The purpose of the present paper is to call attention to certain rock shelter sites in the vicinity of Huancayo, Peru, which—since they have yielded thus far several types of chipped stone artifacts and bone implements, but no pottery—appear at the present writing to be unique in Peru. The two sites described in the following pages are situated on old terraces of the Chupaca River, a tributary of the Mantaro, in Junín Department in the central Peruvian highlands. They were brought to the writer's notice by Mr. Paul G. Ledig, Observer-in- Charge of the Carnegie Institution Magnetic Observatory near Huancayo, who has in the past made small excavations at both sites.

Within the town of Norton, Massachusetts, close by the boundary between it and the city of Taunton, lies the beautiful little body of water known to this day by its Indian name of Winneconnet. This lake, fed by a system of streams from the north and west and draining southward through a complicated network of ponds, swamps, and streams into the Taunton River, seems to have been the center of a large area of Indian population in ancient times. Cultivation and other disturbances of the earth surfaces have demonstrated the existence of many sites of former Indian habitation, while numerous items in local tradition point to the fact that many Indians lived and died within the township. Hardly a garden plot that has not yielded its quota of stone implements to the collections of local “relic hunters” exists in this vicinity.

Ocmulgee National Monument lies on the left bank of the Ocmulgee River at the eastern edge of the city of Macon, Bibb County Georgia. A general description of the archaeological remains has appeared in a previous publication. The present report will describe the excavation of a ceremonial earth lodge uncovered on the Macon Plateau and will summarize traits found in earth lodges represented in the Macon Plateau focus. As this represents the earliest earth lodge so far reported in the southeast, the distribution and significance of the occurrence of this type of structure will be discussed briefly. No historical identification of the Macon Plateau focus can be made, but some parallels with southeastern ceremonial will be pointed out.

Early attempts at the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs by using the phonetic approach were ill-advised, and as a consequence the phonetic theory was generally discredited. However, in view of the fact that the nonmathematical glyphic texts are largely unread, the general reaction to the total ideographic point of view was unjustified. Because we cannot read these texts and know little of the origin of the various signs, any statement of the proportion of ideographs to the total number of signs would appear premature.

The Deep Creek region is a pleasant Great Basin valley bordering the southwest edge of the Great Salt Lake Desert—that is, it is pleasant in contrast to the 10,000 square miles of stark desert which bound it on three sides. The Deep Creek Mountains, which attain an elevation of 12,101 feet, separate the valley from the desert proper. Two small streams, Fifteen-Mile Creek and Spring Creek, have their sources in these mountains and join at Ibapah, Utah, to form Deep Creek itself.

Probably the study of petroglyphs and pictographs has been the most neglected field of archaeology. This disregard has prevailed despite the fact that both types of drawings exist in almost every state. Few attempts have been made to study the relations between different sites or between petroglyphs and other remains. Petroglyphs are regarded with little concern because little is known about them and detailed descriptions will not help to solve the problems confronting the investigator.

A. J. Waring, Jr. has reported certain Hopewellian elements in northern Georgia. His comments reminded me of a site, previously unreported, in the vicinity of Franklin, Tennessee.

I report from my field notes a site discovered two miles west of Franklin, atop Reid Hill, a knob 140 feet high: “Built on the flat top of the hill, the conical mound measures 18 feet high by 80 feet in diameter. The mound is built of stones and earth. (These stones are large and numerous. It is essentially a stone mound.) A deep trench had been cut into the east side of the mound but no sherds, flint, or other material were visible.” Its situation, on a high hill in the flat Harpeth Valley, is similar to that of the many stone mounds reported from Georgia. No central depression was observed, but it may have been destroyed by the trench. I was unable to learn who dug into the mound so do not know whether artifacts were recovered.

The Leake mounds are located 1½ miles west of Cartersville, Georgia, on the north side of the Dallas-Rockmart road. They lie a short distance back from the left bank of the Etowah River but are still in the river bottom. They were briefly mentioned by Moorehead in Etowah Papers, but he did not discuss the type of material there. The group consists of three mounds, of which one was flattopped and the others domed, at least in recent years. The mounds lie directly across the Etowah River from Ladd's Mountain, where Waring recently reported the destruction of a tomb of Hopewellian type. In 1940 the Leake mounds were also sold to road builders and the greater part of them now forms the fill for the new bridge at that point. Pat Wofford, Jr., of Atco, Georgia, observed the destruction of the mounds and salvaged as much material as possible. The other authors are indebted to him for calling to their attention the significance of the remains.

In a review of a recent book by the writer, The Origins and History of the Mayas, Part I, Introductory Investigations, Los Angeles, 194S, Mr. J. Eric S. Thompson, of Carnegie Institution, levels criticism against what he considers its main thesis, the identification of the Itzas with the rulers of the Maya “Old Empire.” Although the full development of this thesis is planned for publication in Parts II and III of his work, the writer desires the privilege of making a brief answer to this criticism in the present journal.