2 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. IO3 



name of the formation is Sand Canyon. Heavy erosion of the gully 

 banks in recent years exposed deposits of alluvium and sporadic 

 concentrations of animal bones including mammoth, bison, and deer 

 as well as other smaller mammals, mainly of the Rodentia. Stone 

 implements occurring near some of these outcroppings indicated that 

 aboriginal hunters had been active in the area and suggested that 

 both former camping places and associations between man-made 

 objects and extinct species of animals could be found there. 



The site was discovered by Keith Martin, a local ranchman, who 

 reported the presence of the bones and showed the artifacts that he 

 had found there to various people at the Museum of New Mexico 

 and the Laboratory of Anthropology at Santa Fe, and at the Uni- 

 versity of New Mexico in Albuquerque. In the spring of 1940 Dr. 

 Frank C. Hibben and a group of students from the Department of 

 Anthropology at the University did some preliminary prospecting 

 there and obtained a collection of animal bones and a few stone 

 artifacts. In August of the same year the writer visited the site in 

 company with Dr. Hibben. Because of the amount of work involved 

 in a thorough investigation and the fact that its efforts were occupied 

 with other archeological researches, the University of New Mexico 

 offered to turn the site over to the Smithsonian Institution. The 

 combination of features at the site and in the adjacent district was 

 so promising that the offer was accepted. Permission to carry on the 

 work was obtained from Mrs. George Wilburn, lessee, and Mrs. 

 H. Bonem, owner, of Tucumcari, N. Mex. 



Several factors were considered in making the decision to investi- 

 gate the site. In addition to the occurrence of artifacts with fossil 

 bones, there was the matter of the projectile points picked up from 

 the weathered surfaces by Martin and found in situ by the University 

 group. They are of the so-called Yuma type, a form purported to be 

 of some antiquity but about which further data are needed to deter- 

 mine its true status. Furthermore, the location, some 130 miles 

 (209.2 km.) south of the original Folsom bison quarry (Figgins, 

 1927; Roberts, 1935, 1940), and some 60 miles (96.6 km.) north 

 of the important deposits along Blackwater Draw between Clovis and 

 Portales where Folsom and Yuma materials occur (Howard, 1935; 

 Roberts, 1940), as well as its proximity to some of the west Texas 

 places where reputedly old finds have been made, seemed significant. 

 In addition the area was the scene of considerable activity during 

 late protohistoric and early historic times. It was hunting territory 

 for numerous bands of the Apache — the Querechos of Coronado and 



