The San Luis Rey River flows westward across northern San Diego County, California. The area from Henshaw dam down to and including the Bonsall post office can be described as the central San Luis Rey River basin. It includes a little less than half of the total watershed area but contains many tributary streams and probably accounts for more than half of the total runoff. The area is mountainous and wooded or brush covered and is dissected by numerous small streams, many of which originate in the higher elevations of the Agua Tibia and Palomar mountain ranges.

Ample water supplies and favorable thermal zones which belt the area, coupled with a heavy growth of forest cover along the streams, provided both vegetal and animal food supplies which in turn resulted in more than average aboriginal population. The heaviest concentrations of population were in the areas now known as Pauma Valley, Rincon, The Potrero, and the La Jolla area, all of which still have sizable Indian populations living on reservations. In historic times, the region was occupied by Indians of the Luisefio stock (Kroeber, 1925, p. 648).

True burins that are directly comparable with a number of Old World types have recently appeared as prominent elements of a number of colleotions from the American arctic. Their areal distribution from Alaska (Giddings 1951) to Greenland (Knuth 1952; Meldgaard 1952) and possibly Labrador (Harp 1951: 215; 1953: 41), in a variety of coastal and inland sites, shows that the trait was not a novelty nor a figment of chance, but an integral part of several North American flint complexes. In certain instances, and particularly at the Alaskan sites, they are accompanied by other implements typologically similar to Old World Paleolithic and Mesolithic forms (Giddings 1951); elsewhere, they are found in complexes that may be more distinctively American (Knuth 1952; Meldgaard 1952; Harp 1951). Oddly enough, basal grinding, parallel flaking, fluted points, and other early American traits such as Oblique and Eden Yuma points, are more conspicuous in the “Mesolithic” Denbigh Flint complex than they are in stages found farther east, for which there is less evidence for close connections with the Old World. However, Harp reports a fluted point in a Newfoundland assemblage (1951: 209).

Various authors in the past have speculated on the epoch and culture to which the so-called “Laughing Faces” belonged. But with only a small number of sporadic finds they have not been able to explain satisfactorily their origin, cultural epoch, symbolism, or typological evolution. There exist, however, some useful works on the subject, such as those by Phillip Drucker, C. W. Weiant, J. L. Melgarejo, Vladimiro Rosado Ojeda, Alfonso Medellin Zenil, and Fredrick Peterson.

In the fall of 1952 the antiquity market of Mexico City was suddenly flooded with sculptured pieces of which the “Laughing Faces,” or “Smiling Heads,” formed the chief part. Their source was made known when the Presidente Municipal (Mayor) of the village of Joachin, in the municipality of Tierra Blanca, Veracruz, denounced illegal excavations in his territory. The looting of the archaeological zones had taken place in the small communities of Los Cerros and Dicha Tuerta.

In a review of the Scalp Creek report (Hurt 1952) Donald J. Lehmer questions the evidence which would warrant the denning of a Randall component at the Scalp Creek site (39GR1), Gregory County, South Dakota (Lehmer 1954). In addition, Lehmer makes this statement, “However, when a subsequent report by Hurt tentatively derives the St. Helena focus of the Upper Republican aspect from a component established on the basis of 39 potsherds, it becomes a matter of somewhat more concern.” The writer wishes to summarize the evidence which led him to define a Randall component, since it is not fully covered in the review, and also to disclaim any adherence to the hypothesis quoted by Lehmer.

The writer defined 3 components at the Scalp Creek site. The lowermost component was assigned to the Loseke Creek focus of the Plains Woodland tradition. The Randall component occupied a midplace in stratigraphy and contained, in addition to the Loseke Creek ceramic types, 39 sherds classified Ellis Plain and Randall Incised (Hurt 1952, Fig. 16, 1-6).

The current status of archaeological investigation in the northern Puget Sound region is one of demarcation and elucidation of problems. Lately, the approach has been toward the accumulation of descriptive information on sites and artifacts. The San Juan Island group, at the southern extremity of Georgia Strait, is increasingly important in this process. The extensive cist or cairn burial development at Armadale Valley is merely one of a number of adjacent sites in the intricate complex of headlands and inlets formed by Westcott, Garrison, and Mitchell bays of the northwestern portion of the San Juan Island.

