ARCHEOLOGXCAL INVESTIGATIONS IN MISSOURI 165 



(?) ; a few snicall seashell beads; a broken granite celt; hematite; a 

 pink chert knife; broken projectile points, including one of "Maples 

 Mills" type ; and a few grit-tempered potsherds. 



Of especial interest in Bo 5 was the presence of several graves that 

 evidently antedated construction of the main vault. One of these, 

 feature 4, was a semiflexed burial lying about 2i/2 feet below the vault 

 floor in the southeast corner. Feature 5, extending diagonally under 

 the east vault wall, consisted of two extended supine skeletons in a 

 pit lined with thin slabs set on edge and covered over with several 

 layers of rock. Feature 6, a disarticulated burial covered with rocks 

 "set at angles to each other so that they would not slip in on the 

 skeleton," lay partly under the southeast wall. Feature 7, running 

 just under the southwest corner, was an incomplete skeleton, supine, 

 on a rock pavement. Features 2 and 3, whose stratigraphic relation 

 to the vault are not so clear, may also have preceded it. In each 

 interment had been on a slab floor about 7 or 8 by 21^ feet, around 

 which slabs were set on edge. From feature 3, an infant burial, came 

 several seashell beads, the only artifacts found in any of the prevault 

 structures. 



Below Bonne Femme Creek, in the narrowing south end of Boone 

 County (fig. 20, 7(9), Fowke reported several vault mounds. One of 

 two mounds on the Baumhoefer farm, 2 miles south of Easley (Fowke, 

 1910, pp. 54—56). had as its central feature a reniform chamber about 

 2 feet 8 inches high, with outside measurements of 14 by 10 feet. In- 

 side was an excavation that held the skeletons of four extended adults 

 and an infant, all lying a foot below the top of subsoil. Beneath these 

 burials, which Fowke thought pertained to the main vault, and under 

 a layer of flat stones was an older extended burial. This was sur- 

 rounded by slabs set on edge, recalling thus some of the cist graves 

 noted by Berry and associates at Bo 5. Two other cist graves lay 

 just north of the main vault ; their temporal relationship is not clear, 

 but they had been included within a supplementary wall of single 

 stones that began and ended at the vault. There was no doorway; 

 cremation is not mentioned; and the only cultural objects were two 

 bits of conch or other seashell out of the vault. 



A mile west of Hartsburg, and only 3 or 4 miles below the Baum- 

 hoefer site, is the Dawson group of 15 mounds. In 3 of these, out 

 of 13 opened, Fowke discovered chambers. In mound 9 (Fowke, 

 1910, pp. 33-35) , the rocks formed a rough wall about 2 feet 9 inches 

 high, which enclosed a rectangular floor area 8 feet 7 inches by 3 feet 

 11 inches. In the southwest wall a passage 2 feet wide, filled with 

 earth, was flanked with regularly laid-up walls. Fragments of human 

 bones, including parts of 12 skulls, were scattered through the vault 

 fill, and there were fragments of 5 pots besides numerous potsherds. 



