June 2, 1916] 



SCIENCE 



797 



About forty-five years ago the Rev. E. 0. Dun- 

 ning, of New Haven, spent two or three seasons 

 in excavating certain ancient mounds of eastern 

 Tennessee. Part of this work was under the' aus- 

 pices of Peabody Museum of Yale University, and 

 part under those of Peabody Museum of American 

 Archeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. 



Brief mention of Mr. Cunning's explorations 

 and the collections he obtained is made in the 

 Fifth Annual Report of the Sheffield Scientific 

 School of Yale College; and in the Third, Fourth, 

 and Fifth Annual Reports of Peabody Museum at 

 Harvard. Dunning does not seem to have left any 

 notebooks or drawings and plans as a result of his 

 field-work. The original documents bearing there- 

 on are thus confined to the specimens and to his 

 letters preserved in the Yale and Harvard museums. 

 Dunning 's explorations covered parts of Knox, 

 Jefferson, Hamblen, Greene, Marion, and Cocke 

 counties, but were limited chiefly to the Brakebill, 

 McBee, Lisle, Lick Creek, and Turner 's mounds. 

 Only the first three of these are represented in the 

 collections at Yale; and to them the present paper 

 is confined. 



A comparative study of the gorgets found by 

 Dunning in the aforementioned mounds, and those 

 in the Wesleyan University collection, leads the 

 author to the conclusioa that the so-called seal- 

 loped disks and the gorgets representing the cross 

 are but conventionalized varieties of the realistic 

 rattlesnake gorget. The kinship would be even 

 more apparent were it not for the incompleteness 

 of the record, and the gradual exaggeration and 

 stereotyping of small differences due to conven- 

 tionalism. 



The Archeology of the Ozark Segion of the United 



States: Chakles Peabody. 



Throughout the region of the "Ozark Uplift" 

 in the states of Missouri and Arkansas are many 

 caves of which a great number have been occupied 

 by prehistoric man. 



In the soft deposits (occasionally brecciated) 

 within, are found projectile points and knives, 

 scrapers, perforators, nuclei, and other specimens 

 in stone, pins and awls of bone, rare fragments of 

 pottery, and in a few instances human bones; ani- 

 mal bones are abundant. 



The culture as a whole is distinguished from 

 that of the supposedly contemporaneous occupa- 

 tions in surrounding regions by the lack of prob- 

 lematical forms, of elaborate pottery and of care- 

 ful burials. 



The reason for this is not yet clear; the time 



of occupation of the eaves must have been long; 

 whether the occupants were the same tribes as 

 those surrounding, or different, has not yet been 

 determined; neither the theory of "summer re- 

 sorts" for the lowland Indians nor that of a 

 quite independent occupation seems adequate. 



Early Pueilo Indian Missions in New Mexico: 



L. BEANroRD Prince. 



The fame of the Franciscan mission churches 

 in California has obscured the history and de- 

 scription of those in New Mexico, and yet the lat- 

 ter are in many respects the more interesting and 

 important. They are very much older and there 

 is far more variety in their history. The earliest 

 California mission was built in 1769, and the story 

 of one is practically the story of all. In New 

 Mexico each mission has its individuality; the first 

 mission was built in 1598, immediately after the 

 colonization, and at least twenty-five were estab- 

 lished before 1630. The massive mission struc- 

 tures, whose remains are seen at Abo, Cuara and 

 Tabira, and constitute the most striking historic 

 ruins in the United States, were built, had ful- 

 filled their religious mission, and were finally de- 

 serted, before 1679. The peculiar feature of the 

 heavy walls, composed of small, thin stones, is 

 essentially aboriginal and similar to that of a 

 number of the great prehistoric ruins in the 

 Pueblo Bonito and San Juan regions. One re- 

 markable circumstance connected with these mas- 

 sive walls is that they were constructed entirely 

 by the Indian women, in accordance with the then 

 uniform Pueblo custom, as distinctly stated by 

 Benavides in his memorial to the King in 1630. 



Archeology of the Tano District, New Mexico: 



N. C. Nelson. 



The American Museum's Southwest Archeolo- 

 gical Expedition, which entered the field in 1912, 

 has just finished its contemplated work in the Tafio 

 Pueblo district of New Mexico. The region under 

 investigation lies between the Rio Grande and 

 Pecos River, with Santa Fg on its northern border, 

 and covers an area of about 1,600 square miles. 

 Within these limits were located 46 pueblo ruins, 

 some small and some very large, besides numerous 

 small houses and minor sites of areheological in- 

 terest. Twenty-six of the most important sites 

 were tried out by excavation, about 2,000 rooms 

 being cleared, in addition to a very considerable 

 amount of trenching in refuse heaps and burial 

 grounds. 



The results have been gratifying in several re- 

 spects. About 3,500 artifacts of stone, bone, shell, 



