CERTAIN ABORIGINAL REMAINS OF THE N. W. FLORIDA COAST. 473 



Four and one-half days were passed by us at the cemetery with ten men to 

 dig and three men to supervise. 



About one-quarter of an acre was dug through by us and it is our belief that 

 that part of the hammock containing burials was thoroughly dug by us. the limit 

 being determined not only by the spade but by sounding rods of iron which we 

 found so useful in our work at the aboriginal cemetery at Durand's Bend, Alabama 

 river. 



The cemetery near Point Washington was not exactly level, there being a 

 number of irregular rises in the ground with flat spaces between. These rises, which 

 probably did not exceed a foot in height, in three cases contained large deposits of 

 human bones, solid masses with outlying bones here and there, these bones not being 

 enough apart to call them separate burials, nor yet so closely associated that they 

 might be considered one interment. One of these deposits had seventeen skulls, all 

 of adults but one, as to which we had not sufficient data to judge. Numbers of 

 long-bones accompanied the skulls. In other parts of the cemetery were single 

 skulls, others with long-bones and, in a few cases, long-bones without the crania, in 

 addition to the burials found under earthenware vessels, which will be taken 

 up later. 



Certain skulls from the cemetery showed marked flattening as by compression. 

 Captain Bernard Romans, in his " A Concise Natural History of East and West 

 Florida," 1 page 82, tells us, speaking of the Choctaws, " their women disfigure the 

 heads of their male children by means of bags of sand, flattening them into 

 different shapes, thinking it adds to their beauty." 



Artifacts other than vessels of earthenware were not numerous. A piece 

 of iron lay near a skull and glass beads were with a number of burials. There 

 were also : shell beads in many places ; several undecorated gorgets of shell ; a 

 hoe-shaped implement of calcareous lime-stone, much disintegrated, with one of 

 the masses of skulls ; a large hone with a burial ; eleven bits of chert and two 

 arrowpoints together, with human remains ; two glass finger-rings loose in the sand ; 

 two pendants of shell resembling barbless arrowpoints in shape, with a burial ; a 

 piercing implement of shell, wrought from a columella, with two circular grooves. 



While the burials without earthenware covering were largely in the low 

 mounds, burials under vessels were chiefly in the slopes of the mounds or in the 

 levels and depressions between them. 



At certain places in the cemetery, from a few inches to one foot below the 

 surface, as in other cases reported by us, but still more noticeably so, lay quantities 

 of earthenware over considerable areas. No burials were with or beneath these 

 deposits which, at places, were so near together as almost to resemble a floor. 

 These deposits were made up of fragments of vessels, some very large ; occasionally 

 a small, well-made vessel, usually with some imperfection ; or bowls rarely over 

 one quart in capacity, of poor material, often undecorated and sometimes broken 

 in addition. 



During our entire investigation, though particular care was exercised and 

 1 New York, 1775. 



