266 ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 
J. Engelmann and were obtained from a burial at Letterman, Arkansas. Both 
had been opened and their contents lost with the exception of six pebbles. The 
wooden portion of one of these ornaments is in an excellent state of preservation 
and is a beautiful example of working in wood by primitive processes, the walls 
surrounding the inner cavity being only about one sixteenth of an inch in thick- 
ness. The sheet copper which encased the wood has corroded and nearly all 
flaked off. It will be noticed that a wooden plug is inserted in a hole at the 
larger end and represents the stem, a feature also present in the pendants se- 
cured by you at Mason Island, Alabama. 
“The pods of the 40 or more species of Asclepias found within the United 
States vary considerably in size and shape. Some are long and slender, others 
are short and thick. In looking over the collection in the Gray Herbarium 
of Harvard University I found none with expanding tips corresponding to the 
form shown in the pendants from Mason 
Island. This feature may have been exagger- 
ated in the ornament. It is possible, however, 
that the Mason Island specimen may represent 
the pod of a different plant, the nature of 
which is unknown to me." 
Burial No. 23, partly flexed on the right. 
At the right shoulder was a pot having four 
equidistant, horizontal projections from the 
rim, which would serve to keep an encircling 
cord in place, while back of the trunk was a 
pot, undecorated save that two opposite pro- 
jections were present at the opening, extend- 
ing horizontally. In each of these projections 
a space is present through which a cord at- 
tached to one enclosing the neck could pass 
vertically (Fig. 40). A considerable deposit 
of soot is on the body of this vessel, which fact 
might indieate that the vessel sometimes had 
been placed on a fire and sometimes suspended when cooking was not in progress, 
for if suspended over a fire presumably the cord would risk destruction. At the 
knees of the skeleton was a pot having two loop-handles, and four lobes around 
the body (Fig. 41), which is shown not on account of any excellence possessed 
by the vessel, but to illustrate the pottery of the region. 
Burial No. 24, an infant. At the cranium lay a vessel from the rim of which 
were numerous horizontal projections. 
Burial No. 26, partly flexed on the right. In front of the thorax had been 
placed a rude, undecorated pot. 
Burial No. 28, adolescent, partly flexed to the left. At the skull, together, 
were a pot with two loop-handles, and a bowl having an effigy of an animal's 
head rising from the rim, a conventional tail being on the opposite side. 
Fic. 40.—Showing method of suspension. 
