380 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1951 



from buried cultural layers. "When digging was started at the Medi- 

 cine Creek sites in western Nebraska the time available for recovering 

 the archeological material was so short that it was deemed necessary 

 to take rather drastic steps. As a consequence, even though mechani- 

 cal aids are generally frowned upon by archeologists, bulldozers and 

 highway-grading machinery lent by the Bureau of Reclamation were 

 used to strip the sod and other cover from entire sites. As a result, it 

 was possible to observe the complete village plan, to study village pat- 

 terns, and to discover small features not readily determinable when 

 the usual hand-labor methods were employed. The results at Medi- 

 cine Creek demonstrated the practicability and effectiveness of heavy 

 equipment in uncovering archeological materials with a minimum of 

 breakage, and wherever possible the use of such machinery was ex- 

 tended to other projects. Bulldozers were employed in some of the 

 digging at the Angostura and Oahe Reservoirs in South Dakota and 

 at the Falcon and La von Reservoirs in Texas. Highway patrols were 

 found to be very satisfactory in the Tenkiller Ferry Reservoir in 

 Oklahoma as well as at the Medicine Creek sites. When the over- 

 burden is removed from a site by such means, a small crew of laborers 

 can accomplish in a few short weeks what under older methods of 

 excavation would require many months of effort. Furthermore, when 

 a village area is uncovered in that way, much more is revealed than 

 when the work is done by hand labor. In the Southeast, however, 

 because of differences in the soil and conditions of greater moisture, 

 heavy equipment has not fulfilled the requirements. In most cases 

 it tends to crush the underlying material or to bog down. 



PALEONTOLOGICAL STUDIES 



Paleontological investigations have not played as large a part as 

 those of an archeological nature in the River Basin Surveys' program 

 for two reasons. In the first place, bone deposits are not restricted to 

 the banks of streams and in many cases similar material may be 

 found at locations which will not be flooded by the reservoirs. Sec- 

 ondly, such deposits as are exposed in reservoir basins are not as exten- 

 sive or as numerous as the camp and village remains left by the 

 Indians. Consequently, they do not call for as much work. The 

 paleontologist as a rule does not sit down and spend long periods 

 digging at a single bone bed but generally moves about from outcrop 

 to outcrop to see what has been exposed by erosion and if the prospects 

 seem good does some collecting. In the course of several seasons' 

 work, he may revisit the same locality a number of times, spending 

 only short periods in digging. In the present program, paleonto- 

 logical and geological studies have been carried on in a large number 

 of reservoir basins throughout the Missouri drainage and at several 