The major group of cairns lies atop a low rocky bluff, overlooking Westcott Bay to the east and the narrow but protected thoroughfare of Mosquito Pass to the west. Immediately below the site, at the base of the bluff is a deep and extensive shell midden.

Pacific Power and Light Company of Portland, Oregon, has now completed construction of the Yale dam, flooding 9 miles of one of the largest river valleys in southwestern Washington. Before the dam was completed an agreement was made between E. Robert de Luccia of the Company and Douglas Osborne of the University of Washington and the Washington State Museum to assure that archaeological resources within the reservoir would be permanently recorded. Correspondence was initiated by Dr. Osborne with Mr. de Luccia, who is Vice-President and Chief Engineer of Pacific Power and Light. The understanding of an archaeologist's aims and needs displayed by Mr. de Luccia and his associates is most heartening. The company employed two archaeologists, Thomas Kehoe and Alan Bryan, and supplied subsistence for a period of two weeks for these men and a third student, Ralph Turman.

According to all ethnographic and historical information, the upper Lewis River Valley was not peopled by the Indians until quite recently, and then not from the coastal area, but from the Plateau over the Klikitat Pass.

There seems to be some possibility that artifacts representative of the Old Copper culture were associated with fossil animals. The evidence is inconclusive but worth noting as a stimulus for future investigations.

In his report on the geology of the Thunder Bay, Ontario, district, Tanton (1931: 83-4) mentions some interesting archaeological remains, information about which was preserved in the files of the Geological Survey of Canada. This information is as follows: in 1918, during industrial excavations, a copper spear point and about 12 mammal bones were found about 40 feet below the surface of the ground in the Kaministikwa Valley at Westfort on the edge of Fort William, Ontario.

The geological section here, according to Tanton (1931: 82) consists of bedrock and conglomerate above which is a “deposit of stratified blue clay between 60 and 90 feet thick, the surface of which has been eroded in channels, and on this uneven surface there are crossbedded sands varying from 4 to 40 feet in thickness filling up the inequalities on the clay surface and forming the plain at the present surface — 638 feet above sea level.”

In a previous communication (American Antiquity 19-3, January 1953, pp. 290-91), I noted significant items in this field during the period 1948-1951, with probably incomplete coverage for the first half of 1952. Additions to that bibliography and this one will be appreciated by the present writer and by the management.

First of all, in supplementation for 1952, must be mentioned the valuable compilation, with year-by-year general trend statements (taken from the Handbook of Latin American Studies) and a subject index: T. D. Stewart, A Bibliography of Physical Anthropology in Latin America: 1937-1948, published by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, New York, 1952.

The rectangular clay bowl with a ring base shown in Figure 108 was unearthed in the area of the Old Line (Linea Vieja) in Costa Rica. It is 8.5 cm. high, 13.0 cm. wide, with an overall length of 18.5 cm., and is made of a well-fired clay painted in red. We consider this find most important as it appears to confirm the influence of foreign cultures in the area of the Old Line on the Atlantic side of the Republic of Costa Rica.

The receptacle of this bowl has lateral ornamentation consisting of 2 distinct groups. The first group, at the lower part of Figure 108 a, depicts the legs of a man with calves and feet in an upright position. This peculiar detail was probably used in order to secure the esthetic arrangement of the border decoration. We see the male genitals and on the thigh of each leg the figure of a bird.

Fluted points, like many other artifacts, seem to be more common than previously thought. Once attention is called to a given item representative specimens are 'found in existing collections only waiting to be recognized. Smail (1951) has presented a discussion of many points of this type from the St. Louis area in Illinois.

Recently several interesting specimens have been brought to the Illinois State Museum and are here illustrated, due to their unusual combination of attributes and location. The first of these (Fig. 57) was found in Fulton County in 1924 by the late Frank Aidrich of Bloomington, Illinois. It is lanceolate in shape, WA inches long, 114 inches wide about % of the length from the base, and lenticular in cross section. Its very delicate chipping produced parallel long flake scars running from each edge to the center. The base is ground on each side and across the bottom.

