SOME ABORIGINAL SITES. 497 
MOUND on THE McCoy PLACE, DYER COUNTY, TENN. 
On the McCoy Place, said to be twenty-five miles up Forked Deer river, is a 
mound in a cultivated field, in view from the water, on property of Mr. A. D. 
Burks, living nearby. The mound, considerably plowed away, is 5 feet in height 
and 50 feet in diameter of base, which is irregularly circular. 
A central excavation, 12 feet square, showed the mound to be of sandy clay, 
and while without a marked base-line, to be upon undisturbed clay at a depth 
of 4 feet from the top. 
At a depth of 18 inches, with traces of a skeleton at length, was part of a pot 
having had a scanty and rude seroll decoration. 
About 3.5 feet in depth, perhaps placed with a skeleton no longer remaining, 
for no bones were found, was an undecorated pot of most inferior ware, which 
offered slight resistance when a shovel cut through it. This vessel, somewhat 
verging on the bottle in form of body, is rather elongated and constricted toward 
the opening, on each of two opposite sides of which is a loop-handle. 
Near the base of the mound, separately, were several rude balls of clay, 
perhaps used in the Indian hand-game. A similar ball came from one of the 
holes dug by us in level ground near the mound. 
THE NEELEY MOUNDS, DYER COUNTY, TENN. 
On the property of Mr. Sterling Fowlkes, of Dyersburg, Tenn., are the 
Neeley mounds, so-called locally, all near together in woods, about 1.5 mile in 
a straight line northeastwardly from Booth Point landing. There are two 
mounds and a number of low ridges or rises, the latter, so far as could be deter- 
mined, being due to wash of water and not to agency of man, though some had 
been lived upon by the aborigines and used as places of burial to a limited extent. 
Our investigation of this place was interfered with by stormy weather and by 
back-water from the rising river. 
MOUND A. 
This mound, of sand, like the neighboring mounds and rises, was 2.5 feet high 
and 45 feet across the circular base. On it, as elsewhere on this site, was a small 
deposit of clay, probably from recent overflows of the river. This small mound 
proved to be of considerable interest in that it furnished, like the site at Hale’s 
Point below it on the river, examples of urn-burial, a custom not widely practised 
by the aborigines of Tennessee.’ 
About centrally on the base of the mound, which was 2 feet 9 inches from 
the surface, was a group of four vessels practically in contact one with another. 
Three of these were pots of comparatively thin, shell-tempered ware that fell 
in fragments on removal. All were undecorated save for the presence of two 
loop-handles, one on each of two opposite sides, if this could be called a decoration. 
1 See our article on urn-burial in “Handbook of American Indians.” 
