NO. 4 SAN JON DISTRICT, NEW MEXICO — ROBERTS 2"] 



f estations occur were uninhabited or whether it was only the particular 

 sites that were not lived on, the people camping elsewhere and leaving 

 materials not yet properly identified, is a problem still to be solved. 

 The consensus of many is that there was an actual interruption in 

 the stream of migration flowing from the Old to the New World 

 and that for a time vast stretches of the western Plains and the 

 Great Basin were uninhabited ; that the first peoples had pushed on 

 southward and into Middle America, although traces of them have 

 not yet been found there, and those who were following had not yet 

 arrived. Others maintain that once man had reached the North 

 American continent there was no break in the continuity of occupa- 

 tion, that the evidence just has not been found or else has not been 

 recognized. There are places where an unbroken sequence from early 

 to modern times is suggested (Sayles and Antevs, 1941), but there 

 still is a question as to whether or not there is a gap between the 

 beginning of that series and some of the other older forms. Perhaps 

 the correct conception is that in some districts remnants of the early 

 migration persisted and ultimately were joined by incoming groups 

 of a later movement, while in other sections the dispersal of peoples 

 into the more southerly regions left large areas unoccupied sufficiently 

 long for natural agents to cover their former camping places before 

 others drifted in and settled at the same locations. Such certainly 

 seems to have been the case at San Jon. 



From the appearance of the Yuma type points down to late proto- 

 historic times there was no break in the occupation of the area investi- 

 gated. Projectile points progress through forms similar to some of 

 those found in the Texas area to the east to the small, notched types 

 associated with late sites in many parts of the country. Accompanying 

 these are stone implements of the kinds that normally occur in the 

 complex of hunting or hunting-seed-gathering peoples. In addition 

 the material from the latest level contained potsherds. Among the 

 stone objects are forms similar to those that have been attributed 

 to the Wichita and the Jumano Indians, others that are like artifacts 

 from sites in the Panhandle district along the Canadian, and still 

 others that can be duplicated in material coming from eastern Pueblo 

 ruins. The potsherds are of two types, one a buff or brownish-colored 

 ware similar to that occurring in house ruins along the Canadian 

 River that probably belongs to the broad, basic type represented in 

 the wares of the Jumano and the Wichita, that have some relationship 

 to those of the Caddo, and the other a black-on-white ware that was 

 derived from a Pueblo type. The latter, called Chupadero Black 



