The advantages of aerial photography to the archaeologist have been expertly described in the literature, especially by O. G. S. Crawford (1928, 1954), the English pioneer in this field. Wessex from the Air, by Crawford and Keiller (1928), is still a classic study in aerial archaeological photography. An aerial view of an archaeological site, especially before excavation, will furnish invaluable leads to the appraisal of the site. A good aerial photograph tells the story at a glance. With its added intelligence the archaeologist can better apportion his work. The purpose of this paper is to show the interested archaeologist how to get good aerial photographs himself at little cost.

Five years after the first publication of age measurements by the radiocarbon method (Arnold and Libby 1951) the method has been established as a powerful technique in the study of archaeology. Lists of radiocarbon dates have been published by a number of laboratories (Libby 1951, 1952, 1954, 1955; Kulp 1951, 1952; Broecker and Kulp 1956; Suess 1954; Ruben and Suess 1955; Blau, Deevey, and Gross 1953; Preston, Person, and Deevey 1955; Ralph 1955; Anderson, Levi, and Tauber 1953). A few scientists feel that the radiocarbon dates contradict archaeological or geological theories which they regard as wellfounded and have suggested that because of this the method is invalid.

For the past several years Charles Borden of the University of British Columbia has been carrying out a most promising attack on the problems of Northwest prehistory, primarily in the Fraser Delta area. Strongly influenced by the latter-day rigorous school of German archaeologists, his field work is thorough and impeccable. His short reports, published in Anthropology in British Columbia from 1950 through 1953–54 have been more than of a preliminary nature. They have taken on, increasingly, the characteristics of final interpretative statements.

This paper is concerned with the prehistory of the Bahama Islands, British West Indies, an archipelago stretching in a 600-mile arc from the southeast Florida coast opposite West Palm Beach to within 60 miles of the northern coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola (Fig. 1). The Turks and Caicos groups, although politically administered from Jamaica, belong both geologically and archaeologically in the archipelago and are therefore included in this report.

The purpose of the present survey is to clarify the relationships of pre-Columbian Bahamian culture to neighboring regions. Before any clarification can be made, however, it is first necessary to outline briefly the archaeological findings in the islands, for no complete survey has yet been published.

Among the numerous problems still to be resolved in the archaeology of Mexico, one could not find a more captivating, more fundamental, and at the same time, less known one, than the early genesis of the native civilizations of Mesoamerica. Lack of knowledge of preceramic developments, which are the truly formative ones of the high prehispanic cultures, leaves the whole complicated sequence of better-studied civilizations without a real foundation. The investigation of this field requires collaborative research in the geological and paleontological sciences.

The cucurbit materials identified and discussed in this report were excavated in 1954 by the third author from 3 caves in the Sierra Madre near Ocampo, Tamaulipas, 5000 feet above sea level (see Fig. 1). These caves were excavated by an expedition under the auspices of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Botanical Museum of Harvard University, and the National Museum of Canada.

Early in 1954 the author and his wife were stationed by the Instituto Colombiano de Antropología at Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia. This provided the opportunity to continue their program of archaeological research on the Colombian coastal area which, at an earlier date, had already led to the formulation of a tentative time and space framework (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1954). While during most of 1954 a survey of the area surrounding Cartagena was made (Dussán de Reichel 1954; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1955), the dry season of 1954–1955 was spent in making a reconnaissance of the Sinú Valley, southwest of Cartagena. During a 4-month trip excavations were carried out at 2 major sites and extensive surface collections were gathered from some 20 others.

The possibility of the contemporaneity of man and the mastodon in America has been a vexing one for more than a hundred years. In 1839 Albert C. Koch first reported that he had found evidence to support such a claim (Montagu 1942); and the situation today remains much as it was then, confused and without absolute certainty. It would, perhaps, be worthwhile at the outset to make explicit the distinction between the mammoth and the mastodon. Mammoths are fossil elephants, family Elephantide, which were restricted in the New World to North America.

From March, 1954, through the whole of the year 1955 the University of California at Berkeley sponsored a program of archaeological field work in southern Peru and related studies in museums of the United States. In Peru the expedition worked out of 2 bases, one at Cuzco in the highlands and the other at lea on the south coast. It was concerned primarily with archaeological survey and exploration, although excavations were also made at 2 Inca period sites in the coastal area studied. The expedition staff consisted of John H. Rowe, Director, Dorothy Menzel (Mrs. Francis A. Riddell), Francis A. Riddell, Dwight T. Wallace, Lawrence E. Dawson, and David A. Robinson.

