20 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1953 



The Post Office Department transferred to the division of philately 

 3,198 recently issued stamps which had been distributed by the Uni- 

 versal Postal Union. Gifts of stamps also were received from the 

 Governments of Monaco, Philippines, Netherlands, Nicaragua, 

 Czechoslovakia, Poland, Australia, and Norwaj'', and from the United 

 Nations Postal Administration. Outstanding additions to the phil- 

 atelic collection were as follows : 12 volumes of stamps of Convention 

 States of India from an anonymous donor; carrier stamps and rare 

 foreign stamps from Philip H. Ward, Jr.; Nesbitt dies and postal 

 fiscal stamps of Austria-Hungary from B. H. Homan; and United 

 States precancels and Bureau print precancel errors from John R. 

 Boker, Jr. 



EXPLORATION AND FIELDWORK 



At the invitation of Princeton University, Dr. Waldo R. Wedel, 

 curator of archeology, participated from July until September 1952 as 

 the representative of the Smithsonian Institution in the interpretation 

 of the archeological aspects of a site near Cody, Wyo., occupied nearly 

 7,000 years ago by aboriginal hunters of buffalo. Ninety-five archeo- 

 logical sites located in the Upper Essequibo, the Rupununi savamias, 

 and the coastal area of the northwest district of British Guiana were 

 surveyed and excavated in the interval between October 1952 and 

 April 1953 by Dr. Clifford Evans, associate curator of archeology, 

 under a Fulbright research gi*ant, funds provided by the Smithsonian 

 Institution, and grants from other sources to the coinvestigator. Dr. 

 Betty J. Meggers. At the request of a field party of the United States 

 Geological Survey working in the Monument Valley-Comb Ridge 

 area of northeastern Arizona, Dr. Walter W. Taylor, collaborator in 

 anthropology, visited 41 sites, from IT of which sherd collections were 

 assembled for subsequent study. At the close of the fiscal year John 

 C. Ewers, associate curator of ethnology, was conducting field investi- 

 gations of Assiniboin Indian arts and crafts on Fort Peck and Fort 

 Belknap Reservations, Montana. 



During the last half of the year 1952, Charles O. Handley, Jr., assist- 

 ant curator of mammals, observed and collected mammals in the 

 Kalahari Desert region of northeastern South West Africa while 

 assigned to the Peabody-Harvard ethnological expedition. Following 

 arrival at Walvis Bay on July 1, 1953, the party, under the direction 

 of L. K. Marshall, proceeded to Windhoek which served as a base 

 for the 6-months investigation of the primitive Bushmen residing in 

 the desert south of Okavongo River. Maun in Bechuanaland was the 

 easternmost locality visited. In June 1953 Mr. Handley also made a 

 short field trip to the Dismal Swamp of Virginia to obtain additional 

 data for inclusion in a memoir on that swamp sponsored by the Vir- 

 ginia Academy of Sciences. At the request of the Army Medical 



