Notwithstanding the numerous published works which have specifically or incidentally treated with the curved fishhooks of California, there is available at present no single source which draws together the accessible information and cites the relevant bibliography. The present article seeks to remedy this situation and seems justified on the grounds of making available the California data to local workers and to those who are further interested in the near identity of some of the California types with those of the Chilean coast in South America, on the one hand, and with those of the Oceanian area, on the other. Within North America the distribution of single-piece curved bone fishhooks is spotty, and a theoretical problem of historical community of these various occurrences also awaits analysis.

Curved hooks of shell and/or bone occur in California in archaeological sites on the Santa Barbara Channel islands (San Miguel, Santa Rosa, Santa Cruz), on the islands farther south and more distant from the mainland shore (San Nicolas, San Clemente, San Miguel), and on the coast from Point Concepcion to Santa Ana.

The establishment of ceramic type categories for the pre-Iroquoian horizons of New York state, exclusive of the Tidewater area, was undertaken for a number of reasons. Primarily, it was believed that such an analysis, breaking down the existing ware divisions into finer type inventories, would prove useful in obtaining a more minute chronological differentiation of the Owasco and Point Peninsula cultures than would be possible on any other basis, and in so doing, would aid in clarifying their possible relationships as well as their conceivable affinities with other major ceramic manifestations in the New York area. It was also hoped that our survey might reveal significant areal subdivisions which eventually might be referred to historic tribal units. Finally, the achievement of a pottery typology for New York would elucidate problems of prehistoric culture diffusion and development over the Northeastern area and might, indeed, contribute to broader interpretations of cultural dynamics and processes of acculturation involved in the complex interconnections of sequential archaeological components.

Peabody Museum, Harvard University, contains two collections of archaeological materials from Far Fan Beach, Panama Canal Zone. The first was given to Mr. Frederick Johnson in 1931 by an army engineer, without any stratigraphic or other data. The collection comprises some ten sherds picked up while excavating a gun position, and correlates exactly with the collection of some thousand specimens obtained by Dr. David B. Stout of Syracuse University during his work with the San Bias Indians in 1941. This second series was discovered in much the same fashion as the first, though fortunately Dr. Stout was able to get to the site while a few pieces remained in situ.

Excavation of the site in the midst of war-hastened construction did not permit the detailed work desired by Dr. Stout, but the results are felt to be a step toward piecing together the background of Panamanian archaeology. Present trends of thought see the Isthmus of Panama as the scene of fluctuating migrations of peoples in the past, and an understanding of the archaeology will aid materially in establishing the course of American prehistory.

Ever since Yuma points were recognized as being particularly ancient, Yuma County, Colorado has been a logical area of interest. Nevertheless, until 1941 the county had received scant attention from professional archaeologists, with the sole exception of a partial surface survey by Dr. E. B. Renaud. On the other hand, there had been considerable collecting by local residents, most particularly by Perry and Harold Andersen of Yuma, Colorado, who have amassed a large and valuable collection including numerous Folsom and Yuma points.

In 1941 Yuma County was still liberally spotted with blowouts resulting from wind erosion of the sandy soil consequent upon the previous drought. Conditions were, for the archaeologist, optimal. Thanks to Dr. Donald Scott, who arranged that expenses be defrayed by the Peabody Museum of Harvard University, my wife and I were enabled to spend part of the summer and early fall in Yuma County and adjacent portions of other counties.

Archaeological research has been conducted in the Mesa Verde area of Southwestern United States since the 1880's. Because of this, many believe that the prehistory of the area is well known. Nevertheless, J. 0. Brew, in a recent summary of available information on the area, concluded that a great deal of work is still needed.

This preliminary report is submitted in the hope that it will provide more information for an archaeological interpretation of the area. It is a report on excavations conducted at the Cahone Ruin during the summer of 1947.

