NO. 2 SALVAGE PROGRAM, I95O-I95I — COOPER 93 



graphically beneath other cultural deposits, and in one stratified site, 

 48CK7, the prospect is for the recovery of a rather exhaustive arti- 

 fact assemblage associated with the points. At a number of sites in 

 the various reservoirs the predominant point is either corner-notched 

 or side-notched, and where stratigraphic evidence exists, the latter 

 seems to characterize the latest occupations. For the later part of the 

 time span of aboriginal occupation of this region, the presence or 

 absence of pottery seems to depend at least partly on factors other 

 than temporal ones. It is probable, for example, that potteryless sites 

 with a predominance of side-notched triangular points are generally 

 later in time than sites yielding heavy, cord-marked pottery and 

 corner-notched points. Later nonceramic sites may, of course, repre- 

 sent occupations either by groups using no pottery or by small hunting 

 parties of pottery-making peoples. In the Boysen area, the occurrence 

 of large numbers of metates and manos in sites producing corner- 

 notched points suggests a considerable emphasis on gathering, which 

 may represent an orientation different from that of other complexes 

 in the area. 



As yet it is difficult to fit the relatively few occurrences of pottery 

 in the western Plains into the cultural picture of the Plains as a whole, 

 since the small collections generally cannot be surely identified with 

 known complexes. The sherds from the upper levels of site 48CK204 

 in the Keyhole Reservoir are apparently referable to a Woodland 

 variant, and some sherds from 39FA23 and 39FA83, in the Angos- 

 tura Reservoir, for example, could be lost in the collections from 

 Upper Republican sites in southern Nebraska, but much of the pot- 

 tery, notably that from the Boysen and Tiber Reservoirs, does not 

 appear to be closely related to any well-defined ceramic complexes. 

 Present evidence indicates that pottery-bearing sites are widely dis- 

 tributed, although apparently in small numbers, throughout the west- 

 ern Plains, but their significance in the late prehistory of the region 

 will be known only when more knowledge of their distribution and 

 variations is at hand. What little is known of the associations and 

 stratigraphic position of pottery in the part of the region west of 

 the Black Hills suggests that it does not occur here earlier than fairly 

 late prehistoric times. The presence of pottery beneath 8 feet and 

 more of overburden at site 24TL26 in the Tiber Reservoir is appar- 

 ently evidence for depositional recency rather than for ceramic 

 antiquity. 



In the Harlan County Reservoir, the investigations of the Univer- 

 sity of Nebraska, when reported, will expand our knowledge of a 

 number of cultural entities of the ceramic period in the central Plains. 



