58 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I26 



forms. The latter include grooved mauls, sandstone shaft smoothers, 

 pumice rubbing and sharpening stones, hammerstones, and pipes and 

 miscellaneous objects of catlinite. Among the bone artifacts are awls, 

 spatulate objects, scrapers or knives of scapula fragments, bird-bone 

 tubes, and flakers. Two fragments of antler are rather elaborately 

 decorated. The pottery is described as representing predominantly 

 globular vessels with either plain or cord-marked surfaces. Handles 

 are apparently rare. Decoration is confined to the rim, which may be 

 simple or collared and is predominantly incised, although there is 

 some pinching of the outer lip margin. Incised designs, found only 

 on the rim exterior, include series of horizontal, vertical, or diagonal 

 lines, pendant triangles, hachures, and combinations of these. One 

 distinctive decorative treatment consists of a series of horizontal lines 

 across which a single line meanders angularly around the rim. Also 

 found were a few plain sherds of conoidal vessels, from the lowest 

 levels of the site, and thick, heavily tempered sherds with exterior 

 nodes. 



The second field unit in the Fort Randall Reservoir area in 1951 

 spent the five-month season in the investigation of aboriginal sites 

 near the mouth of Platte Creek, some 30 miles by river above the dam. 

 Most of the work consisted of excavation in the stratified Oldham 

 site (39CH7), which lies on a rather extensive terrace bordering 

 what is now a narrow river bottom. Since the site has been under 

 cultivation for many years, surface features are lacking except for 

 the portions of a defensive ditch which lie along the edge of the ter- 

 race and the bank of a ravine which bounds the site on the northwest. 

 Test excavations there in the fall of 1947 had produced evidence of 

 two occupations separated by a sterile silty deposit. The upper zone, 

 which had been substantially destroyed by the plow except for fea- 

 tures (such as houses and cache pits) excavated beneath the general 

 village surface, produced, among other rather abundant remains, 

 simple-stamped pottery, while the lower yielded a very small quantity 

 of cord-marked pottery sherds and other debris. Two circular earth 

 lodges attributable to the later occupation were uncovered at that time. 



The excavations in 195 1 produced information primarily relating 

 to the later of the two previously observed occupations. Test trenches 

 across the ditch, both in places where it was still visible on the surface 

 and where it had been filled by cultivation, showed it to be 3 to 4 

 feet deep and about 5 feet wide, with sloping sides. An additional 

 element in the fortification complex was a stockade of vertical posts, 

 spaced an average of i to 2 feet apart, a few feet inside the ditch. 

 Two bastions were found in the 450 feet of stockade uncovered. 



