Abstract
NATIVE CULTURE OP THE SOUTH-WEST.—Under this title, Mr. A. L. Kroeber has written a valuable analysis of the problems of the anthropology of the south-western United States which consequentially analyses the methods of American archæology and ethnology and more particularly the method of ‘cultural areas.’ It has been published by the University of California as No. 9 of Vol. 23 of the Publications in American Archœology and Ethnology. More especially, of course, the author is concerned with the origins of south-western culture and the direction from which cultural influences penetrated the area. The question is made difficult by lack of information relating to adjacent areas, especially northern and southern Mexico. Incidentally, reference is made to the possibilities of chronological correlation from Mr. Douglass's work on tree-growth which has carried a year identification system for the American southwest back to A.D. 1300, beyond which there is a floating block of several centuries of identifiable year growths. To this block belong rafters from Pueblo ruins, such as Aztec and Bonito, of the third or great Pueblo period, while the Spanish conquest falls into the fourth period. It should therefore be possible to obtain a record back to A.D. 1000, from which period rafters could be obtained to reflect on Mexican conditions of the general Toltec period, and possibly confirm legendary Aztec chronologies. In regard to extra-continental influences in the south-west, little reached the area from South America, though it shares certain elements, such as maize culture, the turkey and rain rituals of South American origin with the central area. Asiatic traits are practically absent, except a hesitating occurrence at the farthest extent of distribution of the sinew-backed bow. Trans-Pacific influences are scarcely to be expected, but in Southern California is the cosmogony of Luiseno and Gabrielino, thoroiighly Polynesian in character, and the Gabrielino and Chumash shell fish-hooks, which are strictly Micronesian in form.
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