NO. 2 



SMITHSONIAN EXPLORATIONS, I924 



95 



cluster formerly stood Mr. Weeden's house, but earlier the Indians 

 used it as an eating place to which they brought their canoeloads of 

 shellfish, cooked the mollusks and ate the soft parts, throwing away 

 the shells. Mr. Weeden's old home has now been torn down and a 

 pavilion erected on its site. Previously a trench was run into this 

 mound but it revealed little besides shells alternating with layers 

 of black sand, discolored by decomposed vegetable soil. A few frag- 

 ments of pottery rewarded excavation in this mound but it was singu- 

 larly poor in artifacts of any kind. 



F-"<r 





^ &. 



\-\ 



Fig. 106. — Flexed Ijiirial, lower layer, Weeden Island, Florida. 

 (Photograph by Beck.) 



The conclusions arrived at by studies of this large mound were that, 

 while its top may have served as an observatory or even the site of a 

 building like a chief's house, it was essentially a kitchen midden 

 composed of rejected shells or whatever human artifacts may have 

 been lost in it by the aborigines. Almost every village site in the 

 Gulf States culture area has a mound larger than the rest and dom- 

 inating it, which was used as the foundation of the houses of the 

 chief or of the temple in which, in some cases, the fire was kept con- 

 tinually burning. Such mounds were Cahokia in East St. Louis, Mo., 



