4 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. ?O 



and to the compact condition of the surrounding soil. When house 

 remains were encountered they were immediately exposed, provided 

 no connecting structures were discovered which required previous 

 attention. Working from one dwelling to another, the entire series 

 was finally uncovered. 



Early in the course of the excavations it became evident that in the 

 &quot; big mound,&quot; as in other similar elevations, ruins of two distinct 

 types were to be found. These naturally increased in numbers as the 

 work progressed, but the obvious relationship between the two types 

 did not differ materially from that established during former 

 operations. The chief task of the 1917 expedition, therefore, soon 

 resolved itself into an effort to locate all of the more permanent 

 houses and to discover in the lesser structures invariably associated 

 with them any variation from their customary form. The outstand 

 ing features of each type are given below, with additional notes on 

 certain individual ruins. 



In general, every prehistoric community attracts the student both 

 through its architecture and its lesser antiquities, for the house 

 remains, perhaps more completely than the artifacts found within 

 or near them, furnish a true index to the cultural attainments of their 

 builders. And it is the degree of social and material advancement, 

 as evidenced by such remains and by such artifacts, that enables 

 the anthropologist to assign to any given people its approximate place 

 on the ladder of intellectual progress. In considering the results 

 of excavations in the big mound at Paragonah, therefore, attention 

 will first be directed to the structures occupied by the aborigines and 

 then to the minor objects discovered in connection with those 

 structures. 



HOUSE REMAINS 



Reference to the ground plan (pi. i) of the mound under con 

 sideration shows a number of adjacent, rectangular rooms and sev 

 eral additional buildings. It will be noticed, also, that some of these 

 rooms appear one above the other, but, even in such instances, there 

 is evidence of a purposeful arrangement and the constant recogni 

 tion of a previously determined relationship. The fireplaces in the 

 areas contiguous to the rectangular rooms indicate the location of 

 temporary structures, occupied in conjunction with the more per 

 manent buildings. All the fireplaces discovered during the course of 

 the excavations are not shown on the ground plan, for they were 

 found indiscriminately and throughout the entire depth of the mound 

 in such numbers as to render impracticable their proper delineation. 



