Report on the Bureau of American 

 Ethnology 



Sir : I have the honor to submit the following report on the field 

 researches, office work, and other operations of the Bureau of Ameri- 

 can Ethnology during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1956, conducted in 

 accordance with the Act of Congress of April 10, 1928, as amended 

 August 22, 1949, which directs the Bureau "to continue independently 

 or in cooperation anthropological researches among the American 

 Indians and the natives of lands under the jurisdiction or protection 

 of the United States and the excavation and preservation of archeologic 

 remains." 



SYSTEMATIC RESEARCHES 



Dr. M. W. Stirling, Director of the Bureau, remained in Washington 

 during the major portion of the fiscal year. In addition to regular 

 administrative duties, he continued studies on the archeological collec- 

 tions made in Panama during 1952 and 1953. In May and June he 

 made two brief inspection trips to Kussell Cave in Jackson County. 

 Alabama, where Carl Miller conducted archeological excavations 

 under the auspices of the Bureau and financed by the National Geo- 

 graphic Society. The services of Mr. Miller were lent to the Bureau 

 by the River Basin Surveys for six weeks, the duration of this work. 

 The excavations, which reached a depth of 14 feet in the cave floor, 

 gave evidence of a fairly continuous occupation which extended from 

 approximately A. D. 1650 to the early Archaic. Samples from the 

 14-foot level yielded a carbon-14 date of 8160 B. P. (before the present) 

 ± 300. 



The beginning of the fiscal year found Dr. Frank II. H. Roberts, 

 Jr., Associate Director of the Bureau and Director of the River Basin 

 Surveys, on an inspection trip in the Missouri Basin. He visited 

 survey and excavation parties working in the Oahe Reservoir basin 

 in North Dakota and South Dakota and the Fort Randall Reservoir 

 area, also in South Dakota. After his return to Washington he 

 devoted practically full time to the management of the River Basin 

 Surveys program and in reviewing and revising a number of manu- 

 script reports on the results of investigations in various areas. In 

 October Dr. Roberts went to Clarksville, Mo., to attend the annual fall 

 meeting of the Missouri Archeological Society. He spoke at one of the 

 sessions on the subject "The Inter- Agency Archeological Salvage 

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