SECRETARY’S REPORT 61 
recommended for excavation and 2 were written off as meriting no 
further attention. The 12 comprised either single- or multi-occupa- 
tion sites, ranging in time from Middle Woodland through the early 
ceramic periods of rectangular houses to and including the late 
ceramic periods of circular earth lodges. One suggests a preceramic 
horizon somewhat similar to that at the Medicine Crow site (39BF2). 
Of the sites visited and not tested, nine were recommended for further 
investigation, and five were written off. One of the latter five, 
39HU215, was first thought to be an early 19th-century trading post, 
but tests indicated that it was a late 19th-century homestead allot- 
ment, probably of Dakota occupancy. On September 3 this party 
terminated its work in the Big Bend area after 8 weeks in the field, 
and moved to the Oahe Reservoir area to continue similar survey and 
testing activities. 
In the Oahe Reservoir area there were four River Basin Survey 
parties in the field at the beginning of the fiscal year, and a fifth 
party began work there early in September. Dr. Robert L. Stephen- 
son with a crew of 23 was excavating, at the beginning of the year, in 
the vicinity of Fort Sully on the left bank of the Missouri River in 
Sully County, S. Dak. That party conducted intensive excavations 
in the Sully site (89SL4), the remains of the largest of the pre- 
historic earth-lodge villages known in the Missouri Basin. It also 
completely excavated a small rock-cairn burial site (89SL38) nearby. 
The latter consisted of a deep burial beneath a rock pile and produced 
a skeleton in poor condition, with no associated artifacts. The Sully 
site excavations included 13 circular earth lodges of the nearly 400 
presumed to be present in the site, and 114 of the 4 ceremonial lodges. 
The house floors ranged in depth, below the surface, from 2 to 4 
feet; entrances were to the southwest; and two distinct architectural 
patterns were observed. One was composed of closely set double rows 
of small outer wall posts, the other was composed of widely spaced 
single rows of large outer posts with leaner posts outside them. Ap- 
parently there were two closely related, yet somewhat different, oc- 
cupational patterns, and the artifact inventory tends to support this 
distinction. The ceremonial lodges were 12-sided structures of 75- to 
80-foot diameters and had long entrance passages. The other houses 
all had very short entrances. The ceramic inventory suggests that 
there may have been an earlier occupation featuring rectangular 
houses, but no such houses were found in the areas excavated. Other 
features excavated include burial areas where 63 burials were re- 
covered, midden heaps, a large rectangular “plaza” area of unknown 
usage, a large I-shaped depression of unknown usage, a strata trench 
across the center of the site, and 91 cache pits. The major occupation 
of the site appears to have been by the immediate ancestors of the 
