Bureau of American Ethnology

Abstract

FOLLOWING the precedent of last year, the fifty-first annual report of the Bureau of American Ethnology is reduced in size and does not include the “Accompanying Papers” describing the field-work of the staff, which for so long have made this publication year by year one of the most important contributions of the United States to the literature of anthropology. The fifty-first report covers the operations of the staff of the Bureau in office and field up to June 1934. In the interests of economy, field-work was much curtailed, and for the most part took the form of supervision of the archaeological investigations which have been put in hand in the States of Tennessee, Georgia, Florida and California by Federal authority as part of the measures under the Civil Works Administration for the relief of unemployment. Of these investigations, the most extensive were in California, where extensive excavations at the Buena Vista Lake, Kern County, under Dr. H. D. Strong and Mr. W. M. Walker revealed evidence of extensive occupation and some six hundred interments. Nearly 5,000 artefacts and specimens were obtained, as well as information which throws a flood of light on the prehistoric inhabitants of the great southern valley of California and their ethnic affiliations. Mr. J. N. B. Hewitt's study of the Iroquois continues to reveal new and interesting details in the organisation of the Confederacy of the Five Nations, and this year promises to be of exceptional importance to the student of Indian tribal relations. Incidentally, the report shows another side of recent political ‘scandals’, alleged in criticisms of unemployment relief, by a reference to the specially qualified unemployed who were engaged to translate or transcribe material from the Bureau's archives hitherto inaccessible to study, or in danger of perishing.