178 ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 
flood, as was the case in central Tennessee, whose antiquities have been described 
for nearly a century. 
Herewith we present a map of Tennessee river showing the location of stone 
graves along its course, based on our own observation with one exception which 
carries the presence of the stone grave somewhat farther east than we found it. 
The reader will note that the stone graves, that is to say burials made in 
connection with slabs or masses of stone, have, for convenience, been divided 
on the map into three classes: (a) the regular, enelosed burial or box-grave found 
most extensively and constantly in middle Tennessee; (b) the burial made on or 
under slabs or masses of stone but otherwise unenclosed; and (c) unusual 
forms. 
It will be noted that, as one might expect, in the northwestern area of Ten- 
nessee river the box-grave predominates. Box-graves, however, as will be seen, 
were found by us to a limited extent in eastern Tennessee, and even, in an 
isolated ease, on the most southerly part of Tennessee river, in Alabama, from 
which State no stone graves of any kind had been reported before, though their 
presence there had been conjectured by Cyrus Thomas. 
Stone graves of other forms, also, were present along parts of Tennessee 
river in Alabama, and probably in a scattering way are, or were, along all the 
stream there. 
We may repeat that artifacts in the stone graves along Tennessee river, as 
the reader will see, are seldom encountered, and though objects of great interest 
have been found in stone graves elsewhere, the statement that these depositories 
of the dead anywhere are rich in aboriginal remains comes from those who have 
never investigated stone graves and who apparently write in ignorance of the 
facts. 
Stone graves in any part of the country, it may be said, resemble a lottery: 
one hears of the isolated winners but not of the legions who drew blanks—and 
this applies in the main to aboriginal mounds, cemeteries, and burials of every 
kind throughout the country. 
Often with stone graves, unenclosed burials were found by us along Tennessee 
river, though Professor Putnam informs us that in his investigations in central 
Tennessee, near Nashville, almost no unenclosed interments were found associated 
with stone-grave burials, either by himself or by Mr. Curtis who continued 
Professor Putnam’s work there. 
Along Tennessee river, as the reader will see, many stone graves, as stated, 
were not of the box-grave variety which in central Tennessee is almost exclusively 
found; and along all parts of Tennessee river many mounds and sites containing 
burials are without stone graves of any kind. 
Comparatively little investigation of a serious character had been attempted 
along Tennessee river prior to the commencement of our own work. Here and 
there a mound or a group of mounds had been examined, but no systematic work 
on the stream had been done. 
ER tien 
