The importance of the Clear Fork Focus as a pre-pottery archaeological complex of north-central Texas has become generally known to archaeologists through the industry of its discoverer and principal proponent, Dr. Cyrus N. Ray, of Abilene, Texas. Unfortunately, the relationship of this complex to other and comparable archaeological cultures of Texas has been largely neglected and some regrettable misinformation in regard to its chronological position has been widely disseminated. In this paper the cultural affiliations and age of the Clear Fork Focus will be discussed in terms of the evidence presented by its discoverers and from the standpoint of new data derived from large scale excavations completed by the University of Texas in the terraces of the Colorado River near Austin, Texas. Additional information obtained by the writer through study of some twelve thousand projectile points from central, south, and western Texas, and their geographic and temporal distribution also is used.

Lloyd A. Wilford, in an excellent paper on the Headwaters Lakes aspect, points out that two of its important traits are primary burials, “often in a sitting position,” and “small mortuary vessels … .” Wilford's work in Minnesota has provided certain clues as to the source of the mounds in Manitoba, the traits above mentioned being among the most important.

Archaeological work in Manitoba has been exceedingly sketchy and often extremely careless. Very little if any effort has been made to correlate the various cultural horizons with known aspects south of the international boundary. Documentation is scant and unsatisfactory. Many of the mounds have been badly disturbed without regard for their scientific and historic value; and valuable material has been lost without hope of recovery. Nevertheless, examination of the early documentation, plus the work of the writer during the past few years, indicates a northwesterly movement of some of the important traits of Wilford's various Minnesota aspects.

The state of Florida is mainly a peninsula projecting some three hundred miles south of the continental North American land mass. This unique position has given the state a certain amount of isolation, as a result of which, and because of environmental factors, Florida has been able to participate in the Southeastern cultural picture and at the same time to develop characteristic local features.

Although Florida has had a long history of archaeological research, with an impressive bibliography of descriptive material, synthesis has only recently been attempted. Some early attempts were made to divide the state into archaeological areas but none were of any significance until M. W. Stirling's recent four-fold division into the Gulf Coast, Glades, St. Johns, and Northern Highland areas. This division has been found, in general, to be useful, needing only greater refinement.

As W. H. Holmes pointed out in 1905, our archaeological investigations need to be “supplemented by the rich materials derived from the study of the living peoples.“1 In accordance with this line of thought, I have tried to correlate some findings of archaeology and ethnology in relation to the small but controversial archaeological problem of fetishes and toys. The clay figurines and miniature pots illustrated in Plate XII were made as toys by contemporary Navaho children living in the region between the Chaco and Blanco Canyons, New Mexico. The toys represent two women with the characteristic Navaho skirts and headdresses, three miniature vessels (a handled mug, round-bottomed cooking vessel, and crude dish), and thirteen animals, including two dogs, a sheep, ram, mare, donkey, two horses, a cow, chicken, buck, and two goats. The faces of the women have been pinched to suggest a nose but otherwise they are featureless. One dog, the sheep, cow, two horses, and one of the goats have black glass beads for eyes.

The investigation of archaeological sites in North America has in the past concerned itself predominantly with the discovery and examination of burials and artifacts and associated fauna. This purely qualitative approach has been essential to the elucidation of problems in the culture history of aboriginal man. At the same time, except in such cases where obvious stratigraphy displays itself, few efforts have been directed toward the analysis of the matrix itself, the deposits in which the more spectacular bones, pottery, and implements of war are embedded. Nevertheless, it is wholly possible that accumulations of debris, such as habitation mounds or midden deposits, may be able to supply information of a quantitative character which will throw light upon the population, living conditions, and ecological status of the former inhabitants. A recent study1 based upon older excavations of California shell mounds has indicated the type of information which might be obtained. The present paper explores certain aspects of the methodology applicable to the general problem.

Archaeological investigation in the Northern Periphery, in its present status, has revealed and formulated many perplexing problems. Not the least of these is the problem of the ethnic prehistory of its Puebloid peoples.

Apparently, because of the striking resemblances between the Northern Periphery cultures -and the San Juan Puebloan cultures, Judd, in his expeditions of 1915-1920, tacitly assumed Northern Periphery peoples to be Puebloan in physical characteristics. The crania found by him in the southern part of this area exhibit both occipital deformation and normality. This phenomenon was interpreted by Judd as the most significant observation to be made. He felt that it indicated the use of the Puebloan cradleboard when the trait was either in an incipient form or in a period of decline.1 Equally plausible, of course, is the possibility of two distinct periods, a pre-cradleboard period and a period after the introduction of the cradleboard.

