150 



MEMOIRS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



was inferred from the correspondence of certain special marks and designs on the pottery in the 

 pyral cemetery with designs found on pottery in the graves of the contiguous dwellings. 



The burnt bones and charred remains of some of the more valued articles of personal property 

 were placed in pots of suitable size, which were covered by inverted bowls or broken pieces of 

 pottery and surrounded by other articles of pottery buried as presents to the dead. These mortu 

 ary gifts were broken or drilled before burial, probably in order that the souls they were thoiight 

 to possess might escape and accompany the dead to the spirit land. The custom of breaking the 

 pottery sacrificed with the dead is called by the people of modern Zuni &quot; killing &quot; the vessels, and 

 is still practiced among them. 



It is believed that those of the priestly race were not cremated because they had the power to 

 release their own souls from their bodies while the laity, having no such power, had to have their 

 bodies burned to effect the desired release. Whatever may have been the creed that thus pre 

 served some bodies for simple interment, anthropology owes it gratitude, for without it the 

 unique skeletons of this archaic race would not have been preserved for modern study and com 

 parison. It is thought, too, that the pots buried with the uucremated adults were not broken or 

 &quot;killed &quot; because the priests knew how to release the souls of the pots and take them with them 

 to the undiscovered country, while to the laity such knowledge was denied. 



Fia. 5. Double burial. 



Double burials were found both with the cremated and the uucremated remains; but were much 







more common with the latter than with the former. When two skeletons were discovered in one 

 grave or incinerary vessel they were invariably adult, and, win-never the sex could be deter 

 mined, one was always found to be a male and the other a female presumably man and wife. This 

 might be thought to indicate that the wife had been sacrificed at the death of the husband; but 

 in the house-graves there was often evidence that the interments were not simultaneous, the 

 upper grave not being dug exactly over the lower and thcbodies having been apparently wrapped 

 in different cerements. It was a rare thing to find three, buried in one grave. Fig. 5 shows a 

 double burial, male and female, in which the interments, and probably the deaths, were simul 

 taneous. 



