One of the few bright spots in the 1949 picture was the increase in funding for the 1950 budget year, which finally became available in September. There is, of course, little comfort in realizing that other phases of the River Basin Surveys program suffered from the same or similar handicaps and uncertainties. The field headquarters, staff offices, and laboratory of the Missouri Fiiver Basin Survey were located year-round in the University of Nebraska Laboratory of Anthropology.
70 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETIUSTOLOGY [Bull.154 Service of mimeographed assessments of the archaeological and paleontological resources of the studied reservoirs. Eight articles on archaeological salvage operations in the Missouri River Basin during 1948 were published in the April 1949 issue of American Antiquity, the quarterly journal of the Society for AmericanArchaeology. A summary report prepared by the then Field Director on the activities of the Missouri River Basin Survey during the calendar year 1948 was awaiting publication by the Smithsonian Institution when the year ended.
As in previous years, the Lincoln office of the River Basin Surveys continued to furnish information, as requested, to the daily press, to various periodicals, and to other agencies and individuals.
NORTH DAKOTA
Wheeler returned to Lincoln on the 11th to compile reports on his research and then prepare for further field assignments. Of the 11 projects where fieldwork was conducted during 1949, 8 had not previously been surveyed by river basin survey personnel for archaeological materials. Based on the 1947 paleontological survey, there appears to be no need for further salvage work on the Cannonball line, barring unexpected finds during construction operations.
Dickinson Reservoir Location.–The Dickinson Dam and Reservoir, a Bureau of Reclamation irrigation, flood control and municipal water supply project, is nearing completion on Heart River in Stark County, southwestern North Dakota. Portions of the Dickinson Reservoir area were tentatively surveyed by a River Basin Surveys field group consisting of Paul Cooper and J.
SOUTH DAKOTA
Instead, about 12 or 15 of the more promising ones, which were also found to be representative of these different horizons believed to be present in the reservoir area, were tested using trenches and pits. The most extensive pit excavation was carried out at site 39FA23, one of the few sherd-bearing sites in the locality and situated about 3 miles up the stream. Removal of overburden to the depth necessary to expose a large area of the old occupation.
None of the sites yet explored show evidence of long-term continuous occupation or intensive horticultural practice. The strategic importance of the site of Angostura in the study of the prehistory of the northern plains west of the Missouri River is. The proposed reservoir site lies about 100 miles west of the Missouri River and less than half that distance northeast of the Black Hills.
In the 2 days available for preliminary survey at Bixby, only a small portion of the area could be surveyed. One of these, 39PE10, is located less than a mile upstream from the proposed dam site, on top of a small hollow on the south bank of the river (p. 14, &). The second site lay about 2^/^ miles west, in a short arroyo south of the river.
On the sandy, sloping surface of the arroyo, a few small chipped flint artifacts were found here, along with waste chips, flakes, and weathered animal bone. Philip Reservoir location. -The location of the proposed Philip Reservoir, a Bureau of Reclamation irrigation and flood control project. The dam will be located approximately one mile north of the town of Rockyford, from where the reservoir will extend approximately twenty kilometers upstream.
Further study is also needed in the parts of the reservoir area that have not yet been studied, which are mainly on the west side of the White River. The 3 days spent at Shadehill in May 1949 were devoted to a careful reconnoissance of the area around the dam site and to searching for the previously unexplored portions of the pool area on the North Fork.
WYOMING AND MONTANA
Two other sites were about a mile southwest of the dam site on the west side of the valley (pi. 14, a). It is possible that a careful search of all cut banks and other exposures in the Moorhead Reservoir area would reveal significant remains not now known to science. In the limited time spent at Moorhead during paleontological reconnaissance in 1947, no identifiable fossils were obtained.
No further archaeological or paleontological salvage work is recommended for the Onion Flat Reservoir site unless construction activities reveal significant materials not currently visible. Raft Lake Reservoir location. Raft Lake, the source of the North Fork of the Little Wind River, is scenically located about 20 miles west of the town of Wind River, in western Fremont County, Wyo. It is located just east of the Continental Divide. , at an altitude of about 10,000 feet, and is about a mile long.
The reservoir is on the North Fork of the Popo Agie River, about a quarter of a mile above the mouth of Soral Creek and about 18 miles by road south of the town of Wind River in Fremont County, Wyo.
FIELD WORK BY COOPERATING AGENCIES
The bottom of the valley and the slopes are overgrown with grass and brush; a few pines can be found along the cliff tops and clumps of willows are scattered along the stream banks.
