ANTHROPOLOGY: A. V. KIDDER 
369 
1 This article is published by permission of the Secretary of Agriculture. A part of the 
work of which this is a summary appeared m J.Biol. Chem., 28, 1916, (77). The part relat- 
ing to the determination of the basic amino acids in the proteins will appear in the May 
number of the same journal. 
2 Ritthausen, H., Arch. ges. Physiol., Bonn, 21, 1880, (81). 
3 Osborne, T. B., Ergebn. Physiol., 10, 1910, (126). 
4 Osborne, T. B., The Vegetable Proteins, London, 1909, p. 57. 
5 Osborne, T. B., and Jones, D. B., Amer. J. Physiol, Boston, 26, 1910, (227). 
6 Osborne, T. B., Van Slyke, D. D., Leavenworth, C. S., and Vinograd, M., /. Biol. 
Chem., 22, 1915, (259). 
7 Osborne, T. B., and Clapp, S. H., Ibid., 3, 1907, (219). 
8 Osborne, T. B., Ergebn. Physiol., 10, 1910, (116). 
9 Osborne, T. B., and Jones, D. B., Amer. J. Physiol., Boston, 24, 1909, (438). 
" Osborne, T. B., and Mendel, L. B., /. Biol. Chem., 22, 1914, (325). 
"Hopkins F. G., London, J. Chem. Soc 109, 1916, (629). 
" U. S. Dept. Agric, Washington, Weekly News Letter, 4, No. 22, 1916. 
A DESIGN-SEQUENCE FROM NEW MEXICO 
By A. V. Kidder 
PHILLIPS ACADEMY. ANDOVER. MASS. 
Communicated by W. H. Holmes. April 2, 1917 
Much has been written on the development of geometrical decoration 
among primitive people, and many design-sequences have been arranged; 
the latter, however, have almost always been based on preconceived 
theoretical ideas, and the material for them has usually been selected 
from specimens whose relative ages have not been known. Such se- 
quences cannot, therefore, be regarded as indicating surely the tenden- 
cies of design growth, for the specimens regarded as early m.ay in fact 
have been late, and the development may thus have taken place in the 
opposite direction to the one postulated; or, again, the specimens may 
all have been of one period and may represent either contemporary 
variants of a single design-phase, or entirely unrelated parts of other 
unsuspected sequences. It has accordingly been impossible in most 
cases to do more than guess as to whether any given change in design 
has been from the natural to the conventional or vice versa ; whether 
toward simplification or toward elaboration. 
The only safe method for the working out of developments in decora- 
tive art is to build up one's sequences from chronologically sequent 
material, and so let one's theories form themselves from the sequences. 
In the case of aboriginal American art this ideal has been very hard to 
attain because of the scarcity of stratified sites and the corresponding 
difficulty of obtaining relatively datable specimens. 
In the Rio Grande district of New Mexico, however, students have 
recently been recovering stratigraphical data which establish an orderly 
