In a Previous article in American Antiquity I have outlined the four main divisions of Maya history: the formative period (prior to A.D. 320); the Initial Series period, which is the classical age (A.D. 320–900); the Mexican period (A.D. 987–1204); and the Mexican absorption period (A.D. 1204–1540). I have also sketched briefly the three provinces into which the Maya area can be rather readily divided.1 Nevertheless, it is difficult to place exactly the boundary between the central and northern areas. I have included in the former the various sites of southern Campeche—such as Calakmul—which are culturally a part of the Peten, and which appear to have been abandoned at the close of the Initial Series period.

According to Alfred M. Tozzer, events relating to the taking of Chichen Itza by the Toltecs are depicted in the frescoes and bas-reliefs on buildings at that site which date from the Mexican period. In a paper entitled “Maya and Toltec Figures at Chichen Itza,“ he analyzes scenes from the Temple of the Jaguars, the Monjas, the North Temple of the Ball Court, and the Northeast Colonnade with reference to the known historic conquest and interprets them as portrayals of the Mexican attacks, the submission of the Maya, and the recognition of Toltec supremacy.

In his paper, Tozzer tells us that the Toltec warrior is characterized by a mosaic headdress; a breast ornament, probably also of mosaic; a back shield or dorsal mirror; decorated garters; bands below the knee; and sandals. He carries a bundle of spears and a bag in his left hand and an atlatl in his right. His left arm is protected by padding or a round shield.

Numerous calendric hieroglyphs of inscriptions at Chichen Itza have been deciphered, with the result that a large body of new material is available for a fresh approach to a solution of the Maya correlation problem. Furthermore, there has appeared a new method of interpreting native time counts which will necessitate revised ideas concerning the chronology of inscriptions, of architecture, of cultural changes, and of historical events at Chichen Itza.

Formerly it was thought that the Maya date 9 Lamat 11 Yax, 13 Tun 1 Ahau meant that the calendar round date 9 Lamat 11 Yax, with a positional determinant 13 Tun 1 Ahau, fell n 13 Tun ending on a day 1 Ahau. This Tun-Ahau method of interpreting a date rested on a fallacy and produced a result irreconcilable with the data. According to the new Katun-Ahau method, the given date, 9 Lamat 11 Yax, fell in a current 13 Tun of a current Katun ending on a day 1 Ahau; this is thoroughly consistent.

The Late prehistoric cultural manifestations of Minnesota are so dominantly of the Woodland pattern that manifestations of the Mississippi pattern have not received much attention in published reports. Prior to 1940, components of the Orr and Blue Earth foci of the Oneota aspect had been recognized in Minnesota, and some sites of each focus had been studied. Since that time, two additional complexes, which I am ascribing to the Mississippi pattern and have named the Cambria aspect and the Great Oasis aspect, respectively, have been discovered. The Minnesota sites, together with the Brandon site in southeastern South Dakota reported by Over and Meleen8 and the Mill Creek sites in northwestern Iowa studied by Charles R. Keyes, make an important contribution to our knowledge of the Mississippi pattern in the area near the meeting point of these three states.

The North Benton Mound is a Hopewell site located in Mahoning County, northeastern Ohio. This mound is on the farm of Mr. John Malmsberry, near the village of North Benton. Mr. Roy Saltsman and the writer participated in the excavation of the site. The photographs and other records were made by the writer.

The recent history of the mound is interesting. The grave of Judge William Smith, original owner of the mound, was placed some seven or eight feet north of the crest. It is shown in the cross section (Fig. 4). When Smith died in 1837 with the strange request that he be buried in the mound, the top was apparently cut off to make a burial platform; the removed dirt which was thrown down upon the south shoulder is represented on the projected cross section by broken hatching. The mound, situated on a high knoll, later became an even more conspicuous landmark when conifers were planted on it and grew to great size.

Excavations carried on in 1931 under the University of Illinois archaeological program were directed by A. R. Kelly. One of the small mounds explored during the spring of that year was excavated by W. V. Kinietz. It was called the Box Elder Mound and was located near the town of Science, in Starved Rock State Park near Utica, La Salle County, Illinois.

During the summer of 1935 I was permitted by the late F. C. Baker, then Curator of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Illinois, to study and describe this material. The vessels to be described below are a part of the collections of the University of Illinois.

The Present paper is partially devoted to a consideration of the concept of “horizon styles” in Peruvian archaeology: how the concept has been used in archaeological reconstruction, and how new styles are in the process of formulation. It includes also an analysis of several ceramic periods which may be grouped into such a horizon style, the White-on-red. Differing from the horizon style is another historical phenomenon which I have called the “pottery tradition.” An attempt is made here to show the relationship of these two concepts— horizon styles and pottery traditions—as they are exemplified in Peruvian archaeology.

James B. Griffin, in his recent paper, “The De Luna Expedition and the Buzzard Cult in the Southeast,“ advances the hypothesis that the ceremonial material characteristic of such mound sites as Etowah, Georgia; Moundville, Alabama; and Spiro, Oklahoma, is the result of proselytizing efforts of escaped Mexican Indian servants ’ imported with the De Luna Expedition (1559–1561). He states that “the De Luna Expedition might well have furnished the impetus that resulted in the adoption in the Southeast of various Mexican art styles and concepts.“

This question is of course a basic one in Southeastern archaeology. These Mexicanoid elements are graphic focalizations of a cult which swept over the Southeast from the Gulf of Mexico to the Great Lakes and from the Plains to the Atlantic. Taken at face value, this hypothesis of Griffin's is a simple tool for explaining the otherwise puzzling stylistic resemblances between Southeastern ceremonial art and the Mixteca-Pueblo “culture” of Mexico.

Numerous finds of human skeletons and artifacts in Argentina, all buried in soft deposits, have led to a large literature and to controversies over the antiquity of man. Investigations of these finds by Hrdlicta and the geologic work of his companion, Bailey Willis, proved: (1) that all the skeletons are those of Homo sapiens; (2) that many occur close to the surface in material subject to recent slumping and wind action; (3) that the stratigraphy of the Pampean series is not so distinctive that horizons determined by vertebrate fossils may always be recognized at localities where the fossils are absent; (4) that none of the finds involve stone cultures sufficiently distinctive from those of the modern Indians to demand recognition as being ancient.

In 1938, a seemingly unusual type of side-bladed knife with its stone blade in place was excavated at the Old Fort Abraham Lincoln Mandan village, across the Missouri River from Bismarck, North Dakota. This specimen, now in the collections of the North Dakota Historical Society, was found in an ash-filled storage pit at a depth of 90 cm. The same pit also contained two other side-bladed knife handles of bone and three ovoid stone knife blades, as well as other artifacts, some indicating European contact. The Old Fort Abraham Lincoln village is of protohistoric age and was occupied by the Mandan prior to 1800. The general characteristics of the site and the excavations in question have been outlined elsewhere. The present specimen (Fig. 6, left) is distinctive in that the lanceolate blade of Knife River flint is so inserted that one corner of the butt serves as the cutting corner or point of the knife.