ARCHEO'LOGICAL INVESTIGATIOISTS IN MISSOURI 105 



as large as that at Renner, and it is quite probable that detailed inves- 

 tigation would show an occupancy of some permanence. Four low 

 earth mounds, each 40 to 60 feet across and possibly artificial, lie on 

 the ridge top north of this site. 



Our last site, barring several on the lower part of Fishing River 

 that cannot now be satisfactorily characterized, is very small. It 

 occupies a small flat, elevated about 30 feet above the bottoms, be- 

 tween two deep narrow wooded draws. Though it covers less than an 

 acre, with room for scarcely more than two or three lodges, sherds 

 are surprisingly numerous. In all respects they tally with those 

 from the preceding sites. Rims include plain, cross-hatched and 

 punctate, and rocker marked with punctates. Body sherds are most- 

 ly plain, but with a few examples of rocker roughening and dentate 

 stamp. Our sample includes no flints, but these would appear to be 

 of the types usually associated locally with these wares. The site, 

 I think, can be linked with some assurance with the Renner complex. 

 On the ridge above, several hundred yards distant, are a few low 

 mounds, which were apparently built in part of stone. One has been 

 looted, and bits of human bone were still lying about. I am unable 

 to say whether these were enclosures of the type opened by us at 

 Pearl Branch, or merely piled up stone cairns covered with a man- 

 tle of earth. 



MOUND EXCAVATIONS 



Numerous mounds are to be found on many of the bluffs and hill- 

 tops of the Missouri in the great bend region, which is, in a general 

 sense, near the western limit of the mound building area of the Mis- 

 sissippi-Ohio Valleys. Westward, the custom of raising special 

 structures over the remains of the deceased can be trnced for about 

 100 miles more, i. e., slightly beyond the Blue River in Kansas. Few 

 if any of the mounds now known in the trans-Missouri plains of 

 Kansas and Nebraska attain the size and relative prominence of 

 some of those in northern Missouri, and only rarely do they contain 

 any traces of special enclosures or other structures. In general, so 

 little is known of mounds in this area that even the above statements 

 are made with recognition of the possibility that significant excep- 

 tions may j-et come to light. 



The mounds that came under our immediate obsei-vation in the 

 course of field work in Platte County may be roughly divided into 

 two types. Those of the first type contain rectangular to circular 

 walled stone burial chambers covered with earth. Frequently, per- 

 haps characteristically, they occur in groups of three to a dozen or 

 more. A detailed discussion of their distribution and possible rela- 

 tionships will be presented later, but it may be pointed out here that 



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