VT EE ee OT ER 
ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 201 
At about a depth of one foot, however, was a fireplace near which, in a sym- 
metrieal heap resembling a cone with rounded apex, were nineteen masses of 
soft, fossiliferous limestone, more or less rounded and ranging in size between a 
clenched hand to double that bulk. These masses, presumably intended as 
supports for vessels while cooking was in progress, had most likely been carefully 
piled near the fireplace for convenience, and for some reason had not been removed 
when the fireplace was abandoned. 
To the east of the mound, on the level field, was considerable midden debris, 
including bits of flint and of pottery. At one place where fragments of human 
bone lay on the surface, trial-holes were put down which almost at once reached 
human remains, as follows: a skeleton disturbed by cultivation; an extended 
skeleton, the head directed 8. by W.; a layer of bones, including three crania; 
an extended skeleton heading S.; the bones of an adolescent, lying partly flexed 
on the left side, the head directed SSW.; a skeleton at full length, the eranium 
pointing N. by W. "The skull and the upper part of the thorax of this skeleton 
lay beneath the margin of a fireplace and were calcined. The use of fire in con- 
nection with this burial perhaps was accidental. Parallel with this skeleton 
were two others, from each of which the skull and the upper part of the thorax 
were missing. On the pelvis of one of these skeletons lay a skull. 
Near the three burials last described was another, that of an adult, lying under 
the fireplace to which reference has been made. This burial, which had been 
wholly beneath the fireplace, was in anatomical order up to the lower part of the 
thorax, the upper part of which, along with the skull, was missing and apparently 
had been disturbed through digging, aboriginal or otherwise, as the fireplace at 
this point was broken through and parts of it, along with ashes, were mingled 
with the soil. 
Two feet six inches deep was another fireplace at some distance from the one 
described, which had been burnt so hard that when found with the aid of a steel 
rod it was taken for a rock or a slab forming part of a stone grave. About one 
foot above part of this fireplace were a number of scattered human bones showing 
no trace of fire, while at about the same level and over another part of it was the 
upper half of a skeleton on which no sign of fire was apparent. 
In this field was the remnant of a small, low mound which yielded no return 
to trial-holes. 
Farther north, in sight from the large mound, paralleling the river which it 
commands to the N., 5. and W., is an elevation in the form of a ridge. The 
northern end slopes MNT ҺАМ риб: the descent ор the southern extremity, 
steep at first, reaches a small rise or hump from which the slope is gradual. The 
measurements of this elevation are as follows: height of ridge, which runs N. 
by E. and 8. by W., taken from the northern end, 12 feet 9 inches; length of 
base, 170 feet; length of top, northern slope, 32 feet; crest, 88 feet; southern 
slope to the hump, having a drop of 6 feet, 22 feet; the hump and from it to level 
ground, 28 feet. Width of base, 58 feet, as follows: eastern slope, 24 feet; 
crest, 5 feet; western slope, 29 feet. 
16 JOURN. A. М. 8. PHILA., VOL. XVI. 
