Briefly, the historical background for the legal framework and administrative machinery established for archaeological survey and research in the National Park Service, should be reviewed. The Antiquities Act of 1906 and the Historic Sites Act of 1935, the latter growing out of a special study of European and American legislation and precedents for the conservation of historic monuments instituted by the Secretary of the Interior, are particularly important. Also passed in 1935, was an Act to create a National Park Trust Fund which compares with the National Trust of Great Britain; the National Park Trust of the United States grew out of the same studies which found legal expression in the Historic Sites Act of 1935.

More recently, by coöperative agreement, arrangements have been made for the review of archaeological and historical restoration projects carried out under relief auspices; these involve the operative procedures established by the Works Progress Administration, requiring the technical review of all research and survey project applications by the Smithsonian Institution and the National Park Service, Branch of Historic Sites.

Mr. J. Eric Thompson in his The Solar Year of the Mayas at Quirigua, Guatemala (1932) and the late Dr. J. E. Teeple in his Maya Astronomy (1930) have very fully developed the theory of determinants in the Maya inscriptions. It is sufficient to recall here that according to the theory a determinant date is one which shows what was the number of days required to correct the shifting Maya year at the date of the inscription in which the date occurs. Thompson has shown that two different bases of correction were used. One was 4 Ahau 8 Cumhu, the starting point of the Long Count, 13 August 3113 B.C., the other was 7-6-0-0-0 11 Ahau 8 Cumhu, 10 September 235 B.C., which is thought by both these writers to have been a probable date for the actual inauguration of the Long Count.

Just before the archaeological party of the University of Chicago moved camp to the extreme southeastern part of Fulton County, Illinois, during the summer of 1933, the writer visited the aboriginal site (designated Fv896 by the archaeological survey) on the Norman Crable farm located on the high Illinois River bluff about two miles north of Bluff City. Here for several years Mr. Glenn McGirr, a local collector, had opened a large number of graves to secure artifacts, and on that afternoon had opened six of them. The burials were extended on the back with the arms to the sides and accompanied by typical Middle Mississippi pottery and other artifacts that were assigned to the Spoon River focus of the Monk's Mound aspect after excavations had been carried on by the field party.

The reported occurrence of Folsom points in California, and the suggestion that the parts of the Folsom complex will be found to be as generally widespread west of the Rocky Mountains as they have to the eastward, raises several interesting problems as to the relative age and significance of Folsom material reported from different parts of North America. It becomes obvious, moreover, that an appreciable time has been involved in the spread of the complex if its limits are to be extended, as recent occurrences would suggest.

These and other considerations properly belong to a survey article, and it is enough for the purpose of this paper to mention briefly that during the past several years the Folsom complex has occupied a singular place in any postulated chronological scheme for American archaeology because investigation during this time has failed to show what lies immediately on either side of it.

The area referred to in the following summary of investigations includes the valley of the Tanana River, sections of the Central Yukon Valley above the mouth of the Tanana, and the upper Copper River Valley. This sub-arctic region, inhabited by bands of semi-nomadic Athapascan Indians, by white traders, trappers, miners, and only recently by a few farmers, presents unusual difficulties to an attempt to discover archaeological sites. This is due not only to the sparse population and limited cultivation but to the characteristic mantle of moss, brush and forest that obscures all evidence of ancient dwelling sites. No habitable caves or rock shelters have been found. Under these circumstances, investigations must depend primarily upon information obtained from the present natives and upon accidental discoveries made by white settlers in very limited cultivation and in placer mining operations.

The artifacts of rough stone consist of a crude lamp and some stone hammers, the latter unmodified by chipping or any other process.

Stone lamp. A. S. Darby found at Old Port au Choix a fragment of a lamp roughly made by hollowing out an ovoid or oblong boulder of sandstone (Plate XV, Figure 2, Number 1). The cavity is about 1¼ inches deep and is rounded from end to end and side to side. There is no wick ledge. The thickest part of the base is 1⅛ inches, but the walls decrease in thickness toward the rounded edges at the top. The hollow is slightly discolored by the blubber and there is an incrustation of burnt blubber on both sides of the intact wall. There is a large natural hollow in the base.

Another crude stone lamp was found by Israel Hutchings at the Cow Head site; it consisted of a hollow stone, judging from his description.

In recent years, the attention of some archaeologists has been directed to the Canadian Northwest with the expectation of finding some evidence or indication of the early migrations of man on this continent. That man reached North America by Bering Strait from Asia, is generally accepted, but the theory that the migrations took place in late Pleistocene times and by way of an open corridor between the Keewatin ice and the Rockies, requires confirmation. It is significant that Folsom and Yuma points from Saskatchewan, described by E. B. Howard, were found mainly in areas bordering the ancient glacial Lake Regina.

As a further contribution to this problem, it seems desirable to present a brief description of a carved stone relic found in gravel in central Saskatchewan about three years ago.

The stone was found about seven miles southeast of the town of D'Arcy in a gravel pit located on Sec. 9, Tp. 28, Rge. 18, W. 3rd Meridian, on the north bank of a ravine running east into Bad Lake.

Distinct types of grooved stone mauls are so common in the northwest prairie states that they deserve a brief description.

South Dakota appears to be about the center of the area in which they are found. They are common in North Dakota and the southwest corner of Minnesota, the northwestern part of Iowa, Nebraska, and the eastern parts of Wyoming and Montana. Those found outside of the above area were probably exchange pieces traded with neighboring tribes. These stone mauls seem to be as common in the northwest prairie states as the grooved stone ax is in the woodland region southeastward. In the earlier days they were commonly used as door stops in the cabins of the pioneers; farmers fastened two together with rope or wire and used them as windbreaks on hay and grain stacks. Every private collection contains several, and nearly four hundred have accumulated in the University of South Dakota Museum without special effort to collect them.