Since Haag's article “Early Horizons in the Southeast” appeared some time ago, considerable data have accumulated which further delimit the southeastern archaeological area. Instead of covering the area south of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River, as noted by Haag, it more nearly approximates that region covered by the eastern half of the state of Tennessee; the southern half of North Carolina; all of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Florida; and the eastern portion of Louisiana—most of which lie in the Coastal Plain and in the northern portion of the Piedmont section. Climatic as well as physiographic and cultural conditions were determinants of the type and kind of aboriginal sites found in this geographical section of the United States.

Towers have long been an important and integral feature of architecture. The earliest record of towers is in Mesopotamia with the Statue of Gudea at a date of approximately 2700 B.C. (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1948, p. 330). From there they may be found ranging over the entire world. They have met numerous demands, but from their very beginning towers have served two principal functions: military and religious.

A focal area of tower building was in the southwestern United States. Here towers have presented numerous problems which, despite comment and work, still remain largely unanswered. Their intriguing possibilities, however, early attracted the attention of writers. A brief history would include such men as Jackson (1876), Holmes (1879), and Morgan (1881), who first called public attention to these towers. Their accounts were descriptive and mention ruins of the Hovenweep, Mesa Verde, and McElmo areas. Moorehead, in a series of six articles entitled “In Search of a Lost Race” for Illustrated American of 1892, discussed ruins of the McElmo.

Shortly before the last war I prepared for publication a monograph on the tumuli of Pennsylvania. War conditions prevented its immediate publication, and so it was put aside until 1948 when a few additions and changes were made. By this time it had grown to include the detailed descriptions of 63 mounds plus a fearsome array of plates. No editor would touch it.

This year the study will at last appear, published by chapter in various journals. The brief report which follows was an appendix, included for comparative purposes. It deals with five scattered burial components excavated by three students of archaeology: Dr. Lewis M. Haggerty, a dentist of Hackensack, New Jersey; Mr. Harry L. Schoff, former professional archaeologist, now of Honeoye Falls, New York; and Mr. Gerard Fowke, pioneer Smithsonian archaeologist. I am indebted to the former men for the use of their field notes and to the U. S. National Museum for photographs of the Bowman mound material.

The Ware site is located in the northern part of Salem County, southwestern New Jersey, on the farm of Mr. Lee Ware. It is on the south bank of Salem Creek, extending to within about 100 feet from the creek, a location which would be flooded only in times of especially high water. The total extent of the site is not known, but it occupies an area of at least 400 feet by 150 feet. It is rather thickly wooded in places, with a mixed growth of cedars, hickory, dogwood, several species of oaks, and a variety of other trees, The soil is, in general, light and sandy.

Excavation was begun in the autumn of 1947 and continued in the summer of 1948.

During the summer of 1948, from June 14th to September 25th, the authors made a second archaeological expedition into the area including Lakes Mistassini and Albanel in south-central Province of Quebec. The work was directed by Frederick Johnson and done under the auspices of the Peabody Foundation, which provided half of the funds necessary. The Viking Fund of New York City generously granted the remainder of the money necessary and for this both we and the Foundation wish to express our gratitude.

Traveling in the trackless interior of Quebec presents many difficulties at best, and without the generous cooperation of the Hudson's Bay Company and its personnel, travel would be virtually impossible. We are sincerely grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Fred McLeod, Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Parsons, and Mr. and Mrs. Wilfred Jeffreys, whose hospitality and genuine good will are in keeping with the best traditions of the Hudson's Bay Company.

The new age-dating method based on the radioactive carbon isotope C14 is now turning out absolute dates and promises to reorganize the chronological framework of American archaeology. The results demonstrate that conventional methods of determining relative and absolute age are often uncertain, and that a much more exact technique can in most cases be substituted for the type seriation of archaeology.

Of course the new technique still has its shortcomings, but that does not basically affect the argument. C14 agedating represents the first clear step towards making archaeology an exact science. As a result, a reorientation of the central emphasis in archaeology must sooner or later take place.

Actually, this situation makes it possible for the archaeologist to go one step further in his interpretation than has generally been the case till now. The temporal framework will soon be established with reasonable security, and when a fertile approach to the subject matter is adopted, generalizations of value to all in anthropology should be forthcoming.

In a recent paper Arden R. King notes that the occurrence of tripod vessels in pre-Expansionist Central Andean periods has not yet been definitely established. The Columbia University Virú Valley collection, however, contains two examples of conical legs belonging to the type Castillo, White, Red, Orange. This pottery type has a Middle Gallinazo distribution.

The two specimens are fragmentary; i.e., only the legs themselves rather than the whole vessel have been preserved. They are probably from tripod vessels. The scarcity of the tetrapod form in the Central Andes greatly reduces the possibility that the legs could be from tetrapod vessels.

The legs are hollow and pointed-conical in shape. The one whole specimen is 6.6 cm. high and is 5.5 cm. at the widest part across the top. I t then tapers to a point at the bottom. Both legs are straight walled, not bulging or rounded.

The hills of the barrio of Yaguajay in the municipality of Banes, Cuba have yielded a number of rich finds of archaeological material. To these was added in 1948 a gold figurine, which is of importance as the first such specimen to be reported from the Antilles.

The figurine measures 48 mm. in height, weighs 14.1 grams, and has been cast from 10-carat gold (Fig.111 , left.) It portrays a naked woman, standing and holding a small vessel at the height of the stomach. The head is adorned with three stylized tufts of feathers, and two disks project from the ears in the form of shell helices. The face, nose, eyes, and mouth are very similar to those of the clay, shell, bone, and stone figures of the Banes region (e.g., Fig.111 ,right). The two breasts stand out from the body and the legs are in the form of nodules; although provided with feet, they lack toes.

As a supplement to the recent review of H. V. Walter's book, The Prehistory of the Lagôa Santa Region, some additional information about the nature of his recent archaeological work is of interest. After the completion of our own year of archaeological field work in the Lower Amazon, three days were spent in the Lagôa Santa Region, Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais with Mr. H. V. Walter studying his collections, and visiting and excavating with him some of the rock shelters and caves. Two sites, not mentioned in his report, are of such archaeological importance in the preceramic cultural history of South America that they should be brought to the attention of other archaeologists.

By way of introduction, it should be stated that Mr. Walter, the British Vice-Consul in Belo Horizonte, is primarily interested in paleontological data, a quest which for fifteen years has led him to extensive exploration at his own cost in the caves in and around the Lagôa Santa region.