l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I26 



cultural material were found that appear to require further attention. 

 The fact that the few scrapers and other stone artifacts found were 

 scattered thinly over the reservoir site suggests that camp sites or 

 other sites of intensive cultural activity are absent. The single report 

 received by the survey party of archeological remains in the vicinity 

 was of an aboriginal steatite quarry in the mountains a few miles 

 north of the reservoir location. 



Boysen Reservoir site. — Boysen Dam, one of the earlier projects 

 begun under the Missouri Basin water resources development pro- 

 gram, will create a reservoir about 20 miles long in the Shoshone 

 Basin just above the point at which the Bighorn River enters the 

 Wind River Canyon to make its way between the Owl Creek and 

 Bridger Mountains. The dam was closed and water storage began 

 in October 195 1. Timber in the area is restricted to the slopes of the 

 mountains and to the banks of the streams. The region supports 

 sagebrush and greasewood rather than grass as its predominant 

 vegetation, in which respect it resembles the Great Basin to the west 

 rather than the Plains to the east. Physiographically it is continuous 

 with the Great Plains and is separated from the Great Basin by an 

 unusually low divide. Sand-dune areas are common in the river 

 valley, and many of the occupational sites are found among these 

 surface features. Brief reconnaissance in 1946 and additional survey 

 of three weeks in 1947 had resulted in the recording of 75 sites in 

 and near the reservoir area. These consist of camp sites, often marked 

 by clusters of fire-blackened stones, "tipi-ring" sites, petroglyphs, 

 burials, and rock shelters. During the latter part of the 1947 season 

 a stratified deposit in a cave, 48FR54 (Birdshead Cave), near the 

 base of the Owl Creek Mountains was excavated. Although the arti- 

 fact sample recovered is small, cultural materials were found in all 

 levels and seem to reflect changes through time. It was hoped that 

 through additional investigation in the reservoir area the correlation 

 of more prolific single-component sites with individual strata in the 

 cave would become possible, thus establishing a sequence of more or 

 less exhaustively defined complexes for the region. 



In 1950 parties from both the Missouri Basin Project and the 

 University of Wyoming investigated numerous sites in the reservoir 

 area, the former during only the later part of the summer. The 

 activities of the River Basin Surveys included search for new sites, 

 surface reexamination of previously recorded sites, small-scale test 

 trenching of some sites and more extensive excavation of a few, and 

 recording of numerous petroglyphs. Eleven camp sites, one rock 

 shelter, one workshop, four petroglyph sites, and a burial, all previ- 



