106 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM vol.86 



out by the fact that the great bulk of the material came from a rela- 

 tively homogeneous and unstratified deposit below plow sole and out. 

 of the old trash pits. Furthermore, the Renner site is not unique 

 in the Kansas City area. Five or six miles to the west on a small 

 unnamed creek about a mile south of the Missouri, in "Wyandotte 

 County, Kans., nearly identical remains have been unearthed by 

 H. M. Trowbridge, of Bethel. Practically every artifact and pottery 

 type enumerated above from the Renner site can be duplicated in 

 the Trowbridge collection. Surface finds have revealed good evi- 

 dence for recurrence of the complex at five or six other smaller sites 

 recorded in and below Kansas City, and it is quite likely that still 

 others will eventually be found both up and down the Missouri 

 River from this known area of occurrence. 



A brief survey of the more recent literature on the archeology of 

 the upper ISIississij^pi drainage suggests that the Renner site and 

 similar remains in the vicinity may prove to be rather closely related 

 to certain Hopewellian manifestations in parts of Illinois and Wis- 

 consin.*' From the limited studies so far made, it is not yet clear 

 to which, if any, of the currently recognized aspects of the Hope- 

 wellian phase the newly identified Missouri Valley variant is 

 assignable. It apj)arently lacks among other things many of the prac- 

 tices connected with disposal of the dead farther east and south, 

 although the evidence hints at a basic similarity even here. Pos- 

 sibly further work will show that these remains comprise the Kansas 

 City focus of an as yet unnamed westerly aspect of the Hopewellian. 

 This point, as well as the exact position of the complex in Missouri 

 Valley archeology temporally and otherwise, must remain problemat- 

 ical until systematic investigations have been made in additional 

 related sites and in some of the fast-vanishing burial mounds of the 

 Kansas City area. 



9 McKcrn, W. C, A Wisconsin variant of tln' Hopewell culture, Milwaukee Public Mua. 

 Bull., vol. 10, no. 2, 1931. — Cole, F. C, and Deuel, T., Rediscovering Hlinols, Chicago, 1937. 



U. ». «OVERNIIENT PRINTIN8 OFFICEi l>lt 



