206 ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 
Tenn., three mounds, all near together. Two of the mounds are each about 6 
feet in height and 40 feet across the base. The third mound is about 2 feet high 
and 25 feet in diameter. These mounds, which were visited by us, had unfortu- 
nately been dug to such an extent before our visit that further investigation 
of them was considered useless. 
DWELLING-SITE NEAR MOUTH OF BEECH CREEK, WAYNE COUNTY, TENNESSEE. 
In sight from the union of Beech Creek with the Tennessee, on the northern 
side of the creek, on property of Mr. J. L. Richardson, who resides there, is a 
former aboriginal dwelling-site, the surface of which is thickly strewn with midden 
debris, from which we selected two pestles, several rude hoes of limestone, many 
cutting implements of chipped flint, most of them rudely made, some arrowheads 
and knives of flint. 
Fragments of human bones lay on many parts of the field, and we were told 
that bones and artifacts had been plowed up there for more than thirty years— 
and probably for a still longer period, as the place had been under cultivation for 
a long time before our informant’s experience of it began. 
Slabs of stone lying here and there indicated the former presence of stone 
graves, but as the soil at this place was too tenacious to permit the use of rods to 
advantage, we were compelled to rely on trial-holes to discover burials of any 
kind. The following burials were encountered. 
Burial No. 1 consisted of bones thrown irregularly together and may have 
been a disturbance, aboriginal or otherwise. It lay on yellow, undisturbed clay 
in the rich, dark, loamy clay of the field. With the bones were a few small, 
discoidal, shell beads in bad condition. 
Burial No. 2, just below the surface, was a stone grave from which the plow 
had taken practically all of the upper part of one end and some of one side. 
Within the grave, which apparently had been found and rifled in the past, were 
slabs, and fragments of human bones. At one corner, beneath a slab that still 
remained in place, were parts of a tibia and a fibula, and foot-bones all in place. 
The burial evidently had been that of an adult, the head W. by S. Apparently 
there had been no flooring of slabs for this grave. 
Burial No. 3, lying on undisturbed yellow clay, 18 inches down, was a skeleton 
closely flexed on the left side, the head directed SE. by ®. 
Burial No. 4, a skeleton partly flexed on the right, the head N., lying in à 
grave! which extended 14 inches into the undisturbed yellow subsoil. The dark 
loam of the field was 8 inches deep at this place, making the total depth of the 
burial 22 inches. This skeleton in part rested on the pelvis of Burial No. 5. 
Burial No. 5, a skeleton extended on the back, the head directed SSW. The 
left arm was flexed, with the hand resting on the left shoulder. This burial, 
which was 2 feet deep, had a flint point, probably a lancehead, resting on the left 
thigh. 
1 When stone graves are under description the fact will be distinctly specified. 
