56 CERTAIN ABORIGINAL MOUNDS OF THE GEORGIA COAST. 



usual truncated cone in shape and still symmetrical, though rather considerable 

 superficial digging had been attempted. 



Its height was 8 feet ; its diameter at base, 72 feet. The surface of the mound 

 was covered with shell. With a beginning on the level ground 12 feet beyond the 

 margin of the base, to ascertain the presence of outlying burials, none of which were 

 met with, the entire southern half of the mound was sliced down, leaving an E. and 

 W. cross-section. Next the remaining half was dug away with equal care. 



The mound presented no uniform stratification. It was composed of local layers 

 of bright yellow sand dug from beneath the surface loam of the field; of dark sand 

 containing occasional shells, mostly belonging to the oyster ; of shells with admixture 

 of dark sand and, at the surface, of a layer of midden refuse made up of crushed 

 shell and loam, varying from 8 inches to 2 feet in thickness and occasionally extend- 

 ing still farther down over burials let in from above. All the shell layers of the 

 mound, some of oyster shells, some of shells of the salt-water mussel, seemed dis- 



Fig. 34. — Section of pit. Mound at Bourbon. 



tinctly to be crushed and packed together as though trampled upon for a consider- 

 able period of time which seemed to indicate that the mound had slowly grown 

 for a period of years, during which it was treated as a place of abode. 



There was present in the mound no central pit such as is usually found in 

 mounds of the coast, though, beginning a little north of the center was a 

 general dip in the lower layers of the mound over a pit extending 2 feet into undis- 

 turbed sand, containing a skeleton at length. This pit had at the base a breadth 

 of 3 feet, its exact length we were unable to determine owing to frequent caving of 

 sand though it must have exceeded 6 feet. The layers above this pit, when of 

 shell, in common with all shell layers of the mound, were compact through tread 

 of feet and seemed to indicate that the pit had been dug at an early stage of the 

 building of the mound and but partially filled and that layers forming afterwards 

 shared in the depression. Fig. 34 gives a lateral section of this pit and of the 

 mound above it. 



