Archaeology Magazine - June 1952 - 60

the Afghan Cabinet and the University's Board of Managers.
AAUW Fellowships
Among the fellowshipsawarded this
year by the American Association of
University Women, two were granted
for archaeological research, one to
Doris M. Taylor of Western Reserve
University,for study in Mediterranean
countries on pottery of the Hellenistic
period; the other to Dr. Margaret
Quatember, an Austrian archaeologist,
for research at Rome and Florence.

BRIEF

Annual Meeting of
of America,
Institute

in conjunction with
The American

Philological

Association,

will take place December 28-30, 1952,
at the Statler Hotel in Cleveland .
Those who wish to present papers are requested to submit typewritten abstracts, up to 150 words, to the General Secretary, Archaeological Institute of America, Andover Hall, Cambridge 38, Massachusetts,by October 15th.

NOTICES

ArchaeologicalSurveyin the LowerMississippi Alluvial Valley, 1940-1947,by
Philip Phillips, James A. Ford, and
James B. Griffin. 472pages, 17 tables,
32 collotypes, and 73 illustrations in
the text. Peabody Museum, Cambridge
1951 (Papers of the Peabody Museum
of American Archaeologyand Ethnology, Vol. 25) $8.50
The Lower Valley of the Mississippi
has long been a fruitful area for the
collection of antiquities which now
crowd the shelves of American museums. However, there has been very
little scientificwork done in the nearly
half a century which has passed since
Holmes completed his pioneer work
on the pottery of this area. In the present volume,for the first time, three able
workers attempt to apply modern
methods to this rich field. Their cooperative use of a number of different
approaches and viewpoints leads to a
frank examination of the validity of
their techniques and theories, and the
candor with which they write provesrefreshing to this reviewer.
Ford has maçleuse of sherd materials
from both surface collectionsand test
excavationsto construct a ceramic seriation as a means of establishing the
basic chronology. Phillips carefully
124

The Fifty-Fourth
The Archaeological

RECENT

checks the seriation with stratigraphie
evidence, and he and Griffin accept
Ford's chronology,although with some
reservations.Phillips also illustrates a
new method for arriving at relative
chronologybased on the correlation of
site locations with ancient meander
channels of the Mississippiand Ohio
rivers. This technique is applicable
throughout the whole meander belt of
the Lower Valley and should prove of
considerableimportance. Griffin, besides making a valuable contributionin
the section on pottery classification,
presents a provocative comparison of
some of the more elaborate vessel
shapes from this area with similar types
in the AmericanSouthwestand Mexico.
A section on the different types of site
plans by Ford completesthe analysisof
the archaeologicaldata.
The subsequent section by Phillips
on the "Identificationof Sitesfrom Documentary Sources"will be of specialinterest to historians, since it was in this
area that De Soto discoveredthe Mississippl.The archaeologywould tend to
suggest a crossing of the river farther
to the north than that established by
the officialreport of the De Soto Commission. Phillips also discusses the
seventeenth century French trading

BOOKS
posts near the mouth of the Arkansas.
A brief summary of the prehistoryof
the Lower Valley by archaeologicalperiods concludes the volume. Although
of a technicalnature, this report should
not be overlooked by those in other
fields who wish to gain some insight
into the methodology and presentational techniques of one branch of
American archaeology.
Stephen Williams
Yale University
The Civilizationsof Ancient America.
SelectedPapers of the XXIXth International Congressof Americanists,edited
by Sol Tax, with an introduction by
Wendell C. Bennett, vii, 328 pages,
including illustrations, bibliography.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago
1951
This is only one of three volumes
coveringthe XXIXth Congress,held at
New York in 1949,but it containsmost
of the papers likely to be of direct interest to archaeologists.The other two
volumes are entitled Indian Tribes of
Aboriginal America and Acculturation
in the Americas, the latter containing
the officialProceedings.The grouping
of all papers into three handy-sizedvolARCHAEOLOGY

Archaeology Magazine - June 1952

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Archaeology Magazine - June 1952