Two years ago, in the April, 1947 issue of American Antiquity, appeared a series of papers concerned with the River Basin Survey archaeological program (Brew and others, 1947). As the published record of a symposium sponsored by the Committee for Recovery of Archaeological Remains, those papers set forth the objectives and plans for a major program of scientific salvage. This undertaking stems from the nation-wide Federal water-control developments, whereby hundreds of dams, reservoirs, irrigation facilities, and other works are contemplated. Inasmuch as these developments will necessarily involve large sections of many of our stream valleys, where also exists a great proportion of our archaeological material, it was pointed out that immediate steps were necessary to forestall complete destruction of many of our basic data on American prehistory.

This report, a preliminary delineation of a new lithic complex from the Central Plains, is presented for the immediate purpose of aiding other archaeologists working in the area. Once one has left such easily recognizable markers as the Folsom complex, the details of the archaic horizons of the Great Plains are confused until we reach such lithic complexes as those found at Signal Butte (Strong, 1935), Ash Hollow Cave (Champe, 1946), and more recently, Nebo Hill (Shippee, 1948). The primary value of defining the Frontier Culture complex at this time is that it affords a “pure” and relatively complete lithic complex by means of which comparative typological work in the Plains Archaic can be furthered.

The field work on which this report is based was carried out during the summer of 1948 by a field unit of the Missouri Valley Project, River Basin Surveys, Smithsonian Institution. The unit consisted of Mr. J. M. Shippee and myself; we were assisted during part of the time by Messrs. H. F. Wilson, S. J. Phelps, and R. F. Worden of Hot Springs, South Dakota. Investigations covered the four-month period from June 1 through September 29.

Five proposed reservoir sites in the Cheyenne Basin were investigated more or less intensively. All are Bureau of Reclamation projects, in various stages of development, located in or near the Black Hills of western South Dakota and northeastern Wyoming. Angostura Reservoir received much more thorough exploration than the others; work at this site forms the basis for the present report. Edgemont and Keyhole reservoirs are omitted because the data from them have not yet been evaluated. Pactola and Johnson Siding reservoirs, alternate projects, were unproductive and require no discussion.

The Medicine Creek Valley of south-central Nebraska has for many years been known to contain within its limits important archaeological materials representing various periods of man's occupancy in the Central Plains. The region is climatically near the western limits of successful general farming. While the yearly precipitation averages about 23 inches, records show a variation in total from 11 to 38 inches. (Bason and others, 1939, pp. 4–6). This wide fluctuation in precipitation, often combined with extremely high temperatures during the growing season, makes the area one of agricultural uncertainty. Early White settlement in the valley was often retarded and in some instances completely checked as a result of severe but usually short-period droughts. Prehistoric horticultural groups subsisting in this region were undoubtedly subjected to the same unfavorable conditions. They, like the early- White settlers who were to follow, may have been forced at times to abandon the area temporarily and withdraw to a more favorable one.

White Cat Village, a newly-explored site of the Dismal River Aspect, is located on Prairie Dog Creek about 3 miles above the point where it joins the Republican River from the south. The greater part of the village is included within a 70-acre field just southwest of the center of Section 24, Township IN, Range 18W, some 6 miles southeast of Alma, Harlan County, Nebraska. The village occupies an area approximately 1000 feet long and 250 feet wide, lying along a 30-foot bluff which forms the north bank of Prairie Dog Creek at this point (Fig. 70, e). The terrace on which the site is located will be a few feet under the normal level of the Harlan County Reservoir, and nearly 20 feet below the maximum level.

A preliminary survey of the village was made in November, 1946, by Marvin F. Kivett and J. M. Shippee, for the Missouri River Basin Survey.

Archaeological investigations were carried on by the Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas, from June 19 to August 20, 1948, in the Kanopolis Reservoir area on the Smoky Hill River in Ellsworth County and also along the Little Arkansas River in Rice County, Kansas. The River Basin Surveys of the Smithsonian Institution had undertaken the preliminary reconnaissance and had found more than twenty sites in the area of the Reservoir. William O. Leuty of Ellsworth was helpful in guiding the field parties of both institutions to most of the sites; also he gathered surface collections which were turned over to us.

