NO. 2 MISSOURI VALLEY DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM — WEDEL 1 5 



Medicine Creek Reservoir 



Medicine Creek Reservoir will be located on Medicine Creek, about 

 8^ miles a]:)Ove Cambridge, in southeastern Frontier County. With 

 public announcement during the summer of 1947 that contracts for 

 this unit would be let within a few months, the River Basin Surveys 

 took steps to salvage certain archeological materials threatened with 

 early destruction. Preliminary surveys had been made here during 

 the 1946 field season by Kivett and Shippee, who recorded 15 sites 

 within the reservoir area. Two promising village sites, marked by 

 potsherds, animal bones, mussel shells, stone artifacts, and rejectage, 

 were situated on the west abutment of the proposed dam ; two others, 

 with similar evidences of relatively permanent occupation, lay on the 

 left bank of the creek, at or very near a proposed borrow area just 

 above the dam site. Because only very limited excavations had pre- 

 viously been made in the area, which seems to have been rather thickly 

 settled in prehistoric times by Upper Republican peoples, two members 

 of the Surveys staff were detailed to conduct investigations at and near 

 the dam site. This work began early in September and continued 

 until November 9; it was directed by M. F. Kivett, assisted by George 

 Metcalf, and such local labor as was obtainable from time to time. 

 As previously stated, the River Basin Surveys investigations in 1947 

 were a continuation of excavations begun on July 25 by the Nebraska 

 State Historical Society. 



Test excavations were made by the River Basin Surveys party in an 

 occupational area, 25FT18, on the left bank of Lime Creek near its 

 junction with Medicine Creek. A trench 15 feet wide was cut through 

 the site from the south edge northward for 55 feet. Village debris 

 varied in thickness from 12 inches at the south to approximately 30 

 inches at the north. Hearth areas consisting of burned red earth 

 underlying ash beds were associated with shallow circular pits dug into 

 the sterile yellow subsoil. Unworked fresh-water mussel shells, stone 

 artifacts, and bone fragments were common throughout the fill. Stone 

 artifacts included several small, stemmed projectile points, knives, and 

 scrapers. A few awls and tubular beads of bone, as well as shell disk 

 beads, were found. Pottery, though not plentiful, was of distinctive 

 character; it included thick, cord-roughened body sherds, usually 

 tempered with calcite, and one straight, undecorated rim fragment. 

 The material, in general, is suggestive of the Woodland variant known 

 as the Valley focus, from excavations by the Nebraska State Historical 

 Society in Valley County, Nebr. The pottery shows also some char- 

 acteristics of Woodland materials from Lane County, in west-central 



