{Continued from previous page) 

 were of wattle and daub construction in 

 which clay is applied to thatched twigs. 

 There is no way of knowing whether the 

 roof was arched or domed. Entrance to 

 the house was through a mud-plastered, 

 tunnel-like passageway leading out to 

 the east — reminiscent of the passageways 

 Eskimos crawl through to enter their ig- 

 loos. Just inside the house, a low-, curved, 

 stone wall protected a fire pit from drafts. 



Beneath the floor of the dwelling the 

 inhabitants had hollowed out three stor- 

 age pits; in the largest of these, the Mu- 

 seum party found whole charred corn. 

 This grain storage chamber was pro- 

 tected by a ring-slab cover of chipped 

 sandstone, which was found broken with- 

 in the pit. Also inside the home were 

 several stone metates and manos, tools 

 used for grinding corn into flour. 



The chipped stone implements that 

 were recovered from the site make it pos- 

 sible to assign the house to the Desert 

 Culture. The presence of corn, how- 

 ever, is unusual in a habitation which 

 Martin and Hill believe antedates the 

 pit house builders who are known to 

 have practiced agriculture in this region 

 around a.d. 400. The Snowflake site 

 thus provides the first evidence of grain 

 cultivation by Desert Culture people liv- 

 ing in the Upper Little Colorado drain- 

 age area. Final determination of the 

 age of the dw-elling awaits the results of 

 carbon-14 tests now being made on the 

 charred house posts and the corn itself. 



l\s the excavation proceeded, rem- 

 nants of 8 to 10 more houses were re- 

 vealed. Materials recovered from all 

 of them are now- in the Museum. Dur- 

 ing the winter, these data will be inten- 

 sively analyzed by statistical methods in 

 the hope of finding answers to such ques- 

 tions as where, within the village, was 

 food preparation done? Cooking? The 

 various stages of stone tool-making? How 

 were these tasks divided among the men 

 and the women? Where on the site did 

 different family groups, or clans, live? 

 Was there any division of labor among 

 the clans? The answers to some of these 

 questions will probably have to await 

 further intensive digging now being 

 planned for next summer. 



Dr. Martin, who is president of the 



Page 4 NOVEMBER 



American Archaeological Association, is 

 a pioneer in the use of statistical research 

 to recover information about the social 

 organization and actual day-to-day man- 

 ner of living of extinct peoples. The 

 attempt to answer such sociological ques- 

 tions is a new trend in archaeology, made 

 possible by the application of experi- 



mental methods, the collection of statis- 

 tically valid samples, and the use of 

 computers to analyze data. Such meth- 

 ods reinforce the archaeological disci- 

 pline as a social "science." The present 

 discovery should enlarge still further the 

 exciting promise of this new kind of ar- 

 chaeological research.  





7 



 



Which End of the } G ^£ cot n es first 1 





Austin L. Rand 

 Chief Curator, Zoology 



X he 918-page book called The Avian 

 Egg contains more information about 

 hens' eggs than most people will care 

 to know. Between the quote on page 1 

 about a bird's egg being the most per- 

 fect thing in the universe, and the para- 

 graph on page 806 on "other art forms," 

 there is an exposition of the egg from 

 genesis through morphology and chem- 

 istry to preservation and industrial uses. 

 These last include uses in cakes, cos- 

 metics, and in the leather industry. 



The question of which came first, the 

 chicken or the egg, is not touched on 

 by the authors, A. L. and A. J. Roman- 

 off of Cornell University. But they do 

 settle the question as to which end of 

 the egg, the blunt or the sharp end, is 

 laid first. It is strange that so simple a 

 question should have been so long un- 

 answered. In the historical preamble 

 to the answer, a nice touch of erudition 

 is given the discussion by a reference to 

 the classics, among which Aristotle's 

 comments seem the first recorded. In 

 the early 1800's there was keen interest 

 in the subject. But only in the early 

 1900's was observational and experi- 



mental evidence gathered and presented 

 in quantity and quality that seems to 

 settle the matter. 



The question as to whether the con- 

 tracting of the appropriate muscles 

 forces the egg down the hen's oviduct 

 with pointed or blunt end first seems 

 capable of two possible answers. But 

 actually there are three. Curiously, 

 about 90 per cent of the time hens' eggs 

 have the shell formed around them while 

 the sharp end points down the oviduct, 

 but only 70 to 80 per cent of the eggs 

 are laid sharp end first. Some 20 to 

 30 per cent are laid blunt end first. 



Having answered the question with 

 "yes and no," it now remains to give 

 the third answer to complete the survey. 

 It appears that sometimes the descend 

 ing egg pushes a bulge in the thin wall 

 of the oviduct, and in being squeezed 

 along it rotates, end for end. Thus it 

 makes part of its journey with one end 

 first, part with the other. 



The Romanoffs should know, being 

 associated with the Poultry Husbandry 

 of Cornell University. Further, from 

 internal evidence, the very nature of the 

 answers invites the confidence of bio- 

 logists. Very often we find our answers, 

 "yes," "no," and "sometimes." It is 

 the nature of life.  



