NO. 10 NEBRASKA ARCHEOLOGY STRONG /I 



Our excavation work in this region was prosecuted on a farm then 

 owned by T. Dooley, situated on the east bank of Lost Creek about 

 one-eighth of a mile from its junction with the Republican River. 

 Previous digging here by local collectors from Franklin and nearby 

 towns had revealed much of archeological interest. This work car- 

 ried on in 1928 and 1929 was largely unorganized, few notes were 

 taken, and the specimens were scattered. However, through the cour- 

 tesy of one of the workers, Karl Spence, of Crawford, Nebr., I have 

 been able to compare some of this earlier material with that which 

 we obtained. Mr. Spence kindly sent me photographs and descrip- 

 tions of his extensive collection from this site. This data I have in- 

 corporated under the heading " house 2," at the close of the present 

 section. 



The site which we selected for excavation was a small flat some 

 40 feet above the present bed of Lost Creek and separated from larger 

 flats on both the north and the south by wide draws or former creek 

 channels. The little island or miniature mesa thus formed was again 

 almost cut in two from east to west by a smaller draw or dry wash. 

 The bulk of the earlier digging had been carried on to the south of 

 this little draw and along the steep banks of Lost Creek. The banks 

 at this point drop steeply to a small shelf about 35 feet below, and then 

 vertically for 10 to 12 feet to the present water level. The old houses 

 were located on the uppermost level, and the steep creek banks had 

 been used as a place for dumping refuse ; ashes, broken pottery, and 

 artifacts were formerly thickly deposited along the rim. Unfortu- 

 nately, relic hunters had torn up most of these deposits and had so 

 honeycombed the edge of the bank that the owner was obliged to forbid 

 further excavation here. Since the bulk of the digging back from the 

 banks occurred south of the small draw previously mentioned, we 

 centered our first exploration work on the north side, which had been 

 relatively little dug over. The whole flat in question had never been 

 under the plow, having been used as pasture land. While it formed 

 part of the bottom, inasmuch as the low hills to the east were almost 

 a quarter of a mile away, it had no timber other than low shrubs, 

 the larger trees at this point being confined to the creek bed and the 

 deeper draws. 



Since there were no surface indications of house pits, we ran our 

 first trench through a depression parallel to the edge of the bank where 

 local collectors reported much material had been found (fig. 5, excava- 

 tion 2). A trench 20 feet long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet deep yielded 

 some artifacts but no subsoil indications of any house structure. A 

 few potsherds, some worked jasper and chips, as well as two bison 



