SECRETARY'S REPORT 59 



with that organization and is now at the Kansas City Museum. Mr. 

 Smith participated in the annual Plains Archeological Conference, 

 the meetings of the Nebraska Academy of Sciences and of the Society 

 for American Archaeology which were held at Lincoln. At the An- 

 thropological Section of the Academy of Sciences, he presented a 

 paper on the ethnographic contributions of Paul Wilhelm, Duke of 

 Wuerttemberg, who first visited the Upper Missouri region in 1820. 

 Early in May Mr. Smith went to Pierre, S. Dak., and spent a week 

 with the geological party that was studying deposits in the Oahe 

 Reservoir area. Following that activity he remained at Pierre and 

 began his regular summer's program, as mentioned in previous pages. 

 Mr. Smith's party was continuing its excavations just below the Oahe 

 Dam at the end of the year. 



Upon completing the 1955 season's work Dr. "Waldo R. Wedel re- 

 turned to Lincoln, and before his departure for Washington from 

 the Missouri Basin project headquarters, proceeded to Turin, Iowa, 

 to examine a reported find of human skeletons. He was accompanied 

 by Lawrence L. Tomsyck of the Lincoln office, and when they arrived 

 at the location of the burials they joined representatives from a num- 

 ber of institutions in studying the finds. Absence of diagnostic arti- 

 facts with the skeletons precluded any valid estimate of age or cul- 

 tural affiliations, but nothing was noted that would confirm assertions 

 which had been freely made that the bones were those of Paleo-Indians 

 and had a Pleistocene dating. Upon his return to Washington Dr. 

 Wedel resumed his regular duties at the U. S. National Museum. He 

 was again detailed to the River Basin Surveys for the 1956 season 

 and reported at the Lincoln headquarters on June 4. His subsequent 

 activities were described in the preceding discussion of field parties in 

 the Oahe area. 



Richard P. Wheeler, archeologist, was in charge of a field party 

 working in the Oahe Reservoir area from July 25 through October 29. 

 During the remainder of the fiscal year he devoted his time to analyz- 

 ing the materials obtained in the field and in working on a number 

 of technical reports and short articles. One article, "Recent Archeo- 

 logical Salvage Operations in the Missouri Basin," was published in 

 the Missouri River Basin Progress Report, October-December, 1955, 

 and another, " 'Quill Flatteners' or Pottery Modeling Tools," was 

 published in the Plains Anthropologist, April 1956. Wheeler pre- 

 sented a paper on his work in the Oahe Dam area at the Plains Con- 

 ference in November and participated in a number of discussions 

 during the conference. He was elected chairman of the 14th Plains 

 Conference which will be held in Lincoln in November 1956. At the 

 end of the fiscal year Mr. Wheeler was at the Lincoln headquarters 

 working on reports. 



