Brief Notes on Recent Anthropological Explorations Under the Auspices of the Smithsonian Institution and the U. S. National Museum

In the April and July (1915) numbers of these PROCEEDINGS I have given notes on 'Some Recent Anthropological Explorations' carried out under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, and on 'An Exhibit in Physical Anthropology' which was prepared on the basis of these explorations for the Panama-California Exposition; I will now complete the account by referring in brief to the scientific results of the several expeditions made in this connection. The field work was directed towards three main objects, iramely, the securing for this country of original specimens relating to earlier man in Europe and Asia and contributing thus to the advance of knowledge in this direction; the initiation of comparative study of the child among primitive peoples; and the search in Asia for possible traces of the ancient stock of humanity which gave us the Indian; while an additional aim was to complete as far as possible our collections of skeletal material bearing on prehistoric American pathology. Some of the results of these activities have already been published, at least in a preliminary form (see bibliography, April number), and need not be referred to again at this time; while the remainder can be summarized as follows: Search for Neolithic Human Remains in Southwestern Russia.-It is well known1 that southwestern Russia and particularly the province of Ukraina, is rich in mounds or 'kurgans,' which yield human remains dating from the early historic back into the neolithic period. It is the region which in the past has yielded bones colored red,2 and also some crania of most interesting form, partly transitional with those of geological antiquity. The exploration was entrusted to Prof. Kazimir Stolyhwo, Chief of the Anthropological Laboratory at Warsaw, and was restricted to the district of Kiev, in the vicinity of the villages of Szulaki, Puhacz6wka, Chejtowa, Zywot6wka, Tackowica, Zacisze and Horodnica. The total number of Kurgans explored was thirty-three, twenty-seven of which yielded human remains, whichi however, in the majority of cases had been disturbed. The mounds averaged close to 90 feet in diameter, the range being from approximately 40 to nearly 300 feet; and nearly 5 feet in height, or from less than a foot to nearly 8 feet. Most if not all of the tumuli were originally higher, being reduced in the