The field of California archaeology has long been considered an example of unproductive and timeless culture. This judgment has hardly been a fair one, yet the fault lay not with the anthropological public but rather with the local archaeologists, since field work was rare, intermittent, and unplanned. No scientific institution has ever found it possible or deemed it advisable to institute a long-term archaeological survey of the area. However, the past ten years have seen the recording of sufficient data to demand a retraction of the older viewpoint which offered little promise in future work. In 1929, David Banks Rogers published his volume on the archaeology of the Santa Barbara region; Olson's preliminary report followed a year later. Both treatises are in essential agreement as to the type and succession of prehistoric cultures on the Santa Barbara coast.

A survey of the central San Joaquin Valley has demonstrated a threefold cultural sequence north of Stockton, upsetting the earlier view that central California archaeology lacked evidence of change; south of Tulare Lake are indications of similar cultural stratification. Before the survey the 160 miles between Stockton and Tulare Lake was known only from scattered specimens and occasional correspondence with local collectors.

The area of the 1939 reconnaissance is bounded on the north by the southern limit of Schenck and Dawson's 1929 report, the Mount Diablo Base Line; on the south, by Gifford and Schenck's northern limit, the southern end of Tulare Lake; on the east and west, by the Valley drainage limits. This territory includes the basin of the second largest river in California, and was formerly occupied by the bulk of the Yokutsspeaking peoples, and by some of the Miwok and Mono.

In October, 1939, an atlatl and an atlatl dart were brought from Lassen County, California, to the Lillard Museum for examination. These pieces had been found in Susanville in the collection of Mrs. McDow, whose husband had obtained them from an Indian, Charlie Paiute, formerly a resident of the Susanville area.

The atlatl is made apparently of willow; is 75 cm. long; averages 21 mm. in width; is 10 mm. thick at the distal end and increases to 13 mm. at the handle. The wood has been stained with a red pigment (a very similar stain may be obtained by grinding hematite, adding water to it and daubing it on wood). It is black and greasy, apparently from dirty hands, at the handle and along the edges paralleling the groove.

The Willamette Valley represents an area that has been relatively untouched by any well-organized archaeological and ethnological research. In 1877, Gatschet did some anthropological work which was mostly linguistic. Mr. J. L. Hill did some work in 1883 in the Calapuya mounds, and Dr. J. B. Horner of Oregon State College has removed many skeletons and artifacts from some of the mounds since the turn of the century. Other than this, most of the work has been done by local collectors. Information of any kind concerning the aboriginal inhabitants of the valley is extremely scarce and disconnected. This is owing to the early shifting of the tribes, their rapid extermination by disease, and the scanty references in the records of the early colonizers and explorers.

For many years the people of Maine, parts of New England, and the Maritime Provinces have been told that an ancient group of Indians lived in the northeastern part of the United States and later moved into New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. These ancient people have been called the Pre-Algonquian Group, The Red Paint People of Maine, and the Beothuk of Newfoundland, by various archaeologists who have excavated their graves.

These archaeologists have come to the conclusion that the graves represent a very old group of Indians, but they have not agreed on who they were, where they came from, or where they went. Mr. Charles C. Willoughby shows the distribution of the pre-Algonquian culture as covering all that portion of North America east of the Great Lakes, along the Saint Lawrence River and as far south as the tip of New Jersey.

Recently I published a brief notice on constructional methods in pottery making, which occasioned a number of interesting comments. The majority of the communications and verbal discourses centered upon the seeming error, on my part, “to exclude the paddle and anvil manipulation from the suggested classification.” It will be recalled that the notice in question stated: “On the basis of the work thus far accomplished, the following classification of strictly manual building methods of constructing pottery vessels may be suggested.” The emphasis on hand manipulation and the express limitation to building procedures appear to have made little if any impression on some readers. It seems in point, therefore, to outline briefly the function of the paddle and anvil in pottery making, as derived from my studies of literature and specimens, as well as from certain empirical knowledge. Admittedly, this note does not pretend to settle any problem nor to be conclusive; rather its aim is to call attention to the need of accurate technical detailing.

A very important southwestern pottery type, well dated by tree ring studies, is called Deadmans Black-on-white by Colton, and Black Mesa Pueblo II Black-on-white by Morss. When the Handbook of Northern Arizona Pottery Wares (Colton and Hargrave, 1937) was being written, and there were two descriptions of the type, the question arose which name to choose. The original description of Deadmans Black-on-white appeared in Bulletin 104 of the Bureau of American Ethnology, which carried a printed authorization date of Feb. 17, 1931, and which appeared in 1932. Morss published his description of the same type in 1931, calling it Black Mesa Pueblo II Black-on-white (Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology).

In Vol. VI, No. 1, of American Antiquity is a communication by Charles Fairbanks discussing the occurrence of the “salt pan” type of vessel in his early Middle Mississippi horizon (Macon Plateau) at the Ocmulgee National Monument. These specimens show some variety of manufacture and surface treatment, namely, coiling, fabric marking, leaf marking, and complicated stamping. Fairbanks contrasts this variety of handling with the relatively consistent fabric marking and distinct “clubbed” lip in the salt pans of southern Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee, where the type seems to have met a definite functional need, i.e. the evaporation of salt at salt springs. Fairbanks accordingly postulates: “The variation of decoration and possibly construction in peripheral areas suggests an acculturation process in which the basic form was retained but the function may have been lost.”

A large quantity of fabric impressed pottery was found during the excavation of the Elizabeth Herreli Site in Jefferson County, Missouri, by the Academy of Science of St. Louis.

Inasmuch as variations in weaving technique have proven of value in distinguishing and in indicating the connection between ethnic groups this study has been made in an effort to aid archaeologists in comparing the finds at the Herreli Site with the results of other expeditions.

The Herreli Site is a village site which belongs to the Middle Mississippi phase of the Mississippi pattern. The reasons for designating this site “Middle Mississippi“ and a full description of the site are given elsewhere.

The twelve specimens here analysed were obtained from the island of Kagamil in the Four Mountain Group and from the island of Shiprock in Umnak Pass. No date other than merely "pre-Russian" has been assigned either burial cave from whence the specimens were obtained, although it is likely that Dr. Aleš Hrdlička will formulate a satisfactory chronology for the known sites of the Aleutian Islands. The specimens consist of the fragments of five baskets or mats, five cords, and two bird skins, the latter presumably from parkas. While these specimens are few in number and in no wise unique, the paucity of published material on the prehistoric textiles of the Aleutian Islands justifies this paper.

This brief description of the site and evidence of occupation is written for the purpose of preserving the data. Considering the rare reference to cave habitations in reports of Eastern activities, this bit of evidence seems worth recording.

Approximately one mile below Carvers Falls, in the valley of the Poultney River, and nine miles from Lake Champlain, the cave entrance is seen as a crevice, open overhead, in an outjutting part of the southern face of a limestone cliff. The opening is near the top of the cliff and at the summit of a talus incline extending into a land-locked pool where once the river was navigable by large boats before historical freshets changed the scene.