This article represents a preliminary statement of the results of the archaeological survey of the Sierra de Tamaulipas, coastal Tamaulipas north of the Soto la Marina River and the adjacent portion of Texas, which was conducted from November, 1945 through June, 1946 under the auspices of the University of Chicago. Since a long interval of time will probably elapse between the analysis of the archaeological materials and the final publication, it seems advisable to put this summary into print.

Basic to the purpose of the survey and to the problems with which it was concerned was the assumption that there were cultural relations between the people of the Southeast and the more complex cultures of Mexico.

The importance of being able to date accurately the remains of past societies has long been recognized by archaeologists. The problem has always been to find methods that work in the absence of historical records. Recent developments, such as tree-ring dating, have been great contributions, but they are not applicable everywhere. There is still a great need for new methods to supplement and extend the range of present dating procedures.

A large field of knowledge so far largely unexplored for possible dating methods is the physics and chemistry of archaeological remains. One area in this field is the study of naturally occurring radioactive elements. Some of these elements have been used by geologists to date ancient rock strata, but applications to archaeological materials have not been made. Recently, however, two possible methods for using radioactive elements to date archaeological remains have been proposed on theoretical grounds. It is not yet definitely known whether they will work, or how well. Further research is necessary.

The importance of the Clear Fork Focus as a pre-pottery archaeological complex of north-central Texas has become generally known to archaeologists through the industry of its discoverer and principal proponent, Dr. Cyrus N. Ray, of Abilene, Texas. Unfortunately, the relationship of this complex to other and comparable archaeological cultures of Texas has been largely neglected and some regrettable misinformation in regard to its chronological position has been widely disseminated. In this paper the cultural affiliations and age of the Clear Fork Focus will be discussed in terms of the evidence presented by its discoverers and from the standpoint of new data derived from large scale excavations completed by the University of Texas in the terraces of the Colorado River near Austin, Texas. Additional information obtained by the writer through study of some twelve thousand projectile points from central, south, and western Texas, and their geographic and temporal distribution also is used.

Pottery obtained during 1938–40 in northwest Georgia establishes a ceramic sequence which I shall preview here, since the war delayed even a preliminary analysis of this material for so many years and the final publication will be a long time in preparation.

I am grateful to the University of Georgia and the State Department of Natural Resources, sponsors of the WPA survey which obtained the materials discussed here, for permission to present this preliminary report on the ceramics of the Etowah Drainage. I am also indebted to the Tulane University Council on Research for a grant which enabled Mrs. Wauchope and me to study the pottery in Georgia during the summer of 1946, and to Dr. Arthur R. Kelly, Ocmulgee National Monument, for many official and personal courtesies extended to us during our stay in Macon.

I shall employ the designations for archaeological stages used by Ford and Willey in An Interpretation of the Prehistory of the Eastern United States, since these make it unnecessary to refer frequently to many different individual components in chronologically related areas.

Lloyd A. Wilford, in an excellent paper on the Headwaters Lakes aspect, points out that two of its important traits are primary burials, “often in a sitting position,” and “small mortuary vessels … .” Wilford's work in Minnesota has provided certain clues as to the source of the mounds in Manitoba, the traits above mentioned being among the most important.

Archaeological work in Manitoba has been exceedingly sketchy and often extremely careless. Very little if any effort has been made to correlate the various cultural horizons with known aspects south of the international boundary. Documentation is scant and unsatisfactory. Many of the mounds have been badly disturbed without regard for their scientific and historic value; and valuable material has been lost without hope of recovery. Nevertheless, examination of the early documentation, plus the work of the writer during the past few years, indicates a northwesterly movement of some of the important traits of Wilford's various Minnesota aspects.

In a recent paper we explored the possibility of comparing the physical and chemical characteristics of aboriginal sites by the small-sample method. The two mounds investigated showed clear differences with respect to certain features. Whether or not there were quantitative distinctions pertaining to other properties depended upon the validity of the sampling method. It thus became apparent to us that a further investigation should be made wherein the results obtained by sampling could be tested by comparison with data based upon practical certainty. In other words one mound should be sampled and at the same time be completely excavated so as to determine the actual values for the entities under consideration. Concomitantly, an opportunity would be offered to make an archaeological analysis of an aboriginal site in its entirety, including a tabulation of all the cultural elements present, such as artifacts and burials.

This paper presents data for the reconstruction of a culture sequence in the section of western peninsular Florida that has bf en referred to as the Manatee region (Goggin, 1947, p. 118). These data have been drawn from the analyses of a group of archaeological sites excavated under the direction of the Bureau of American Ethnology during the peri od of 1923 to 1936.1 A full presentation of this material is planned for a forthcoming report (Willey, N.D. a). For the present, this preliminary summary is offered as a companion resume to previously published reviews of archaeological chronology in northwest Florida (see Willey and Woodbury, 1942, and Willey, 1945).

