1895] MARYLAND ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 233 



ined, and objects of interest removed, before the cists containing 

 the relics now before you had been opened. The surface was 

 thus thickly strewn with fragments of cist rock, and paleolithic 

 and neolithic implements, broken and whole ; some from the 

 cists previously opened, and others surface specimens of later 

 Indian occupation. Amongst objects taken from the cists were 

 large pieces of massive slabs ; they are formed of a conglom- 

 erate of clay and broken shells. The shells, which form the 

 binding ingredient, are in recognizable pieces, and many minute 

 whole shells are in the mixtui-e as if scooped up roughly from 

 a deposit to throw into clay for mixing. The conglomerate is 

 in nowise different from that prepared for the finer pottery, 

 except in the coarser texture, the ingredients and mode of treat- 

 ment by sun-heat and fire apparently being the same. It is the 

 coarsest mixture I have yet seen of what may be called aborig- 

 inal pottery. It is possible the pieces are fragments of altars, 

 but nothing in the surroundings pointed either to sacrifice or 

 partial cremation. It seems most probable that in these massive 

 fragments we find an attempt to use prepared or artificial mate- 

 rial for the laro;e cists where burial was made in the natural 

 position, as the funerary urns of the finer, close-grained pottery 

 have been used by many peoples in various periods of their 

 development for the reception of bodies prepared for the smaller 

 receptacle by cut tendons or entire or partial cremation. Such 

 pieces of shell conglomerate or pottery have not been figured 

 before (to my knowledge), and if the supposition is correct that 

 they form parts of cists, we see a new feature of the work of 

 the Stone Grave Indians. Some very finely finished paleoliths 

 are found in the cists, especially when taken from the small 

 mounds, where several rows of the cists were placed one above 

 the other. From the cists of the garden came some arrowheads 

 and spearheads of various sizes, some with notches for tying, 

 and others with rounded ends for insertion in wooden handles. 

 Some show the difference of angle in sides, which it has been 

 thought imparted the rotary motion in flight to the weapon. 

 The implements are in no way diiferent from those of ordinary 

 Indian manufacture. 



