SECTIONAL. TRANSACTIONS.—H. 451 
of the Navajo. Dependence on agriculture, despite the desert conditions, is possible 
on account of the peculiar character of the flood water run-off from the mesas. Flash 
floods following the storms descend the canyons and scarps, fan out over the lower 
land forming washes, without cutting a definite channel. Apart from the gardens 
at springs which may be due to Spanish influence, there is no irrigation, merely the 
planting of patches of ground likely to be flooded. In recent years, however, definite 
channels or arroyas have been cut across some of the washes, seriously reducing the 
flooded area and destroying much valuable land. This may in part be due to over- 
grazing of the mesas by the Navajo and Hopi flocks promoting more rapid run-off, 
but other factors may be operating, since cycles of arroya cutting have occurred in 
the past. One, indeed, appears to coincide with the abandonment of many Pueblo 
sites in the south west at the end of the Great Pueblo period. 
Arable land is therefore rather rigidly restricted, and there are definite, although 
disputed, boundaries between the lands of each village. The village lands are parcelled 
out into major areas nominally owned by the clans,and marked by boundary stones 
roughly incised with clan symbols. The clan lands are not concentrated in one place 
but subdivided into several lots in different parts of the village territory. Each 
family has field patches within several of its clan’s lands. This produces a superficial 
resemblance to open-field systems and distributes the risk of crop failure as all fields 
are subject to a double hazard, i.e. of being washed out by too fierce a flood or of 
receiving no water in a particular year. 
The matrilineal clan organisation is reflected in the control of land. The family 
plots are theoretically controlled by women, the older women disposing of fields to 
their daughters as they marry and have need of them. Since, however, all field work 
except at harvest time is done by men, the husbands and unmarried sons of the clans- 
women, the actual cultivation is undertaken by men who have no personal lien on 
the fields they cultivate, and indeed in the case of husbands, who are not themselves 
members of the clan. The clan leaders reapportion fields as need arises, handing 
over some of those of dwindling families to others which are growing in numbers and 
have more labour to cultivate them. Certain fields are also reserved for the chiefs 
of certain societies ; these are cultivated by the members of the society in question. 
This scheme is, however, modified in practice by the acquisition by men of fields 
outside the traditional clan lands. This tendency has increased since the introduction 
of the horse and wagon, followed by the cultivation of fields at considerable distance 
from the village. In some instances men obtain control of fields within the clan 
lands. These are usually inherited from their mother or maternal relatives and are 
sometimes passed on to the man’s sons and daughters. In this way fields have been 
alienated from the clan. This type of inheritance is recognised as inconsistent with 
the theory of clan ownership, but is rarely interfered with at the present time. It 
may be a recent development connected with the decline of population and the 
diversion of much male labour into new pursuits consequent on Americanisation, 
——————— Ce. hh tC 
Dr. R. E. Mortimer WHEELER.—Summary of the Current Excavations on 
the Prehistoric and Roman Sites of Verulamium (St. Albans). 
Monday, September 28. 
Prof. Henry FarrrieLp Ossporn.—The Geologic Age of Pithecanthropus, 
Koanthropus, and other Fossil Men determined by the Enamel-Ridge- 
Plate-Grinding-Tooth-Measurement of the Proboscidea with which they 
were geologically contemporaneous. 
The association of man with the mammoth in closing Pleistocene times was one 
of the earliest archeological discoveries; it has become a tradition. One of the 
most striking generalisations from recent palxontological exploration and research is 
that man has been the travelling companion of members of the Elephant super-family, 
Elephantoidea, for a very long period of time, as it now appears from the close of 
Pliocene time, roughly estimated as 1,250,000 years before our era. 
First, the natural inference is that Tertiary man inhabited the kind of partly 
forested, partly open upland country bordering streams and rivers that was also 
attractive to primitive elephants. The second inference is that only in the sands and 
aag2 
