NO. 10 NEBRASKA ARCHEOLOGY STRONG 'J'J 



circa 1800, was difficult to trace. In this regard it is apparent that the 

 older the site the more broken up will be the lines of soil stratification, 

 owing to the long-continued work of insects and rodents. In all cases 

 but one the posts had rotted away except for small crumbling pieces 

 of charcoal and rotted wood. Each post, however, thus left a mold 

 somewhat larger than itself which could often be cleaned out by hand 

 without the use of tools. The outer post molds averaged about 10 

 inches in diameter, suggesting a post about 7 inches in thickness. 

 These outer posts appear to have been vertical rather than leaning 

 outward as occurs in historic Pawnee lodges ; however, lacking the 

 actual posts themselves, this is not positive. One post in the southeast 

 corner was more or less intact below the floor line, consisting of two 

 slabs of bark filled with yellow earth, ash, and charcoal. The bark 

 crumbled on exposure but appeared to be a soft wood, perhaps cot- 

 tonwood, and the post itself measured 7 inches in diameter. It is 

 possible that not all the outer posts were located, especially on the 

 north and west walls. Their distribution was six on the north, eight on 

 the east, eight on the south, and five on the west, although originally 

 there may have been eight to a side. In every case the upper portions 

 had been burned, while the lower portions had rotted away. Evidences 

 of the floor line extended only about 2 feet beyond the posts. 



The arrangement of the inside posts as revealed by the excavation 

 leaves something to the imagination. In many cases it was impossible 

 to distinguish between post molds and small pocket caches, while in 

 others large cache pits or other subfloor excavations made the location 

 of post holes difficult. Four post molds, each about 6 feet from the 

 center of the fireplace, are located in an almost perfect square (fig. 5, 

 I-IV). The northeast post hole measured 12 inches, the southeast 

 10 inches, the southwest 10 inches, and the northwest 9 inches. The 

 southwest post hole was less clearly defined than the others (fig. 5, 

 IV) but appears to have served this function rather than that of a 

 pocket cache, since it contained considerable charcoal. All of the post 

 molds, both inner and outer, were sunk well below the level of the 

 floor. Judging from the one 7-inch post found more or less intact, 

 the holes were first dug out, the posts set in, and the earth tamped 

 down around them. Just 3 feet south of the north wall three 4-inch 

 post molds occurred on an east-and-west line, but all three were very 

 shallow, penetrating only a few inches below the floor line. They 

 could not have been used as roof supports, and their positions, each 

 2 feet north of a cache pit, suggest some relationship between post 

 and pit. One 4-inch post mold was located 3 feet from the southeast 

 corner, another of the same size exactly between the NE. and SE. 

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