ARCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS IN ^-nSiSOURI 155 



of the artifacts recovered by Curtiss. Only one of those illustrated 

 (pi. 43, a) appears to be from, the chambered mounds. Catalogs • I as 

 a "notched point from the eastern part of Keller's farm ....'' it 

 may be the "flint spearpoint" referred to in the list of accessions. 

 The mound is described as a "Dolmen mound, stone chamber 8' 

 down (?), 41/2 '-5' high, walls 2' thick, walled entrance 21/2' wide." 

 The other specimens are from Wolf den (or Wolf Den?) Ridge, 

 Platte County, and must be from the large mound containing the 

 extended burials. This is further described as an "earth mound 75' 

 East and West by 20' wide, 5'-6' high; human bones 10' from east 

 end." The daggers, of which the largest shown (pi. 43, q) measures 

 26 by 5.8 cm., are of rosy wdiite chert. They are unlike any of the 

 large blades of local provenience which have yet come to my no- 

 tice, but Shippee reports (letter of February 10, 1940) seeing sim- 

 ilar specimens in collections from Jackson County. The pierced 

 pendant w^ith nicked edges is presumably the "ornament of catlinite" 

 in the accessions list, though the catalog data identify it as red 

 slate. In the treatment of the edges it recalls the sagittate object 

 of fine-grained red sandstone found by Shippee on the bluffs just 

 north of North Kansas City (pi. 20, c). The hematite bead is shown 

 as I. Of the remaining specimens none appears particularly diag- 

 nostic so far as the cultural manifestations revealed by our own ex- 

 cavated materials are concerned, although the flake knives {c and d) 

 bear a slight resemblance to objects from the Steed-Kisker site. It 

 has been impossible up to the present time to learn the fate of the 

 "minute fragments of vessels of clay" found by Curtiss in one of 

 the vaults or of the "well made pottery" from the earth mound, and 

 I am unable to state their nature. 



In 1907, while engaged in mound investigations in central Missouri, 

 Fowke undertook a reexamination of five of the Line Creek vaults. 

 All had been opened before, and his efforts accordingly were directed 

 mainly toward a determination of their purpose and manner of con- 

 struction. In this he was successful; he surpassed all his predeces- 

 sors in the matter of accurate description and in addition left a series 

 of excellent photographs (Fowke, 1910, pp. 65-72). 



Three mounds were excavated on the Eugene Keller farm, in Clay 

 County (Fowke, 1910, pp. 67-69). In mound 1 "only 7 feet of the 

 wall was intact along the north side; this was about 31/2 feet high" 

 and nearly vertical. On the south side were the remains of an en- 

 trance passage flanked by wing walls. In mound 2, a pear-shaped 

 slab area covered a vault 7I/2 feet square by 2^4 feet high. Disturbed 

 wing walls marked the location of the doorway to the south. The 

 vault walls bore evidence of great heat, and throughout the chamber 

 were scattered masses of burnt earth most or all of which had evi- 



