■206 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. III. No. 58. 



mounds that there must have been a widely 

 extended trade with tribes of the interior, 

 and possibly a migration from the central por- 

 tion of the continent to Florida. The large 

 number of copper objects found by Mr. Moore, 

 many of the same character and in some cases 

 identical with those found in the Ohio mounds, 

 is evidence of contact. The copper itself, 

 which probably came from the Lake Superior 

 region, is an important factor in this connec- 

 tion. The skulls found in the Florida mounds 

 are of the bracliycephalic type, closely resem- 

 bling those from other southern mounds. The 

 pottery, however, is different to a marked de- 

 gree. The stone ' celts ' or hatchets are dis- 

 tinctly of the extreme southern type, border- 

 ing on the West Indian. Is there Carib in- 

 fusion from the islands or from the northern 

 coast of South America ? There are indications 

 in this direction. 



The oldest perfect skull known from Florida 

 is extremely dolichocephalic and entirely dif- 

 ferent from the mound type. This was found 

 by Wyman at the bottom of the great shell 

 heap near Hawkingsville on the St. Johns. 

 This heap was so old that its lower layers 

 of the shells had become decomposed and 

 transformed into a limestone in which this skull 

 and other bones of the skeleton are firmly im- 

 bedded. We naturally question if this skeleton 

 is not that of a survivor of the earlier people 

 who were on the peninsula before the^short- 

 heads came. 



Thus there is a complicated problem which 

 can be solved only by such careful field work 

 -as was begun by the late Jeffries Wyman and 

 is now being continued by Mr. Moore. In this 

 connection it is interesting to know that Mr. 

 Frank H. Gushing is now engaged in explora- 

 tions on the west coast of Florida, under the 

 auspices of the archaeological department of the 

 University of Pennsylvania. 



Mr. Moore in this last memoir has described 

 and figured a number of vessels and singular ob- 

 jects of pottery, which he designates as 'mor- 

 tuary ' and ' freak ' pottery. This pottery, to 

 which I called attention in my notice of his first 

 and second memoirs, is, thus far, peculiar to 

 these Florida mounds. The forms he designates 

 .as freaks ' are very odd and are apparently. 



useless for any practical purpose. Perhaps cer- 

 emonial would be a better designation, since 

 we know that among other peoples pottery of a 

 certain character was made for ceremonial pur- 

 poses, and that such vessels were often placed 

 with the dead. That mortuary vessels were 

 sometimes made for this special purpose is indi- 

 cated by the fact that holes were purposely 

 made in many of the vessels before they were 

 subjected to burning or baking ; while vessels 

 of utility were sometimes perforated or even 

 broken into several pieces before being placed 

 in the mound. Among some tribes the break- 

 ing of a vessel or an implement is to ' kill ' 

 it, that its spirit may accompany the spirit 

 of the dead person ; and some such idea may 

 have prevailed here. This would be another 

 indication of the culture of the people com- 

 ing from the west, which would agree with 

 other facts pointing to such a migration of the 

 southern brachycephali. It is also interesting 

 to note here the resemblance in this respect to 

 the mortuary customs of some of the peoples in 

 Europe in ancient times who made special ves- 

 sels of pottery for burial with the dead, and even 

 manufactured them with holes in the bottom the 

 same as was done in Florida. Is this simply a 

 psychical coincidence in the development of cul- 

 ture iu places so widely separated, or is it an in- 

 dication of man's migration in early times? 



On page 74 Mr. Moore gives an illustration 

 of a little piece of pointed and oxidized iron, 

 less than an inch long, which in itself seems in- 

 significant. This fragment would have been 

 overlooked by a less careful observer or would 

 perhaps have been taken for the end of a nail 

 and so put down as proof that the mound was 

 made after European contact. Mr. Moore him- 

 self thinks that it must be carefully considered 

 from this point of view, while at the same time 

 he suggests that it may be of meteoric origin. 

 To me this bit of iron is most significant, for it 

 closely resembles several small awls or piercers 

 I have found in the Ohio mounds, some of 

 which were so well preserved as to furnish the 

 proof that they are made of meteoric iron. In 

 1882 I was puzzled by a mass of iron rust and 

 fragments of iron found during the exploration 

 of the great group of mounds known as the 

 Turner group in Anderson county, Ohio, where 



