ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 243 
This site was made up of dark midden soil to a depth of about 18 inches, 
when a mixture of soil and shell, the shell predominating, was encountered. 
Considerable digging led to the discovery of the skeletons of two young children, 
both in the upper soil. A knoll at one side of the field was carefully investigated 
without success. 
We obtained from an inhabitant of this place an oblong gorget of igneous 
rock, having two perforations, 5.75 inches in length and 2.25 inches in maximum 
width. We were informed by the colored man who had plowed the large field 
for a long period back, that ten years ago gorgets of this class were frequently 
found there, and we, at the time of our visit, came across fragments of two of 
them on the surface. 
A woman resident in the settlement showed us a drinking-cup wrought 
from a conchshell, which she had found and which was interesting in that it 
had a circular hole in the base, not broken through but evidently eut out with 
much саге, thus clearly demonstrating that the “killing” of a vessel for inter- 
ment with the dead had taken place as far north as northern Alabama. 
A spade of shale, 17 inches in length and about 5 inches wide, was picked 
up from the surface by a member of our party in another part of the island. 
MOUNDS NEAR PERKINS SPRING, LAUDERDALE COUNTY, ALABAMA. 
Leaving the main landing, which is on the western side of Koger’s Island, 
and following a road leading across the island, one comes, after about one mile’s 
walk, to a waterway almost dry when the river is low. Crossing this, one is 
but a short distance from Perkins Spring, on property be onging to Mr. J. T. 
Reeder, of Smithsonia, Ala., to whom the Academy is indebted for many cour- 
tesies. 
MOUND А. 
In a very large, cultivated field covered with fragments of stone, evidently 
an aboriginal dwelling-site in the past, is a mound about 200 yards NNE. from 
Perkins Spring. This mound is 7 feet 8 inches in height, outside measurement, 
and 62 feet by 55 feet in diameters of base. The mound, which had every ap- 
pearance of having been erected for burial purposes, apparently had never been 
under cultivation, nor was any previous digging in evidence. 
In its central part an excavation 16 feet square was put down, and eight 
trial-holes to be described later were sunk around it. 
The mound was of brown, loamy material in the upper part, below which 
was black, midden soil containing small fragments of stone and other dwelling- 
site debris. Below this, over part of the base of the mound, was raw, yellow 
clay which had been dug from underlying clay in making a large grave that had 
been filled in part by the return of some of the yellow clay and by black, midden 
soil of the kind found in part of the mound. 
The base of the mound was reached at a depth of 6 feet 6 inches, and was 
marked by the presence of a black deposit, 9 inches in depth, which formed 
