266 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 93 



at least used as a charnel house, is also noted. These conclusions are 

 in almost complete accord with those of the less extensive Survey 

 researches in such sites. Gilder has also described various Nebraska 

 culture houses, but owing to incomplete excavation his earlier descrip- 

 tions are seriously open to question and need not be considered here. 



There remains to be mentioned the vexed problem of the methods 

 of disposal of the dead practiced by the people of the Nebraska 

 culture. The occurrence of some sort of charnel houses has been 

 mentioned above, and the presence of scattered bones and partially 

 articulated skeletons in natural hillocks or mounds associated with 

 potsherds of the Nebraska culture type has also been touched upon 

 in earlier sections. Fragmentary evidence of this sort obtained by 

 Gilder, Sterns, and the writer, indicates that the people of the Ne- 

 braska culture exposed their dead, perhaps on scaffolds or in certain 

 houses, and later buried them with a few scattered offerings in small 

 elevations or ridges near the houses. That some of these hillocks may 

 prove to be artificial rather than natural is a possibility, and until more 

 careful excavation work in such sites has been accomplished we can- 

 not tell whether the Nebraska culture carriers were actually mound 

 builders or not. The occurrence of only a very few scattered human 

 bones and offerings in such elevations, as was the case in the " mound " 

 above the Walker Gilmore site previously described, suggests that the 

 Nebraska culture people may have at times removed the bones of their 

 dead and carried them away with them, as has been recorded, for 

 example, among the Sisseton and other Dakota groups. (Bushnell, 

 1927. p. 26.) All that can be said at present is that these people 

 exposed and dismembered their dead, seem to have kept the skeletal 

 remains in their lodges, perhaps practicing some form of ceremonial 

 cannibalism, and eventually deposited them in mounds, natural or 

 otherwise. 



In summing up the characteristics of the Nebraska culture in com- 

 parison with those of the Upper Republican culture, a few sharp 

 differences as well as numerous similarities become apparent. Both 

 have rectangular semisubterranean earth lodges as the main type of 

 dwelling, and both occasionally used round earth lodges as well. How- 

 ever, the Nebraska culture lodges had only interior cache pits and 

 often lacked a definite entrance passageway, whereas the Upper Re- 

 publican culture house type, so far as known, had a definite four post 

 central foundation, one or two post-lined entrance passages, and ex- 

 terior as well as interior cache pits. Both cultures are characterized 

 by the deposition of previously exposed human bones in ossuaries, 

 Init there is a possibility that the people of the Nebraska culture were 



