12 ABORIGINAL SITES IN LOUISIANA AND IN ARKANSAS. 
arrowhead of red flint, slightly more than .5 inch in length, being a flake worked 
on one side only. There was picked up also an object of earthenware belonging 
to a elass shown in Plate II. "These objects, hitherto unreported, were found by 
us in various sites in Louisiana and will be fully described later in this report. 
MOUNDS on Bonnet Bayou, ASSUMPTION PARISH. 
About two miles up Bonnet bayou, on property of Mr. Gus Drews, of 
Morgan City, La., are three mounds about 200 yards in from the water. 
The mound nearest the bayou, which, like the other two, has been plowed 
out of shape and greatly spread, is of tenacious clay and about 2 feet in height. 
As the mounds on this place were the reliance, in time of flood, of those owning 
cattle in that region, they were not accorded a thorough investigation; but several 
holes sunk into the one in question came upon a skeleton near the surface, so 
badly decayed that the exact form of burial was not determinable, though the 
skeleton seemed to have been closely flexed on the left side. 
The remaining two mounds differed from the other in that they had been 
places of abode and contained a large proportion of midden material. They 
are known as “shell banks" in the neighborhood, though in reality they are far 
from being shell-heaps, containing as they do a small proportion of shells, mostly 
Rangia cuneata, with a few Quadrula apiculata, in such parts where shells are 
present at all. 
The larger of the two ‘‘shell banks" was accorded an incomplete investi- 
gation, the holes indicating that the ridge, which had a maximum height of 4 
feet where less plowing had been done than elsewhere, perhaps owing to the 
presence of trees, had increased in height in the main during a period of oc- 
cupancy, as the material of which it was largely composed seemed to show. 
An addition, however, of clay had been made to the mound, presumably further 
to increase its height, probably after a time of unusually high water. 
Scattered bones were found at several points in the mound, but only one 
burial was encountered. The superficial part of the mound above this burial 
consisted of a layer, 4 inches deep, of black loam with a mingling of shells. Pre- 
sumably this layer had been much thicker at one time; in fact we were informed 
by the custodian of the property that all the mounds had been considerably 
higher in the past. Beneath the upper layer was a stratum of clay 14 inches deep, 
almost immediately under which lay the burial in black midden material which 
contained no shells, though it was noted that the corresponding layer in another 
part of the mound had a fair proportion of them. The burial, of the kind so 
“The bit of pottery enclosed in your letter is the most westerly example yet found of the 
stamped ware which characterizes the south Appalachian region. The matrix is siliceous, and 
the pot has been built in the same way as the vessels from the states to the east of the Mississippi. 
The stamp used has been merely faced with a number of squarish teeth and has been applied as 
a paddle over the surface of the vessel." 
This form of stamp has been fully described by Professor Holmes in his * Aboriginal Pottery 
of Eastern United States," pp. 78, 80, 20th Ann. Rep. Bur. Am. Ethn. 
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