A Brief note in Science in the spring of 1943 reported the find of an association of human burials and artifacts with the remains of Camelops, Equus, and Bison, near Tranquillity, Fresno County, California. The present paper is a more detailed description of the cultural remains and a fuller report of the writer's findings at the site prior to 1944. Excavations in that year by the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, are mentioned below. They will be described in a forthcoming paper by Lloyd and Satterthwaite, to include a critical examination of the evidence for and against the contemporaneity of the human and extinct mammal remains.

The incentive for an archaeological reconnaissance of this region (see map, Fig. 29) by Mrs. Gifford and myself in the fall of 1944, and again for a single day in November, 1945, came from reading references to kitchen middens in the report of the conchologist H. N. Lowe: “The numerous large kitchen middens at Punta Peñasco and Punta La Cholla contained thousands of these Glycimeris maculata with rarely a valve of the much larger G. gigantea. With these were quantities of the huge Cardita affinis, Chione, Ostrea, Paphia, Cardium, and large Murex. No stone artifacts or black earth were noted in any of these shell heaps. Perhaps the early inhabitants preferred their shell-fish raw.” At Punta Peñasco these “middens” proved to be uplifted marine deposits which Dr. Leo G. Hertlein of the California Academy of Sciences identified as Late Pleistocene, basing his opinion on specimens and photographs.

It is the purpose of this paper to bring together all of the known examples of those archaeological objects from Mexico which it seems best to refer to as wheeled toys. All but one of these have previously been described and illustrated, but I have thought it worthwhile to repeat to a certain extent in order to put all the evidence into readily available form. I shall also discuss briefly certain of the historical and general anthropological implications of the presence of wheeled toys in ancient America.

Since its discovery and exploitation by commercial diggers in 1933, the unusually rich ceremonial complex of the Spiro Mounds, Leflore County, Oklahoma, has engaged the interest of archaeologists. The importance of the Spiro site to Southeastern archaeology has been recognized, and the science has awaited report of the scientific excavation undertaken by the Work Projects Administration and the University of Oklahoma for a number of years. No comprehensive report on this important area has been published to date.

In his recent publication, Hall disagrees with Roberts' interpretation of depressions found in conjunction with house units, as set forth in a report in 1930.

Dr. Roberts' report includes the results of a thorough examination of eighty houses, two kivas, and six circular depressions. It is the latter with which this comment is concerned. These depressions, according to Hall, are neither “borrow pits” nor “reservoirs,” but probably mark the locations of former pit houses:

“The writer cannot help but feel that the majority of Roberts's Piedra ‘reservoirs’ are pit houses and that if these were defined they would resemble the Rosa Phase pit house in many respects.”

It has become almost an archaeological maxim that each new culture should be followed up with some dispersal studies. Most of these take the form of tabulations of typical cultural items that may be recognized out of context. If these are sufficiently distinctive, dispersion of the particular traits or characteristics may be traced with fair facility. Inherent in this supposition are some outstanding difficulties, nowhere better illustrated than in the case of the Folsom point. After the discovery of the Folsom site at Folsom, New Mexico, and the relatively quick realization that the Folsom point was distinctive and had a characteristic outline and peculiarities of chipping which could be recognized out of context, a fervent search was initiated to discover the dispersal of this element.

The recent revival of interest in the Kolomoki site, little known except to southeastern archaeologists, has suggested that a short description would be of value. The mound group was described by C. C. Jones in 1873 as Messier Plantation Mound. Some random digging has been done from time to time, and several large collections of flint points have been removed. Dr. A. R. Kelly, Jesse D. Jennings, Robert Wauchope, and the writer have made surface collections which are now at Ocmulgee National Monument, Macon, Georgia. Through the interest of Dr. C. C. Harrold of Macon, Georgia, the group has become a state park under the jurisdiction of the State of Georgia. Dr. Robert Wauchope and the writer excavated a series of test pits along the site of a proposed road and found evidence of scattered house sites. Jones reports burials adjacent to the large mound. During 1940 and 1941 the writer investigated two small mounds which were to be flooded by a proposed recreational development. These mounds did not yield much material, and the bulk of the information comes from the surface collections.

During two years of duty at the Naval Operating Base, Trinidad, British West Indies, the author had the good fortune to gain the friendship of a local geologist and savant in the field of archaeology. He is Mr. J. A. Bullbrook, Honorable Secretary, Archaeological Section, Historical Society of Trinidad and Tobago. Mr. Bullbrook resides in the southern portion of the island of Trinidad near Erin, in an area which at one time was well populated by aboriginal migrants from the mainland of South America.

Rather recently the author received a letter from Mr. Bullbrook describing the accidental discovery of an effigy vessel by a native workman in his neighborhood. The paragraphs which follow are excerpts from Mr. Bullbrook's letter.

Our collection, gathered over a period of years from surface sites in the upper Red River basin of northern Texas, represents only the historic and late prehistoric cultures of this region.

The occurrence of pecked and polished celts in the upper Red River area is of interest since they probably represent prehistoric trade objects carried westward up the Red River from somewhere in the eastern forest area, possibly western Arkansas or extreme eastern Oklahoma. Nine of the celts described here were found along a fifteen-mile stretch of the Red River between the mouths of the Pease River and China Creek, which enter it from the south. Several camp sites are located along the south bank of the Red River between these points and two more lie at the mouth of China Creek.