(2 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
of the Commission, the local contractor, the Corps of Engineers, 
members of the Yankton College staff, the National Park Service, 
and the Smithsonian Institution made this salvage operation success- 
ful. The burials proved to be of a group of Woodland people and 
included an appreciable number of personal ornaments, as well as a 
good series of skeletal remains. This party disbanded on August 23, 
after 8 weeks in the field. 
The third River Basin Surveys party in the Oahe Reservoir area 
at the beginning of the year was comprised of a crew of 10 men under 
the direction of Charles H. McNutt. This party conducted excava- 
tions at a series of sites in the Fielder Bottom-Telegraph Flat area 
near the Sully site. The work was a continuation of excavations be- 
gun the season before, designed to sample the smaller sites in the 
immediate vicinity of the Sully site, in order to round out the story 
of the prehistoric occupations of this once heavily populated area. 
At the Sully School site (89SL7), one house was excavated in its 
entirety, and portions of four more houses were exposed. Three test 
trenches were cut across the fortification ditch, and a large series of 
midden tests, cache pits, and subsidiary features were excavated. Be- 
cause of the two seasons’ work there the total artifact sample is ex- 
tensive. The architectural information recovered is less satisfactory. 
The gumbo fill present in many of the features made it extremely 
difficult to determine structural characteristics. Two occupations were 
present, one represented by rectangular houses and pottery similar 
to that from the Thomas Riggs site, the other by circular houses and 
pottery in the La Roche tradition. Only part of the site was fortified. 
The rectangular-house occupation was confined within the fortifica- 
tion ditch, but the circular-house occupation was found both within 
and without the ditch. There is additional ceramic evidence that the 
fortification probably dates from the former, rather than from the 
latter, occupation. 
The Ziltener site (89SL10) was located along a treeless cutbank 
of the Missouri River bottoms approximately 3 miles southeast of 
the Sully site. Informants had reported that a number of skulls and 
artifacts were eroded from-the bank from time to time by the annual 
spring rises in the river. The bank was carefully watched for several 
seasons by River Basin Surveys parties, but with little success. In 
1958 a storage pit and a house profile were visible, and a small cache 
was found where it had slumped from the cutbank. The remainder 
of the house and the storage pit were excavated. The house was 
circular, and the pottery of the La Roche tradition. 
The Nolz site (89SL40) was located on a terrace remnant below 
and somewhat to the southwest of the Sully site. Three very faint 
house depressions were visible as surface features. Two of these 