During the field season of 1941–42, joint excavations were undertaken in the Huasteca territory by the American Museum of Natural History and the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia. The American Museum had appointed Dr. Gordon Ekholm to investigate this area as a part of the program sponsored by the Institute of Andean Research. The Instituto Nacional appointed Wilfrido Du Solier to collaborate with Ekholm because of his (Du Solier's) long interest in and knowledge of the area.

It was decided to undertake work in the following sites: Las Flores in Tampico; Tancol, a little to the north of Tampico; Panuco, on the river of the same name; and Buena Vista, Huaxcama, San Luis Potosi, to the northwest of the Huasteca territory. The explorations in Buena Vista and Las Flores were made by both Ekholm and Du Solier, while those of Panuco and Tancol, due to the illness of Du Solier, were made only by Ekholm.

Although the importance of the northwest Gulf coastal region in the problem of Mexican-Southeastern relationships frequently has been pointed out, the region has received comparatively little archaeological investigation. As a relatively uniform and unbroken territory, stretching from the Caddo area on the east to the Huastec area on the south, the region forms one of the most likely routes of land communication between the advanced cultures of Mexico and those of the Southeast. Inhabited at the time of the Conquest by numerous bands of nomadic hunters, fishermen, and food-gatherers who left nothing comparable with the spectacular remains of their neighbors to the east and south, the region generally has been neglected in favor of richer fields.

In the exceedingly important symposium, “Man in Northeastern North America,” edited by Frederick Johnson, Frederica de Laguna has published a very interesting and elucidative paper, “The Importance of the Eskimo in Northeastern Archeology,” dealing chiefly with the relations between the Dorset Eskimo and the prehistoric Indians of the Northeast. The subject is fascinating, indeed, partly because the Dorset culture has a rather peculiar position within the prehistoric Eskimo cultures, and partly because even the Indian cultures of the Northeast coast in many respects have cultural traits alien to other prehistoric Indian cultures. In fact, the dissimilarity between Dorset and the neighboring Thule culture is so striking that the Eskimo origin of the Dorset culture has been seriously doubted by Therkel Mathiassen and Henry B. Collins. Collins, however, later agreed in the opinion, originally expressed by Diamond Jenness, that Dorset, in spite of the Indian-like features, may be an Eskimo culture.

Because of the interest in the mural paintings from Kuaua pueblo, it is felt advisable to present a complete report on the field and laboratory processing of these. Although two articles were published in El Palacio in 1935 and 1936 on the removing and processing of the murals, the detailed procedure has not been published as a unit in a scientific report. The processing of the Kuaua murals had no precedent to follow. As it is possible that similar finds will occur in future excavations, the processes developed for coping with the problem at Kuaua may be of aid. These processes may be varied to meet conditions involving other types of paintings.

The Kuaua ruins, now known as the Coronado State Monument, are situated on the western side of the Rio Grande two air miles northwest of the business section of Bernalillo, New Mexico. They lie in the Tiguex province of the central Rio Grande.

The state of Florida is mainly a peninsula projecting some three hundred miles south of the continental North American land mass. This unique position has given the state a certain amount of isolation, as a result of which, and because of environmental factors, Florida has been able to participate in the Southeastern cultural picture and at the same time to develop characteristic local features.

Although Florida has had a long history of archaeological research, with an impressive bibliography of descriptive material, synthesis has only recently been attempted. Some early attempts were made to divide the state into archaeological areas but none were of any significance until M. W. Stirling's recent four-fold division into the Gulf Coast, Glades, St. Johns, and Northern Highland areas. This division has been found, in general, to be useful, needing only greater refinement.

When William Henry Holmes of the U. S. National Museum explored the Potomac River Valley in 1890, he studied and described most of the major village sites and cultures to be found in the area known as "Tidewater."1 The Marcey Creek site is located at the head of Tidewater, overlooking the Little Falls of the Potomac, but was not reported by Holmes.

As W. H. Holmes pointed out in 1905, our archaeological investigations need to be “supplemented by the rich materials derived from the study of the living peoples.“1 In accordance with this line of thought, I have tried to correlate some findings of archaeology and ethnology in relation to the small but controversial archaeological problem of fetishes and toys. The clay figurines and miniature pots illustrated in Plate XII were made as toys by contemporary Navaho children living in the region between the Chaco and Blanco Canyons, New Mexico. The toys represent two women with the characteristic Navaho skirts and headdresses, three miniature vessels (a handled mug, round-bottomed cooking vessel, and crude dish), and thirteen animals, including two dogs, a sheep, ram, mare, donkey, two horses, a cow, chicken, buck, and two goats. The faces of the women have been pinched to suggest a nose but otherwise they are featureless. One dog, the sheep, cow, two horses, and one of the goats have black glass beads for eyes.

