Until recently there has been little attempt to trace the early history of the Navaho in the Southwest through their archaeological remains. While some investigators were studying Pueblo archaeology, they did record certain discoveries which tend to throw some light here and there on the earlier history of the Navaho. In the summer of 1937 a reconnaisance of archaeological sites, putatively Navaho, was made in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico. The sites were mainly on, or at the base of western Chacra Mesa, some eight miles east of Pueblo Bonito. Interesting information was gathered, particularly in regard to house types, pottery, burials, textiles, and certain other items of material culture which may be correlated with ethnological data on the Navaho.

The field work described below was part of a general survey of the Manitoulin District, by arrangement with authorities of the National Museum of Canada, Ottawa. This work, extending from July 7th to September 15th, 1938, under the direction of the senior author, was done for the Museum of Anthropology of the University of Michigan. The present report on an early site on Great Cloche Island is in two parts. The first concerns the archaeology, and the second the glacial geology. Both statements present only the details necessary to an understanding of the general nature of the find, and will be followed by a more complete description in a Museum of Anthropology publication.

The material described in this article was secured by Dr. D. Jenness and the writer in 1927 and 1929 in the course of archaeological reconnaissances along the east and west coasts of Newfoundland. The purpose of both field trips was to locate sites and burial places of the extinct Beothuk Indians. Although the writer suspected that other people besides the Beothuk had inhabited the island in prehistoric times, he was surprised to find abundant evidences of the presence of an Eskimo people on the northwest coast: one of the sites visited by Dr. Jenness on the northeast coast also was inhabited by Eskimo.

Briefly, the historical background for the legal framework and administrative machinery established for archaeological survey and research in the National Park Service, should be reviewed. The Antiquities Act of 1906 and the Historic Sites Act of 1935, the latter growing out of a special study of European and American legislation and precedents for the conservation of historic monuments instituted by the Secretary of the Interior, are particularly important. Also passed in 1935, was an Act to create a National Park Trust Fund which compares with the National Trust of Great Britain; the National Park Trust of the United States grew out of the same studies which found legal expression in the Historic Sites Act of 1935.

More recently, by coöperative agreement, arrangements have been made for the review of archaeological and historical restoration projects carried out under relief auspices; these involve the operative procedures established by the Works Progress Administration, requiring the technical review of all research and survey project applications by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service, Branch of Historic Sites.

This is a report of archaeological and ethnological work done on Andros Island, Bahamas. No habitation sites of the Lucayans were found and evidence seems to show that the island was sparsely populated in prehistoric times. The famous “Indians” of whom so many tales have been written, turned out to be descendants of Negro-Seminole crosses instead of Lucayans. This work was done through five weeks during the months of July and August, 1937. Visits were made at all the mail boat stops and two weeks spent at both Mastic Point and Mangrove Cay.

The third Peabody Museum Awatovi expedition, under the direction of the writer began work on July 12, 1937, and remained in the field until November 5, 1937. The explorations and excavations were carried on under permission of the United States Department of the Interior. The continuation of these studies was made possible by the contributions of Mr. and Mrs. William H. Claflin, Jr., Mr. Henry S. Morgan, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Allen, Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Emerson, and the Peabody Museum. Its primary objective was the securing of information relative to the post-Spanish period of Awatovi.

Mr. J. Eric Thompson in his The Solar Year of the Mayas at Quirigua, Guatemala (1932) and the late Dr. J. E. Teeple in his Maya Astronomy (1930) have very fully developed the theory of determinants in the Maya inscriptions. It is sufficient to recall here that according to the theory a determinant date is one which shows what was the number of days required to correct the shifting Maya year at the date of the inscription in which the date occurs. Thompson has shown that two different bases of correction were used. One was 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, the starting point of the Long Count, 13 August 3113 B.C., the other was 7-6-0-0-0 11 Ahau 8 Cumhu, 10 September 235 B.C., which is thought by both these writers to have been a probable date for the actual inauguration of the Long Count.

Sandia Cave is located in an escarpment of Pennsylvania limestone in Ellis Canyon, thirty miles northeast of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It presents an interesting problem in regard to the time when man existed in North America contemporaneously with the horse (equus?), the ground sloth (nothrotherium), and other extinct Pleistocene forms. In the United States, discoveries of artifacts with extinct mammals do not show necessarily that man existed in the Pleistocene or ice age, but may indicate that the mammals have survived that period and become extinct in more recent times. The best criteria for dating would be collections made in the glaciated areas and associated with glacial deposits. However, this is not always possible, and other means must be sought. Dating can be done to some degree of accuracy by the interpretation of climatic conditions that existed at the time the deposits were laid down.

