602 PREHISTORIC VILLAGES IN TENNESSEE [ETH. ANN. 41 
bundle of bones. Did this person, for whom no one appears to have 
cared enough to even make a rude coffin, have any connection with 
this woman of an alien race, by the side of whose coffin his bones 
had been buried? Was it the body of some captive? 
Wuo Were TuHesr FLexep-BurtaL PEOPLE? 
This concludes the record of the remains of the flexed-burial people 
who built the mounds and the first village at the Fewkes group. 
Who were these flexed-burial people? 
Their method of burial, the bodies more or less closely flexed, the 
stone coffins hexagonal or octagonal or tending to circular, is different 
from that of the other stone-grave peoples who have lived at various 
times in the surrounding region in middle Tennessee. This method 
of burial resembles that-found by the author in the Sequatchie Valley, 
in the Kelley group, 8 miles south of Dunlap, on the Sequatchie 
River, a small tributary of the Tennessee River, in east Tennessee. 
It also resembles some of the flexed burials found by others in east 
Tennessee, north Georgia, and north Alabama, principally along the 
waters of the Tennessee River. However, at some points along the 
Tennessee River, for example, at Bennett Place in Marion County, 
Tenn., about 25 miles south of the Kelley group, in a mound exea- 
vated by Mr. Clarence B. Moore and described in his ‘Aboriginal 
Sites on Tennessee River,” pages 338 to 352, both the flexed burials 
and extended-full-length burials are found in the same mound. Some 
other comminglings have been found. <A study of the small number 
of these commingled burials does not settle the question as to whether 
the same people practiced both forms of burial, or whether the unlike 
forms of burial belonged to two different peoples who had occupied 
the site at separate times. More information is necessary in order 
to establish the truth of the matter. It is to be regretted that the 
Fewkes excavations did not bring to light sufficient skeletal material 
to greatly aid in this determination. The type of buildings found in 
mound No. 2 and in circle No. 6, including the altars, and also some 
of the artifacts found with these flexed-burial people, indicate contact 
with the surrounding rectangular-stone-slab people, such as those 
found on the Gordon site and elsewhere in the Cumberland Valley 
in middle Tennessee. 
These first or flexed-burial inhabitants of the Fewkes group, for 
some unknown reason, deserted the site. There may be some very 
slight indications in the large amount of broken pottery on the floor 
of circle 6 that they were forced to leave hurriedly, and such of their 
belongings as they could not carry with them they destroyed. This 
important site, which contains the remains of two waves of ancient 
migrations, should be thoroughly explored. 
