32 CERTAIN ABORIGINAL REMAINS OF THE ALABAMA RIVER, 



showing workmanship. 

 Small mound on Char- 

 lotte Thompson Place. 

 (Full size.) 



Five feet from the surface, with human remain, lay a brass 

 bell, the brass base of a candlestick and shell beads. 



Glass beads with a gorget and beads of shell had been 

 placed with remains of a child. Near the base, together, lay a 

 stone "celt," two discoidal stones, a bit of iron and a copper 

 pendant. 



A shell drinking cup, a stone "celt," sheet copper and iron 

 lay together with human remains on the base. 



Not far from the mound just described, was an undulation 

 composed of midden refuse. No burials were met with in it. 



In the same field was another rise in the ground, composed 

 of dark sandy loam with many sherds and mussel-shells. 



Lying on the surface, where the plough had thrown it out, 

 was the central portion of the shaft of a human femur, 4.8 inches 

 in length. At one extremity of the fragment was an interesting 

 exhibition of workmanship, the end being reamed out almost to 

 a cutting edge, probably to serve as the handle to a tool. 



Careful search was made in the refuse heap, resulting in the 

 finding, about 6 inches below the surface, of another fragment 

 which fitted to the one already found, making a total length of 

 8 inches. This portion of the shaft of the femur, presumably a 

 woman's, is the proximal part with the articular portion roughly 

 broken off. The bone is highly polished, presumably through 

 wear, and a part of the linea aspera is worked or worn away. 



This interesting specimen is shown in Fig. 51, where it is 

 represented as raised somewhat at one end and is consequently 

 foreshortened. 



During all our mound work we have but twice before found 

 human bones bearing trace of workmanship. 



In the Tick island mound was a piercing implement wrought 

 from a human femur, 1 while from the mound at Bluffton came 

 a part of a parietal bone decorated with incised lines, probably 

 a portion of a gorget. 



Professor Jeffries Wyman, 2 the pioneer of shell-heap investi- 

 gation in Florida, says : " We have not found tools made of 

 human bones, but it is not improbable that these were used for 

 such purposes, as the sawed human thigh-bone found at Osceola 

 mound naturally suggests." Professor Wyman, in a foot-note 

 refers to a humerus from a human skeleton, ground and scraped 

 as though for a tool, found in a shell-heap at Ipswich, Mass. 

 Professor Putnam also has described this bone. 



1 " Certain Sand Mounds of the St. Johns River, Florida," Part I. 



2 " Fresh-Water Shell Mounds of the St. Johns River, Florida," p. 51. 