The Kanopolis Reservoir is situated in the highly dissected terrain which marks the Plains border along the 98th meridian of longitude in central Kansas. The Smoky Hill River meanders eastward, fed by many tributary streams and canyons. Outcrops of Dakota sandstone are common on the bluffs bordering the valley and trees are limited to the edges of the streams.

One of the consequences of the Missouri Basin development program will be the virtual obliteration of the Missouri River between Yankton, South Dakota, and the Montana-North Dakota line. The lakes to be created by the various dams proposed or under construction by the Army Corps of Engineers will inundate all but short stretches of the terraces on which are situated literally hundreds of fortified and unfortified earth-lodge villages and other, earlier, occupational sites. Situated near the northern limit of agriculture but heavily populated by sedentary, horticultural people for a period of several hundreds of years, this anthropologically fascinating area has been barely touched scientifically.

The Thomas Riggs village site is located along the east bank of the Missouri River on the ranch of the late Thomas L. Riggs in the SW¼ NW¼ Section 27, Township 112 North, Range 81 West, Hughes County, South Dakota (Fig. 74). It is approximately 10 miles above the proposed site of the Oahe Dam and will fall well within the limits of the basin of this huge reservoir when it eventually becomes filled. This particular site, unlike many others in the area, shows little evidence of depredation.

This may be due in part to the fact that evidences of occupation are only faintly discernible on the surface. No conspicuous pits or mounds are visible, and the site is covered with a luxuriant growth of native grass which not only conceals the usual telltale surface accumulation of refuse but also obscures the minor surface irregularities.

Two burial mounds on the east bluff overlooking the left bank of the Sheyenne River, east-central North Dakota, were excavated between June 25 and August 1, 1948, by a field party of the University of North Dakota, working in cooperation with the North Dakota State Historical Society. The archaeological resources of the area of the Baldhill Reservoir had been appraised in 1947 by a party of four, headed by M. F. Kivett, for the Missouri Valley Project of the River Basin Surveys. This survey resulted in the mapping of ten sites, three of them mounds or moundgroups, and the partial excavation of one mound to salvage skeletal material already partly exposed.

Construction of Baldhill Dam, about 9 miles north of Valley City, was already far advanced in 1948, and several occupational sites in the Sheyenne River bottomland were in danger of flooding within a few years (see Fig. 81, a and b).

In the Missouri River Basin, as elsewhere, the need for an accurate chronological framework for the understanding of archaeological relationships and cultural development is of primary importance. Because of the vastness of the area, the great diversity of materials from its various regions, and the relatively limited systematic work so far performed, no general Basin-wide chronological scheme of any preciseness is yet feasible. About the best we can do is to try to correlate a few locally developed sequences, and then if possible fit into this general picture some of the “floating” sequences and horizons. Complete coverage of the known archaeological remains of the Basin is manifestly impossible within the limits of a summary paper. It is hoped, however, that the remarks which follow may help to suggest trends developing as the evidence accumulates.

Wedel and Trowbridge described a prehistoric rouletting tool from a Hopewellian site in Wyandotte County, Kansas. This rouletting tool of bone was circular with a notched stamping edge and an attached handle that served also as an axle for the stamping wheel. The discovery of this tool, according to the authors, substantiated rouletting on the principle of wheel-rolling, as originally deduced by Holmes in 1892.

In the collections of the Chicago Natural History Museum there is a Hopewell rouletting tool that may represent a borderline case of the principle of rouletting by wheel-rolling. This tool was excavated from Mound 25 of the Hopewell Group in Ross County, Ohio by Warren K. Moorehead in 1891-92 and until the present time remained unidentified in a miscellaneous collection of fragmentary Hopewell artifacts stored in the Museum.

On October 17, 1947,1 read a paper, “A Critique of Some Archaeological Field Methods,” before the Anthropology Section of the Indiana Academy of Science. The occasion was the annual meeting of the group at Ball State Teachers College, Muncie, Indiana. The paper in its entirety was accepted for publication in the Proceedings of the Academy. I later withdrew the paper because I did not believe this to be the proper medium for its dissemination. The Proceedings for 1947 has now been issued and since it contains an abstract of my paper1 I think it proper to proceed with its publication with some minor changes.