THE NORTHWESTERN FLORIDA COAST REVISITED. 587 
dug out on our previous visit to this region, on Choctawhatchee bay, to the east- 
ward of this cemetery, originally had been come upon in this way.! On our visit 
this season to the Hogtown bayou site we devoted seven working days, with six 
men to dig, to the investigation of the place. The rises, as a rule riddled with 
small excavations and covered with fragments of pottery, were surrounded by us 
and completely dug through where indications from trial-holes and the use of 
the sounding rod justified it, yielding excellent results, though in addition to the 
previous wreckage we had to contend with adverse natural conditions. The 
sand was very damp, water being reached at a depth of less than three feet during 
part of our visit, and at considerably less than that throughout the remaining 
part when high tides prevailed in the bay. Consequently the earthenware, 
saturated with moisture, presented but little resistance to the roots with which 
the whole area was replete, including the permeating ones of the scrub palmetto 
found filling many of the vessels in solid masses. These roots not only were 
direct agents in the wrecking? of much pottery, but were the cause of extensive 
breakage when our men were forced to eut through them with spades or with 
axes. 
Although this site, as we shall see later, was post-Columbian all the pottery 
found by us in fragments on the surface or in the course of our investigation is 
purely aboriginal in every detail, and of the same class as is that found by us in 
our former investigation in the aboriginal cemeteries between Perdido and Choc- 
tawhatchee bays, inclusive. The abundant decoration consists largely of com- 
binations of straight lines, of the scroll, and of animal elements (limbs, mouth, 
eyes, etc.), incised or trailed, and sometimes heads modeled in relief or in the 
round. Considerable of the incised decoration, mainly from one of the rises, at 
the Hogtown bayou site, contains kaolin in the lines, the white elay presenting a 
pleasing contrast to the dark background of the ware. 
As this ware is so extensively shown in our earlier report, it has not seemed 
necessary to illustrate it here. Practically all of it has been presented by us to 
the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, New York City. 
The ceremonial *killing" of the vessel, varying between a carefully drilled 
hole about the diameter of that of a lead pencil, and the knocking out of the entire 
base, was practised at this site, though some vessels, including several found 
over burials, had bases intact. The mortuary perforation made in the base of 
vessels previous to the firing of the clay was not found. 
That form of urn-burial,? namely, a bowl turned over a skull alone, or a skull 
having a few bones or fragments of bones with it (sometimes mere traces at this 
place, where moisture speeded decay), first described by us as oceurring in this 
region, was abundantly represented here. The proportion of such, however, 
among the unenclosed burials varied greatly in the different rises. 
1 “Certain Aboriginal Remains of the Northwest Florida Coast, Part L," page 472. 
? A large bowl from this site, found by us in forty-nine fragments and subsequently put together, 
retains its pristine symmetry. It has been presented by us to the U. S. National Museum. 
3 See our “Urn Burial," Handbook of American Indians. Bul. 30, Part 2, Bur. Amer. Ethn. 
