CERTAIN ABORIGINAL MOUNDS OF THE GEORGIA COAST. 75 



was 22 inches ; its diameter of base, 30 feet. It was totally demolished, being dug 

 through at a depth considerably lower than the level of the surrounding territory. 



Human remains were met with at eight points, some at a depth of 3 feet. At 

 one point was a solitary skull unaffected by fire. Seven pockets of calcined bones 

 comprised the remainder of the human remains in the mound, with the exception 

 of one femur showing no trace of fire, which lay immediately beneath one of the 

 masses of calcined bones. 



Several local streaks of bright sand colored with hematite were present in the 

 mound and scarlet sand was occasionally with human remains. 



Five or six sheets of mica, with one of the pockets of burnt bones, were the 

 only artifacts present in the mound. 



St. Catherine's Island, Liberty County. Mound near South-end Settlement. 



About three-quarters of one mile in a northerly direction from the South-end 

 Settlement, in a field long under cultivation in former times but fallow at the time 

 of our visit, was a rather symmetrical rounded mound 3 feet in height and 68 feet 

 across the base, the outline of which was almost exactly circular, though, as the 

 reader may see by consulting the diagram (Fig. 49), burials and artifacts were by no 

 means included beneath the slope of the mound but extended to the east and south- 

 east in perfectly level ground. 



There had been no previous investigation. 



The mound was dug through, including considerable outlying territory. 

 Throughout the mound proper there ran, commencing at the beginning of what we 

 took to be the original slope (for the external lower portions of the rise seemed to 

 have been ploughed down from above), a dark band not on one level, as in many 

 mounds we have investigated, but extremely irregular, often continuing a consider- 

 able distance into the pits which were numerous in certain portions of the mound. 

 In default of a better theory, we believe that these pits were dug and but partly 

 filled previous to the erection of the mound ; that the field continued to be a 

 dwelling site, and that the deposit of offal, debris, charcoal and the like, created a 

 black surface laj^er in the depressions as well as on the level ground. 



The mound was composed of dark loamy sand resting upon undisturbed yellow 

 sand. Local layers of oyster shells were present, and the central portion of the 

 mound was made up of a deposit of oyster shells about 2 feet thick — not midden 

 refuse but loose as though brought there at one time and deposited. This deposit 

 extended in some directions about 10 feet from the center, in others 20 feet, while 

 to the N. W. it continued, tapering off in thickness, to the very verge of the mound. 

 From the highest point of the mound to the level of the black base-line, was a per- 

 pendicular distance of just 3 feet. 



The following is a detailed description of burials to be used in connection with 

 the diagram. 



Burial No. 1, 51 feet, E. S. E., from the center of the mound proper, beneath 

 perfectly level ground, lying at the bottom of a pit, 2.5 feet from the surface, were 

 fragments of a human skull badly decayed. 



