NO. lO NEBRASKA ARCHEOLOGY STRONG I29 



depth of over a foot. The 2-inch post next to the fireplace, which had a 

 slant to the southwest, has already been mentioned. Below the floor 

 level occurred hard yellow unmixed clay. 



Storage Pits 



Cache pit no. i was located on the northwest side of the house 

 (fig. 14) . It was circular in outline, 4 feet 3 inches in greatest diameter 

 and 2 feet wide across the mouth. Its greatest depth was 6 feet 3 

 inches, and it had a slightly concave bottom. It was bell-shaped in 

 cross-section with a wide bottom and narrow mouth. No special lining 

 of any sort was observed. The storage pit was filled with white ash 

 containing charcoal, bone fragments, potsherds, and a few artifacts. 

 The most striking of these was a large complete pot (pi. 13) lying 

 on its side at a depth of 4 feet 5 inches. The illustration shows how 

 strikingly the white ash in the cache pit contrasts with the surrounding 

 soil. The pot was full of ashes and dirt, one unworked mussel shell 

 being the only other object it contained. Besides this pot and a large 

 number of potsherds, one broken shell spoon, several small arrow- 

 points, several end scrapers, and numerous fragments of chipped 

 stone were recovered in cache i . 



Cache 2 (fig. 14) was on the northeast side of the house. Its 

 flattened bell shape is clearly indicated in the diagram. It was roughly 

 circular in outline with a greatest diameter of 4 feet 5 inches and an 

 extreme depth from the ground surface of 7 feet 7 inches. The mouth 

 of the cache was about 2 feet in diameter and 2 feet below floor line. 

 Like cache i, it contained a large amount of ash, but there was more 

 mixture both of dirt and of cultural detritus than in the former pit. 

 Near the top of the pit in the bottle neck (fig. 14) was a mass of black 

 organic material mixed with large numbers of fishbones, apparently 

 from very large catfish. There was also a large amount of baked clay 

 in the mouth of the pit, and its walls were lined with clay. This clay 

 lining was baked in places as though the walls of the pit when first dug 

 had been coated with wet clay and then a fire had been built on the 

 inside. 



Artifacts were more numerous in cache 2 than in cache i. Just 

 under the organic material previously mentioned a small. complete pot 

 was found in close contact with the roof lining of the cache (fig. 14). 

 It was right side up and in perfect condition (pi. 14, fig. i, a). In 

 addition, the cache contained i small pottery ladle (pi. 14, fig. i, e), 

 many potsherds (including both highly polished buff and polished 

 incised ware), i incised shell spoon, 4 arrowpoints, several broken 

 knife blades of chert, many retouched chert flakes, 3 small end scrapers. 



