ARCHEOLOGICAL IN\'ESTIGATIONS IN MISSOURI 



257 



In the Madisonville series Hooton (1920, p. 85) found occipital 

 flattening in all but 19 out of a total of 82 crania. Of the deformed 

 skulls only 9 showed a grade of deformity rated as medium or pro- 

 nounced ; in 54 the grade was considered slight. No frontal flattening 

 was reported. 



It is interesting to note also that the crania from the Wallace 

 mound near Omaha, Nebr., described briefly by Poynter (1915) and 

 believed by Strong (1935) to represent the Nebraska Culture, which 

 in turn has ISIiddle Mississippi relationships, are slightly deformed in 

 the majority (26: average cranial index 85.2; range 80.0-92.7). 

 Again, the Dickson site in Illinois, a Middle Mississippi site that has 

 many traits in common with Steed-Kisker, yielded only 17 unde- 

 formed adult male crania sufficiently complete for study out of a 

 total of 230 burials (Neumann, 1937). This suggests a rather high 

 frequency of deformity. Apparently this is generally true of Middle 

 Mississippi sites (cf. Newman and Snow, 1942). 



Measurerrhents. — Individual measurements are given in table 17 and 

 are summarized for the males in table 18 in comparison with other 

 Middle Mississippi series. Because deformity is so common in this 

 group, the best representation of the undeformed type is that assem- 

 bled by Neumann (1941b) in his "Spoon River focus" series. On the 

 average the undeformed appear to be mesocranial and thus somewhat 

 more roundheaded than the Hopewellian-Woodland type. Wliether 

 all traces of deformity have been eliminated from the "Spoon River 

 focus" series may possibly be questioned on account of the high 

 standard deviations. 



Head height appears to be variable in the several series. The skulls 

 from Steed-Kisker and Madisonville, in spite of occipital flattening, 

 tend to be absolutely and relatively lower than those from Roger's 

 Island and "Spoon River." The females from Madisonville show 

 the same trend as the males (24: average mean height index 84.3). 

 However, the distribution of the mean height indices in the Madison- 

 ville series is not far different from that characterizing other series 

 from the Northeast (cf. Stewart, 1940, table 1) : 



The one specimen from Steed-Kisker for which the mean height index 

 is available (81.4) thus falls well within this range. Noteworthy, too, 



