58 CREMATION-FURNACE. 



row, retreating frontal, prominent parietal protuberances, rather protuber- 

 ant occipital, which was not in the least compressed, the well-defined 

 supraciliaiy ridges, and the superior border of the orbits, presenting a quad- 

 rilateral outline, were also particularly noticed. The lower facial bones, 

 including the maxillaries, were wanting. On consulting such works as are 

 accessible to him, the writer finds no mention of any similar relics having 

 been discovered in mounds in Florida or elsewhere. For further particu- 

 lars reference may be had to a paper on the subject read before the Saint 

 Louis meeting of the American Association, August, 1878." 



The discoveries made by Mr. Gillman would seem to indicate that the 

 people whose bones he excavated resorted to a process of partial crema- 

 tion, some examples of which will be given on another page. The use of 

 crania as receptacles is certainly remarkable, if not unique. 



The fact is well known to archaeologists that whenever cremation was 

 practiced by Indians it was customary as a rule to throw into the blazing 

 pyre all sorts of articles supposed to be useful to the dead, but no instance 

 is known of such a wholesale destruction of property as occurred when the 

 Indians of southern Utah burned their dead, for Dr. E. Foreman relates, in 

 the American Naturalist for July, 1876, the account of the exploration of 

 a mound in that Territory, which proved that at the death of a person not 

 only were the remains destroyed by fire, but all articles of personal prop- 

 erty, even the very habitation which had served as a home. After the pro- 

 cess was completed, what remained unburned was covered with earth and 

 a mound formed. 



A. S. Tiffany* describes what he calls a cremation-furnace, discovered 

 within seven miles of Davenport, Iowa : 



"* * * Mound seven miles below the city, a projecting point known 

 as Eagle Point. The surface was of the usual black soil to the depth of from 

 6 to 8 inches. Next was found a burnt indurated clay, resembling in color 

 and texture a medium-burned brick, and about 30 inches in depth. Immedi- 

 ately beneath this clay was a bed of charred human remains 6 to 18 inches 

 thick. This rested upon the unchanged and undisturbed loess of the bluffs, 

 which formed the floor of the pit, Imbedded in this floor of unburned clay 



* Proc. Dav. Acad. Nat. Sci., 18G7-?(i, p. 64. 



