306 CERTAIN ABORIGINAL REMAINS OF THE ALABAMA RIVER. 



discover}* of vessels elsewhere on the place was reported by colored people living 

 there, but none was found by us though a really exhaustive search was made and 

 much territory, in addition to the field we have referred to, gone over by lines of 

 men prodding at short intervals with iron rods. 



The surface of the field and some of the other territory was covered with 

 broken pebbles, chips of stone and numerous sherds. Some of these, evidently 

 from burial urns broken by the flood or by previous visitors, are shown in Figs. 

 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. 



Other sherds were undecorated, or had the check stamp and probably belonged 

 to cooking utensils. Among all these were a few bearing the complicated stamp so 

 familiar in Georgia and Carolina. 



Fig. 15.— Head of earthenware. 

 Cemetery at Duraud's Bend. 

 (Full size.) 



In addition, scattered over?the field, were: arrowpoints of quartz; smaller 

 ones usually of black chert ; hammer-stones , discoidal stones made from flat 

 pebbles pecked into shape ; many discs made from fragments of pottery ; a 

 human head in earthenware, about 2 inches high, somewhat injured on one side 

 (Fig. 15) ; fragments of various implements and a number of pebbles, some clayey 

 and soft, others of a silicious character and hard, each having a perforation, seem- - 

 ingly artificial, though in no case was the perforation of that 

 even character such as was made by the tubular drill used 

 with sand by the aborigines to cut resistant rocks. The holes, 

 on the contrary, were irregular in shape, some showing a certain 

 polish as to the interior surface. These pebbles were not found 

 associated with the dead, but singly and loose in the earth. 



Professor Putnam declares them to be natural formations. 

 It is not even likely they were utilized by the aborigines since, 

 as we have said, they lay apart from burials. Certain of these 

 formations are shown in Fig. 16. 



During trenching of part of the field and the excavation 

 of vessels many objects, similar to some of those enumerated, 

 were met with and it is probable that those on the surface 

 were left there by the subsiding water. 



Fig. 17.— Notched pebbli 

 Cemetery. Durand 

 Bend. (Full size.) 



