river.

Wildrose Canyon, the site of the summer headquarters of the National Park Service for Death Valley National Monument, is on the west side of the Panamint Range in eastern California. The canyon, which runs in a roughly east-west direction, is about 13 miles long. Structurally, its width widens from its mouth where it measures less than 1/4 of a mile inland to a maximum of 11/2 miles and then narrows again in its upper reaches. There is a general upslope of the valley floor from about 4000 to over 8000 feet in elevation.

The valley is flanked on either side with rugged mountains which rise steeply above its floor. Their sides are furrowed with many gulches and narrow canyons and the lower slopes are piled high with rock debris. The uneven valley floor is covered with boulders, gravel, sand, and silt washed down from the surrounding heights. Branch canyons extend back into the mountains at many points, dwindling to narrow gorges in their upper reaches.

Anangula is an island 1.6 miles long and .5 mile wide, lying on the north side of Nikolski Bay about 4.5 miles northwest of Nikolski village, Umnak Island, in the eastern Aleutians. The designation of this island on United States Coast and Geodetic Survey charts is Ananiuliak, a transliteration of the Russianized form “Ananyulyakh” of the original Aleut name “Anangulagh” (from which we have subtracted the ending -gh to give “Anangula”). In current Umnak usage this island is called in Aleut “Anagulagh,” and in English “Rabbit Island” from the numerous rabbits there, descendants of two pairs of domestic Belgian hares introduced onto the island in 1936 by one of the Aleuts as food for foxes which have since been removed, when the island became a bird sanctuary. The change in the Aleut form of the name for this island from “Anangulagh” to “Anagulagh” undoubtedly accompanied the shift in the dialect spoken on Umnak subsequent to the first arrival of Russians in the Fox Islands in the early 1750's.

This Article is intended less as a descriptive piece on the archaeology of the Rimac Valley than it is as a single-valley application of various conclusions reached by Richard P. Schaedel in his Major Ceremonial and Population Centers in Northern Peru (1951). Schaedel, in a broad synthetic study of major ruins on the North Coast of Peru, comes to several interesting conclusions on the “urban revolution” in that region. The author, who was already engaged in a survey of the Rimac, with the focus on the coastal cultures from sea level to the 1000-meter line, felt impelled to shift the emphasis of his survey from straight description to a Central Coast application of Schaedel's North Coast findings. This was a fairly easy task, as the sites were already being analyzed both architecturally and ceramically.

The Rimac, the “valley of Lima,” presents sufficient of both typical and atypical features of a Peruvian coastal valley to make the application of Schaedel's theories to a single valley at least fairly indicative of their validity for the entire Peruvian coast.

In 1952 I had the opportunity of investigating about 70 slab cists in the province of Munecas, Bolivia. Among the vessels found in the graves there were a few goblets provided with a tubular protuberance on one side. As my collections and personal outfit are still detained by the Bolivian authorities, the appearance of these vessels is illustrated here only by a drawing of a vessel taken over by the Museo Nacional “Tihuanacu,” La Paz (Fig. 50). A similar but undecorated vessel from the same region, Tacacacoma, is published by Schmidt (1929: 256, and Fig. 2). On the latter vessel the tubular protuberance is joined to the body of the goblet by two bare. Other minor variations in vessels of this type appear in the shape of the goblets and in the shape and placing of the tubular protuberance. Sometimes, for instance, the tube is longer than on the vessels depicted here and very often a raised human face is found on the outer side opposite the tube.

The Shirt which is the subject of this article is of importance for several reasons: it exemplifies a revolutionary construction principle in old Peruvian dress, indicates that the new style was one still based on the weaver's art, and gives significance to textile fragments which heretofore have been anomalous.

The specimen (Fig. 76) is the property of Edwin Ferdon of the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe, who has kindly given permission for a descriptive and analytical article concerning it. In the spring of 1953 the writer examined the specimen, then on loan to the Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico. I wish to thank Frank Hibben, Curator of the Department's collections, for making this textile available for study, and Joseph Allen for photographing it. The shirt bears the loan number UNM F 15-93. My colleague, John Rowe, has kindly assisted with advice on the dating given herein.

The area dealt with in this report is that portion of northwestern Sonora and southwestern Arizona bounded on the southwest by the Gulf of California, on the west by the Colorado River valley below the junction of the Gila River, on the north by the Gila River valley, and on the east by an imaginary line from the vicinity of Gila Bend south along the western edge of the Papago Reservation and thence southwest to the mouth of the Sonoyta River on the Gulf of California (Fig. 106). Within this area Sauer has suggested a boundary between the Piman-speaking people of southern Arizona and northern Sonora, and the Yuman-speaking tribes of the lower Colorado and Gila River valleys, based on linguistic affiliations described in early historical sources (Sauer 1934, map). On archaeological evidence Gifford has suggested that the locality between Punta La Cholla and the mouth of the Sonoyta River represented a point on an ethnic boundary (Gifford 1946: 221).

Lake Nipissing is situated 230 miles north of Lake Ontario and roughly 140 miles within the igneous rock territory. Some 30 by 8 miles in size, it is drained westerly by the French River into Lake Huron. Frank Bay, enclosing an area of one half square mile, is situated on the south shore at the entrance to the French River.

Historically the area was occupied by an Algonkian group called “Nipisinieries” or “Nipissings” by the 17th century Jesuits; Galinee's map of 1665 depicts a bay on the south shore of Lake Nipissing at the head of the French River: “In a bay at this place the Nipissings usually locate their village” (Coyne, 1903).

The site described here, probably the one figured by Galinee, is a level tract of about one half acre constructed by wave deposition of coarse sand upon a low area at the bottom of the bay.