126 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [bull. 64 



only a few fragments of the skull and long bones remained, not 

 enough to determme even the position in which the corpse had been 

 placed at burial. With the bones, in some cases close to them, in 

 others at some little distance, the following objects were discovered: 

 One rubbmg stone (for grmding corn), 2 pear-shaped flints, 9 flint 

 hammerstones, 1 ax head, 1 flint scraper, 1 broken hone of slate, 1 

 flmt spearhead, 2 fossil shells, 2 pieces of brick-like pottery, 1 pot- 

 tery disk, 3 small beads, and 1 shell. 



On reachmg the ground level of hard compact earth, it was found 

 that an oblong trench had been cut through the latter down to the lime- 

 stone rock beneath, 3 feet in breadth, and varying from 2 to 4 feet ill 

 depth; this trench had been filled m with small rubble. In its mncr 

 wall, at the north side of the quadrangle, three interments had been 

 made hj scooping out small cists hi the earth, deposituig the remains 

 thereui, and filling in with Imiestone dust and rubble. With one of 

 these burials was fomid a small three-legged pot, of rough, unpolished 

 pottery; with another, a vessel in the form pi a quadruped, 7 niches 

 in length, the itleiitity of which is difhcult to detemime; and with the 

 third a small saucer-shaped vessel of red ware, and a nearly spherical 

 vessel of dark polished red ware. Within the latter were discovered 

 a few small animal bones, some fresh-water snail shells (as are found 

 at the present day m the neighboring swamps and eaten by the 

 Indians), and a few bivalve shells. It seems probable that this 

 vessel contained food, either as an offering to the gods or for the use 

 of the deceased in his passage to the next world. It is not uncom- 

 mon to find considerable accumulations of the shells of conchs, 

 cockles, snails, and other edible shellfish, with the bones and teeth of 

 deer, tiger, gibnut, snake, and (along the seashore) manatee, in 

 British Honduras mounds; but the remains of food offerings con- 

 tained within a vessel are of rare occurrence.' 



A number of these large flat mounds containing multiple burials 

 have been from time to time completely dug down near Corozal, in 

 order to obtain stone for repairing the streets. Beneath nearly all 

 of them wore found trenches cut through the earth down to the 

 subjacent limestone. These trenches varied from 2 to 5 feet in 

 breadth; in the case of the smaller mounds they formed a parallelo- 

 gram, a triangle, or even a single straight line; in the larger mounds 

 two parallelograms were joined by parallel trenches (see fig. 23) . They 

 were invariably filled with small rubble, and a few of them contained 



1 Among the modern Maya Indians of this area food is no longer placed with the dead, but every Hanal 

 pishan, or All Souls' Day, tortillas, posol, meat, and other foods are placed upon the graves, on the odor of 

 which the soul of the departed is supposed to regale itself. Tozzer mentions the custom of burying food 

 with the dead as still practiced by the modern Lacandones. (See Tozzer, A comparative Study of the 

 Mayas and the Lacandones, pp. 47-48.) 



See also Cogolludo, op. cit., Bk. xii, Chap, wi, p. 699: "Al rededor le ponen mucha vianda, 

 una sicara, un calaba^o con atole, salvados de maiz, y unas tortillas grandes de lo mismo, que ban 

 llevado juntamente con el cuerpo, y assi lo cubren despues con tierra." 



