KANSAS CITY REVIEW Of SCIENCE. 
ARCHAEOLOGY. 
EXPLORATION OF ALTAR MOUNDS IN OHIO. 
PROF. F. W. PUTNAM. 
The group of mounds about which I will speak to-day is situated in Ander- 
son township, Ohio, near the little Miami River, about twenty miles from 
Cincinnati. 
One of the mounds in this group is the center of a circular embankment 
placed on a small hill. Across the hill, outside the embankment, two wide 
trenches had been cut to the level of the bottom of the hill, and the earth from 
the cuts had been used to form a graded way from the top of the hills to the 
lowlands. From this graded way a low embankment extends, forming a circle 
over half a mile in diameter, in which were eleven mounds and a large earth 
circle. Near the earth circle, but outside the large enclosure upon the bank of 
the river, was another mound, making in all thirteen mounds belonging to this 
interesting group. In May last, with the assistance of Dr. C. L. Metz and a 
number of reliable workmen, I began the exploration of this important group of 
earthworks After I was obliged to leave the field, the work of exploration was 
carried on by Dr. Metz, who has been a most conscientious and faithful agent of 
the museum, and to him we are principally indebted for the important results that ,f 
have come from the field work, which has extended over a period of several \ 
months. To Mr. Turner, the proprietor of the land upon which the group is 
mainly situated, the museum is indebted for the exclusive right of exploration. 
The mound on the hill was five feet high and fifty two feet in diameter. Be- 
neath the sod and two feet of clay was found, in the central portion, a pavement 
of flat stones, covering a circular enclosure about twenty-five feet in diameter, 
surrounded by a stone wall two feet ten inches high and about two feet wide. 
This stone wall enclosed a central tumulus two feet four inches high and twelve 
feet in diameter, made up of stratified earth and clay, and the space remaining 
between the tumulus and the stone wall was packed with a mass of gravel. Under 
the tumulus was found an elongated bed of puddled clay, sunk in the ground, 
and having a central excavation, which was filled with sand and covered by an 
altar made of clay, carefully shaped into a basin about four feet in diameter, and 
burnt hard and red. This altar did not contain any relics. Upon the stone wall 
enclosing the inner tumulus were two skeletons, one extended, the other having 
the bones out of the regular order, as if buried in a bundle or re-interred here. 
In the clay outside the wall several skeletons were found, one of which lay upon 
a platform of stones. With the skeletons were found copper ornaments, a cop- 
