1942: Archaeology

Near East.

Even an approach to a relatively complete summary of archaeological research in 1942 must in large measure be confined to reports of accomplishments in the Americas. The all encompassing global war has curtailed, if it has not entirely stopped, such work in most areas and since the cessation of communication between many nations, only scattering reports are available. However, wartime duties have themselves occasionally been the indirect source of archaeological finds, as in the Nahr-Kelb, Dog River, Lebanon, where Australian engineers engaged in a war-construction project found a large stone statue of a wolf which has been identified as one which for many centuries guarded the pass at Ras-el-Kelb and then was thrown into the river by Mohammedan Arabs, in accordance with their religious antagonism to images of any kind. The statute will now be placed in the National Museum at Beirut.

Excavating in Palestine, in caves along the seacoast near Jaffa, on the west side of Mount Carmel, near the Crusader castle at Athlit, M. Stekelis (sponsored by the American Schools of Oriental Research and the Hebrew University) has found evidence of an early neolithic culture estimated to have flourished some seven or eight thousand years ago and which in other localities has been called late Natufian. Wooden sickles with fliut blades found here suggest that these cave-dwellers were agriculturists.

While repairing a road to the western wall in the old city of Jerusalem, a Roman aqueduct, nine meters wide and made of flagstones, and a house wall, with niches containing pottery, were found. The material has been tentatively identified as either Byzantine or of the Second Temple period. The Palestinean Department of Antiquities plans to continue excavations in this area. Railway workers, building a line between Haifa in Palestine and Tripoli in Lebanon have also found Roman ruins, Phoenician glass, and marble coffins, dated at about 1000 bc.

During excavations in Syria at the site of Wachukani, the old capital of the Mitanni kingdom, on the Turkish-Syrian border at Ras al Ain, clay tablets with cuneiform writing dated between 1500 and 1300 bc were uncovered. This excavation was under the direction of Calvin McEwan, and was part of the Theodore Marriner Memorial Expedition of the Oriental Institute of Chicago, jointly with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Oriental.

From Russia, it is reported that excavations have been carried on at the palace of Ulug Beg, grandson of Tamerlane, or Timur I Leng, at the foot of a mountain near Samarkand. The palace has long been noted for its Chinese ceramic decoration.

The Buryat Mongolian State Institute of Language, Literature and Art announces that an archaeological expedition has discovered 400 very old Mongolian and Tibetan wooden tablets which are said to record important data on the history of Buddhistic lamasaries.

In the Sabarmati Valley in the State of Baroda, India, an expedition from the Archaeological Department of the Government of India has found many Early Stone Age quartzite implements embedded in a pebble conglomerate formation in a river bed, as well as some microlithic implements. It is proposed to extend the work of this expedition to the lower Narmade and its tributaries, to determine the full range of distribution of these implements.

United States.

With the United States at war during the period covered by this brief survey, there has been an enormous curtailment of institutional anthropological activity, paralleled by the rather unusual number of anthropologists engaged in special government service.

The fifteen-hundred mile route of the highway recently constructed by the U. S. Army between Fort St. John, British Columbia, and Fairbanks, Alaska, apparently offered an unrivaled opportunity for an archaeological reconnaissance. Although Dr. Froelich G. Rainey, working under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History, spent the summer in an effort to locate archaeological deposits along the route, no evidence of human occupation of this entire area was found, despite the earnest search made not only by Dr. Rainey, but by the cooperating officers and men of the construction crews.

Dr. L. H. Cressman of the University of Oregon reported evidence in Oregon of human occupation from five to ten thousand years ago, and antedating the formation of Crater Lake. In caves in the eastern part of the state, he found campfires and refuse, chipped obsidian tools, horse and camel bones, covered with pumice from the volcanic eruption which formed this well-known lake. Here he also found evidence of the transition from the early use of the wooden spear thrower to the use of the bow and arrow.

In continuation of its project to study the ethno-history and archaeology of Missouri, the Academy of Sciences of St. Louis, in cooperation with the WPA has excavated a wet rock-shelter in Jefferson County. This seems to correlate stratigraphically with the Hidden Valley rock-shelter previously studied. The greatest mass of occupational débris was found at a depth of from four to eight feet, while Woodland cord-marked pottery disappeared at a depth of three feet. A fortified site with a ceremonial area within the enclosure was also excavated in New Madrid County. Here both clay-tempered cord-marked pottery and plain shell-tempered pottery were found intermingled. Also, in this area a primary truncate mound has been uncovered in what has been designated as a ceremonial mound.

In Arizona the State Museum has concentrated its archaeological survey on two sites in the Forestdale Valley on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation. During the three seasons devoted to this survey over fifty village sites were found. Three of these have been excavated. The oldest of the village sites; which was excavated in part, proved to belong to the Mogollon culture.

In cooperation with the anthropological department of the University of Arizona the state museum completed its fourth year of work at Papaguera in the southern part of the state. Excavations at Ventana Cave, a rock-shelter near Santa Rosa, revealed an important stratigraphic sequence. The deposits were divisible into two major culture layers, each containing sub-layers. The top levels of the uppermost layer, which consisted of midden refuse, contained a full range of Hohokam pottery types as well as other ceramics beneath which were many grooved and chipped stone tools related to the Cochise culture as well as to early Californian desert groups. The animal remains were of modern species. The deepest part of the lowermost layer was a natural, and not a man-made, deposit. Obviously the cave had been repeatedly used as a shelter by man so that tools, charcoal, and various animal bones were mixed with water-deposited volcanic débris which was cemented together with lime. The fauna identified included the horse, bison, sloth, and tapir. As represented by the implements, the deposit resembles the Folsom culture more closely than any other known early culture. There appears to have been a considerable lapse of time between the midden layer and the volcanic débris, with perhaps one or more culture stages not represented.

An expedition from the Smithsonian Institution excavating in four Mexican caves and sixteen other sites found skeletons and other remains of a group of cave dwellers. Woven rush sandals, matting, stone points for weapons and arrow-shafts, but no pottery, were found in the cave. The indications are that these cave-dwellers were seed gatherers, and not agriculturists. It is assumed that this primitive culture, first noted in the Big Bend region in Texas by F. M. Setzler, spread over a considerable area several thousand years ago.

Central and South America.

The field-work of a major archaeological project briefly noted last year was completed during 1942. The Institute of Andean Research, financially assisted by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (U. S. State Department) in 1941, sent field parties to Mexico, Cuba, San Salvador, Venezuela and the West Indies, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Chile. In every country the work was carried on in close cooperation with local archaeologists and with local government sanction. Final publications on these projects have not yet been issued.