In 1947, at a conference on Peruvian archaeology held in Viking Fund headquarters in New York City, Wendell C. Bennett proposed a concept of area co-tradition and used it as a means of expressing certain characteristics of Peruvian culture history. He first defined the concept in abstract terms, then described the Peruvian co-tradition, and finally suggested the possibility that other area co-traditions might exist in the Southwestern United States, Middle America, and Northwest Argentina (Bennett, 1948).

Acting on Bennett's suggestion, Martin and Rinaldo (1951) subsequently worked out a Southwestern area Co-tradition in some detail. In addition, Willey (1953, p. 374) has suggested the existence of an Arctic or Eskimo cotradition and of three co-traditions in the Eastern United States: Archaic, Woodland, and Mississippi.

In the present paper, I shall confine myself to the use of the concept in Peru and the Southwest, since these are the only places where it has yet been applied in any detail.

San Nicolas is a small island located off the coast of southern California some 75 miles southwest of Los Angeles and 55 miles from the nearest point of the mainland. It is the most distant from the mainland of eight islands referred to collectively as the Channel Islands. San Nicolas is about 8 miles long by 4 miles wide and is 32.2 square miles in area. According to Norris (n.d., pp. 67-74), San Nicolas Island is a faulted asymmetric anticline composed of Pleistocene sediments lying unconformably on Eocene sandstone and shale. Original deposition during the Eocene was followed by anticline development and faulting in Eocene-Oligocene times. Miocene volcanic activity probably accounts for the several small diabase dikes on the island and for rhyolitic Begg Rock 7 miles northwest. The Pleistocene sediments were laid down during the first half of that period when the island was nearly or entirely submerged.

On September 22, 1951, Marc Navarrete brought word to the Arizona State Museum of the discovery of two large projectile points in association with mammoth bones exposed in an arroyo eroded by Greenbush Creek one mile northwest of Naco, Arizona (Fig. 1). Marc Navarrete and his father, Fred, for some fifteen years have been watching the arroyo for fossils as erosion widened and deepened it.

A bone concentration, though known for some time, was freshly exposed by floods resulting from heavy summer rains in August, 1951. This encouraged Fred Navarrete to dig in an attempt to salvage what appeared to be a part of a skull with teeth and tusk of a large animal. In the course of this work he found near the skull a projectile point in what appeared to be undisturbed matrix. Additional excavations by Marc Navarrete soon revealed the left foreleg, scapula, humerus, and ulna and, near the superior margin of the scapula, again in the undisturbed clay, a second projectile point came to light.

Kroeber's classic study of the “Cultural and Natural Areas of Native North America” has been invaluable to eth' nologists and archaeologists working with cultural phenomena more recent than the beginning of the Christian era. However, it has become increasingly evident that the cultural and natural areas of the neo-Indian (the term used by Griffin, 1946, p. 38) were not necessarily those of the paleo-Indian (the term used by Roberts, 1940, pp. 51-116). It is therefore my intent here to outline briefly, and without much detail, the cultural and natural areas of the paleo-Indian.

I have focused my attention upon glaciation, because the presence of a continental glacier seems to have been a major factor of North American paleogeography in the periods here considered. Climate, which possibly is more the result of, than the cause of, glaciation, I have interpreted in terms of pollen levels, and any other phenomena that I could understand.

Asiatic origins have, at one time or another, been suggested or at least considered for a number of traits connected with the manufacture and decoration of the earlier New World pottery. The well-known paper by McKern (1937) is among the most explicit statements on the subject. Griffin (1946; Sears and Griffin 1950a) has held similar views for some time. Like McKern, he has primarily in mind traits of the Woodland pattern of eastern North America, although he also mentions some non-Woodland traits among those which have counterparts in the Old World (1946, p. 45).

Since McKern's paper, the distribution in time of the traits involved has become a lot better established. With the help of the still suspiciously regarded radiocarbon dates, our perspective on ceramic history in the United States has been extended over a span which appears to be that of some four millennia. Among the more significant additions to the Asiatic half of the distributional picture first place must be given to recent Soviet work in eastern Siberia.

The archaeology of Panama, like that of most of lower Central America and the north Andes, has but recently emerged from a purely descriptive stage. The formulation of cultural-geographical divisions in ceramic and sculptural styles — “Cultures” as these are sometimes called — has been the most important attempt at synthesis. Lothrop (1948) envisaged four such “culture areas”: (1) Darien (Panama below the Canal Zone); (2) Coclé (the Pacific watershed in Coclé, Herrera, and Las Tablas Provinces); (3) Veraguas (Pacific highland Panama in the Province of the same name); and (4) Chiriqui (the upland country of Chiriqui Province and adjacent Costa Rica). To these Stirling and Rands (personal communication) have recently added what is probably a fifth, the Atlantic coastal strip above the Canal Zone. The internal coherence or unity of these “culture areas” is of a most general sort.

