ANCIENT CEMETERY AT MADISONVILLE. 529' 



of copper articles in stone graves, none were obtained from this particular 

 group. 



"Descriptions of stone graves will be found in C. C. Jones' ' Antiquities of 

 Southern Indians,' chapter lo; in ' Explorations of the Aboriginal Remains of 

 Tennessee,' by Dr. Joseph Jones ; 'Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge,' 

 259, 1879, and in the ' Eleventh Annual Report of the Peabody Museum.' " 



The third lecture was entitled 



THE ANCIENT CEMETERY AT MADISONVILLE AND ITS 

 PECULIAR ASH-PITS. 



"In the valley of the Little Miami, three or four miles from Madisonville, are 

 extensive woods of oak and walnut, where the hogs were allowed to run wild, and, 

 by their rooting, uncovered human bones, stone implements and potsherds. In 

 1878 this attracted the attention of the gentlemen composing the Madisonville 

 Literary and Scientific Society, prominently Dr. C L. Metz and Mr. C. F. Low, 

 who caused an exploring trench of some length to be dug, and having thus ascer- 

 tained the place to be the site of an ancient cemetery of considerable interest 

 entered at once upon the work of scientific investigation, in which the museum 

 has since taken an active part, and the Curator has made two extended explora- 

 ations in person. A part of the large number of specimens collected during the 

 past season was arranged on the table. 



"The surface was found to be covered with leaf-mould of an average depth 

 of eighteen inches, below which is the hard clay of the region. In the leaf- 

 mould and occasionally a few inches in the clay are found the skeletons, some- 

 times extended, and sometimes out of the regular position, as if the body had been 

 buried in a bundle, or the bones had been brought here for reinterment. The 

 burials were made here and there without order, but in great number, about one 

 thousand skeletons having been already discovered. Under the leaf-mould many 

 round pits, dug in the hard clay, have been found, the object of which is one of 

 the great puzzles of American archaeology. 



"These so called 'ashpits' are sometimes isolated, but often in clusters- 

 Seven hundred have been found in this cemetery, to which they are, so far as is 

 at present known, peculiar. The pits are commonly about three feet in diameter 

 by three or four feet deep, and are filled with fine light gray ashes to near the 

 mouth, where some sand is mixed with the ashes. Human skeletons have been 

 found in two pits, in one instance at the bottom of the pit, and in the other half 

 way down. Human bones have also been found in such positions as to show 

 that burials had occasionally taken place in the clay before the ash pits wereduo-^ 

 while in other cases skeletons in the leaf-mould had been removed in order to dig 

 a pit. The plan followed in exploring the cemetery has been to divide it into 

 blocks, whose corners were marked by four large trees. In one of these blocks 

 explored this summer were found fourteen ash pits dug in the clay, and six skele- 

 tons buried in the leaf-mould. 



