THE ARCHEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF NEW YORK I79 



Burial 17. At 36 feet in trench 3, 18 feet south of ossuary i, 

 pit 5, the third ossuary was discovered. Six skulls were arranged in 

 the form of an ellipse and the other bones thrown in the opening. 

 These bones, besides arm and leg bones, included ribs, pelvises, 

 phalanges, astragali, tibiae and vertebrae. There were two female 

 skulls. 



Burial 18. This burial was in the middle of trench 3 at 19 feet 

 and 18 feet south of the ossuary (17). On the bottom of the grave 

 a few potsherds were discovered but no visible trace of bone. 



The problem of the many empty graves in the burial knoll was at 

 first a puzzling one. Some graves contained a few ribs, some a 

 pelvis, one or two arm bones and teeth and others were entirely 

 empty except for traces of bone dust. As an hypothesis the theory 

 was then advanced that the parts of skeletons, the larger limb bones 

 and skulls had been removed from the graves and deposited in the 

 ossuaries ; that the graves had been left, open or filled, for use again. 

 The ossuary burial is a Huron, or perhaps more properly. a Huron- 

 Iroquois custom, and has usually, perhaps entirely, been held a mere 

 matter of superstition or ceremonial custom. The presence of empty 

 graves and overflowing ossuaries suggested the theory of the 

 economic utility of the ossuaries. The virgin earth being difficult 

 to dig, but once disturbed never packing as hard as before, it would 

 have been a matter of labor, time and space saving to exhume the 

 remains of the dead and reinter them in an ossuary, and to use the 

 empty graves again as burial places. 



Those theories are only tentative and not to be regarded as estab- 

 hshed until numbers of other places shall have shown the same 

 characteristics. 



Excavations within the inclosure. The ground within the earth 

 wall had not been disturbed since its aboriginal occupation except 

 in places where sugar boilers had been erected. 



Over one hundred and twenty basinlike depressions were scattered 

 over the surface and varied in diameter from 3 to 10 feet, and in 

 depth, from 6 inches to a foot. These pits were exarriined to dis- 

 cover their purport. Only six yielded anything in the way of 

 relics. These consisted of flint chips, fire-broken stones, pottery 

 fragments and arrowheads. The earth was not disturbed in any 

 case, except in that of the deep middle pit, for a depth of more than 

 30 inches, the underlying soil being hard and impenetrable by crude 

 implements. 



Middle pit. This pit was carefully excavated. The soil was dis- 

 turbed for about 9 inches below its modern surface except at the 

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