FOWKE] AKCHEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS 67 



over 3 inches. None of them showed any marks of fire ; some had 

 both Aalves in position, as if they had never been opened, and a few 

 of the larger of these had been filled with small shells and closed 

 again. A few were broken, but most of them were entire. About 

 1,400 valves were in this pile, meaning that at least one-half of that 

 number of mollusks were consumed. 



The first interment was found at 46 feet from the front, 14 feet 

 from the east w\'ill. The folded skeleton of a very old person lay on 

 the right side, head east, in loose ashes, on a large flat rock whose 

 top was 30 inches below the surface. This rock had not been placed 

 here, but had fallen from the ceiling; probably its existence was not 

 known until it was uncovered in digging the grave. The skull still 

 retained its shape, in part, being held in place by the ashes, but fell 

 in pieces when this support was removed. A portion of it was 

 gone; two fragments were found, several feet away, not near each 

 other, one of which fits in the skull, and the other probably belongs 

 with it also. The frontal bone is nearly half an inch thick; the 

 sutures partially obliterated ; the teeth worn down to the necks, 

 some of them nearly to the bone ; the forehead is low and receding. 

 A restoration is seen in plate 20, «, h. In addition to the missing 

 portions of the skull, most of the ribs, half of the lower jaw, and nearly 

 all the dorsal vertebrae w-ere absent, probably having been dragged 

 away by ground hogs. The bones are all light and fragile. Lying 

 above the skull, in contact wath it but supported by the ashes on both 

 sides, was half of a large mortar hollowed on both sides. Above the 

 skeleton, and extending for several feet on every side, was an undis- 

 turbed stratum of closely packed ashes, 17 inches thick at the middle, 

 which broke off under the pick in large clods; these, of course, had 

 accumulated after the body was interred. 



The spongy condition of these bones, in spite of the preservative 

 action of the ashes, is evidence of the fact frequently noted, that 

 with advancing age some change takes place which renders them less 

 resistant to destructive influences. Bones of children only a few 

 weeks old near this skeleton held their structure perfectly and were 

 easily secured. 



Ten feet east from the pile of mussel shells, at a slightly lower 

 level, was nearly half a gallon of snail shells which had been boiled, 

 probably in soup. With them were a few pieces of bones. 



Scattered irregularly through the ashes were many cavities which 

 somewhat resembled the " postholes " so common beneath the mounds 

 in Ohio. Some were barely an inch in diameter and a foot deep; 

 from this size they varied indefinitely to the largest, which was a 

 little more than 3 feet deep, reaching from about a foot below the 

 undisturbed layers just under the loose surface ashes to within about 



