THE NORTHWESTERN FLORIDA COAST REVISITED. 571 
No artifacts lay with any of the burials found by us, and but two or three bits 
of pottery were encountered in all our digging. One of these, however, is of 
excellent ware, bearing an interesting incised decoration, perhaps including the 
well-known step design (Fig. 41). 
It is evident from the results of the Buffalo Society's digging and from ours 
that the aborigines had used one part of the cemetery in which to place burials 
with mortuary deposits and had seleeted another part to make interments without 
such deposits. 
ABORIGINAL SITE ON CRYSTAL RIVER, Cirrus COUNTY. 
In two reports! we have described our investigation of the aboriginal site at 
the great shell mound? on the bank of Crystal river, about two miles from its 
union with the Gulf. 
This site, belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Knight, of Safety Harbor, 
Fla., through whose kindness all our investigations in it have been made, in- 
cluded as one of its component parts, as may be seen in our earlier and more 
complete reports on the subject, some flat ground and a rise culminating in a 
mound, all surrounded by an irregularly circular embankment of sand having a 
maximum height of about 6 feet. 
The rise and the mound, entirely dug away by us during our former visits, 
yielded a rich harvest, consisting mainly of ornaments of copper, of shell and of 
stone, including several beautiful charm-stones of rock-crystal and one of ame- 
thystine quartz, a veritable gem. 
In the enclosing embankment, dug into but to a very moderate extent at the 
time of our two previous investigations, a few burials, none accompanied by 
artifacts, were found. | 
The contrast between these burials in this respect and many of the burials 
in the mound and in the rise, was so marked that we determined, this season, to 
revisit the site in order to make a more thorough examination as to this subject. 
In the southern portion of the embankment, which included its highest part, 
much digging was done, showing that part of the embankment to be constructed, 
not of white sand such as is found in the neighborhood, but of sand evidently 
darkened by admixture of organie matter and containing marine shells here and 
there, bits of pottery, other midden debris, and numerous scattered fragments of 
human bone, sometimes only a single one lying alone. Evidently the material 
for the embankment had been gathered from a dwelling-site. 
Burials were numerous in the highest part of this southern portion of the 
embankment, nearly every trial-hole in it coming upon at least one burial (5 feet 
being the maximum depth), and were found here and there in other parts of it. 
1 Certain Aboriginal Mounds of the Central Florida West-Coast.” Journ. Асар. Nar. Sct. 
PnuiLa., vol. XII, pages 379-413. “Crystal River Revisited." Journ. Асар. Nar. Scr. PHILA., 
vol. XIII. 
2 Locally known as the Spanish mound, though, of course, Spaniards had no connection with its 
origin. 