Almost 50 years ago, Clarence B. Moore called attention to the presence of “the symbol of the open eye on the open hand” in both the Southeastern United States and Mexico (Moore 1907: 346). The design has achieved some renown as one of the motifs characterizing the so-called “Death Cult” in the Southeast and has also continued to be cited as an indication of Middle American connections (for example, Phillips 1940: 356). Rather little has been done in following up Moore's observation through detailed comparative studies between the 2 areas.

The Melhado site is near the town of El Cayo, in the Cayo District of west central British Honduras. This region forms a part of the eastern edge of the Peten forests. Its limestone hills and ridges are covered by a dense jungle growth, including such typical trees as the mahogany, sapodilla, Spanish cedar, and cahune palm. Rainfall is heavy, amounting to 50 to 70 inches a year at El Cayo, most of it falling in the rainy season from June to October.

Until about 25 years ago nearly all that was known of the prehistory of Panama was the result of careful studies based on somewhat haphazard excavation (MacCurdy 1911; Holmes 1888). Almost without exception detailed and often gross provenience data were completely lacking. This unhappy situation was attacked in the late 1920s by Linné (1929). Beginning in the 1930's Lothrop succeeded in outlining and describing a number of culture areas covering most of Panama's Pacific watershed (Lothrop 1937, 1942, 1950). These areas of necessity reflected only the broad picture at the time of and immediately preceding the initial Spanish entradas for, although it was to be assumed that there was internal variation within each of these areas and considerable time depth for the country as a whole, no data on this were available.

Growing knowledge of cultural sequences in Mesoamerica and in Peru has caused archaeologists interested in correlating these areas and explaining the derivation of various traits to look longingly at the little-known intermediate region occupied by Ecuador and Colombia. In the fall of 1954 an invitation by Emilio Estrada, Director of the Museo Arqueologico “Victor Emilio Estrada” in Guayaquil, Ecuador, gave us the opportunity to make a brief survey and to excavate stratigraphically a few sites in the Guayas Basin on the central coast of Ecuador (Fig. 1). One of the sites excavated (R-B-l: La Chorrera) and two included in the survey (R-B-2: Al Frente el Tejar and G-D-8: 5Jaupe) produced potsherds and other artifacts of types that have been classified as belonging to the Formative period in Middle America and Peru.

In order to appreciate a given culture or phase of culture at one point in time it is important to have a knowledge of the possibilities that are open to its bearers through the environment. An awareness of the environment and its changes is even more important in order to understand the dynamics of the culture history of any area. It is with this objective, a more complete knowledge of the climate of a particular region with an attempt at understanding its culture history, that this paper has been written.

Jamaica, the third largest island in the West Indies, has probably received less archaeological attention than any other island in the Greater Antilles. There are several reasons for this neglect. Jamaican archaeological remains are not very spectacular and offer few features to excite the interest or curiosity of the casual observer. The Jamaican Arawak were exterminated so early and so effectively by the Spaniards that they were able to contribute virtually nothing ethnically or culturally to the history of the island in the historic period.

Although the problem of stonecutting techniques is but one key to understanding the civilizations of the Middle American people, it is through their stonework that they left their greatest mark and in order to fully appreciate the organization and magnitude of their achievements, we must examine this aspect. To this end the author, who is by training and experience a mechanical engineer, attempted to check in various centers in Mexico on the feasibility of estimating the man years required to build various monuments in order to test hypotheses concerning techniques of construction.

The purpose of this paper is to review the archaeological data on the settlement patterns of the Yucatan Maya with a view to reconstructing the history of their changing way of life.

There is little evidence that the population density of the lowland Maya during their cultural heyday was substantially greater than that of the modern State of Yucatan, about 30 persons per square mile.

Under the auspices of the University of Florida Anthropology Laboratory the writer devoted the second and third weeks of June, 1955, to a survey of the Bimini Islands, Bahamas, the primary objective being an archaeological site reconnaissance of the group. Although archaeological findings were few, there were significant features meriting the observations presented in this report.

In many works on Peruvian archaeology with their necessary emphasis on pottery styles as diagnostic elements of cultural development and change, one is often struck by the seeming confusion and number of styles in the Tiahuanacoid or Middle periods, and the resulting number of conflicting names for chronologically affiliated strains. This paper is an attempt to clarify in part this confusion and also an attempt to explain why it should exist and undoubtedly will continue to exist for some time to come, or at least until a great deal more field research has been completed on the coast of Peru.