540 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 60 



to have been a part of the widespread period in the Southeast known 

 as Temple Mound 2 and which has been correlated with the Creek- 

 Cherokee peoples. It is dated at approximately A.D. 1450 to 1700. 

 The Buford Mound had the outlines of a small square house on its 

 summit. At one end inside the structure there had been a bench or a 

 throne, and it is supposed that the remains were those of a small cere- 

 monial structure. The other momid was at first believed to be one 

 of the oldest artificial structures thus far discovered in Georgia and 

 to have belonged to the Burial Mound 1 horizon postulated as having 

 occurred from A.D. 700 to 900. Subsequent work there, however, 

 demonstrated that it actually was the remnant of a natural levee 

 built up by the river. There were traces of aboriginal occupation in 

 the deposits which indicated that the material belonged to what has 

 been called the Forsyth period of approximately the dates indicated. 

 There were other mounds in the area but they went under water before 

 they could be tested. Excavations were also made at the Chauga 

 Mound in the Hartwell Keservoir area by the University of Georgia. 



Excavations have been made in burial mounds in several different 

 areas, two of them at the Jamestown Reservoir on the James River 

 in eastern North Dakota. The remains of 20 secondary burials were 

 found in a series of pits in various levels in the first mound. The 

 bodies of the mdividuals represented had been exposed on platforms 

 or in trees for a sufficient period after death to permit the decom- 

 position of the flesh. The skeletons had then been collected and placed 

 in pits in the mound. As additional interments were made, the size 

 of the mound grew through the piling on of sufficient earth to protect 

 the graves. In some cases there were copper jangles or ornaments 

 accompanying the bones, and several bison skulls, probably with 

 ceremonial significance, had been placed between some of the grave 

 pits. The second mound was considerably smaller and only five sec- 

 ondary burials were found in it. They also Avere associated with 

 bison skulls but had no accompanying mortuary offerings. Excava- 

 tions in three mounds south of Fort Yates, N. Dak., during the summer 

 of 1960 showed a similar association of human remains and buffalo 

 bones for the Oahe area. These burials appeared to be of an earlier 

 period, however. 



There were other forms of burial besides that of placing the re- 

 mains in a mound or below a moimd. In some cases the body was 

 put in a simple grave shortly after death. In others there were single 

 secondary burials, and occasionally a number of secondary inter- 

 ments were made in large ossuary pits. Examples of the simple 

 primary form of burial were excavated at two sites below the Oahe 

 Dam in the area of the outlet channel. Others were dug at some 

 of the large village sites upstream. The Sully site yielded the remains 

 of 224 individuals. Similar interments were investigated along the 



