220 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 93 



As previously stated, the presence of the flint nodules may have 

 led early people to use the gravel bed as a v^orkshop site, which would 

 account for the large amount of chips and flakes as well as the few 

 broken artifacts. The fossilized bone fragments showing the effects 

 of fire as well as the broken marrow bones (pi. 22, fig. 2, n. g, q) 

 suggest that it was also a camp site and that these early people killed 

 and ate bison of a species now extinct. The total absence of any 

 pottery also indicates a nonceramic culture and in all probability a 

 preceramic culture. 



Owing to pressure of other work, nothing more was done in Bird 

 Creek Canyon after our visit of April i, 1930. The site here is very 

 inadequately worked, and there are in all probability similar ex- 

 posures in the bluff canyons bordering the Platte and the Missouri 

 Rivers. 



Recent Discoveries of Human Artifacts Associated with 



Extinct Mammals in Nebraska and Closely 



Adjacent Regions 



Since 1929 several discoveries of human artifacts in association with 

 skeletal remains of extinct animals, or under other circumstances sug- 

 gesting some geologic antiquity, have been reported from within the 

 boundaries of Nebraska. As individual papers have already been pub- 

 lished concerning the majority of these finds, as well as two general 

 reports (Strong, 1932 b, and Bell and Van Royen, 1934), they need 

 only be briefly referred to here. Since this evidence, wherever authen- 

 ticated, gives us the earliest glimpse of man in Nebraska yet known, 

 it must be considered in a work such as the present one dealing with 

 the general archeological problems of the State. 



Considering these discoveries in chronological order, the first was 

 made in July 1929 by C. B. Schultz, of the Nebraska State Museum, 

 while excavating in the South Loup Valley about 7 miles southeast of 

 the town of Cumro, Custer County (fig. i, site 35). While removing 

 fossilized bison bones from a i-foot soil layer, under 16 feet of loess, 

 Schultz found and removed a black flint point or knife blade. This 

 specimen (pi. 7, fig. i, e) is 7.6 cm in length and is of the so-called 

 " Yuma type " (ND, fig. 7). Later, in September of the same year, I 

 visited the site with Schultz, and we conducted further excavations but 

 found no other artifacts. Schultz has published a brief account of the 

 discovery (Schultz, 1932; also see Strong, 1932 b, and Bell and Van 

 Royen, 1934.) Owing to the premature removal of the artifact and 

 the lack of secondary evidence, the association, although extremely 

 probable, cannot be fully demonstrated. 



