258 ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 
less a domiciliary mound. About centrally an excavation 10 feet square was 
put down, reaching a dark line 7 feet deep over undisturbed, yellow sand. ‘Traces 
of two skulls were found separately, somewhat less than 2 feet down. With 
one was a vessel in fragments, of a kind found by us in this region, which, put 
together, and restored somewhat, is shown in Fig. 34. Тһе ware is thick and 
coarse. 
About 3 feet down were remains of a flexed burial with which was a large 
fragment of an undecorated vessel of earthenware. А small pot without orna- 
mentation was found apart from bones. 
We note in this mound no burials lower than 3 feet and conclude it to have 
been a domiciliary mound having superficial burials. 
DWELLING-SITE ON GILCHRIST ISLAND, LAWRENCE COUNTY, ALABAMA. 
On Gilchrist Island, on property belonging to Prof. J. H. Patterson, of Nash- 
ville, Tenn., about midway as to the length of the island and near its southern 
side, in a cultivated field that is comparatively level and shows no trace of midden 
debris, is a hump 195 feet by 305 feet, approximately, in basal diameters and 
about 7 feet in maximum height. This hump is superficially covered with 
dark soil greatly differing from that of the surrounding field, and having sprinkled 
through it fragments of musselshells and quantities of periwinkles (Campeloma 
ponderosum). About 2 feet down our trial holes came to almost solid shell, 
encountering disturbed human bones near the surface in one instance, and a 
disturbance about 20 inches down, evidently not due to cultivation of the field. 
This site is similar to that near Milton Bluff, to be described next in this report, 
and belongs to a class that seems to offer little inducement to the investigator. 
DWELLING-SITE ABOVE MILTON BLUFF, LAWRENCE COUNTY, ALABAMA. 
About one mile above Milton Bluff and 200 yards from the water is a mound 
in a cultivated field on property belonging to Miss Lucy L. Wheeler, of Wheeler, 
Ala. This mound, rising from level, bottom land, is said to have bordered the 
river within memory of man, the intervening ground having formed in compara- 
tively recent years. The height of the mound is about 9 feet, its basal diameters 
180 feet and 335 feet, approximately. Its surface was thickly strewn with 
shells and fragments of stone. 
Eight trial-holes showed the first two feet of this mound to be of midden 
soil, below which was a mixture of earth, musselshells, and Campeloma pon- 
derosum, a univalve, closely packed. Digging through this material made slow 
progress. Four burials were discovered as follows: scattered bones near the 
surface; adolescent closely flexed on the right, about 3 feet down; a child at a 
depth of 22 inches; adult closely flexed on the left, nearly 4 feet deep. 
As our deepest hole was but 5 feet 3 inches and still in masses of shell, we 
cannot say if this mound was in part natural or wholly artificial. Probably, 