Discovery of a second small prehistoric site in the interior of the Chukchi Peninsula during the summer of 1952 is of interest despite the paucity of the material recovered. The finds, including the first pottery from the region, are sufficient to shed some light on a littleknown area whose past is of great concern to Americanists. Okladnikov's report (1953) forms the basis for this account.

The first interior site, consisting of surface finds on the Yakitikiveem River judged on typological grounds to be of “Neolithic” age in the East Siberian sense of the term, was summarized by Krader (1952). Previously, archaeological knowledge of the extreme northeast tip of Siberia had been limited to coastal sites left by a sedentary sea hunting population — ancestors of the Eskimo. The oldest of these are not thought by Russian investigators to go beyond 500 B.C. The Yakitikiveem finds undoubtedly represent the wandering reindeer hunters of the tundra who must have preceded the historic reindeer-breeding population in the interior of the Chukchi Peninsula.

The reason for the following is an article by Henry B. Collins: “Radiocarbon Dating in the Arctic” which appeared in the January, 1953 issue of American Antiquity. This is the third article in four years in which Collins comments on the interpretation of the Ipiutak culture advanced by Froelich Rainey and me in our publications on the excavations at Point Hope, Alaska, 1939-41 (Larsen and Rainey, 1948). Although critical regarding certain points in our theory on the development of Eskimo culture, his comments in the first two articles are on the whole objective and justifiable (Collins 1950a and 1951). His latest article, however, is written in a surprisingly sharp, polemic form which is entirely unprovoked and it contains statements which disclose that he has misunderstood certain important points in the Ipiutak report and misinterprets archaeological evidence. My aim is not to begin a polemic because experience shows that polemics are merely a waste of valuable time and print; they often foster ill feelings and seldom give positive results.

The greater part of Larsen's paper is a restatement of the Ipiutak theory rather than a reply to my two specific criticisms. I feel that this theory is based on a series of questionable assumptions rather than facts, but as Larsen properly insists on “sound scientific documentation and not mere statements” I will not attempt to discuss the theory as a whole in the space available here but refer to a recent publication which gives my views (Collins, 1954, pp. 78-85). The second half of Larsen's paper deals for the most part with the second of the two points I raised, the relationship of the Ipiutak and Old Bering Sea cultures. This is a crucial point for the Ipiutak theory, for if I am correct the type culture of the “palae-Eskimo” complex, from the evidence of both archaeology and radiocarbon dating, is later than cultures assigned to the “neo-Eskimo” complex and also more closely related to them than to other “palae-Eskimo” cultures.

John M. Longyear, in his excellent presentation of the ceramics of Copan (1952), describes a vessel which he tentatively labels an incense burner. The vessel in question belongs to his Archaic period (?-A.D. 300). He considers it to be the only vessel from this period with possible ceremonial connotations. Quoting Longyear (p. 24): “It is a thick-walled, rough-finished vase, set on three solid cylinder legs (fig. 42 a [reproduced here as Fig. 86, a]). The body is pierced by a number of large, horseshoe-shaped holes. This may very well have been an incensario of some sort.” Longyear gives more details about the same vessel (p. 92). “Other thickwalled, coarsely finished sherds appear to come from incensarios of jar type, only two of which could be reconstructed. One is a large jar, of ‘hourglass” silhouette, supported on three long solid cylinder legs. The walls are pierced by an undetermined number of horseshoe-shaped windows, and the basal angle bears indentations made by the fingertip (fig. 42a).

The Aleut burial cave described in this report was found by the authors during field work in July, 1952. As the site was left entirely undisturbed, the information may be useful to parties programming future work in the Aleutian Islands area. Further, it may be possible on the strength of this description alone to relate the burial occurrence to known cultural traits. At the very least it will point out the existence of an intensely interesting isolated feature. The cave is located at the base of a steep sea cliff on Kanaga Island at latitude 51° 43’ 44” N. and longitude 177° 31'10” W. (All locations are from the Army Map Service map of Kanaga Island, Sheet no. 3 of 5, scale 1:25,000.) A small kitchen midden was noted a short distance south of the cave.

