36 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1954 



unrecorded sites were located in addition to the 57 examined and 

 sample collections were made from each. During August, September, 

 and October another party made an intensive reconnaissance and 

 tested major sites in the Oahe Reservoir area in north central South 

 Dakota. The purpose of that party was to locate new and unrecorded 

 sites in the area, to visit all the old sites reported in previous years 

 in order to reevaluate them in terms of new information, and to test 

 extensively those which seemed to warrant full-scale exploration in 

 order to determine the minimum amount of digging necessary to obtain 

 a fair sample from each. The party accomplished all three objec- 

 tives. Eleven previously unknown sites were recorded and tests made 

 in them. A total of 89 previously located sites were revisited and 

 tests of varying intensiveness were made in 45. 



In May 1954 a reconnaissance party returned to the Fort Randall 

 Reservoir to obtain further information from several additional sites 

 for which the data were not conclusive. The party found that several 

 of those scheduled for study had already gone under water but by the 

 end of the fiscal year 13 had been visited and more or less intensively 

 investigated. Extensive excavations were carried out at three of them. 

 At one a circular house and an exterior cache pit were dug, and at 

 another stratified camp remains were trenched. At the end of the 

 year the party was clearing debris from the ruins of an earth lodge. 

 A second party also went to the Fort Randall Reservoir in May to 

 complete investigations at a large earth-lodge village which had been 

 occupied by at least two groups of prehistoric Indians and where con- 

 siderable work had been done during two previous seasons. At the 

 end of the year that party was still in the field, having excavated earth 

 lodges, palisade trenches, and cache pits, establishing not only the 

 two occupations previously noted but a third one as well. The evi- 

 dence obtained indicates that the three occupations took place at vari- 

 ous times between A. D. 1500 and 1700. At the end of the year the 

 water of the reservoir had already risen to the lower edges of the site 

 and it was expected that by mid-July tlie entire area would be under 

 several feet of water. 



A third party went to the Garrison Reservoir in North Dakota in 

 May and resumed excavations at the site of Fort Berthold II where 

 extensive digging had been done during the 1952 field season. Shortly 

 after arriving at the location the River Basin Surveys party joined 

 forces with one from the State Historical Society of North Dakota 

 which was working under a cooperative agreement with the National 

 Park Service. As a single unit, the combined group completed the 

 excavation of all features of the site of Fort Berthold II, which was 

 occupied by both fur traders and American military forces from about 

 1858 to 1890. The group then turned its attention to the remains of 

 the adjacent Indian village where considerable digging had been done 



