44 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 93 



the site in 1902. Since definite artifacts or indisputable human evi- 

 dence have not been found in any of the quarry pits so far opened, the 

 problem is not a simple one. Sterns (1915 a, I, pp. 126-135), o" the 

 basis of personal examination concluded that the assumed quarry 

 pits were of natural rather than human origin, though these conclusions 

 have not as yet been published. Unfortunately my own researches 

 here were not directly concerned with the " quarry pits " themselves, 

 and hence throw only an indirect light on the problem. We will return 

 to this subject briefly in a later section. 



In 1892 a brief article was published stating that the mounds along 

 the west side of the Missouri were the remains of earth lodges rather 

 than artificial burial mounds. (Jones, 1892, pp. 111-112.) Since the 

 whole matter of Nebraska " mounds " is a troublesome problem, it 

 will be discussed in a later section. There seems little on record 

 for this decade concerning Nebraska archeology. Certain second-hand 

 observations given by Grinnell (1893, pp. 255-256) on the subject of 

 pottery making by the Pawnee have value, especially since little else 

 is extant on the subject. Likewise, the general study of eastern 

 ceramics made by Holmes (1903. pp. 58-59, 145, 199, and pi. 

 CLXXVii) has some direct references to Nebraska problems. He 

 figures some of the sherds collected on Beaver Creek by Hay den and 

 generally classifies Nebraska as being in the northern and simpler 

 area of eastern ceramics. The Beaver Creek sherds figured and the 

 projected shapes derived therefrom are excellent and present a good 

 sample of protohistoric Pawnee pottery in its best period. 



Oil October 21, 1906, the Omaha World-Herald announced the 

 finding of human remains occurring in undisturbed loess formation 

 and presumably of great antiquity. In excavating an apparently arti- 

 ficial mound on Long's Hill about 10 miles north of Omaha, Robert F. 

 Gilder had run into a large number of disarticulated human bones 

 both above and below an area of what appeared to be burned clay 

 which occurred at a depth of about 4 feet. The remains from the upper 

 strata appeared to him and to others who examined them to be of a 

 relatively modern Indian type but the lower skulls had certain ap- 

 parently primitive characteristics. (Gilder, 1907 a, pp. 35-39; 1907 b, 

 pp. 378-381.) Interested in the report, Henry Fairfield Osborn made 

 a trip to Omaha, examined the material, and later published a rather 

 cautious article (1907, pp. 371-375) stating that although the remains 

 were mere recent than Neanderthal man and might even be more 

 recent than early Neolithic man in Europe, they were of a very primi- 

 tive human type. The skeletal material was transferred to the Uni- 

 versitv of Nebraska, where it was studied by E. H. Barbour and H. B. 



