SIXTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT 17 



Boysen Reservoir area, Wyoming, to resume the collecting of fossil 

 material. All three parties were at those respective locations at the 

 end of the year. 



The general results of the Surveys' findings in the Plains were out- 

 lined in the 64th Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology 

 and, although subsequent work added important details, need not be 

 repeated. Some mention, however, should be made of the excavations 

 carried on in the present year. Birdshead Cave, located near the 

 base of the Owl Creek Mountains, in the Boysen Reservoir basin, 

 Wyoming, contained several levels of aboriginal debris of occupation 

 separated by layers of decomposed rock and dust. The artifacts re- 

 covered, although small in number, show significant differences from 

 level to level. If these specimens can be correlated with those from 

 some of the single-occupation sites in the basin, a task which was being 

 attempted at the close of the year, it may be possible to arrange the 

 latter in a sequential order and thus establish a relative chronology 

 for the area. As a whole the material from upper levels of the cave 

 suggests a late pre-Columbian occupancy by Indians from the Great 

 Basin farther west rather than by people from the Plains. This in- 

 troduces another set of problems pertaining to the interrelationships 

 between two rather distinct groups over a long period of time. Fur- 

 ther work in the area should throw light on the subject. 



Excavations at the Medicine Creek Reservoir were carried on from 

 September 5 to November 9, but little more than sampling was under- 

 taken at that time. When the work was resumed in March, large- 

 scale operations became possible through the labor and power ma- 

 chinery contributed by the Bureau of Reclamation. The use of heavy 

 equipment ordinarily is frowned upon by archeologists. Because of 

 the short time available for excavation before the sites were destroyed 

 by construction activities and the lack of funds needed to hire large 

 labor crews, however, it was deemed advisable to use bulldozers and 

 highway-grading machinery to remove the overburden from buried 

 village remains. The results obtained amply demonstrated the prac- 

 ticability and effectiveness of such equipment in uncovering archeo- 

 logical materials with a minimum of breakage, and wherever possible 

 its use probably will be extended to other projects. At Medicine 

 Creek entire sites were stripped of their sod or other cover, making it 

 possible to observe the complete village plan, to study village pat- 

 terns, and to discover small features not readily determinable by the 

 usual hand-labor methods. From March 29 to June 30 the remains 

 of 25 houses were uncovered, 37 cache pits located beneath their floors 

 were investigated, 13 similar pits outside the houses were examined, 

 and 13 middens were dug. Some 28,000 specimens including utensils 

 made of pottery, tools of bone, stone, and shell, and the remains of 

 various food stuffs such as animal bones, mussel shells and charred 



