1961-1962 - American Museum of Natural History

in comparison with a group of unoperated control fish.
Dr. Schneirla, with Drs. Ethel Tobach and Leo Vroman, completed
research on the influence of early stress on individual
behavior in mammals. Stressful conditions were introduced to
litters of rats by a schedule of changes in their cages, such as
odor patterns on the floor and visual features on the walls. These
environmental instabilities affected the behavior of the mothers
adversely in activities such as nursing and retrieving their
young. They also disturbed behavioral development of the
young, such as their reactions to their mothers and orientation.
One important outcome of this project was the development
of a system (the "ATSL": Aronson, Tobach, Schneirla, Laupheimer)
for recording the behavior and the physiology of animals
in a form that can be fed into a modern computer system
for rapid and automatic processing.
DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
Harry L. Shapiro, Chairman
The Department of Anthropology experienced a year of noteworthy
accomplishment in field work, research, and exhibition,
and in an extremely active record of publications and lectures,
both scientific and popular.
In field work, a long-term study by Dr. James A. Ford, which
still continues, is concerned with a survey of the alluvial valley
of the Mississippi River and the changing course of the river.
Both factors are being correlated with archeological sites, a
number of which have already been dated at from 4000 to 800
B.C. By mapping the old channels of the Mississippi and its
tributaries and by dating them, Dr. Ford has been able to assign
dates to the associated sites and to work out the settlement
'patterns of the area.
This spring, Dr. Junius B. Bird cooperated with San Marcos
University in a novel problem that involved relating old beach
levels of the Peruvian coast with archeological cultural pe-
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