ANTIQUITIES OF THE OUACHITA VALLEY. 121 
was defined as seemingly that in which the human remains and pottery were in- 
cluded, This area, which proved to be somewhat greater th f 
~ “ 7 
| ап necessary on one 
side, was completely worked through by us, at depths de 
; pending on the varying 
thickness of the layer of dark, loamy clay, which rested upon untouched clay of 
lighter color, and upon the depth of various grave-pits which extended into undis- 
turbed clay, the deepest of which was 3 feet. 
The outer parts where grave-pits were less frequently found, though they were 
numerous even there, were dug through with spades, but the central portion of the 
area, 23 feet by 28 feet in extent, where the graves cut through each other and 
were present almost throughout, was gone through with the aid of trowels alone. 
The condition of the human remains in this cemetery was such that not only 
no bones were saved, but practically all that were found could have been contained 
in a space considerably less than the size of a bucket and consisted almost exclu- 
sively of mere outlines of skulls, crumbling crowns of teeth, and occasional spongy 
fragments of long-bones. 
These traces of human remains were encountered 255 times, from the surface, 
where they had been disturbed by the plow, down to the bottom of the deepest 
graves. 
This enumeration by us is, of course, no exact indication of the number of 
individuals originally buried in the cemetery, as it is evident that fragments of 
bone belonging to the same skeleton, but at some distance apart, might be twice 
scored, or even more often. On the other hand, many burials unquestionably had 
disappeared. 
It is needless to say that determination as to form of burial was almost 
impossible, though as many of the grave-pits were small and circular, presumably 
the bunched form of burial had been in excess of the flexed burial or the burial at 
length. 
However, three burials certainly, and perhaps a fourth, had been of the ex- 
tended variety. One of these extended burials offered features of interest. 
Burial No. 178, the head directed toward the south, lay about 20 inches below 
the surface, on a substance seemingly bark, which rested on the undisturbed clay 
at the bottom of the grave. This substance, about an inch in maximum thickness, 
was from 10 to 11 inches in width. 
At the right-hand side of the skeleton, in contact with part of it, was a circular 
staff or pole, of wood, badly decayed, 3 inches in diameter at the end nearer the 
head, and 2 inches in diameter near the lower end. The length of the pole was 5 
feet 4 inches, when first noticed, but as the feet of the skeleton in question had 
been cut away by the digger, it is possible that part of the staff or pole also had 
been removed. No sign of metal was present with the wood, nor was there any 
trace of strips of hide bound around it. Shafts of spears of modern Indians some- 
times were ornamented with hide cut in strips. It is a question, however, con- 
sidering the condition of the bones in this cemetery, if strips of hide, һай they 
originally been present, would have remained, even in part, to the period of the 
discovery of the wood. No lancehead was found in association. 
16 JOURN. А. М. 8. PHILA., VOL. XIV. 