KANSAS
Dam and Reservoir, an irrigation and flood control project of the Bureau of Reclamation, is located on the Solomon River in Mitchell County, north central Kansas. Both of the former are pottery-bearing sites, although they are rather determined by distinct cultural affiliations and different temporal positions. Site 14ML1 is on a high hilltop on the western edge of Glen Elder, overlooking the Solomon River.
The site, already partially destroyed by a gravel pit on its southern edge, will undoubtedly suffer further damage and possibly complete destruction from the dam, which will then reach the present gravel pit. Difficult searching of the surface, part of which was covered with growing corn and alfalfa, yielded several hundred sherds and a number of stone artifacts. The work generally confirmed the observations of previous investigators, also based on surface collections and very limited test pitting, that the site is ceramically quite distinctive compared to other known Kansas village sites.
At another site, on the north side of the valley near the head of the future pool, tests in one of a series of grass circles revealed bone fragments and charcoal at a depth of 8 inches. Near the mouth of Paradise Creek, which enters the Salines near the top of the reservoir, worked stones, shellland bone fragments, and a few small potsherds of unidentifiable type were found.
MONTANA
The general impression left by the university party's Avast findings is that an area is occupied only sporadically and for short periods, perhaps primarily in connection with seasonal hunting and gathering activities.
NEBRASKA
Harlan County Reservoir.—This place is located in the southern part of Harlan County on the Republican River north of the Kansas-Nebraska state line, about 200 miles west of the Missouri River. Some of the earlier horizons appear to be associated with buried soil zones or old surfaces that have been covered by windblown soil since the sites were abandoned. The 1949 work of the University of Nebraska Laboratory of Anthropology at the Harlan County Reservoir was largely a continuation of excavations begun in 1948 at Site 25HN37.
One of these was evidently burned and crashed; parts of the charred timber and other structural ele-. At site 25FT50, excavated in 1948 and subsequently reported in print, some time was spent collecting faunal material which could provide further clues to the age of the cultural deposits. At 25H021, on the south bank of the river directly on the axis of the proposed dam site no.
Tests were also made at sites 25H09 and 25H024, both on the south bank of the creek between the previous two sites. All of these are assigned to the Dismal River culture, which is believed to represent the Plains Apaches of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The distance between the two localities is not great, being less than 150 miles as the crow flies; but the environment of the Hooker County sites differs markedly from that of the Republican River Valley.
96 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY IBull.154 face, but the slope was flatter than that of the present grass-covered ground surface. Organized archaeological salvage operations proposed by the University of North Dakota did not materialize to the extent of the previous season due to transportation deficiencies and pending personnel moves. The markedly different character of the remains from each of these two levels and the clear separation of the two.
CONCLUSIONS
98 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull.354 water will result in the complete obliteration of hundreds of village sites, burial grounds, and other features that cannot be duplicated elsewhere in the region or outside of it. No one who is even slightly acquainted with the many and varied remains of this region can look upon their impending submergence except with grave apprehension, and the hope that a determined effort may after all save a valuable segment of the materials at hand for destruction. The intensive surveys conducted in Angostura by the River Basin Surveys, and those conducted in Harlan County, Medicine Creek, and Mullen through the welcome cooperation of state authorities, have added essential data to our understanding of various phases of the pre- white occupation of these localities.
Most of the 1949 work in these latter reservoirs, as mentioned in a previous section, was of very short duration and preliminary in character, and therefore its evaluation must await the completion of more intensive investigations than have yet been possible. Material apparently relevant to the problem of "early man" in the Missouri Basin has sub-observations at two widely separated localities. Through the limited use of earthmoving machinery as well as manual labour, and the stripping of significant parts of the old occupation surfaces, it was possible at Angostura to collect somewhat larger samples of the remains.
There appears to be nothing in the archaeological findings to date to contradict the view that the western plains are much of the presence. Wyoming and Montana were occupied throughout most of prehistoric time, as well as in the historic period, by small groups of hunters and gatherers who had no fixed settlements comparable to those of the semi-horticultural peoples of the eastern plains. In none of these places has it been possible to get a very extensive range of artifact types or a clear picture of the kind of community and people represented.
The work done in 1949 at Dismal River culture sites in Harlan County Reservoir and at Mullen is significant because it relates the upper endophanarchaeological sequence to historical documented data on Indian-White contacts. The data now available should contribute significantly to a more accurate characterization of the way of life and the cultural equipment of the early historic Plains Indians, and perhaps also a clearer perception of the antecedents from which the defined archaeological horizon is derived . This data is badly needed from all parts of the Basin, from the sparsely populated west as well as from the more densely populated east.