CERTAIN ABORIGINAL REMAINS, BLACK WARRIOR RIVER. 241 
knees, a smoking-pipe of coarse ware and fragments of a rude pot with an arrow- 
head of jasper nearby. Under the legs were several small fragments of sheet- 
copper. At the feet were 103 pebbles and parts of pebbles, all or nearly all of 
Jasper. With these were six small arrowheads of jasper, more or less rudely made, 
and one drill of the same material. At the left knee was Vessel No. 1, a rude 
water-bottle of coarse, yellow ware, with three large, hollow feet (Fig. 172). Part 
of the body of this vessel, which had been earried away by the plough, has been 
restored. At the skull was Vessel No. 2 (Fig. 173), which, by an unfortunate blow 
from a plough, has lost its upper part. Тһе decoration is a. repetition of the open 
hand with the open eye upon it. 
А handsome piercing implement of bone, 6 inches long, highly polished, with 
three notches at each of two sides of the blunt end, lay apart from human remains. 
А full-length skeleton, on the back, had at the neck a quantity of beads made 
from portions cut from thick parts of mussel-shells, where the muscular attachment 
is. These nacreous beads must have presented an attractive appearance in their 
time. 
А skeleton, also at full length, whose interment had cut through another 
skeleton, had shell beads at the wrist. 
A small, thin disc of limonite, with many scratches on each side, and a small 
stone chisel with double cutting edge, lay apart from human remains. 
MOUND S. 
Mound S, a small remnant of what once was an inconsiderable mound within 
the line of encircling mounds, was dug into by us with no material result. 
MOUND T. 
Mound T, apparently another small remnant within the circle, was thoroughly 
dug into by us with no result except the ку of part of a disturbed skeleton 
just under the surface. 
Here ends the account in detail of our digging at Moundville. Let us now 
consider the question of domiciliary mounds. In much of our work at Moundville, 
and all along the Black Warrior river, for that matter, we have assumed that large 
mounds with flat summit plateaus were built by the aborigines for purposes other 
than that of sepulture. Now let us see on what grounds this assumption was based. 
As we have to do with southern mounds, we need go no farther for data than our. 
own field of exploration in the South. 
The mound on Little Island," South Carolina, elliptical in outline, 11 feet to 14 
feet in height, was about 100 feet by 150 feet in basal diameter. The summit 
plateau was 38 feet by 61 feet. An excavation in the central part of the mound, 
about 45 feet by 55 feet, to the base, was made by us. One superficial burial was 
met with, and also the bones of an infant under a house of clay and wattle, which 
1 “Certain Aboriginal Mounds of the Coast of South Carolina," Journ. Acad. Nat. Sci. of Phila., 
Vol. ХІ. 
31 JOURN. А. N. 8. PHILA., VOL. XIII. 
