184 BULLETIN 1S3, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



been found, they include pottery of Hopewellian type (Babcock 

 mound B) or of more generalized type (Nolan mound C, see pi, 36a) ; 

 and such nondiagnostic objects as antler cylinders and stone balls. 

 In at least one instance (Nolan mound C), Middle Mississippi pottery 

 types occurred intrusively. In central Missouri the vaults were much 

 less carefully built, usually lack entrance passages, contain primary 

 extended and flexed as well as disarticulated burials, and yield cultural 

 material in a greater number of instances. The grit-tempered plain 

 "coconut pots" collected by Fowke bear a closer resemblance to Wood- 

 land types than to those of any other manifestation in the area with 

 which I am acquainted. The apparent, if occasional, presence of cord- 

 roughened vessels leads me to believe that the people responsible for 

 the vaults also erected the more numerous earth mounds nearby, 

 wherein cord-roughened and square-mouthed pottery has been found. 

 Heavy clay elbow pipes and stemmed projectile points likewise are 

 reminiscent of Woodland traits. At the same time, shell spoons, orna- 

 ments of Busycon shell, and perhaps the frequency of grave goods 

 might be evidence of Mississippi influence^ As to specific similarities, 

 the cultural complex found in the central Missouri vault mounds seems 

 at present to have its nearest relationship with the so-called Tampico 

 phase of the Woodland in Illinois. There are reasons for supposing 

 that the vaults in our third subarea, centering in Ralls and Pike Coun- 

 ties, Mo., and in Adams County, 111,, may belong with the central 

 Missouri vaults. Here, too, entrance passages are rare or absent, and 

 artifacts seem to be a little more common than in the western mounds. 

 Distinctive, apparently, are the multiple or conjoined vaults reported 

 by Hardy and Scheetz (1883, p. 535) and more recently by Neumann 

 (letter of January 31, 1940). 



As regards physical type, the extremely scant data indicate a long- 

 headed population throughout, with slight frontal deformation re- 

 ported only in the Kansas City locality. 



My interpretation of the incomplete and sometimes untrustworthy 

 evidence detailed in the preceding pages and summarized immediately 

 above can be stated briefly. I am of the opinion that at least two eth- 

 nic groups, closely related physically and predominantly long-headed, 

 but bearing fairly distinct inventories in material culture, were in- 

 volved. The well-built structures at and above Kansas City — our 

 western subarea — probably affiliate with a local Hopewellian-like 

 group whose village remains are represented by the Eenner and related 

 occupational sites in the immediate locality. The cruder but often 

 better furnished structures in central Missouri, together with many of 

 the associated earth mounds nearby, are the remains of a less special- 

 ized, Woodland people whose relationships may eventually prove to 

 be with some such easterly manifestation as that termed the Tampico 



