In a recent paper notable for its lucid presentation of certain of the wider problems confronting the American anthropologist in his attempt to unravel New World prehistory, Dr. A. L. Kroeber has touched, doubtless with justified trepidation, upon the problem of Folsom man in America. That subject has indeed suffered but little illumination in so far as its relation to the rest of the American archaeological record is concerned, and Dr. Kroeber, with sturdy honesty, minces no words in pointing out the hiatus which intervenes between this early horizon and later cultures. It is, he warns, dangerous to produce “speculative bridges that quickly tend to run into fantasy.” He notes that “the earlier date, the longer time span, have an inherent attractiveness to most human minds.” “So long,” he says, “as there is a real possibility that some of the associations of human artifacts with extinct animals may be no more than three thousand years old, it is certainly not wise to build interpretations on the contrary possibility that some of them may be twenty-five thousand years old.”

The Papago Indian Reservation, touching the Mexican border in south-central Arizona, has been the scene of anthropological work by the Department of Anthropology of the University of Arizona and the Arizona State Museum during the past four years. One branch of this general study has been archaeological, consisting of reconnaissance and of excavation in what were considered to be key sites. Beyond Gila Pueblo's limited survey in Papagueria, next to nothing was known about it. The environment is harsh and arid, and scanty surface water limits agricultural possibilities. Yet more than 5000 Papago Indians somehow manage, as they have for centuries, to make a comfortable if simple living in the area. Certainly the life there today is nothing new and it is a fair conclusion that, although inhospitable, the area should furnish a fairly rich archaeological picture. As our work proceeded it became evident that there were ruins in abundance. With few exceptions, these were small and the occupation thinly spread. Occasionally, a large site with sizable trash mounds gave promise of stratigraphy.

A preliminary report has already been made on the Finley site,2 located in Sweetwater County, southwestern Wyoming, in the southeast corner of the N.E. ¼ of Section 25, Township 24 N., Range 106 W., about four and a half miles east and a little south of the town of Eden, which itself is approximately thirty-seven miles northwest of Rock Springs. The altitude of the site is approximately 6750 feet.

This report is based on two months reconnaissance in the summer of 1941 in the Eden Valley, Wyoming. The work is as yet far from complete and the conclusions presented here must be regarded as tentative. It is hoped that in the future more extensive geological work may be undertaken.

The Finley site provides a promising opportunity for a determination of the age of the Yuma culture. The points and bones described by Dr. Howard occur in a culture layer which has been found in a large dune area, here called the Killpecker dunes. The deposition of the culture layer is one of a series of events in the dune area which can be correlated with the cutting and filling of gravel terraces in the Eden Valley to the west, and these in turn may be related to the glacial chronology in the Wind River Mountains which lie to the north.

During the past fourteen collecting seasons, paleontological expeditions of the University of Nebraska State Museum have excavated a large number of sites which contained the bones of extinct mammals associated with the artifacts of Early Man. Many of these sites have been reported but some data have not been published. All of the studies of Early Man have been carried on from a paleontologic and stratigraphic point of view. It is hoped that a faunal and stratigraphic sequence connecting the Pleistocene and Recent will eventually be established, and that Early Man's relation to this sequence will be determined. It is the purpose of this brief paper to summarize the work relating to Early Man which has been done by the field parties of the University of Nebraska State Museum since 1937. The explorations have been confined chiefly to Nebraska, New Mexico, Texas, and Wyoming. Since the studies of the Nebraska sites have, for the most part, been published, the discussion will be confined to the sites in the latter three states.

Within recent years it has become increasingly clear that the antiquity of man in America can be pushed back to respectably remote periods of time. The evidence for this is now beyond reasonable question. The original Folsom find, as well as the more recent Lindenmeier excavations, among others, have established the general status of the Folsom culture complex involved. The work at Gypsum Cave has added to the picture of early man in America, and that at Sandia Cave also shows clear-cut evidence that cannot be ignored.

