326 ANTIQUITIES OF THE ST. FRANCIS, WHITE, 
CEMETERY ON THE CUMMINGS PLACE, POINSETT COUNTY. 
The Cummings Place, belonging to Mr. C. C. Cummings, who resides on the 
plantation and at Marked Tree, has at the landing considerable high ground of 
artificial origin, through which a road has been cut, and on which is Mr. Cum- 
mings’ home and also a large barn and various other outbuildings, and an enclosure 
for stock, in which a building formerly stood. 
The Cummings Place has been long famous for the aboriginal pottery found 
there, and we were informed that a person whom we knew to be a prominent 
vendor of aboriginal relics, and to have passed many years on St. Francis river in 
pursuit of his vocation, had spent much time at that place and had gathered an 
abundant harvest there. 
Our successful digging at the Cummings Place was done in that part of the 
enclosure where a house had been at the time of the visit of the person to whom 
we have referred, and also in an extension of the raised ground, about 40 by 75 feet 
in size, immediately across a fence bordering the northern side of the enclosure. 
Our work, which consisted of digging here and there and enlarging the holes 
when burials were encountered, resulted in the discovery of forty interments and 
of sixty-six vessels of earthenware, nearly all of which were with the burials. 
Of the forty burials, thirty-one were of adults; five, of children ; two, of adoles- 
cents; and two were aboriginal disturbances. One of these latter, Burial No. 15, 
was interesting in that the legs showed marked disparity of development, the in- 
dividual in life having been decidedly lame. 
With the exception of the burials of two or three children (the form of which 
was not determined) and of one burial which lay at full length face down, all inter- 
ments from the Cummings Place were extended on the back, with three slight 
variations, as follows: 
1. The right leg crossing above the left knee. 
2. Trunk on back, thighs flexed upward with legs partly flexed on the thighs. 
3. The left ankle crossed over the right one. | 
Three skeletons lay with the skulls resting in bowls. 
While pottery lay with nearly all the burials found, but few other artifacts 
had been placed with them. With a child’s skeleton were five beads of shell; 
an earthenware pipe of ordinary type lay near the burial of an adult. 
With Burial No. 36 was an earthenware bottle at the skull, and at each side 
of the cranium, an ear-plug of shell of the type having the shank made from 
the penultimate whorl of the Fu/gur (conch shell) and the mushroom-shaped head 
from parts of the shell on each side of the suture. On page 295 of our “ Cer- 
tain Aboriginal Remains of the Alabama River” we figure a shell and show 
exactly from what parts ornaments of this kind were cut. This form of orna- 
ment often has been considered a pin, but as we have frequently found such orna- 
ments at each side of the head at the ears, some with grooves just back of the heads 
i The same type of ornament is figured by Professor Holmes in “ Art in Shell," Plate ХХА, 
g. 
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