ARCHEOLOGICAL ESTVESTIGATIOISrS IN" MISSIOURI 159 



together might have permitted a closer and more fruitful comparison 

 with remains elsewhere. 



Little information is available regarding chambered mounds north 

 of the Pearl Branch group. At least one small cluster has been 

 reported from the northwest corner of the county near latan (fig. 

 20, 3), and it is quite likely that others are present, or formerly were, 

 along the intervening bluffs. Whether they occur in Missouri beyond 

 the northern limit of Platte County I am unable to say. Across the 

 river, however, in Donij)han County, Kans., similar structures have 

 been found. One of these, on a ridge overlooking Brush Creek about 

 a mile northwest of Geary City (fig. 20, ^), was opened several years 

 ago. When we visited it in 1937 there remained only one or two 

 courses of stone on the east, north, and west sides; the south wall 

 had been completely demolished. The area inclosed measured a little 

 over 6 feet east and west and must have been approximately square. 

 The walls seemed to have been built with less skill than those in the 

 chambers near Kansas City. I was unable to learn whether a passage 

 had existed but was informed that no bones or artifacts had been 

 found. 



A close-to-type variant of the chambered mounds is represented by 

 stone graves in northern Doniphan County, a few miles south of the 

 Nebraska line (fig. 20, 1). One of these, opened by Ed Park, is 

 situated on a hill northwest of Cedar Creek and about 2i/^ miles south 

 of White Cloud. The walls had been carefully laid up so as to form 

 a rectangular box measuring about 8 by 4 feet, with a depth of 2l^ 

 feet; there vras no entrance. The contents, so far as I could learn, 

 included nothing except a few badly decayed bones. Fowke (1922, 

 p. 152) reports an apparently similar "box grave" at Iowa Point in 

 the same county. More recently one of this type on a hill overlooking 

 Mill Creek, about 2 miles southwest of loAva Point, was systema- 

 tically opened by Stanley Bartos for the University of Nebraska. 

 From the information he has generously supplied (letter of December 

 5, 1939), it appears that this was also a rectangular affair, measuring 

 7 by 4 feet and from II/2 to 2 feet in height. The long axis lay east 

 and west, and at the east end was a walled entrance 3i/^ feet long by 

 12 to 14 inches wide. Bartos states that the upper 15 to 18 inches 

 of soil in the chamber was dark, mixed, and soft. Below this was 

 a 5 to 8 inch layer of hard earth "which appeared to have been 

 mixed, wetted, and then tamped into place." This stratum, which 

 did not extend into the passage, contained the fragmentary remains 

 of "at least four individuals, all extended and with their heads to the 

 west." No pottery or other artifacts were encountered. In the vicin- 

 ity of the site, along Mill Creek, Bartos says that sherds have been 

 found "of a Woodland type, thick, grit-tempered, and with heavy 