Very Little has been written about the archaeology of central and southern Bolivia, the attention of students having been concentrated on the Tiahuanaco area. I began exploring this great unknown region in 1940-44 and am now continuing the project in my present capacity as Director of the Archaeological Museum of the University of Cochabamba. The present report is a summary of the results of this work to date. The best described Bolivian culture outside of the Tiahuanaco area is the one called Mizque-Tiahuanaco by Nordenskiöld and Bennett which I am calling Yampará. I have found tombs in an earlier variety of this style without any Tiahuanaco influence. A characteristic of Yampará pottery is the presence of tripod bowls which resemble Mexican ones; this trait is entirely un-Tiahuanacoid.

The Yampará style extends to the whole of the Department of Chuquisaca, except for Cinti and the southern part of Azero, and it occurs also in the Province of Cornelio Saavedra in Potosí.

Venado Beach comprises a shore line facing the Pacific Ocean in the southwestern corner of the Panama Canal zone. The burials here discussed were found 100 to 200 yards from the high water mark in a band of refuse which extended across the mouth of the Mangopobre Valley. A total of 369 bodies have been recorded. Of these, 202 were excavated by the Peabody Museum of Harvard University in 1951, and 167 were unearthed by Neville A. Harte, who most generously has placed at my disposal his carefully kept field notes.

The skeletal material from Venado Beach, owing to unusual soil conditions, is better preserved than any other collection yet found in the wet tropics of the New World. When studied, it should prove of general interest. We are now concerned, however, with burial techniques rather than with the bones themselves or the funeral paraphernalia which accompanied them.

During the last four years (1949-1952) the National Museum of Canada has carried out archaeological investigations in the Northwest Territories of Canada, the primary purpose of which was to determine what kind of archaeological materials and what sort of prehistoric artifact complexes existed in that area. Since part of this region, mainly the Mackenzie River drainage, was supposedly free of ice early in the recession of the last glaciation, it has often been suggested as a possible migration route through which early groups of Indians could have passed when moving from Asia to the more southerly regions of the New World, and, therefore, it was hoped that archaeological information resulting from research in that district might throw some light on these early migrants.

The first three seasons of research (1949-1951) in northwest Canada were mainly devoted to archaeological reconnaissance (MacNeish, 1951; 1953). The scarcity of cleared land and of adequate transportation seriously hampered the survey.

Recently renewed interest has been focused upon the occurrence in the Plains area of the archaeological complex often termed the “Southern cult.” This complex is found over a wide geographic area and in association with varied cultures. It occurs throughout the southeastern United States, and extends north and west along the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys. It has been found in eastern South Dakota, eastern North Dakota, and in the provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada. The complex is characterized by specific art motifs and ceremonial objects, including masklike whelk shell gorgets, and the cross, forkedeye, and hand-and-eye motifs. The complex was apparently fundamentally dependent upon a horticultural base, and is associated in nearly every case with platform mounds. Sites often thought of in connection with the Southern cult are Etowah (Georgia), Moundville (Alabama), and Spiro (Oklahoma). The author has recently examined materials in the collections of the North Dakota State Historical Museum for artifacts related to the complex.

Pre-Russian Aleutian Culture was characterized by such typically Eskimo traits as open-sea hunting and the use of kayak like boats, gut clothing, stone knives, ivory needles with eyes, labrets (probably introduced from Northwest Coast cultures), circle-and-dot design, and others. There is evidence that in the eastern Aleutians the culture was most Eskimoid during the early phases and gradually a somewhat more differentiated Aleutian type developed under the influence of the environment. A number of traits, such as whale poisoning with aconite and the use of the semisubterranean, sod-covered house with entrance in the top, are recognized as probable direct Asiatic transfers (Heizer, 1943). The Aleut population numbered 16,000 or more persons prior to 1741 (Kroeber, 1947), and the villages, most of which were situated close to shore, occupied the majority of more than sixty islands comprising the archipelago. Abandoned sites often remain as imposing mounds whose archaeological deposits may be more than thirty feet thick.

The Bull Brook Site, near Ipswich, Mass., was discovered in the spring of 1951 by William C. Eldridge, of East Lynn, and Joseph Vaccaro, of Beverly, Massachusetts. Both are members of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society. A brief notice of the site appeared over their names (Eldridge and Vaccaro, 1952). The site was worked by them, with the assistance of Nicola, Frank, and Tony Vaccaro, Alfred Thibodeau, Tony Orsini, E. E. Tizzer, Howard A. Jones, and Douglas Jordan. The last named is preparing a more extensive account of the site and analysis of the collections obtained from it.

The site lay on the south side of Bull Brook, and was situated on a kame terrace jutting into a salt marsh (Fig. 90, c). Its surface was approximately 40 feet above sea level. This deposit has been worked for sand and gravel, and the site is to all intents and purposes destroyed.

Impressions of past climates on 1 soils and soil materials are not easily obliterated by time. Morphological and chemical features of the weathering record may be of considerable aid in reconstructing the past environments as well as in understanding the present ones. It should be possible not merely to recognize the qualitative aspects of the past climates, by the morphological-geochemical analysis, but also to attempt establishment of semi-quantitative time scales, of indices of the duration of this or that component of the climatic sequence. This analytical approach to the study of ancient soils, palaeopedology, is now at its beginning. The large but disorganized body of observations and data in this field is still lacking in perspectives and interpretations. The tentative conclusions developed herein are subject to revision and change, and it is our hope to verify and to enlarge this study in the near future, time and opportunity permitting.

