1 6 STONE GRAVES OR CISTS. 



l>e accounted for if it is considered how great a deposition of earth may 

 have taken place during the many centuries which have elapsed since the 

 burial. Many of the graves explored by the writer in 1875, at Santa Bar- 

 bara, resembled somewhat cist graves, the bottom and sides of the pit being 

 lined with large flat stones, but there were none directly over the skeletons. 



The next account is by Maj. J. W. Powell, the result of his observation 

 in Tennessee: 



" These ancient cemeteries are exceedingly abundant throughout the 

 State; often hundreds of graves may be found on a single hillside. In 

 some places the graves are scattered and in others collected in mounds, 

 each mound being composed of a large number of cist graves. It is evi- 

 dent that the mounds were not constructed at one time, but the whole col- 

 lection of graves therein was made during long periods by the addition of 

 a new grave from time to time. In the first burials found at the bottom 

 and near the center of a mound a tendency to a concentric system, with 

 the feet inward, is observed, and additions are made around and above 

 these first concentric graves ; as the mound increases in size the burials 

 become more and more irregular. 



" Some other peculiarities are of interest. A larger number of inter- 

 ments exhibit the fact that the bodies were placed there before the decay 

 of the flesh, while in other cases collections of bones are buried. Some- 

 times these bones were placed in some order about the crania, and sometimes 

 in irregular piles, as if the collection of bones had been emptied from a sack. 

 With men, pipes, stone hammers, knives, arrowheads, &c, were usually 

 found ; with women, pottery, rude beads, shells, &c. ; with children, toys 

 of pottery, beads, curious pebbles, &c. 



" Sometimes, in the subsequent burials, the side slab of a previous 

 burial was used as a portion of the second cist. All of the cists were 

 covered with slabs." 



Dr. Jones has given an exceedingly interesting account of the stone 

 graves of Tennessee, in his volume published by the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, to which valuable work* the reader is referred for a more detailed 

 account of this mode of burial. 



* Antiquities of Tennessee. Cont. to Knowledge. Smith. Inst., 1876, No. 259, 4°, pp. 1, 8, 37,52, 