While much has been written concerning the aboriginal steatite (soapstone) bowl industry, it would seem that too little attention has been given to its cultural significance and the people who developed it. Whatever their traits, these stone bowl people, through initiative and persistent effort to raise their standard of living, became primitive industrialists of note. From soft steatite, which they quarried, they made stone bowls of various shapes and sizes, some of which were transported in trade to far-away regions devoid of steatite deposits.

That New England was the center from which quarry work methods spread to other localities, probably south, is the opinion held by some. However, it is not known whether the concept of utilizing the soft soapy stone for pots originated in New England. It may have started further north where steatite deposits occur with telltale pick scars of primitive workmen.

The objectives of this paper are three-fold: (1) to make available to interested anthropologists the archaeological material which will form the basis for the discussion, (2) to point out several problems of the archaeology of the area in which the site to be discussed is located, and (3) to present a brief account of the history of the site as it is known through extant documents.

The material on which the discussion will be based consists of pottery sherds which were collected, with few exceptions, from the surface of the site of Ciudad Real located on the east bank of the Paraná River, at the confluence of the Piquirý River, in the present-day Brazilian state of Paraná (Fig. 32). The site is located on the elevated bank of the river some five miles north of the present town of Guayra, Paraná,. Brazil, and approximately six miles above the Sete Quedas.

This communication will (1) report on two projectile points from Oregon and (2) call attention to others from south central Oregon caves which vary from the types usually found there and throughout the Great Basin.

The two projectile points, illustrated in Plate XVI, A, were turned into the Museum of Natural History, University of Oregon, by Mr. H. L. Robe, Museum Attendant, about 1938. The cataloger called the Yuma point to my attention but not the other. He informed me that the Yuma point had been found in an old slough in the Willamette Valley and on the basis of that information nothing was worth reporting about it since stratigraphic or associational sequence seemed to be lacking. It was interesting but that was all.

A textile specimen in the University of California Museum of Anthropology, perhaps to be identified as a sling pocket, adds a new item to the growing list of fabrications made of twisted dogbane fiber (Apocynum cannabinum).It is, moreover, constructed by a technique not to my knowledge previously reported. I am indebted to Professor Robert F. Heizer for calling my attention to this unique object and for the following paragraphs placing it in its relation to Nevada archeology.

“The piece comes from a dry cave site (Humboldt Cave) in west central Nevada about 10 miles southwest of Lovelock Cave. The cave was excavated in 1936 by the University of California Department of Anthropology, and the final report on the excavation is now nearly completed.

In presenting the accompanying sketches and observations, it must be stated that they were taken from a layman's viewpoint, and some significant details may have been omitted in one or two instances. Data were not collected with the thought of scientific publication, but since it is believed there has been no previous recording of Indian pictographs from a locality as far north in Manitoba as the occurrence here described, the following brief observations are presented at the suggestion of Dr. Douglas Leechman of the National Museum of Canada, Ottawa.

The pictographs occur on the west side of the north arm of Tramping Lake, Manitoba (Fig. 36). They are about one mile north of the wide part of Tramping Lake, at approximately 54°43’ N. latitude and 100°05′ W. longitude. Tramping Lake lies between Wekusko (Herb) Lake on the east and Reed Lake on the west and is a portion of the Grass River system, one of the early canoe routes of the area. Peter Pond has referred to this canoe route on his map, dated 1785, as the “middle road to Hudson's Bay.“

Attention is invited to a unique flaked pyrite object from the ancient village of Miyowaghameet, St. Lawrence Island, Alaska. While specimens of unworked pyrite and certain pyrite-studded artifacts1 have been found at this and other Arctic sites, the specimen illustrated (Fig. 40) is, to the best of our knowledge, the only object of pressure-flaked iron pyrite reported from St. Lawrence Island and possibly from the Arctic coastal sites.

Miyowaghameet lies in a gravelly plain at the foot of Cape Chibukak, approximately one mile east of the Eskimo village of Gambell. Collins gives the average diameter for the site as one hundred yards; however the long axis runs roughly NE/SW, and the specimen herein described, while located within the eastern half of the midden, was found approximately sixty-five yards from the eastern edge.

In a recent issue of American Antiquity John M. Goggin has described certain materials from a site in the St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, Wakulla County, Florida. The present note is a continuation of Goggin's remarks, based on certain materials not available to him at the time of his writing, and on a more recent surface collection of sherds from the site.

Goggin mentions a copper plate ornamented by incision, having human and animal figures depicted on the surface, which he had not seen. When this object was originally found in 1938 by Bill Kary of Tallahassee, it was examined by J. Clarence Simpson of the Florida Geological Survey. Simpson made a cast of the object, as well as a detailed drawing. The drawing reproduced in this note (Fig. 41, b) was made from Simpson's sketch and a copy of the cast in the possession of Dr. Mark F. Boyd of Tallahassee. The writer is grateful to both of these gentlemen for the use of their material.