212 BUEEAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 52 



There are no data as to the exact depth at which the body lay, no 

 photograph showing the remains; but granting that it was deeper 

 than in an ordinary grave, who shall say that it was not buried in a 

 depression or crevice, and that since the burial there were no additions 

 to the general Pampean surface by wind or water or through the 

 medium of the humus ? 



Koth's objection to burial, on the basis that the Indians had no 

 means Avith which to dig a grave, is not tenable, for they always had 

 bones of animals, and antlers, which are capable of making excellent 

 digging tools, and they probably had also sticks, if no other imple- 

 ments. To scrape together enough earth for effectually covering a 

 human body involves quite as much work, except in sand}^ places, 

 as the digging of a not very deep grave, and necessitates the use of 

 similar implements. 



That the bones lay in the Pampean is natural. As everything 

 beneath the vegetal stratum is regarded as Pampean, the body could 

 not have been buried in anything else. That there was but little to 

 direct special attention to the find at the time it was made appears 

 plain enough from the words of Koth himself and from the subse- 

 quent neglect of the bones. 



The state of fossilization of the specimens has not been chemically 

 determined. As to incrustations, these are, even more than actual 

 minerahzation of a bone, an indication of environmental conditions; in 

 this case it was the presence of lime in percolating or underground 

 waters. There are in the United States National Museum several largre 

 Spanish olive jars, dredged from Atlantic coast waters, large portions 

 of which are thickly incrusted with calcareous deposits. The teeth of 

 the common horse from the beach of Lagima de los Padres, near Mar 

 del Plata, and to a slight extent even the fresher ones from the 

 lower jaw of a horse found at Ovejero (see p. 257), show similar 

 deposits; and these are also occasionally found on the bones and 

 pottery of the North American Indians. In the Argentine loess, 

 the richness of which in lime and perhaps in other salts is attested 

 by the very prevalent tosca formation, it would doubtless be a far 

 greater rarity to find bones that have lain more than a few decades in 

 the ground, and that were not cleaned at once after exhumation,^ wdth- 

 out than with more or less compact cement adhering thereto, and also 

 more or less filling of the bone cavities by the same calcareous mate- 

 rial. The "adherence of the bone to the tongue," which is often 

 mentioned in these cases, especially by Lehmann-Nitsche, as a sign 

 of ''fossilization," is merely a sign of the presence on or in the bone 

 of more or less mineral matter, particularly lime and will be equally 

 manifest in a specimen that has suffered such change recently as in 

 one in which the deposit or infiltration is of great age. The teeth of 



' It. was observed during the work in Argentina that sometimes loose earthy matter adhering to boaes 

 when taken from the ground becomes hard and adheres firmly after exposures. 



