Report on the Bureau of American 
Ethnology 
Sir: I have the honor to submit the following report on the field 
researches, oflicework, and other operations of the Bureau of Ameri- 
can Ethnology during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1959, conducted 
in accordance with the act of Congress of April 10, 1928, as amended 
August 22, 1949, which directs the Bureau “to continue independently 
or in cooperation anthropological researches among the American In- 
dians and the natives of lands under the jurisdiction or protection of 
the United States and the excavation and preservation of archeologic 
remains.” 
SYSTEMATIC RESEARCHES 
(Prepared from data submitted by staff members) 
Dr. Frank H. H. Roberts, Jr., Director of the Bureau, devoted a 
portion of the fiscal year to office duties and the general supervision 
of the activities of the Bureau and the River Basin Surveys. In 
September he went to the Mesa Verde National Park in southwestern 
Colorado as a consultant to the Research Committee of the National 
Geographic Society. While there he visited a number of ruins that 
are to be excavated to obtain new information on the aboriginal peo- 
ple of the region and also to provide additional exhibit areas for 
visitors to the park. Asa result of the conferences on the Mesa Verde, 
the National Geographic Society made a grant to the National Park 
Service to assist in the excavation program on Wetherill Mesa. It is 
contemplated that the digging will continue over approximately six 
field seasons. Following the sessions on the mesa, Dr. Roberts spent 
a day at Hovenweep National Monument on the Colorado-Utah line 
north of the McElmo Canyon area where the late Dr. J. Walter 
Fewkes, a former Chief of the Bureau, carried on investigations some 
50 years ago. Judging from Dr. Fewkes’s report and the condition 
of the area today, there has been little change since he first described 
the towers for which the area is famous. 
After his return to Washington, D.C., Dr. Roberts went late in 
September to Athens, Ga., and visited a number of projects in other 
parts of Georgia and South Carolina where salvage operations were 
underway, and participated in discussions relative to continuing work 
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