Several thousand stone tools have been found along the Imlay channel in eastern Michigan. The first were noticed in 1937, but it was not until 1952 that enough were accumulated to be very certain there was a people here before readvances of ice of the Wisconsin glaciation. The area is within that shown for the Cary Substage on the Glacial Map of North America (R. F. Flint, et al., Geol. Soc. of Am., Special Paper, No. 60, Pt. 1, 1945).

Opinions have varied among professionals who have seen this material, some thinking it is all natural, others, that some at least might be artificial, and George F. Carter who examined the largest sample, nearly 500 specimens, that it is all man-made. That many of these are artifacts could be demonstrated to anyone taking the trouble to examine the stones of this region. While many can be ruled out as possibly of natural origin, others cannot.

Photographic emulsions sensitized to wave-lengths of radiation in the infrared region of the spectrum have been used in technical studies for a number of years. During excavation of the Barbeau Creek Rock Shelter, in Randolph County, southern Illinois, in 1952 and 1953, I experimented with infrared films, taking pictures of profiles in the site. The midden in this shelter consisted largely of a light, dun-colored loess which came from the tops of the bluffs in the area. Ordinary photographs of the profiles in the midden are dull and without sufficient contrast between features to be useful for analytical purposes. The possibility of making dramatic, high contrast prints from infrared negatives is well known. For this reason photographs of the profiles were made with infrared film. The results the first season were promising. Not only did features in the profiles show up clearly on the prints, but some appeared which were not visible in prints made with panchromatic film and which were not apparent to the eye.

In Marian DeWolf's recent interesting article on Jamaica archaeology she refers to an earthwork and trench as Windsor Fort, built by the British in 1803 (DeWolf 1953: 236), citing Cundall (1915) as her authority. Actually Cundall mentions the fort but makes no attempt to suggest that its site was on Windsor Hill, which trench has always been known as Spanish Fort. From my local research, Fort Windsor was built on the sea shore, 1000 yards north of the hill, where up to a few years ago stone foundations still existed.

The Windsor Hill site presents one of the most curious mysteries of the north coast, and in 1951 I excavated the hole with a view to a solution and moved and sifted about three tons of earth which had been thrown in during the early part of the 19th century.

In a recent article J. Alden Mason (1951) called attention to 2 small Chinese figurines found in local archaeological collections in Mesoamerica. One was from Azqueltan, Jalisco, Mexico and is now in the University Museum, Philadelphia (catalog number NA- 11808), and the other was in the Vitalino Robles collection of Quezaltenango, Guatemala. Both are of a soft stone and were described as “crawling infants.” While browsing through a collection of archaeological objects in an antique shop in Guatemala City I came across another small Chinese figurine similar in most respects to the ones described by Mason. The shop owner, unaware of the Oriental origin of this specimen, was sure that it must have come in with the other artifacts from Kaminaljuyu, a large archaeological site on the outskirts of the city. The figurine has been presented to the University Museum (catalog number 54-4-1).

Like the Quezaltenango specimen (Mason 1951 Fig. 1, a), the stone figurine from Guatemala City is an opaque yellowish-amber color with reddish veins and has a very soft, soapy texture (Mohr scale 2.8).

Well before the Spanish conquest the Incas were drinking their chicha out of big wooden cups, usually called keros. The earliest ones have simple incised designs only, but later an elaborate art developed involving lively representative designs executed in lacquer inlay in several colors. The lacquered keros continued to be made almost throughout the colonial period for use by the caciques and other comparatively wealthy Indians, and numerous specimens are known depicting people in 17th and 18th century costumes. Most of the specimens in our museums were not excavated but were acquired from descendants of the original owners who had kept them as heirlooms over a period of several centuries. While it seems not unlikely that the lacquer technic was developed before the Spanish conquest, we have no really satisfactory proof of its age, since all the pieces found in indisputably preconquest archaeological context are of the unpainted incised type. No wooden keros of any type have been found in any context suggesting a pre-Inca date for them.