ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 253 
DWELLING-SITE ON GILCHRIST ISLAND," COLBERT COUNTY, ALABAMA. 
About one mile inland, in an easterly direction from the principal landing 
on Gilchrist Island,-of which Mr. William Richardson, of Florence, Ala., is 
owner, is a small field surrounded by woods. In the eastern part of this field 
is a gradual rise having a maximum height of about 4 feet and basal diameters 
of 190 feet and 210 feet. The surface is covered with fragments and chips of 
stone, mainly flint, but implements, whole, broken, or in any stage of manufac- 
ture were extremely rare. 
Considerable digging in this rise showed a foot or more of black soil containing 
quantities of chips and fragments of flint. Beneath was midden soil having 
a large proportion of shells closely packed. Burials seemed to have been made 
here and there throughout the rise, but nowhere closely associated. A structure, 
however, on the central part of the rise prevented our digging in that part 
of it: 
Five burials were encountered, three of adults, two of children. Of the 
adult skeletons, two were in flexed positions and one had been disturbed in ab- 
original times. 
The two children lay together, a young child along the legs of a larger one 
which had, at the right side of the body, two masses of rock and two others 
at the left of the head. On the legs of this burial was a fragment of a large 
vessel of earthenware, the concave side uppermost. In this stood a vessel of 
the type first found by us at Baugh’s Landing, having extensions on opposite 
sides and loop handles (Fig. 31). 
DWELLING-sITE AT Lock NUMBER 3, LAUDERDALE COUNTY, ALABAMA. 
At Lock Number 3, in the Musselshoals canal, where Bluewater creek enters 
the Tennessee, is a large, aboriginal dwelling-site, said to belong to a Mr. Huston, 
of Memphis, Tenn. The site has been washed by rain after cultivation to such 
an extent that the midden soil has practically disappeared, leaving on the surface 
an enormous quantity of fragments of stone, mostly a coarse chert which would 
hardly lend itself to superior workmanship. Among the debris were “wasters” 
and uncompleted implements, and some rather rude tools, evidently finished 
though few were entire, as doubtless, in the course of years, they have been 
plowed up and plowed under and occasionally struck by the heavy knives of 
cutting machines used in clearing the field of cotton-stalks. 
A brief search of the surface yielded a spade of limestone, some compara- 
tively small, argicultural and cutting implements of flint, barbed arrowheads 
(some serrated), knives, and other objects. No small, triangular arrowheads 
were found. 
1 Another Gilchrist Island (locally pronounced Gilerease), in Lawrence County, figures later 
in this report. | 
2 Almost universally spelled Muscleshoals. The name, of course, is derived from the shell-fish. 
