374 ANNUAL REPORT SMITPISONIAN INSTITUTION, 1951 



burial was practiced. In general the Baldhill mounds show consider- 

 able similarity to those in that portion of North Dakota, in northern 

 Minnesota, and in southern Manitoba. All probably belong to the 

 same cultural complex. The actual people involved have not been 

 identified as yet. 



Burial in mounds was not the only form of interment practiced 

 by the aborigines. One interesting form of cemetery, which has 

 been designated "shell bead ossuary" because of the large number 

 of beads made from fresh-water and marine shells used as mortuary 

 offerings, appears to center in the Republican River drainage in 

 south-central Nebraska. One such feature was excavated in the 

 Harlan County Reservoir area by a River Basin Surveys party. The 

 site was complex, for originally a series of pits had apparently been 

 dug to receive individual or small groups of burials. Subsequently 

 a large oval basin was excavated in the same area, destroying all but 

 the bottom portions of the older pits. A large series of secondary 

 burials was then placed in the basin. Tlie human remains were 

 disarticulated and scattered, with little regard for orderly arrange- 

 ment, over the floor of the basin. They were not what is known as 

 bundle burials. It is possible that the small individual pits may 

 have been the primary depositories for remains that were later ex- 

 humed and placed in the basin, but such was not established by the 

 evidence. The smaller pits may have had some other function. At 

 various places in the basin there were indications that considerable 

 burning had occurred and layers of charred twigs and timbers appar- 

 ently separated the human remains. Some of the human bones and 

 shell beads that were abundant in the fill were charred. Whether 

 this indicates that there was some cremation or is attributable to 

 other reasons is not clear. Since the burials were secondary and all 

 the soft parts of the body presumably had disappeared prior to 

 the placing of the bones there, it seems strange that an attempt at 

 cremation would have been made. On the other hand, there is the 

 possibility that some of the bodies had not been exposed sufficiently 

 long to lose all the skin and flesh and that some attempt was made to 

 remove it before the pit burial was completed. One other suggestion 

 is that scaffold burials may have been damaged by prairie fires or 

 had collapsed and subsequently were burned and when the bones were 

 gathered up and placed in the pit charcoal from the timbers and 

 grass was thrown in along with the bones. An interesting number 

 of problems have been raised, and further work in such ossuaries 

 will no doubt solve some of them. 



In addition to the secondary burials in the basin, there was one fully 

 articulated individual that unquestionably represented a flesh burial. 

 It was in the deeper part of the basin and may have been one of the 

 original undisturbed interments. The person was an adolescent and 



