548 PREHISTORIC VILLAGES IN TENNESSEE [eTH. ANN. 41 
on top of and formed a cover for the smaller bowl, which was within 
the larger one. Neither of the bowls appeared to have ever had any 
solid contents. The discoidal fitted into the rim of the bowl so closely 
that no solid substance had been able to filter into it. The larger 
bowl was not well baked and crumbled into very small fragments, 
which have been placed back in proper position. Its rim is oval, 
5 by 4 inches. It originally had four knobs at each end. These two 
bowls and the discoidal, which were found nested, are shown sepa- 
rately in Plate 123. 
CEMETERIES 
In addition to the children’s graves found in the wigwam floors 
there were two well-defined cemeteries. These are shown on the 
map (pl. 95). One is in the southeastern portion of the town in the 
dotted area marked ‘‘Scattered graves.’’ Here apparently the graves 
were widely scattered. They have nearly all been destroyed by 
cultivation. Theother cemetery is on asmall knoll at the northeastern 
corner of the town. Here the graves have not been disturbed by 
the plow, but they have been subjected to some erosion. The 
graves here are fairly close together, ranging from 1 to 3 feet in dis- 
tance each from the other. These graves le at all angles, with no 
definite rule as to direction. There had probably been 25 graves in 
this cemetery, mostly of adults. These were all typical middle 
Tennessee stone-slab graves, with the bodies lying on back, extended 
full length, with arms at side. Judging from similar graves in that 
portion of the Gordon site not subjected to so much erosion, the 
stone-slab tops of the graves in all the cemeteries in this town had 
been placed from 16 to 25 inches beneath the surface of the soil at 
the time of burial. Erosion in this northeastern cemetery has 
brought the tops of the graves to the level of the soil and in some 
instances 1 or 2 inches above it. They had all been disturbed by 
relic hunters. 
In a corner of a rifled child’s grave, about 38 inches long, inside 
measure, was found the unusual toy pottery sunfish bowl shown in 
Plate 120, e. It is 134 inches in length. A similar toy sunfish bowl 
was found by Mr. John Early Jackson in an adjoining child’s grave. 
This bowl was 2% inches in length and was in the child’s right hand. 
The sunfish-shaped bowl is one of the types of mortuary vessels 
found in some of the stone-slab graves of middle Tennessee. It 
appears not to have been much used for domestic purposes. Out of 
thousands of fragments of domestic pottery found by the author in 
middle Tennessee only three or four were fragments of sunfish vessels. 
The sunfish, possibly from its very remote resemblance to the sun’s 
disk, especially when first removed from the water, may have been 
connected with the sacred sun rites of these people. 
