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ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 203 
plowed field and proving to be made up of particles and masses of clay, reddened 
by heat, some of the masses bearing imprints of wattle. 
Investigation showed this reddened clay to have a maximum thickness of 
about 2 feet. Beneath it was an arrangement of thin slabs of limestone, of clay- 
stone, of fine-grained sandstone, some calcined, others flaked by the effect of 
heat, lying in one thickness as a rule, but occasionally in double and in triple 
layers. These slabs were not arranged with a view to an exact level, a few even 
having been placed on edge. The arrangement, of very irregular outline, as 
shown in Fig. 11, was about 22 feet long and 12 feet in maximum width, approxi- 
mately. 
The slabs rested on a smooth, hard surface of baked clay resembling a floor, 
on which was no charcoal or deposit of ashes. 
All these slabs, of course, were removed by hand with great care, but nothing 
was found between them and the hardened clay beneath (under which digging 
came upon undisturbed soil), except at one place near the northern end of the 
arrangement of slabs where were found a few fragments of calcined bones, some 
undoubtedly human, the remainder too small to identify but presumably also 
parts of a general cremation. Near this place, but above the slabs, also were 
found a few fragments of calcined bones. 
Presumably the aborigines, in connection with this cremation, had proceeded 
in the following way: Human remains were placed on the ground, which seem- 
ingly had been either purposely smoothed in advance or, which is more likely, 
was the trampled, earthen floor of a wigwam, and the arrangement of slabs laid 
upon them. 
Next a wigwam standing over the remains or near them, was burnt down and 
the clay from its wattle and daub walls, while still at high temperature, was piled 
over the slabs and the bones beneath, the intense heat calcining and flaking some 
of the slabs and consuming most of the human remains. 
The clay from the walls of the building must have been intentionally piled 
over the remains, and not simply have been allowed to lie where it fell, inasmuch 
as the wattle and daub walls of wigwams were not more than 3 or 4 feet in height, 
and from them a roof of material unmixed with clay sloped upward. Hence 
some labor was required to bring the heated clay from where it fell at the outer 
part of the fire and to arrange it so as to make the highest part of the deposit in 
the center of the rise as it was found by us. 
In connection with this striking ceremony the description of the Bennett 
mound in this report will prove of especial interest. 
In the field, near the great ridge, was a low elevation from which a stone grave 
had been plowed shortly before our coming, the slabs and fragments of human 
bone lying on the surface at the time of our visit. Digging at this point came 
upon no other stone grave or burial of any kind. 
All burials found at this place were without artifact of any kind, yet it was in 
the same county (Humphreys), where this site is, on Duck river, probably not 
