46 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 66 



But great difficulty is encountered if Ave try to harmonize ob- 

 served conditions with the opinion that all the bones of Skeleton II 

 were derived from stratum No. 2. If the skeleton had been inclosed 

 within this layer and the sand over the larger part of the remains 

 had been subsecjuently washed away, how could we explain that the 

 bones thus exposed, some of which are small and light fragnients, 

 happened to remain, and remain at ditferent levels? Is it not 

 reasonable to assume that they also Avould have been rolled or washed 

 aw^ay or sunk to one horizon? How could some of the bones, as 

 the radius, have reached almost double the depth of others? After 

 exposure and before being covered with the sediments and muck 

 of layer No. 3, how could the bones, or at least some of them 

 or some part of a bone, have escaped bleaching or weathering? AVe 

 have seen that the three bones wdiich fell out of the bank before the 

 skeleton Avas located all show decided bleaching as a result. How 

 could the fifth metatarsal, which show^s the same color and the same 

 fossilization as most of the other bones of tl\f skeleton, have come 

 to lodge in the midst of the muck of lnjev 3, above and to the east 

 of the radius, as explained by Sellards (p. 142 ^) ? It might possibly 

 have been brought there by a rodent, but the same agency could not 

 have been instrumental in placing some of the other bones of the 

 skeleton. 



Eespecting the question of antiquit}^, it would really not matter 

 much whether the skeleton lay in the lowest part of layer 3 or in 

 layer 2, the remains of wdiich in this place did not even shoAV indura- 

 tion — it could have been introduced with equal facility in either 

 stratum; but conditions are such that the assumption of its having 

 been included in stratum 2, as already outlined, would involve us in 

 difficulties seemingly not susceptible of satisfactory explanation. 



A more important problem is whether the skeleton represented an 

 accidental inclusion or a burial. The bones are broken and were in 

 a considerable measure dissociated, as if they might have lain for a 

 time exposed to the elements and have been dragged and trampled 

 by animals, conditions which w^ould normally precede an accidental 

 covering and inclosure of such remains. If, however, Ave look closely 

 into the matter, it is soon felt that the actual facts as shoAvn by the 

 bones are not compatible Avith such a conclusion. 



The entire area covered by the bones, including the fcAV j^arts found 

 by Sellards in layer 2, wa^ an ellipse about 12 or 13 feet in its longest 

 and evidently less than 7 feet in its transverse diameter. This is 

 altogether a too moderate scattering to admit of the theory that part 

 of the body or of the bones Avere dragged about by animals. Tlie 



1 " One of the foot bones, a fifth metatarsal, was taken about 8 feet east of the ulna 

 and at an actual level, owing to the change in slope, above that of the radius and ap- 

 proximately the same as that of the ulna." 



