16 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES. (AMEEICA.) 



circular embankments, in Anderson township, 

 Hamilton County, Ohio, has been carefully and 

 thoroughly explored, with the earth examined 

 shovelful by shovelful. Thousands of objects 

 have been recovered, and valuable facts regard- 

 ing the structure of the mounds have been ob- 

 tained from them. Several of the mounds had 

 within them "altars," or basins of burned clay, 

 one of which contained about two bushels of 

 ornaments made of stone, copper, shells, teeth, 

 and thousands of pearls. Several of the copper 

 ornaments were covered with native silver, 

 which hud been hammered out into thin sheets 

 and folded over the copper; and one copper 

 pendant seems to have been covered with a 

 thin sheet of gold the first instance in which 

 native gold has been found in the mounds. 

 The ornaments, cut out of copper and mica, are 

 of many forms, some of them peculiar scrolls, 

 scalloped circles, and oval pendants of copper ; 

 circles and bands, and heads of animals in 

 mica, the features of the animals being em- 

 phasized by a red color ; and a grotesque hu- 

 man profile in mica. Several masses of mete- 

 oric iron and ornaments made from it were 

 found on this altar. All of the metallic orna- 

 ments were manufactured by hammering. On 

 another altar were found several terra-cotta 

 tigurines of a character heretofore unknown 

 from the mounds. The peculiar manner of 

 wearing the hair, and the peculiar head-dresses 

 and large, button-like ornaments shown by the 

 human figures, were of particular interest ; and 

 with them were found two dishes, carved from 

 stone, in the form of animals; a serpent cut 

 out of mica ; several hundred small quartz peb- 

 bles ; nearly three hundred astragali of deer and 

 oik; and ornaments of copper, shells, etc. The 

 larger of two mounds within the earthwork on 

 the hill contained a small central tumulus, sur- 

 rounded by a carefully built stone wall, and 

 covered in by a platform of stones, over which 

 was a mass of clay. On this wall were two 

 depressions, in each of which a body had been 

 laid, and outside the wall in the surrounding 

 clay were found several skeletons, one of them 

 lying upon a platform of stones. With these 

 skeletons were found a copper celt, ornaments 

 made of copper and shell, and two large sea- 

 shells; and with each of them a pair of spool- 

 shaped ear-ornaments of copper. The thirteen 

 mounds differ much in their structure. Under 

 one of the large altar-mounds was a large ash- 

 pit, six feet deep, similar to the ash-pits of 

 which a thousand had been discovered in the 

 cemetery at Madisonville, the object of which 

 had not been explained. Mr. Putnam's ac- 

 counts of these ash-pits have, however, sug- 

 1 to Miss Alice 0. Fletcher a similarity 

 between them and the disused caches of the 

 Omahas, who, after having abandoned them 

 as caches, use them for ash-pits, r*nd when they 

 have been nearly filled up, cover them with 

 earth. In other mounds, pits, or beds of ashes, 

 containing bones, were found; in one, a cop- 

 per celt, lying on the bones of a hand, with 



casts of the papillae of the fingers distinctly 

 preserved in the carbonate of copper. One 

 mound, stratified and of unusual structure, 

 contained four circular pockets, or excava- 

 tions, each ten inches deep and fourteen inches 

 in diameter, about four inches apart. Three 

 of them contained a dark, pasty substance that 

 became hard on drying, and the other one 

 fragments of stone, burned clay, and earth. A 

 further examination of the larger of the altar- 

 mounds, made in 1883, showed it to be of a 

 far more complicated structure than had been 

 made evident by the work of the previous 

 year. It was found to have been surrounded 

 by a stone wall two feet high, below what had 

 been supposed to be the natural level of the 

 ground, at one place in which, higher and 

 wider than the rest, was a cavity covered with 

 stones erected in a dome-shape, containing the 

 burned remains of a human skeleton, with arti- 

 cles, among which was a carved piece of a 

 deer's antler. "Within this wall was a bed of 

 burned clay, and under that a series of pits 

 about three feet in diameter, and from four to 

 nine feet deep, connected with tunnels or tubes 

 eight feet long and a foot in diameter, having 

 a slight dip downward from the pit, and end- 

 ing in a small vertical tube, which extended to 

 the " concrete " or gravel layer, above the 

 burned clay. The walls of the pits showed the 

 effects of great heat, and at the bottoms were 

 ashes containing fragments of burned bones. 

 Two of the pits had dome-like coverings of 

 clay, in one or two of which were two small 

 holes. The investigation of this branch of the 

 subject has only begun. Many other mounds 

 were examined, all of which presented their 

 several points of interest, the description of 

 which would involve much detail. From one 

 of them were recovered seventy-one skeletons, 

 each of which had been surrounded with stone 

 at the time of burial, and with the skeletons 

 a large number of articles. Several of the 

 mounds in this part of Ohio, and in the Scioto 

 Valley, which were described by Squier and 

 Davis, and by Hildreth and Atwater, have been 

 greatly worn away by the cultivation of the 

 ground. Dr. Charles C. Abbott, who has re- 

 covered many thousand stone implements from 

 the gravels of Trenton, N. J., has found among 

 them two spear-heads of native copper, a worn 

 fragment of a human tooth, in situ, about 

 twelve feet from the surface and near it, two 

 years later (April 18, 1884), the fragment of 

 a jaw, which are regarded as undoubtedly of 

 the same age as the gravel. These discoveries ' 

 are considered important, as removing the 

 doubts respecting the actual occurrence in the 

 gravel of a large portion of a human skull that 

 had been given Dr. Abbott, with a statement 

 by the giver that he had found it there. 



Mr. Bandelier's Investigations in New Mexico. 

 Mr. A. F. Bandelier has been engaged for a 

 number of years, under the direction of the 

 ArchaBological Institute of America, in exam- 

 ination of the ruins of the ancient Pueblos 



