62 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1961 



At the end of the fiscal year there were 3 archeologists in addition 

 to the chief, 1 administrative assistant, 1 administrative clerk, 1 sec- 

 retary, 1 scientific illustrator, 1 photographer, and 4 museum aides on 

 the permanent staff, and 2 assistant field archeologists, 1 cook, and 25 

 field crewmen on the temporary staff. 



During the year there were 10 Smithsonian Institution River Basin 

 Surveys field parties at work in the Missouri Basin. Three of these 

 were in the Oahe Reservoir area and two were in the Big Bend 

 Reservoir area of South Dakota during July and August. One small 

 field party conducted investigations during October and November in 

 the Big Bend Reservoir area. One party investigated the Merritt 

 Reservoir area in Nebraska during May and June. Two parties were 

 excavating in the Big Bend Reservoir area and one in the Oahe 

 Reservoir area during June. 



Other fieldwork in the Missouri Basin during the year included 

 11 parties from State institutions operating under cooperative agree- 

 ments with the National Park Service and in cooperation with the 

 Smithsonian Institution in the Inter-Agency Archeological Salvage 

 Program. 



There was a slight increase in appropriated funds for fiscal year 

 1961, but since most of the new money was to cover wage-scale in- 

 creases beginning in July, the fiscal situation brought into even sharper 

 focus than before the critical problem of accomplishing the minimum 

 necessary salvage at a time when two of the largest reservoirs. Big 

 Bend and Oahe, were nearing completion and, in fact, Oalie was be- 

 ginning to flood some of the important imexcavated archeological 

 sites. However, when the parties took to the field in June it was 

 possible to shift the methods of fieldwork from sampling of large 

 numbers of sites back to the intensive excavation of a smaller number 

 of key sites. The sampling techniques of the preceding two field 

 seasons had been successful but some of the more intensive excavations 

 were again needed. 



At the beginning of the fiscal year, Dr. Warren W. Caldwell and 

 a crew of eight were engaged in minor test excavations at two sites 

 in the Big Bend Reservoir of South Dakota. Site 39LM222, near 

 the mouth of Medicine Creek, in Lyman County, was a diffuse village 

 of the La Roche complex. A small, circular house with closely spaced 

 wall posts, four center posts, and a long entry passage, lay just above 

 an earlier structure of indeterminate pattern. A shallow ditch sur- 

 rounding the deeper house suggested that the house itself may have 

 formed a bastion, or strong point, in the fortification system. Seg- 

 ments of both superimposed houses were excavated. Portions of a 

 third house were also dug and it proved to have been a small, circular 

 building differing little in structural details from the uppermost of 

 the two superimposed houses. Pottery and other artifacts were 



