288 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 189 



representative of the Thomas Riggs occupation. Stratigraphically, 

 it falls within the Riggs pottery zone. 



Unfortunately, there is no direct data linking the fortification sys- 

 tem with either occupation. A few cord-roughened body sherds, pres- 

 ent in Feature 4, might suggest an Anderson tie, but the fortification 

 itself is more characteristic of a later time, in fact it resembles the 

 Huff site in south-central North Dakota, in most significant respects. 

 The Hickey Brothers bastion is longer and narrower in proportion 

 than the excavated example at the Huff site (Howard, 1959, personal 

 communication) and the "tower room" or strongpoint features at the 

 Huff' site are lacking at Hickey Brothers. It is worth noting that the 

 situation at the Hickey Brothers site suggests that the village defenses 

 were completed prior to the large-scale building of houses. 



Tentative as the foregoing observations are, they cannot be con- 

 strued to offer any explanation for the negligible occupation found at 

 the Hickey Brothers site. The insignificant artifact return and the 

 diffuse architectural remains are difficult to rationalize with the large- 

 scale, well-engineered project represented by the village fortifications. 

 A number of possible explanations come to mind, but there is no real 

 support in fact for any of them. 



One of the more enticmg suggestions is based in the possibility of a 

 local ecological shift following the beginning of village construction. 

 A season of severe drought, or even a large prairie fire, might have 

 made the area temporarily uninhabitable, or might have destroyed 

 usable building material. Today there is virtually no bottom land 

 adjacent to the site. An ice jam or a shift in riverflow by some other 

 agency could well have reduced the bottoms to such a degree that the 

 tillable land available to the village could not support the expanding 

 settlement. 



The explanation might even be more simple. A mere change in 

 leadership, the heavy toll of an epidemic, or pressure from enemies 

 might have made a shift of locale necessary before the village was 

 really well established. A sudden attack could have ended the in- 

 cipient village at a single blow. The concentration of charcoal in 

 house areas, particularly Features 25 and 39, offers some support for 

 this view. 



The sum of these speculations (and postulations) amounts to an 

 enigma. The data will support no firm statements. In extirpation of 

 the insecure position that we have been forced to assume, we do not 

 feel too self-conscious in restating the useful cliche — more work needs 

 to be done to solve the case of the unfinished village. 



