18 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY 



of the Commission, the local contractor, the Corps of Engineers, 

 members of the Yankton College staff, the National Park Service, 

 and the Smithsonian Institution made this salvage operation success- 

 ful. The burials proved to be of a group of Woodland people and 

 included an appreciable number of personal ornaments, as well as a 

 good series of skeletal remains. This party disbanded on August 23, 

 after 8 weeks in the field. 



The third River Basin Surveys party in the Oahe R-^ervoir area 

 at the beginning of the year was comprised of a crew of 10 men under 

 the direction of Charles H. McNutt. This party conducted excava- 

 tions at a series of sites in the Fielder Bottom- Telegraph Flat area 

 near the Sully site. The work was a continuation of excavations be- 

 gun the season before, designed to sample the smaller sites in the 

 immediate vicinity of the Sully site, in order to round out the story 

 of the prehistoric occupations of this once heavily populated area. 

 At the Sully School site (39SL7), one house was excavated in its 

 entirety, and portions of four more houses were exposed. Three test 

 trenches were cut across the fortification ditch, aaid a large series of 

 midden tests, cache pits, and subsidiary features were excavated. Be- 

 cause of the two seasons' work there the total artifact sample is ex- 

 tensive. The architectural information recovered is less satisfactory. 

 The gumbo fill present in many of the features made it extremely 

 difficult to determine structural characteristics. Two occupations were 

 present, one represented by rectangular houses and pottery similar 

 to that from the Thomas Riggs site, the other by circular houses and 

 pottery in the La Roche tradition. Only part of the site was fortified. 

 The rectangular-house occupation was confined within the fortifica- 

 tion ditch, but the circular-house occupation was found both within 

 and without the ditch. There is additional ceramic evidence that the 

 fortification probably dates from the former, rather than from the 

 latter, occupation. 



The Ziltener site (39SL10) was located along a treeless cutbank 

 of the Missouri River bottoms approximately 3 miles southeast of 

 the Sully site. Informants had reported that a number of skulls and 

 artifacts were eroded from the bank from time to time by the amiual 

 spring rises in the river. The bank was carefully watched for several 

 seasons by River Basin Surveys parties, but with little success. In 

 1958 a storage pit and a house profile were visible, and a small cache 

 was found where it had slumped from the cutbank. The remamder 

 of the house and the storage pit were excavated. The house was 

 circular, and the pottery of the La Roche tradition. 



The Nolz site (39SL40) was located on a terrace remnant below 

 and somewhat to the southwest of the Sully site. Tliree very faint 

 house depressions were visible as surface features. Two of these 



