172 Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis 
only dark decayed vegetable matter extending into the sterile 
sub-mound area. The house remains, the ashes and the pit 
were all on the same level indicating that the mound had 
probably been erected over all three formations. 
The house was built by sinking poles vertically into the 
ground enclosing a rectangular floor space. The bottoms of these 
posts had been cut into a chisel shape before they were placed 
into the ground. The corners of the structure did not seem 
to have had posts in them, The house had not been completely 
burned to ashes. The fire had been put out while still smoldering 
so that large portions of intact wattle work of the collapsed 
walls (intertwining wall support members of small branches ) 
lay on the floor. (See Plate IV B). Two or three fragments 
of charred grass thatch lay above the wattle work indicating 
that the roof and possibly also the walls were of thatch. A large 
crushed olla with flaring rim or jar lay just west of the center 
while two small ollas with flaring rims or jars lay near a mass 
of corn in the northwest quadrant. There was evidence of a 
small fireplace indicated by a roughly circular burned stain 
on the floor at the north end of the structure. 
Many test trenches were placed in the village, particularly 
to the south of the immediate mound area. Some of these 
trenches were expanded when any feature of importance was 
found in them. It was found that the village occupied the higher 
second terrace and appeared to extend also into the low bottom- 
land. One feature was found along the slope between the bot- 
tomland and second terrace. It was the wall outlines of several 
superimposed and possibly rebuilt aboriginal houses. The east- 
ern extension of structures, lying in the bottomland, were s° 
close to the surface that they had been destroyed by surface 
water and plow erosion, Furthermore structure outlines were 
more clearly visible and easy to locate on the slope between 
the first and second terraces because the black humus was less 
dark possibly because erosion had stripped most of the humus 
from the lower first terrace. The floor of the houses had been 
destroyed but a group of three small circular clay fireplaces 
close together near a mass of charred corn was found belonging 
