90 BULLETIN 183, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



that the bundles were deposited at some other time than the rest of 

 the burials, perhaps even by an unrelated group sojourning tempo- 

 rarily in the locality, but this point unfortunately could not be settled 

 from our observations. 



Of the 14 unattached skulls, the majority seem to have been relics 

 of burials whose other parts were removed by later interments, 

 through decay, or by other factors. Seven of these at the east edge 

 of the burial area were closely associated with two very incomplete 

 but probably extended skeletons. Just why these particular individ- 

 uals should have suffered more from decay than others nearby is 

 not clear. Perhaps they were in an older section of the cemetery, 

 though there is nothing otherwise to indicate any very great lapse 

 of time between the beginning and close of use of the hill for bury- 

 ing the dead. 



Wliat may signify the practice of retaining trophy heads or the 

 skulls of deceased relatives was suggested in the case of burial 77, 

 that of an adult male. On the right side of the chest, as if placed 

 inside the right arm, was the badly decayed cranium of another male 

 ( ?), No. 80. The incomplete partly flexed skeleton of a child. No. 79, 

 lay under the left arm with the knees over the left leg of the adult. 

 From the position of the bones, there can be no doubt that all these 

 remains had been placed at the same time in a common grave (pi. 

 31, h.) 



Stone slabs were used but sparingly in the cemetery. Their asso- 

 ciation with bone bundles has already been noted above. Two others 

 were found as a covering for burial 83, a very young child near the 

 west edge of the area. Three others stood partly on edge in a small 

 pit in the southeast corner of square 45W1. No trace of bones was 

 noted in the pit, 42 inches deep, which lay somewhat apart from the 

 other burials. It is possible that a grave formerly existed here but 

 had been rifled by previous excavators. A few other stones of small to 

 medium size were noted among the burials. William Kisker in- 

 formed us that in the first few years following breaking of the sod, 

 similar slabs were occasionally plowed up and carried away. If in- 

 tentionally placed in or over the graves, these must have accompanied 

 only a small proportion of the burials. There is no reason, so far as I 

 am aware, for believing that the entire area was so covered, or that 

 any save an occasional grave was accompanied by the slabs. They 

 seem never to have been used in lining the walls of graves. 



That most of the burials were made in dug grave pits seems a rea- 

 sonable assumption, but clear evidence of such pits was uncovered in 

 only two instances. Burial 49 lay in a pit 5 feet long by 21^ feet 

 wide, filled with soil darker and containing more charcoal and debris 

 than that surrounding it. A second skull and some loose bones in 

 the east end of the grave comprised burial 50, perhaps disturbed by, 