My Geological and archaeological studies in the Valley of Mexico, which I have carried out since the end of 1945 under the auspices and with the aid of the Viking Fund, Inc. of New York, were rewarded on February 22 of this year (1947) by an extraordinary find of human skeletal remains in the Upper Pleistocene Bercerra formation at Tepexpan, in the State of Mexico. So far the quest for genuine fossil human remains in North America has been a tantalizing venture because of the incomplete state of preservation and the uncertainty of dating. In this respect the Tepexpan find would seem to meet many of the requirements necessary for assigning it to a known geological formation dating back to the close of the Ice Age. Moreover, the formation in which the human fossil was excavated has yielded at several other localities artifacts which must be regarded as more or less contemporary.

In the summer of 1945, members of the Illinois State Museum under the direction of Thorne Deuel, Director of the Museum, excavated a group of Indian burial mounds in the Havana, Mason County area. Burial No. 10 in Mound No. 9 of this group yielded 22 rounded bead-like objects, composed of strongly oxidized iron, together with slightly more than 1000 ground shell and pearl or pearl slug beads. As the burial was evidently prehistoric and of Hopewellian age, it was at once conjectured that the iron might be of meteoric origin. In January, 1946, several of these supposed iron beads were sent to the State Geological Survey, with the request that the nature and source of the iron be determined if possible. In addition, Dr. Deuel kindly made available the data presented herein on the nature of the discovery and on the size, shape, and arrangement of the supposed beads.

This paper is frankly exploratory, designed to test the possibility of applying historical and archaeological evidence to the solution of certain problems in demography and human ecology for which it is impossible to secure data of more conventional character.

The Central Mexican region was selected because it contained for a very long time perhaps the densest population on the North American continent and because the annalistic as well as archaeological information concerning it is remarkably copious. Specifically the area is defined for present purposes as that included in the present states of Vera Cruz, Hidalgo, Tlaxcala, Puebla, Mexico, Federal District, Morelos, Oaxaca, Michoacan, and Guerrero. This territory is not an ethnic or economic entity since it includes both coastal and highland cultures together with numerous independent linguistic stocks. On the other hand it corresponds to the most intensive area of archaeological investigation outside of Yucatan and is more or less coterminous with the so-called “Aztec Empire” as the latter existed in 1520.

The senior author has for a number of years worked on the problem of the numerous and virtually unknown burial sites on the bluffs bordering the valley of the Republican River in Geary and Clay Counties, Kansas. This work has been a matter of some urgency, owing to the prevalence of unsystematic amateur excavation on the more prominent stone cairns found in the area. Fortunately, the complete excavation of the larger cairns involves too much labor for the merely curious, and it has often been possible to salvage material and information despite disturbance.

The investigation of archaeological sites in North America has in the past concerned itself predominantly with the discovery and examination of burials and artifacts and associated fauna. This purely qualitative approach has been essential to the elucidation of problems in the culture history of aboriginal man. At the same time, except in such cases where obvious stratigraphy displays itself, few efforts have been directed toward the analysis of the matrix itself, the deposits in which the more spectacular bones, pottery, and implements of war are embedded. Nevertheless, it is wholly possible that accumulations of debris, such as habitation mounds or midden deposits, may be able to supply information of a quantitative character which will throw light upon the population, living conditions, and ecological status of the former inhabitants. A recent study1 based upon older excavations of California shell mounds has indicated the type of information which might be obtained. The present paper explores certain aspects of the methodology applicable to the general problem.

Studies of Louisiana's prehistory have been devoted largely to the pottery-making and mound-building cultures. The topography of the state is primarily responsible for this fact, since the delta lands of southern Louisiana and the wide, fertile river valleys of the northern part were particularly suitable for the agricultural peoples whose numerous sites have attracted attention. Witness to this fact is the long sequence of pottery-containing cultures (Tchefuncte, Marksville, Troyville, Coles Creek, Plaquemine, historic Natchez) delineated by Ford, Willey, and Quimby in central and southern Louisiana, while the Red and Ouachita River valleys in the northern portion present another series of culture periods (Marksville, Coles Creek, Gahagan, Bossier, Belcher, Glendora) which culminate in the historic Caddo.

Despite these facts, evidences of pre-pottery cultures are appearing in the state and these may be expected to increase as more careful investigations are pursued. This could be anticipated from the situation in surrounding states—the Edwards Plateau culture of central Texas, the Ozark Bluff Dweller culture of Arkansas and the several strata which underlie the pottery containing cultures in the Southeast, recently reviewed by Haag.