THE CHARLES S. MASON COLLECTION 



By Alanson Skinner 



DURING recent years few acces- 

 sions in archaeology have rivaled 

 in interest the Mason collection 

 from Tennessee, donated to the Museum 

 in the summer of 1913 by Mr. J. P. 

 Morgan. The material is the fruit of 

 many years of painstaking work by 

 Mr. Charles S. Mason and is of added 

 value to students in that it was gathered 

 within one general lo- 

 cality, the vicinity of 

 Jonesboro, Tennessee. 

 Many of the specimens 

 come from an old ab- 

 original cemetery on 

 the Nolachucky River, 

 and may be examples 

 of Cherokee handicraft. 

 The collection con- 

 tains two of the rare 

 engraved shell gorgets 

 so typical of the archse- 

 ology of southeastern 

 United States. They 

 are made of the shell of 

 one of the large conchs 

 found both in the Gulf 

 of Mexico and along 

 the southern coast and 

 traded inland. Ex- 

 amples of a similar sort 

 have been discovered in 

 the mound area of the 

 Ohio Valley. With the 

 gorgets are included a 

 number of massive shell 

 beads, such as are found 

 especially with skele- 

 tons exhumed from' the 

 stone-lined graves of 

 Tennessee, and several 

 interesting pins of shell 



I ,11 mi Arrow points 



are also notable. There serrated edge 



are also in the collection a number of 

 perforated bear's teeth and a trade 

 copper gorget. 



A remarkable series of steatite pend- 

 ants of all imaginable forms was brought 

 together by Mr. Mason. These include 

 a number of miniature grooved axes, 

 some seemingly suspended by a thong 

 tied about the groo^^e, others perforated 



flaked into a great variety of forms, several with 



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