Ever since the general acceptance of the theory that Bering Strait served as the entrance of man into North America, Alaska has been suggested as the most likely area for additional discoveries adding to our knowledge of Early Man. In spite of the fact that the bulk of these discoveries has occurred in the Southwest or in the far west of the United States proper, increasing attention has been paid to northern regions. The Folsom and also the Yuma problem (or problems as the case might be) have been traced into the northern Plains regions of Saskatchewan, Canada.

In the summer of 1940, a site with an industry new to the region of the western Great Lakes was discovered near Killarney, Ontario, in the course of a survey of the Manitoulin District by the Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan. Brief notices of this work have appeared in the press and in professional publications, and some of the readers of this paper have already seen the material. A mpre complete report than is possible in the present paper is in press.

About eight years ago there was discovered in the valley of the Little Colorado River between Hoi brook and Cameron in northern Arizona, evidence of an ancient alluvial terrace. Sand and waterworn pebbles largely derived from the Triassic Shinarump Conglomerate that once covered the area, form the deposit. The terrace which was formed by the gravels is now much dissected and remains only as the isolated flat tops of hills and ridges, the surfaces of which are covered with a desert pavement of waterworn pebbles. There are remnants also of later and lower alluvial deposits containing angular fragments of rock, of which a large proportion is made up of basaltic rocks from the San Francisco Peaks (Fig. 22).

The archaeology of the Puebloan or Anasazi people of the Southwest has been the subject of many investigations, to the neglect of partly contemporaneous peoples of different cultural background. However, the existence of a non-agricultural people as predecessors and contemporaries of the Puebloans has been postulated on general, theoretical grounds. It comes, therefore, with something of an expected surprise to realize that in the heart of the Puebloan area of central New Mexico at least one non-ceramic cultural complex existed. The present investigation gives only faint clues to the antiquity of this complex and to possible relations of the people represented by these artifacts with the Puebloans. A later and derivative Lobo complex is associated with Pueblo I and Pueblo II pottery and represents a close association or perhaps a fusion of a hunting people with the Puebloans. The present paper deals with the location of the sites, the artifacts found in them, and the general archaeology. The following paper, by Bryan and McCann, describes the local geology and makes a geological and archaeological correlation with other areas in the Southwest. The two papers should be regarded as a mere introduction to a field of archaeological research that has heretofore been much neglected.

Progress in knowledge of the more ancient stone cultures in North America has made increasingly apparent the existence of a gap in time between the fairly well-known, modern North American Indian and his Paleo-Indian predecessors. The extent of the break presents a problem to both archaeology and geology. Obviously, it is possible to approach the problem by leading from the earlier horizons toward the later, or in the reverse direction. The expansion and development of the “alluvial chronology” affords a basis for approach from the later horizons, as the last events in this chronology are effectively dated in the pottery cultures of the Southwest. The discovery by Mr. Joseph H. Toulouse, Jr., of the stone artifacts of a hunting people, who did not use pottery, in the heart of the Pueblo area appeared to offer such an opportunity. It seemed that it might afford a series of stages transitional backward from the known dates of the Puebloan stages toward the remote Paleo-Indians. The geologic results raise more problems than are solved, yet have some importance in extending knowledge along the fringes of the problem.

During the early fall of 1941, excavations were made by the National Park Service at the Lamar site, Bibb County, Georgia, on the ground of the proposed south section of the levee which will surround the site. The area was formerly forested and is level, poorly drained, and subject to frequent flooding by the Ocmulgee River. Elevation varies little in the river valley; in the section trenched, it ranges between 276.4 feet and 278.9 feet. The occupation area of the Lamar site lies on slightly higher ground with a maximum height of 282 feet (exclusive of the mounds). The surface soil of the bottom land, including the Lamar village site, is Congaree Silty Clay Loam, a recent alluvial deposit of the Ocmulgee River.

The projectile points described below are surface finds discovered by Oscar Lewis within a few miles of his ranch located about twenty miles south of Glendive, Montana. As some of the types represented are those which have been found to have considerable antiquity elsewhere and the complex is similar to that recorded in Pictograph Cave I, a cultural horizon buried under two other prehistoric and one historic horizon at Pictograph Cave near Billings, Montana, their occurrence in this locality is of interest.