Although the Republic of Colombia occupies a large area in northwestern South America arid its geographical position makes it an important link between the basic components of nuclear America, our knowledge of Colombia's prehistoric cultures is still very scanty and sporadic. Practically no serious attempts have been made toward correlating its many different cultural manifestations in terms of temporal development or spatial distribution. This has been due mainly to the lack of organized scientific archaeology and to the romantic orientation most research had taken in Colombia, where archaeologists have concentrated upon the more spectacular ceremonial sites while ignoring almost completely the problems of chronology and cultural interrelations.

The considerable advance made during the last decade in the field of Venezuelan and Antillean archaeology, together with the many unsolved problems posed by Meso-American and South American relationships, has pressed the need for the establishment of an adequate chronological framework for the archaeological cultures of the north Colombian lowlands.

During the summer of 1950, from June through August, the authors made an archaeological reconnaissance in south - central Quebec. All traveling was done by canoe. This work was made possible by grants from the Robert S. Peabody Foundation for Archaeology, Andover, Massachusetts and from Stephen Phillips of Salem, Massachusetts. The survey was started at Senneterre, Quebec (Fig. 54) and carried northward by way of Lac Parent and the Bell River to Lake Mattagami. At this point, we began working upstream by way of the Waswanipi River to Lake Waswanipi, passing through Lakes Olga and Goeland. After spending a few days looking about Lake Waswanipi, we continued on our way to Lake Mistassini. The route took us through Lakes Puskitamika, Malouin, Lichen, and Opawica. We then ascended the Opawica River to Lakes Doda and Bras Coupé. From Kere, we crossed the height of land to Lac Presqu'ile and continued up the Obatogamau River to Lake Muscocho.

This study is based on the bison, deer, and antelope bone from a fortified earth lodge village (32ME15) in the Garrison Reservoir Area. The site was excavated by River Basin Survey parties in 1950 and 1951, under the supervision of G. Ellis Burcaw and Donald D. Hartle respectively. The animal bone from this site is of particular interest because it permits a comparison to be made between the methods used on the smaller food animals and those used on the bison. In a previous study an attempt was made to compare the methods used on antelope and on bison, but the methods were those of very different peoples who were widely separated both geographically and temporally and the differences could as easily have been due to culture as well as the size of the game. Since this material is from a single component site, any difference in technique can safely be attributed to the size of the game.

In 1940, while on a commission for the Ecuadorian Government to the site of La Tolita in the province of Esmeraldas, Ecuador, the author had an opportunity to examine and photograph a few specimens in the collection of Sr. Yannuzzelli. Sr. Yannuzzelli maintained a ranch at the archaeological site of La Tolita which is located a few miles up the Rio Santiago from the coastal town of Limones and is not far from the Colombian border. Several large flat top mounds (Fig. 56, 1) and about 25 increasingly smaller ones comprise the present site. It had been visited about 30 years previously by both Uhle and Saville, but neither one conducted adequate excavations there. It is a favorite site for local inhabitants to pan gold, and in 1940, Sr. Yannuzzelli was actually engaged in carrying out extensive, large scale, placer mining operations within the archaeological zone.

Prinsesse Ingeborg Halvø is a low peninsula, situated on lat. 81°35'N., long. 16°35'W. in northernmost east-Greenland. From the west it wedges into the large local icecap Flade Isblink, which forms the easternmost corner of Greenland. The peninsula lies 70 miles southeast of the northernmost region in Greenland, Pearyland, separated from it by a bay, the joint mouth of two big fjords: Danmarks Fjord and Independence Fjord. The latter cuts its way westward from the Greenland Sea as the southern border of Pearyland (Fig. 101).

At three places on Prinsesse Ingeborg Halvo (Fig. 102, A, B, C) paleo-Eskimo flint implements were spotted by the author of this article during the summer of 1952. The localities were all situated at a height of 40-50 feet above sea level and at a distance of 370-810 yards from the present coastline. Thus, from a geological point of view they belonged to the same horizon in the system of old raised beach terraces of the peninsula.

Although many large mound groups, are found in northeastern Iowa, little information concerning the prehistory of this region has been published. Results of limited early investigations, presented by Cyrus Thomas in the 12th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, are indicative of a fertile field. Records of the pre-1900 Hill-Lewis survey, preserved in the files of the Minnesota Historical Society, include descriptive notes and maps locating many Iowa mounds which have since been destroyed. Field reports by the late Ellison Orr, assistant supervisor of a statewide archaeological survey, made in the 1930's by the Iowa State Historical Society, may be found in the collections of the Society at Iowa City. Articles by the late Charles R. Keyes (1934, 1951), field supervisor of this latter project, describe the wealth of the state's prehistoric resources. Nevertheless, the data concerning the contents of the mounds in northeastern Iowa is meager.