The Cahone Ruin is located in southwestern Colorado: Township 39 North, Range 18 West, in Dolores County, just north of the Montezuma-Dolores County line. It is found on a natural rise, about 500 yards north of the northern rim of Cahone Canyon, a tributary of Cross Canyon.

A dead trunk, seasoned hard, is extremely resistant to the blows of a stone axe and fairly unyielding to a keen axe of steel. A high percentage of wood specimens from ruins in the Southwestern United States which furnish outer ring dates before A.D. 600, are parts of trees that were dead before they were felled; they are often weathered, and sometimes show signs of having been attacked by secondary insect pests.

In his recently published paper on “The Archaeology of Central California I: The Early Horizon” Robert F. Heizer writes “it is possible to anticipate at least in the later Southwestern horizons, for which we have dendrochronologic dates, a direct cross-chronology between the Southwest and California in terms of actual year dates.“

Fourteen Californian shell types from Anasazi sites, ranging from Basketmaker II to Pueblo IV, have been listed. Nine of these fourteen types come from Basketmaker III sites, one also from Basketmaker II, indicating that they were already being made in California contemporaneously and probably considerably earlier. These Basketmaker examples thus establish a minimum dating for the types in California.

The spread of the Headwaters Lakes Aspect in a northwesterly direction through Manitoba, has been the subject of previous comment by the senior author. The manifestations of the aspect in this area, have a marked resemblance to the Black Duck Focus, and have been defined as the Manitoba Focus.

The factual data upon which this conclusion is based are derived from three controlled excavations in Manitoba. Hecker and Hlady excavated the Lockport site, north of the city of Winnipeg, in August, 1947. Hecker reports the presence of sherds that show a “close relationship” to the Black Duck Focus. During 1947 and 1948 the junior author conducted excavations on the Scott site near Brandon, Manitoba. This site is located on the S.W. Sec. 35, T. 10, R. 20, W. 1, and has yielded a good collection of Manitoba Focus sherds, with an associated artifact complex that closely corresponds to that outlined by Wilford for the Headwaters Lakes Aspect.

While the stone collars of Puerto Rico are well known none has been reported of other materials. The writer, however, has in his collection a collar of shell in the shape of a slender stone collar. I t has been made out of the top portion of one of the so-called giant conch shells, so common in this island. The shell is of the same kind as those from which shell cups were constructed.

The specimen measures 7¼ inches in height and 5¼ inches in its greater width. Its thickness varies from 1 inch to nearly ¼ inch, being thicker at the junction of the shoulder and the decorated panel, where the arch is almost round. It is pear-shaped in its general outline, with the central opening, also of pear shape, surrounded by an almost flat band, an inch wide, which forms the shoulder and the decorated and undecorated panels above it (Fig. 53).

Baltasar Jaime Martiñez de Compañon, has been mentioned in anthropological literature for the past fifty years, albeit rather sporadically; but up to the present time the importance of his legacy has not been appreciated by those anthropologists in the Peruvian field, especially those who have dealt with the ethnology and archaeology of the North Coast. Although one of the purposes of this brief note is to call attention to the necessity of incorporating the valuable illustrative material of Martiñez de Compañon in future works, the primary purpose is to make known to the anthropological public that, except for an extremely rare edition of plates which is but a tiny fraction of the whole, the enormous fount of ethnological and archaeological information that Martiñez left remains unpublished.

The only marine mollusk listed for 22 samples from beds on Whitewater Creek and San Pedro River is a fragment of Olivella identified as Olivella pedroana Conrad: “A marine species of the Gulf of California and the Pacific coast from California southward. Only one fragment found. It is possible that this might have been used as an ornament.“ This specimen is from the lowest or Sulphur Spring stage of the Cochise culture, which has yielded certain extinct mammals.

“The problem of the route of spread [of the Cochise people] is raised by the occurrence with the Sulphur Spring artifacts at Double Adobe (bed b, Fig. 12) of a shell fragment of the marine gastropod Olivella pedroana Conrad, which postulates that the Chochise people had contact with the west coast.“