104 Report of the President 



ber, the Curator has spent a large part of his time in Washing- 

 ton, D. C, serving the National Research Council. Assistant 

 Curator Spinden gave the latter half of the year to special 

 service in Cuba for the Department of State, while other 

 members of the staff have been away on extensive field trips. 

 The chief responsibility for the work of the Department has 

 therefore fallen to Dr. Goddard, Curator of Ethnology. 

 Further, the resignations of Dr. Leslie Spier and Mr. B. T. B. 

 Hyde, the only assistants upon our staff, render it increasingly 

 difficult to keep our exhibits in order and to care for incoming 

 collections. It is therefore apparent that the greatest present 

 need of the Department, as a whole, is provision for the train- 

 ing of new assistants. 



During the year, the work of the Archer Mi. Huntington 

 Survey was confined to three enterprises; the continuation of 



excavations at Aztec, the discovery and prelimi- 

 The Archer M. nary exploration of a new site on the Navajo 

 Survey 5 ° n Reservation, and the further application of the 



tree-ring method to the dating of ruins. Several 

 important developments are to be reported in the work on the 

 ruin at the town of Aztec. Early in the year, the original 

 owner of the ruin, Mr. H. D. Abrams, gave a deed by which 

 full title to the property passed to the Museum. In due time, 

 this property with the ruin, as uncovered and partially restored 

 by us, will be presented to the United States to become a 

 National Monument and to be administered as a National 

 Park. Thus we shall have provided for the future care and 

 preservation of this remarkable ruin and realized the hopes of 

 its former owner and our generous donor. Returning to the 

 excavations in the ruin, we are happy to report that the rooms 

 opened this year were rich in material, particularly in burials, 

 one room containing seventeen in all. But by far the most 

 distinctive discovery yet made was the uncovering of a deco- 

 rated room. The room was deeply buried in a mass of debris 

 and its presence was entirely unsuspected, but what in one 

 case seemed to be a rounded heap of earth and stones, such as 

 mark the sites of completely collapsed walls and ceilings, 

 proved to be a buried room in perfect condition. The ceiling 



