In 1963, the Glenbow Foundation excavated a bison bone bed exposed at a water hole in southern Alberta near the Montana border. Age estimates grounded in geology place the bone bed between 7,000 and 11,000 years ago. Projectile points at the Fletcher site include the Alberta and Scottsbluff types. Other artifacts suggest that the site was not only a kill but also a butchering station. The heavy emphasis on bison here, as well as at nearly all related sites in the northern Great Plains, makes it clear that Fletcher properly belongs to the Paleo-Indian big-game hunting continuum rather than to the Archaic stage.

Recent excavations in the Gulf of Georgia region have added microblades and microcores to assemblages of the Locarno Beach and Marpole culture types. The production of microblades is now seen as a regional tradition lasting from at least 1200 B.C. until around A.D. 400. Persistence of this technology may indicate more continuity of culture growth than has until now been ascribed to the Gulf of Georgia sequence.

In the summer of 1953 the Texas Memorial Museum of Austin, Texas, conducted scientific excavations of a Paleo-Indian bison kill near Milnesand, New Mexico. After the departure of this group from the site, a large number of artifacts were collected from the bison bone bed by Ted Williamson of Milnesand, New Mexico. Because of the site's importance and the paucity of culturally related sites, a detailed description of the artifacts collected by Williamson is considered to be of immense value to specialists in the Paleo-Indian field.

Arrow Grotto, an inner sanctum deep within a mountain of south-central New Mexico and reached only by a crawlway from Feather Cave, was found to contain masses of offerings untouched for six centuries or more. Examination of material and of accompanying pictographs by men from several living pueblos led to identification of the grotto as a shrine for Earth Mother and Sun Father, visited at the period of biannual solar ceremonies. Parallels between Arrow Grotto, other prehistoric ceremonial caves, and even the Anasazi sipapu, show a pattern surprisingly similar to that of a number of Pueblo ceremonial caves in use today or in the recent past. Parallels to concepts regarding caves and supernaturals in Mexican cultures indicate a series of rapid northward diffusions of religious ideas, the first, at least, from eastern Mesoamerica, through Preclassic to Postclassic periods, one of our most specific evidences of influential contacts.

Original owners of Feather Cave and Arrow Grotto probably were Piros who left the Rio Bonito Valley to become mingled, eventually, with southern Tiwa relatives, whose descendants still inhabit pueblos near Albuquerque.

The Chalchihuites culture of the Colorado-Suchil river drainage of western Zacatecas began about A.D. 100 as a somewhat evolved and belated Early Preclassic colonization of simple agriculturalists. By the Alta Vista phase (ca. A.D. 350-550) it had assumed the role of a much more complex society. A great expansion of population occurred. This transition was very rapid and present evidence supports the hypothesis that highly organized social groups colonized the area in order to exploit the mineral resources located there. Extensive mining operations, coupled with self-supporting agricultural patterns, characterize the zenith of the period. The extent of mining was much more than local consumption could possibly require and therefore points to the economic dependence of the exploitative organization upon the high cultures farther south and southeast. This paper reviews the 1963 and 1965 surveys of the Alta Vista mining operations and draws some conclusions about the character of the society which sponsored them.

A study of the relationships between archaeological sites and the previous channels of the Ucayali River in eastern Peru supports the archaeological chronology already established on stratigraphic grounds. These relationships also suggest that the average duration of a meander loop from inception to cut-off is about 500 years. This 500-year cycle offers an explanation for, and a measure of, the temporal lacunae separating the various components of multicomponent sites on the bluffs adjoining the Ucayali flood plain. The extent and rapidity of geomorphological evolution in this region must be considered when one attempts to evaluate the data of site density and site location, since many archaeological sites are quickly destroyed or buried.

Recent observations on the Central and North Coasts of Peru indicate the previously unrealized importance of a prehispanic agricultural technique (mahamaes) which permits effective cultivation of sizable areas without canal irrigation. Mahamaes cultivation may well have been significant in the origins of agriculture on the coast, and as a supplement to canal irrigation in later prehispanic times. Its apparent ability to support relatively large, sophisticated political structures suggests some reorganization of our thinking about the utility of the hydraulic agriculture model for coastal Peru.

The increased costs of processing artifacts can be substantially reduced by the use of labor-saving devices in the laboratory. A standard washing machine has been modified for washing historic-period artifacts with minimal breakage. Forty-five man-hours of hand washing can be accomplished in one hour by machine, with comparable standards of cleanliness. The numbering of artifacts, using rubber stamps, can represent time savings of 80 per cent on certain classes of material. Use of a sandblaster for cleaning iron artifacts triples the output of the conventional electrolytic treatment. A ceramic pantograph and a modified diagraph show promise of reducing the time required to draw pottery sections.

Lafitau's 1724 engraving of Huron agriculture, previously taken as evidence for triangular stone hoes in the Northeast, actually is a copy of de Bry"s engraving of Timucua agriculture, and the hoes shown are a European type.

The possibility of tuna fish being an agent for the diffusion of the circular shell fishhook found in California and Oceania is discussed. Data from the latter area indicate a specific type of hook and of fishing technique for these fish, suggesting that the circular shell hook would not be used in this way. The experimental evidence of Robinson (1942) and Glidden (Heye 1921) and an examination of the function of fishhooks further suggest that the circular shell hooks function best in a different subenvironment of the sea and for a different group of fish than the tunas. While it is impossible to state unequivocally that the tunas could not be the agents of diffusion for this hook, the specificity of the existing tuna-fishing techniques and the evidence for a different use of the circular hook make it more improbable than is suggested by Heizer or Landberg.

Reinman's misinterpretation (in his article in this issue) of Landberg's (1966) remarks about the aboriginal use of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook is corrected, and the unlikelihood that this type of hook was used by fishermen to catch tunas is further emphasized. Conclusive evidence that tunas transport fishhooks is introduced for representatives of one species, bluefin, in the Atlantic and Mediterranean Oceans. Taking this evidence into consideration, the tentative nature of the tuna-tagging evidence is again noted, and it is stressed that considerably more data will be required to substantiate presently proposed models of migration for tuna populations before incontrovertible geographical relationships can be drawn between Oceania and other areas. Independent invention as an alternative to the hypothesis of hook transportation by fish as an explanation for the distribution of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook is examined with reference to Crain's (1966) article on the mechanical aspects of this hook type. It is concluded that independent invention, as suggested earlier (Landberg 1966), probably accounts for part of the distribution of the curved, single-piece shell fishhook and that transportation of this type of hook by migratory fish would have been only a complicating factor in its geographical distribution.

A fossilized bone projectile point has recently been recognized in the collections of the National Museum of Canada. The point was found at a depth of 8 ft. in a waterhole in southeastern Saskatchewan, immediately south of an ice frontal position dated at about 10,000 years ago. The implement is described on the basis of microscopic and macroscopic examination, and similarities to other specimens with early associations are noted.

Citation in a reputable publication of the idea put forth by R. G. Baker (1962) that Maya monuments were altered and recarved from time to time makes it necessary to evaluate the thesis. Examination of the evidence presented by Baker leads to the conclusion that most of the putative alterations are the result of differential weathering, and unfamiliarity with Maya sculpture. In addition, Baker has interpreted 19th-century mutilation as being ancient. Finally, Proskouriakoff's historical interpretation of the function of Maya sculpture and glyphic texts (1960, 1963, 1964) leads to a definitive refutation of Baker's hypothesis.

The circumstances of discovery and the offering of a Tzacualli (Teotihuacan I) burial from Pueblo Perdido, San Bartolo Naucalpan, northwest of Mexico City, are described.