Abstract
IN another column of this issue (see p. 555) there appears a brief summary of certain conclusions as to cultural sequences in Nebraska, United States, which have emerged as a result of a review of the archaeology of that State by Mr. W. D. Strong. It does less than justice to a record of remarkable interest. Among the numerous investigations of recent date, to which Mr. Strong refers, is that of Signal Butte, a stratified site examined by himself, on which evidence of three distinct cultures is to be observed. The levels in which these are found are separated from one another by deposits of olian origin, the whole series being superimposed upon sands, which Mr. Strong himself holds to be water-borne and of Pleistocene age. The level of the earliest human occupation is immediately superimposed on these sands. The interpretation of the deposits in terms of climatic variations, based on a correlation with data from other sources, postulates for the whole series, beginning with the period of earliest human occupation, a period of 7,000–10,000 years. Further, this is the only site as yet discovered in America on which stratification gives a clue to the progressive development of type implements of stone in chronological succession. No less interesting and revolutionary in its geographical, archæological and historical implications is a discovery, which hitherto has escaped the attention of archæologists, that while there was a hunting culture on the plains dependent on the bison, in the earliest and in the latest phase of aboriginal existence until it was swept away by Caucasic culture, there intervened between early and recent hunters a semi-horticultural mode of life, akin to that of the Eastern Woodland type, which was forced back to the Missouri with the coming of the horse. This carries with it implications, fully elaborated by Mr. Strong, which necessitate a modification of current views on geographic controls in the Plains area.
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Cultural History in Nebraska. Nature 136, 543 (1935). https://doi.org/10.1038/136543a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/136543a0