To establish the chronological order of a series of surface sites which are not stratigraphically superimposed, archeologists make use of a technique known as seriation. The first systematic method for carrying out seriation was devised by Robinson and Brainerd in 1951. Since then, a number of other methods for doing so have been developed. Almost all of them, however, are laborious and time consum-ing. The present paper describes a new way of doing seriation which, while giving the same results as more familiar and established methods, does so in a much shorter time.

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We describe a series of preliminary experiments undertaken to investi-gate the relationship between complicated tool-making and the presence or absence of language in its communicative role. The experiments involved teaching two groups of university students how to make Levallois flakes by either verbal or non-verbal demonstration. The rates and mean times of acquisition of the Levallois technique and of successful flake production were compared. They did not differ significantly between the two groups. From these results, we infer that spoken language was not indispensable for Levallois flake production in the Middle Palaeolithic.

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Patterns of growth in forearm length and tibial length were studied in 149 school-children of Aymara ancestry (73 boys and 76 girls), aged 6 to 19 years. The investigation was based on a cross-sectional survey performed in 1987 in the rural community of Putre (3, 530 m), northern Chile. The results show that there is little sexual dimorphism over the age period of 6 to 13 years, while sex differences are more pronounced between the ages of 14 and 17 years, both for forearm length and tibial length, with boys having higher means. Correspondingly, the maximum values achieved for both measurements are greater in boys than in girls. The growth spurt begins about two years earlier in girls than in boys. In both sexes, tibial growth precedes forearm growth. The analysis of growth relationships between forearm length and tibial length in relation to other measurements shows higher positive correlations to stature than to sitting height. Inter-populational comparisons between the extremity growth pattern of the Aymara children and that of children of different ethnic ancestry reveal that at all ages, the Aymara have longer forearms in propor-tion to their tibiae than is the case with children of Asiatic, European and African ancestry. It is suggested that the relatively longer forearms in the Aymara might be related to their larger thoracic dimensions.

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