SOME ABORIGINAL SITES ON MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 457 
lay a disappointment in the shape of a perfeetly preserved gorget of shell somewhat 
more than 7 inches in length and 6 inches in maximum breadth, having two регіо- 
rations in the upper, or broader, part, and one near the opposite end. This gorget, 
of a type so often representing the human face, is without decoration of any kind, 
Burial No. 326, the skeleton of an adult, showing slight disturbance, had at the 
right of the skull, one within the other, two earthenware vegsels representing shell 
forms, and a bottle at the right humerus. Near this bottle were a small quantity 
of paint; three cylinders shaped from tines of antler; a piercing implement about 
6 inches in length made from a section of a bone, having at one end nine notches 
on one side. 
Burial No. 333, adolescent, had two rude, discoidal stones at the left of the 
pelvis. 
Burial No. 340, adult, had a small quantity of red pigment near the skull and 
two shell beads at the neck. A bowl and a bottle also were with this burial. 
Five hundred and thirty-five vessels of earthenware, broken and whole (two 
hundred and sixty-three of which were left with Mr. Friend, the owner of the 
Pecan Point Plantation), were found by us during our investigation. Of these, 
eleven were apart from burials, probably as a result of aboriginal disturbance. 
The vessels from this place, as a rule (with many exceptions), lay near the 
skulls, and often a deposit consisted of a bowl and a bottle. A number of burials, 
however, were without deposits of earthenware, while some had only one vessel and 
a few had each a considerable number of them. The arrangement of vessels in 
respect to each other was simple. А few lay within others, but cases of surmount- 
ing vessels, inverted or otherwise, were rare. 
The earthenware from Pecan Point is shell-tempered as a rule, but on the other 
hand, often it is not of the shell-tempered kind. The ware is of fairly good quality. 
The forms are almost invariably confined to the bottle, the bowl, and the pot, and 
these, as a rule, vary but little from standard shapes. 
Bottles almost universally are of the wide-mouthed variety, and, save in a few 
instances, without superficial decoration, though many of them have an added 
attraction in the form of a projecting annular or discoidal base which, incidentally 
we may say, was often, if not always, made separately from the body of the vessel 
and added to it previous to the firing. 
Strangely enough, the bottle with the tripod support, a not uncommon form in 
the Middle Mississippi region, was not found by us at Pecan Point. 
Though the surface of much of the ware from Pecan Point could readily have 
lent itself to engraved, incised, or trailed decoration, such decoration is seldom 
found upon it, and when present it is almost invariably of the rudest kind. How- 
ever, incised decoration on earthenware, as the reader knows, is not looked for to 
any extent in the Middle Mississippi region. On the other hand, the use of pig- 
ment for decoration of earthenware was a favorite method in that region and was 
extensively practised by the potters of the St. Francis river sites to the westward 
of Pecan Point. Taking this into consideration it is rather a surprise to know that 
58 JOURN, A. N. 8. PHILA., VOL. XIV. 
