12 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. yy 



was not determined and it was stated by these authors that " Nothing 

 resembhng these figures has ever been found, so far as we know, in 

 the San Juan drainage, and nothing exactly Hke them anywhere in 

 the Southwest.'" 



STONE BURIAL CYSTS AT WUPATKI 



Shortly after publishing his account of the Black Falls ruins, the 

 author made a few excavations near the large buildings and found 

 several good examples of the stone burial cysts similar to those de- 

 scribed in the Marsh Pass (Tokonabi) region by Kidder and Guern- 

 sey." The sides of these cysts were made of stone slabs set on edge, 

 and each enclosure had a stone slab for a cover. The pottery found 

 in these graves had the same character, and bore designs like those 

 here described from Young's Canyon. The identity of this mode of 

 burial and its association with a massive walled building reminds 

 one of the Ruin A in the Marsh Pass area. The form of the great 

 building, Ruin A, and those of the Black Falls, is apparently the 

 same, but the use is not as yet satisfactorily determined. 



BURIAL LTRNS AND CREMATION 



Mr. Clarke calls attention to calcined human bones in mortuary 

 vessels which appear to have been burial urns" like those found at 

 Casa Grande, elsewhere mentioned by the author. Cremation was 

 a method of disposal of the dead, and is also reported by Mr. F. W. 

 Hodge from Hawiku in the Zuni Reservation.* 



BONE ORNA>[ENTS FOR THE HEAD 



The collection contains a few bone objects, such as needles, bod- 

 kins, and the like, which do not differ greatly from those found in 



^Bull. 65, Bur. Amer. Ethn., p. 144. 



' These cysts were of circular or oval form contaiuing huinan bones, skull, 

 and mortuary offerings. 



Similar burials were discovered many years ago by Baron Nordenskiiikl in 

 Step House on the Mesa Verde. (Cliff Dwellers of the Mesa Verde, 1893.) 

 The existence in Step House cave of prepuebloan as well as puebloan culture 

 was pointed out by the author in Smithsonian Misc. Coll., Vol. 72, No. 15, 1922. 



^ ]"\,de note on contents of Grave No. 17, specimen No. 75. This is a very good 

 example of the ease with which archcological objects may be interpreted by 

 modern ceremonial survivals, a method at present greatly neglected by writers 

 on pueblo chronology. 



* Castaneda records cremation among the Cibolans (Zuni) in his account of 

 the Coronado Expedition (1540). W'inship, 14th Ann. Rept., Bur. Amer. Ethn. 



