138 CERTAIN ABORIGINAL MOUNDS OF THE GEORGIA COAST. 



but given to the manufacture of earthenware, which, however, lacked diversity 

 of type. 



The builders of these tumuli differed markedly from the aborigines of Florida 

 in their method of constructing many of their mounds, in possessing a totally 

 different type of tobacco pipe, in the absence of mortuary earthenware with ready- 

 made perforation in the base. 



They coincided, however, in the absence of the grooved axe and of the mortar 

 made of stone. In both sections this utensil was probably of wood, as are some 

 along the Georgia coast at the present time. 



In mortuary methods we note a striking difference between the mound-makers 

 of the Georgia coast and their neighbors to the south. In Florida, cremation, 

 though practised, was by no means carried to so great an extent as on the coast of 

 Georgia, while, to the best of our belief, placing of cremated remains in cinerary 

 urns and uncremated skeletal remains in jars was unknown in Florida. 1 



A point of interest, as illustrating diversity of custom in neighboring localities, 

 is that when jars were used for uncremated remains, infants exclusively were selected 

 in some localities, as at Creighton Island, and at Ossabaw Island, and adults in 

 others, as at Sapelo Island, and at St. Catherine's Island with one exception. 



Another feature of interest was the occasional occurrence of mounds in which 

 the skeletal burials were those of women and children -exclusively. But the most 

 striking feature of all and one for which we vainly seek a solution is the use in the 

 same mound of forms of burial so varied, varieties of inhumation and of cremation 

 lying side by side. 



We are told by Cabeca de Vaca, 2 who, as the reader recalls, crossed from Florida 

 to Mexico comparatively early in the sixteenth century, that certain aborigines of 

 northwest Florida burned the remains of their doctors while burying those of all 

 others. Here we see a distinction in form of burial, which, however, cannot apply 

 to the Georgia coast, for even had physicians been proportionately as numerous in 

 former times as they are at present, still the percentage of cremations in the coast 

 mounds is too great to consider these cremations the remains of medicine-men alone. 

 Besides, as we have seen, cremated remains of infants are met with on the Georgia 

 coast. 



In conclusion, we call the attention of the reader to mortuary customs across 

 the sea in former times, so ably presented by the Marquis de Nadaillac in the 

 succeeding paper, " Inhumation and Incineration in Europe." 



1 Colonel C. C. Jones (op. cit. page 456), refers to urn-burial in Florida. We think this accom- 

 plished writer, who did little work in that State, must have accepted erroneous information. Vessels 

 buried beside skeletons often receive a certain number of bones from them, a fact which may have 

 misled investigators as to urn-burial in Florida. 



2 " It is their custom to bury the dead, unless it be those among them who have been physicians, 

 and those they burn." The Narrative of Alvar Nunez Cabeca de Vaca, translated by Buckingham 

 Smith. Washington, 1851, page 49. 



