272 ART IN SHELL OF THE ANCIENT AMERICANS. 



The edge of the shell has been broken away nearly all around. The 

 accompanying cut represents the ornament natural size — one and a 

 half inches in diameter and one-sixteenth of an inch in thickness. It 

 was obtained from a mound on Faiu's Island, Tennessee. 



The smaU gorget presented in Fig. 2, Plate LII, is of inferior work- 

 manship and the lines and dots seem to have a somewhat haphazard 

 arrangement. The cross, which may or may not be significant, con- 

 sists of two shallow irregular grooves which cross each other at right 

 angles near the center of the disk and terminate near the border. 

 There are indications of an irregular, somewhat broken, concentric liue 

 neajr the margin. A number of shallow conical pits have been drilled 

 at rather irregular intervals over most of the surface. One pair of per- 

 forations seems to have been broken away and others drilled, one of the 

 latter has also been broken out. A triangular fragment is lost from the 

 lower margin of the disk. This specimen was obtained from a mound 

 on Lick Creek, East Tennessee, by Mr. Dunning. 



The gorget shown in Fig. 3 contains a typical example of the cross 

 of the mound-builder. The cut was made from a pencil sketch and is 

 probably not quite accurate in detail. The border of the disk is 

 plain, with the exception of the usual perforations at the top. The 

 cross is inclosed in a carelessly drawn circle, and the spaces between 

 the arms, which in other crosses are entirely cut out, or are filled with 

 rays or other figures, are here decorated with a pattern of crossed 

 lines. The lines which define the arms of the cross intersect in the 

 middle of the disk. The square figure thus produced in the center 

 coutaius a device that is probably significant. A doubly-curved or 

 S-shaped incised line, widened at the ends, extends obliquely across 

 the square from the right upper to the left lower corner. This figure 

 appears to be an elementary or unfinished form of the device found 

 in the center of many of the more elaborate disks. Intersected by a 

 similar line it would form a cross like that upon the back of one of the 

 spiders shown in Plate LXI, or somewhat more evenly curved, it would 

 resemble the involuted figure in the center of the circular disks given 

 in Plate LIV. This specimen was obtained from a mound on. Lick Creek, 

 Tenn., and is now in the Peabody Museum. 



In Fig. 4 a large copper disk from an Ohio mound is represented. 

 The specimen is eight inches in diameter, is very thin, and has suffered 

 greai.y from corrosion. A symmetrical cross, the arms of which are 

 five inches in length, has been cut out of the center. Two concentric 

 lines have been impressed in the plate, one near the margin and the 

 other touching the ends of the cross. It is now in the Natural History 

 Museum at New York. 



In Plate LIII I present a largo number of crosses, most of which 

 have been obtained from the mounds, or from ancient graves, within 

 the district occupied by the mound-builders. Bight are engraved upon 

 shell gorgets (illustrations of which are given in the accompanying 



