NO. 10 NEBRASKA ARCHEOLOGY STRONG 51 



Cache 8 would have been an ordinary pocket cache but for the fact 

 that it was Hned with baked clay about three-fourths inch in thickness. 

 The cache was small, being ii inches in greatest diameter and 3 feet 

 6 inches deep (i foot 6 inches below the approximate floor line). The 

 soil content was of soft dark mixed earth but was barren of artifacts. 

 The lining of the cache was similar to that in cache i, but unlike the 

 latter it had been thoroughly baked, possibly by the introduction of 

 burning coals into the excavation after it had been coated with wet 

 clay. 



The remaining 12 pocket caches indicated in figure 5 present no new 

 features. A cross-section of one of these is shown in figure 6 and, as 

 previously mentioned, cache 7, aside from its slab cover, is also typical 

 (pi. 4, fig. 2). Just what function these small pits may have served is 

 obscure, but they might have been places for hiding artifacts in some 

 cases and a means of burying offensive ofifal in others. 



Refuse Heaps 



The extensive use of the steep banks of Lost Creek at this place for 

 the deposition of refuse has already been referred to. While engaged 

 in the excavation of house i, we learned from Ralph Douglas that 

 along the bank just west of excavation i and northeast of the house 

 site itself he had earlier dug up a great deal of refuse material. Bones, 

 potsherds, especially rims, broken artifacts, ash, and charcoal had been 

 abundant here, reaching a considerable depth just over and below the 

 edge of this bank. Several fragments of a burned bone bracelet, show- 

 ing incised designs similar to those on fragments from cache i in the 

 house, as well as a number of large baked fragments of wattle and 

 daub with large twig imprints were the most significant finds. Plainly 

 this was the refuse dump for house i (fig. 5), and this earlier digging 

 accounts for the fact that only a limited amount of refuse material was 

 found in excavation i (just east of the dump) and in our western 

 trenches. Hoping to find a similar refuse heap along the bank south of 

 the eastern entrance, we ran a 20- foot trench south from the passage to 

 the edge of the bank (fig. 5), but no indication of another refuse heap 

 was encountered. To judge from the uniformity of the collections of 

 previous diggers in this refuse heap it would seem that one group and 

 one general period were represented. So far as I could learn, little was 

 recovered in any refuse heaps that was not represented in our findings 

 at house i. 



In general, it appears that house i was originally a square, slightly 

 subsurface, earth lodge, with a 4-post central foundation and shorter 



