SOME ABORIGINAL SITES ON MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 393 
rudely fashioned to form а discoidal stone. With a bunched burial lay а flat pebble 
perforated at one end. Pebbles thus treated are not often met with. One, similar 
to that from this place, was unearthed by us in the site at Avenue, Ark., and will 
be referred to later in this report, while three other perforated pebbles were found 
by us on the lower Arkansas river, and one at the Forrest Place, near the mouth 
of the St. Francis river, Ark. 
Ninety-one vessels of earthenware lay with burials in this mound and six 
vessels were found apart from them. 
The bunched burials at this place had their full share of earthenware vessels, 
the deposits with some of the larger burials being greater than those with 
smaller ones. 
Burial No. 17, a bunched burial, consisting of six skulls of adults and one of a 
child, lay upon bark, and had with it thirteen vessels, an interesting feature being 
that some of these are diminutive and evidently had been placed with the burial on 
account of the child included with it. 
Burial No. 33, a bunch in which were eight skulls, two of them having 
belonged to children, was accompanied with eight vessels, and here again toy ves- 
sels intended for children were present. 
Of the ninety-seven vessels from the Neblett Landing mound, twenty-four were 
unbroken or nearly so, most of the remainder being badly crushed. 
The ware from this mound is not of the best, and no vessel shows a polished 
surface. A few of the vessels exhibit fairly graceful modeling and some diversity of 
form, though, curiously enough, the bottle is present in but few instances. A favorite 
form of vessel at this place is one somewhat resembling an inverted, truncated cone, 
which is represented among the vessels found no fewer than thirty-seven times, 
with various modifications, of course, including a considerable expansion of the body. 
Decoration is a marked feature of the pottery from the Neblett Landing mound, 
only nine of the ninety-seven vessels found being entirely without it, though in 
some instances the decoration present is scanty enough, being only a single, incised 
encircling line, or a line arranged in festoons. 
The decoration in the main consists of line-work,—engraved, incised or trailed, 
—fairly well executed in some instances, but much of it of mediocre or inferior 
workmanship, as is the case in nearly all sites where this kind of decoration on 
pottery is employed. There is great repetition of design on the ware, the partly 
interlocked scroll, the current scroll, the spiral, festooned lines, loops surrounding 
circles (some of these in connection with rude cross-hatch work), all doing yoeman 
service as they are so often called upon to do in connection with incised decoration 
on aboriginal pottery in certain regions. 
Decoration in color is present on but two vessels from this place—a design in 
red and white in each instance. On the whole, the earthenware of the Neblett 
Landing site is interesting, as this site is the northernmost one investigated by us 
on the Mississippi river where line decoration is a feature, though line decoration, 
as we have already said, is often present on aboriginal pottery from sites on the 
Arkansas river, which enters the Mississippi only a few miles above Neblett Landing. 
50 JOURN, A. N. 8. PHILA., VOL, XIV. 