During the past two years the attention of archaeologists and collectors has been directed toward peculiar types of chipped stone objects purportedly found in Delaware County, Oklahoma. Professional opinion is divided as to the authenticity of these specimens and various stories about them are in circulation. Although the specimens exhibit a large variety of shapes, the general pattern and type of workmanship recalls the so-called “eccentric flints” of British Honduras and Guatemala. For these reasons, it is felt that the facts so far as they are known should be presented.

When the Russians first crossed the Ural Mountains in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they found there a great number of native tribes. Some of these Siberian aborigines soon became extinct while others only diminished in number. Their territories shrank to insignificant patches of land—as is always the case in newly-discovered countries when western civilization comes into close contact with native primitive cultures. The degree of resistance of the native Siberian cultures to the invading Russian culture exhibits an interesting ethnological fact. It reveals that there were at least two strata in the aboriginal Siberian population—an ancient layer and a comparatively new one, or the Old-Siberians and the New-Siberians. The latter were both culturally and physically better able to resist the Russian invasion. Since the Old-Siberians were much weaker in both of these respects, they began to die out immediately after the conquest of Siberia. This does not mean, however, that the Old-Siberians were lacking in bravery or that they did not resist the Russians.

Extending over a wide area in northern and central Europe great beds of peat cover stretches of moor and occupy valleys and depressions where sluggish drainage has favored the growth of marsh vegetation. More than any other soil type they are entirely dependent in substance on the vegetation which they support. Thus they are peculiarly reflective of changes of a climatic nature, and this, combined with the preservative effects of bog acid, both upon pollens and artifacts, has made them a peculiarly effective medium for investigation. While most thoroughly studied in Europe, peats occur in both the northern and southern hemisphere wherever conditions permit. Typically and most extensively however, they are a circumpolar phenomenon closely attendant upon glaciation.

Just before the archaeological party of the University of Chicago moved camp to the extreme southeastern part of Fulton County, Illinois, during the summer of 1933, the writer visited the aboriginal site (designated Fv896 by the archaeological survey) on the Norman Crable farm located on the high Illinois River bluff about two miles north of Bluff City. Here for several years Mr. Glenn McGirr, a local collector, had opened a large number of graves to secure artifacts, and on that afternoon had opened six of them. The burials were extended on the back with the arms to the sides and accompanied by typical Middle Mississippi pottery and other artifacts that were assigned to the Spoon River focus of the Monk's Mound aspect after excavations had been carried on by the field party.

Due, I believe, to the lack of a working knowledge of the bow and the atlatl, the tendency with some archaeologists is to date sites by the size of projectile points. In this paper, the writer hopes to prove this method is wrong.

The pre-historic peoples, and especially the nomadic peoples, lived by hunting. The atlatl and spear, or the bow and arrow, were in daily use during a period covering many thousands of years. These peoples were thinkers, inventors and experimenters, and it is reasonable to expect that they all made and used very efficient projectile points. The sole purpose of a projectile point is to pierce the hide of an animal and to enter the body cavity deep enough to cause a hemorrhage that will in time kill the animal. Two agencies will cause the penetration—speed and weight.

The reported occurrence of Folsom points in California, and the suggestion that the parts of the Folsom complex will be found to be as generally widespread west of the Rocky Mountains as they have to the eastward, raises several interesting problems as to the relative age and significance of Folsom material reported from different parts of North America. It becomes obvious, moreover, that an appreciable time has been involved in the spread of the complex if its limits are to be extended, as recent occurrences would suggest.

These and other considerations properly belong to a survey article, and it is enough for the purpose of this paper to mention briefly that during the past several years the Folsom complex has occupied a singular place in any postulated chronological scheme for American archaeology because investigation during this time has failed to show what lies immediately on either side of it.

In times long before history was recorded in America, a people or peoples mined native copper on the shores of Lake Superior. Every copper-bearing vein mined here by modern man has shown indications of mining by prehistoric man. The copper which the primitives mined, and the artifacts made of the copper, were found by early settlers and explorers of this continent to be distributed throughout the Mississippi Valley and the Northeast.

This paper is limited to the presentation of the stratigraphic relationships of certain pottery types which are found in a pre-historic village site in central Georgia. These types are site markers of two established cultural horizons in the southeast, and it is evident that their wide distribution and relationships to the chronological framework of the area are of major archaeological importance. In a recently published report of investigations centering in and around Macon, Georgia, A. R. Kelly demonstrates that the Lamar and Swift Creek horizons are differentiated from each other and from other cultural complexes in the region by distinctive traits. Foremost among these traits, for each complex, is pottery.