As is well known, one of the most serious handicaps to archaeology along the Atlantic Seaboard is the scarcity of deep stratified sites. Shallow sites are numerous, but if these ever contained superimposed cultures, the evidence in most cases seems to have been destroyed by the plow. Furthermore, as the result of an intense population, the most likely Indian sites are now covered by cities, towns and farms. These factors coupled with a humid climate, so destructive to all but non-perishable artifacts, have combined to present us with most difficult problems.

It must not be supposed that the case is hopeless, but it is obvious that unless some unforeseen good fortune should bring to light exceptional sites, progress toward the eventual understanding of the chronological aspects of the archaeology of the region will be made only through a most laborious process.

Since 1929 Southwestern archaeology has stood on a much surer footing than at any other time in the history of its development. This stabilization is due to the research of Dr. A. E. Douglass of Tucson, Arizona, whose inquiries into the reaction of trees to weather, from an astronomic standpoint, led, as a ramification, to the use of the annual growth rings in trees in dating the pre-Spanish remains of man in the Southwest. From the standpoint of the archaeologist, the most significant progress date in Dr. Douglass' study was June 22, 1929. On that day ended a long search for a particular sequence of rings needed to complete the ring record. This sequence was found in a log in the Showlow ruin, and united two chronologies then extant, the one a floating series of five hundred and eighty years, the other an historic series extending from 1929 to about 1280 A.D.

A wide and interesting field for coöperation by metallurgists and archaeologists is the metallographic study of primitive metal work. The present paper is an elementary exposition of techniques which are familiar to every metallurgist but which may be simply applied by archaeologists in any metallurgical laboratory. The typical copper artifacts examined (Plate 11) were kindly given by H. C. Shetrone of the Ohio State Museum, W. C. McKern of the Milwaukee Public Museum, and C. E. Brown of the Wisconsin Archaeological Society. All the specimens are Lake Superior native copper, but they show different kinds of working. Several unworked copper nuggets from the Wisconsin mounds were treated in the laboratory for comparison with the native artifacts.