^2 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



the Committee on Historic Sites of the Mississippi Valley Historical 

 Association held at Lincoln. On June 10 Mr. Smith left with a field 

 party for the Big Bend Reservoir area and at the end of the fiscal year 

 was engaged in excavations previously described. 



Richard P. Wheeler, archeologist, was at the Lincoln headquarters 

 during the entire year. Most of his time was spent completing a 

 lengthy detailed manuscript pertaining to archeological remains in 

 the Angostura Reservoir area, South Dakota, and the Keyhole and 

 Boysen Reservoir areas in northeastern and west-central Wyoming. 

 The manuscript is based on data gathered by reconnaissance parties 

 of the Missouri Basin Project during the period 1946-51 and informa- 

 tion obtained by excavating parties in 1950-52. Mr. ^Vheeler served 

 as general chairman of the 14th Conference for Plains Archeology 

 in November and presented a paper, "Archeological Field Data and 

 Their Interpretation," at the annual meeting of the Nebraska Academy 

 of Sciences in April. In May he gave an illustrated talk before the 

 Interprofessional Club of Lincoln on the subject "Some Recent 

 Archeological Discoveries in the Missouri Basin." Mr. Wheeler was 

 in the Lincoln office at the end of the fiscal year. 



The activities of Dr. Robert E. Greengo and Dr. James H. Howard, 

 archeologists, who were temporarily based at the headquarters of the 

 Missouri Basin Project, have been discussed elsewhere and need no 

 further comment. 



Snake River Basin. — At the beginning of the fiscal year a field party 

 was excavating in sites along the Snake River in the area where the 

 Idaho Power Co. is building its Brownlee and Oxbow dams. Test 

 digging was done in a number of sites, and extensive excavations were 

 carried on in four habitational areas. Two of the latter were on the 

 Oregon side of the Snake River at Robinette and two on the Idaho 

 side at Big Bar. Most of the material found there indicates that the 

 sites date from the late prehistoric period to the early period of Euro- 

 pean contact but at two of the locations there were items representing 

 much earlier horizons. The general picture obtained by the investi- 

 gations is that of an early expansion of Great Basin cultural features 

 into the Northwest and their replacement by a more dynamic cultural 

 pattern working upstream from mid-Columbia centers. The artifacts 

 collected show that the people had a basically hunting-gathering type 

 of economy. Implements associated with fishing were for the most 

 part lacking but an abundance of fresh-water mussel shells in the 

 middens indicates that aquatic food was actually consumed. Such evi- 

 dence as was found pertaining to habitations suggests that rather 

 flimsy brush superstructures were erected over saucer-shaped floor 

 areas. At the time of the arrival of the first Europeans, that area was 

 inhabited by a band of the Shoshoni known as the "Mountain Sheep 

 Eaters." They were a seasonal nomadic group subsisting mainly by 



