A PREHISTORIC CEMETERY. 445 



A PKEHISTORIC CEMETEEY. 



By JOSEPH F. JAMES, 



CUSTODIAN CINCINNATI SOCIETY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 



ABOUT ten miles from Cincinnati, along the Little Miami River, 

 is a locality which has long been known to the country people 

 as the " Potteiy-Field." The ground was strewed with fragments of 

 pottery, bones, arrow-points, and other remains of like character, and 

 the place was generally considered to be the site of an ancient work- 

 shop. The primitive forest still occupies the locality, and is made up 

 of oak, beech, elm, maple, Avalnut, etc. All around are found numer- 

 ous mounds or tumuli, most of them small. A few of these were 

 opened by Mr. Florian Gianque, in 1876, and some interesting things 

 found. But, in 1878, Dr. Charles Metz and other gentlemen interested 

 in archajology commenced a systematic exploration of the country 

 thereabout, and so much has been found that we are enabled to form 

 some idea of the habits, and get a glimpse into the life, of the people 

 who once lived in the immediate vicinity of the city of Cincinnati. 



During the four years that the excavations have been carried on, 

 between six hundred and fifty and seven hundred skeletons have been 

 brought to light. Many of them are in an advanced state of decay, 

 and crumble to pieces on the slightest touch, while others, again, are 

 in a very good state of preservation. It can, therefore, hardly be in- 

 ferred that, because some of the skeletons are much decayed, they 

 are necessarily very old ; for, though we have well-preserved remains 

 of bones from Babylon, Nineveh, and Egypt, which are certainly 

 twenty-five hundred or three thousand years old, still the cases are 

 exceptional in which they are found in good condition after the lapse 

 of many years. Different kinds of soil and differences in climate 

 have much to do with the matter : for, in a dry and equable climate, 

 bones may resist for a long time the influences which would cause 

 their decay, while, in a moist climate, and with sudden and extreme 

 changes of temperature, such as we have here, any boue, unless buried 

 in peat, or subject constantly to heavy pressure, so as to become par- 

 tially fossilized, is liable to soon decay. 



An examination of the skulls found in the cemetery, as it is called, 

 as well as the other parts of the skeleton shows some interesting facts. 

 In a paper by Dr. F. "YY. Langdon * is given a table of measurements 

 of the crania which shows that the brachycephalous skulls (those 

 with an index of breadth of "800 and over) f are largely in the major- 

 ity, there being fifty-two out of seventy-two of this character. None 

 of them, however, exhibit any signs of the flattening of the frontal 



* " Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural LTistory," vol. iv, pp. 237, cl seq. 

 \ The long diameter being taken as 100. 



