216 BULLETIN 183, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



complex is obscure. From the instances cited above, however, it seems 

 safe to infer a general contemporaneity. Moreover, wherever strati- 

 fication west of the Missouri involves Woodland and other ceramic 

 horizons, the Woodland materials seem always to occur at the bottom 

 of the sequence. This was demonstrated by Sterns (1915; see also 

 Strong, 1935, p. 175 seq.) for the immediate valley of the Missouri, 

 where Woodland remains underlay others attributed to the Nebraska 

 Culture. Recent researches at Ash Hollow Cave in Garden County, 

 Nebr. (Hill and Kivett, 1941, p. 224) and those mentioned above on 

 Salt Creek in Lane County, Kans., show that in widely separated 

 localities in the High Plains the Woodland horizon sim^ilarly underlies 

 the Upper Republican. Thus, from the standpoint of temporal suc- 

 cession, if the Renner site is correctly correlated in time with Wood- 

 land horizons to the west and northwest, it must also be earlier than 

 the Upper Republican aspect and the Nebraska Culture, with which 

 Steed-Kisker has been equated. 



It will be recalled that two pottery vessels of Hopewellian type 

 were taken from a chambered stone burial mound on Pearl Branch. 

 If this and similar structures in Platte County are correctly assigned 

 to the Hopewellian horizon as represented at Renner, there is further 

 support for the succession indicated in the above paragraph. This 

 support derives from our finding of five intrusive shell-tempered 

 vessels of undoubted Middle Mississippi type in the vault and repaired 

 wall of Pearl mound C. The peoples who placed this shell-tempered 

 pottery in the tomb must perforce have been in the district at a time 

 later than the vault builders, provisionally identified as Hopewellian. 



Despite the presence at Renner of certain rimsherds and other items 

 possibly suggestive of Mississippi influences, I can see no valid reason 

 for believing that the site on Line Creek was contemporary with 

 Steed-Kisker, or that the respective manifestations of which the two 

 stations are representative were locally in contact with one another. 

 Nothing in the ceramic or other remains at Steed-Kisker, or in any 

 other related village or mound sites so far seen in Platte County, 

 suggests that these people had any commercial intercourse with the 

 Hopewellian occupants of the locality. Had the two groups been 

 contemporary there would certainly be some surviving evidences of 

 the fact. The available data do not warrant a guess as to the age of 

 either horizon, or an attempt at estimating the length of time that 

 intervened between the two occupations. 



The greater antiquity of the Renner site, as compared with Steed- 

 Kisker (see table 10), is in line with previous archeological findings 

 and interpretations in the Mississippi Valley. At the Whitnah village 

 site and elsewhere in Fulton County, Illinois, Cole and Deuel (1937, 

 pp. 161, 205) have demonstrated that Hopewellian and Central 

 Basin Woodland peoples preceded Middle Mississippi groups. In 



