94 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS \'0L. 'J'J 



Following the above-mentioned plan, Weeden Mound, near St. 

 Petersburg, was excavated by the Chief, assisted by Mr. M. W. 

 Stirling, through the kindness of Mr. E. M. Elliott and the Boulevard 

 and Bay Land and Development Company. These investigations, pre- 

 liminary results of which were published last fall,' reveal that the 

 culture of northern Florida was in prehistoric times dififerent from 

 that of southern Florida. 



The character of the objects obtained from Weeden Mound, as 

 shown in the above-mentioned pamphlet, indicates that the former 

 inhabitants of this site were allied to the so-called Lower Creeks who 

 once lived on the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers in Georgia. These 

 were of the same race as the Upper Creeks, denizens of the Tallapoosa 

 and Coosa valleys in Alabama, and as the Creeks were the most 

 numerous representatives of ]\Iuskhogean culture they may be re- 

 garded as typical of it. The archeological relation is mainly deter- 

 mined by the designs on the pottery, which in the case of the ceramic 

 objects from the Lower Creeks collected on the Chattahoochee and 

 Flint, figured and described by Mr. Clarence B. Moore, and those 

 from Weeden Mound are practically identical. In both localities 

 pottery designs are outlined by pitted or perforated lines, which 

 designs and technique occur also on pottery found at Tarpon Springs, 

 Crystal Springs, and at various other localities northward on the 

 west and northwest coast of Florida. 



There is a similarity in mortuary practices throughout the greater 

 part of the Muskhogean culture area which occurs also in the 

 Weeden Mound. The actual method of burying the dead among the 

 Upper Creeks, as shown by the Graves collection at Montgomery 

 where the skeletons were placed in urns (figs. II2, 113), is unlike that 

 at \\'eeden Island, where they were free or placed in baskets. Urn 

 burial has not been recorded among the Lower Creeks but a secondary 

 interment or burial of skeletons in urns after the flesh had been 

 removed has l^een found in the islands on the Georgian coast. Bunched 

 burials occur throughout the whole Muskhogean area. So far as 

 we at present know, urn burial (fig. 114) is a localized development 

 found in dififerent localities in the Gulf States but the bunched sec- 

 ondary burial of skeletons is a general feature in this culture. 



The cluster of mounds on Weeden Island near St. Petersburg is 

 easily distinguished, and its site has been lately designated Narvaez 

 Park from the Spanish leader of the expedition in the sixteenth 

 century that ended so disastrously. On the largest mounds of this 



^ Smithsonian Misc., Coll., Vol. 76, No. 13, 1924. 



