70 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1948 
vegetal materials (corn, beans, seeds of sunflower, squash, and wild 
plum) were found. In a number of cases sections of wood in an 
excellent state of preservation were obtained from post holes in the 
house floors. These specimens are of value for determining the type 
of vegetation in the area hundred of years ago and possibly may 
furnish information for dating purposes. 
Most of the remains in this district belong to the Upper Republican 
culture, so named because the first of the type studied and defined 
were located in the Republican River drainage of southern Nebraska. 
It is not possible at this time to correlate them with any of the known 
tribes, such as the Dakota, Pawnee, or Comanche, but this may be 
done later. Remains of this culture are believed to date from ca. 
A. D. 1200 to 1500. A few of the sites appear to belong to what has 
been called “Woodland” because of their close relationship to others 
east of the Missouri. Tentative dating places it in the centuries 
A. D. 500 to 1200. In addition there are traces of a primitive hunting 
people who inhabited the area several millennia earlier. There is no 
doubt that the work at Medicine Creek has added a large and im- 
portant body of new data on the pre-Columbian inhabitants of western 
Nebraska and from it an unusually complete picture of life in the 
area should emerge. It seems evident that several long-held scientific 
theories regarding those people and their relationship to their environ- 
ment will need to be revised. The information from Medicine Creek 
certainly will be one of the most significant contributions yet made to 
the study of Plains prehistory. 
The paleontological work, under T. E. White, while not as important 
in some ways as the archeological investigations, is making a definite 
contribution to geology. This is particularly true in the Wind River 
Basin in Wyoming where data collected by the River Basin Surveys 
field party has aided in the identification of younger beds than pre- 
viously had been supposed to be present in the area. Furthermore, no 
historical summary of paleontology in any of the river basins would 
be complete without consideration of the fragments of fossil bones and 
leaves frequently found by archeologists in Indian sites. These ob- 
jects probably were collected as curiosities, although they occasionally 
were used as ornaments and sometimes attempts were made to work 
silicified bones into implements. While not of great significance to 
paleontology, they are a part of the story, and study of the material 
is helpful. Thus far 94 reservoir areas in the Missouri Basin have been 
examined either briefly or in some detail, and specimens have been 
collected from some 68. In a number of cases this material has helped 
to clarify understanding of the area and will provide useful data for 
future reference. 
As during the previous year, Dr. Waldo R. Wedel, on detail to the 
River Basin Surveys from the Division of Archeology, United States 
