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ABORIGINAL SITES ON TENNESSEE RIVER. 413 
explore these mounds was not granted by Mr. Ewing, who was consulted by 
telephone. Later, when we called on Mr. Ewing, another place owned by him 
was cordially put at our disposal. 
MOUNDS ON THE Biss PLACE, Roane COUNTY. 
On the property of Mr. Henry D. Biss, who resides on it, are three mounds. 
Two of these, about 60 yards apart, on high ground, are visible from the river, 
the larger, which has an extensive hole in the center, left by a previous digger, 
being 11.5 feet in height and 60 feet in diameter, and having, like nearly all the 
mounds of this region, an almost circular base. 
The smaller mound, between 3 and 4 feet in height, and 45 feet in diameter, 
is on a slope. 
An excavation 12 feet square was put down in the smaller mound, reaching 
undisturbed clay at a depth of 3 feet 7 inches. Just beneath the surface were 
remains of a skull and fragments of other bones. An arrowhead of flint was 
found isolated in the clay. 
At a depth of 2 feet 5 inches was the skeleton of an adolescent, partly flexed 
to the left, without the skull. While the bones of this skeleton were badly 
decayed and friable, they were distinct, so that it was clear that the skull was 
not missing through decay. No sign of disturbance, aboriginal or recent, was 
noticeable near the skeleton, which apparently had been interred without the 
cranium. 
At the right shoulder was a small, triangular arrowhead of flint, and four 
of the same material and shape were at the left shoulder, a particularly graceful 
one being 1.7 inch in length and .65 inch across the base. On the pelvis was 
part of the columella of a conch-shell, much decayed. 
A most careful search failed to reveal any sign of a burial below the base 
of the mound. 
We obtained from Mr. Biss, who informed us he had plowed it from this 
mound, an object of coarse-grained diabase, 6.6 inches in length, 3 inches in 
maximum width, 1.1 inch wide at the narrow end, 2.75 inches at the opposite 
end, and .3 inch in maximum thickness (Plate VII, Fig. 2). In shape this 
object much resembles a ceremonial axe, which we believe it to be and that it 
was carried attached to a handle, as the perforation is placed in a position in 
the blade similar to that found in numerous unquestioned ceremonial axes. 
The absence of a cutting edge in the specimen under consideration does not, in 
our opinion, seem incongruous in the case of an axe intended only for cere- 
monial use. | 
An object of like material, and otherwise similar, save that it is somewhat 
smaller, is in the Vaux collection at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- 
delphia and is reported to have come from West Virginia. 
In a description of the Mason collection in the American Museum of Natural 
History, New York, is figured! another of these ceremonial axes (according to 
1 Alanson Skinner in “The American Museum Journal," April, 1914. 
