486 ANNUAL. REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 193 5 



stratified deposits of the earth's crust. It is the method followed by 

 paleontologists and paleobotanists ; and, provided the enclosing crust 

 is undisturbed and of reasonable thickness, it is obviously a fairly 

 reliable mode of procedure. The archeologist of necessity utilizes 

 the same stratigraphic principle in unraveling the time order of cul- 

 tural phenomena, as laid down, however, only in the relatively small 

 accumulations of artificial debris left behind mostly on the surface 

 of the earth as byproducts of former human occupation. Such refuse 

 deposits are available in countless numbers; are of several different 

 types, residential and occupational; are found in both natural shel- 

 ters and in open-air locations; and are distributed over nearly all 

 the known habitable portions of the globe. In Europe, and to some 

 extent elsewhere in the Eastern Hemisphere, these deposits have 

 yielded a fairly complete record of man and of his doings from 

 middle Quaternary times to the present. In America, if man was 

 indeed living here also during these early days, it would seem that 

 we might expect indications of the fact to occur in much the same 

 manner as elsewhere and to the same extent. Let us review the 

 available evidences. 



Number of culture deposits. — As already remarked, the Western 

 Hemisphere is richly strewn with monumental proofs of early human 

 activity. Leaving out of account our many wonderful ruins and 

 our stupendous earthworks as being of relatively recent date and 

 of secondary importance for present purjDoses, we have left for 

 consideration incidental accumulations of settlement and workshop 

 debris in number and variety as remarkable as those of any other 

 region of the world. These archeological features range from the 

 Arctic through the Tropics to the sub-Antarctic, i. e., from the 

 Eskimo territory of Alaska, Greenland, etc., to the almost equally 

 inhospitable habitat of the now nearly extinct Onas and other 

 primitive tribes of Tierra del Fuego. In the form of shell-heaps or 

 kitchen-middens they line both our Atlantic and Pacific shores, 

 while inland they occur as ordinary camp and village refuse, as a 

 rule thinly spread out, but sometimes heaped up either in the open 

 or concentrated within restricted limits of caves and rock shelters. 



Thickness of culture deposits. — The actual thickness and volume 

 of these culture deposits are of some significance, though naturally 

 difficult to interpret in strict chronological terms. So far as Imown, 

 American shell heaps appear not only to spread out horizontally 

 rather more than those of the Old World, but they also exceed them 

 in vertical dimension. Thus while heights of fully 30 feet have 

 been personally recorded more than once, for instance, in the San 

 Francisco Bay region, and a single pile in Florida was estimated at 

 about 45 feet, and while doubtful reports from Brazil claim 100 feet, 

 the extreme figure for the Old World — vaguely recollected as re- 



