THE ST. JOHN'S RIVER, FLORIDA. 



211 



That certain shell-heaps were in process of construction at a time when some 

 of the river mounds were built, we believe to be undoubtedly the case. Certain 

 varieties of earthenware are common to various mounds and shell-heaps, while 

 objects similar to all those discovered in Mulberry Mound, with the exception 

 of the unique incised effigy on pottery, are present in sand mounds. And further- 

 more, immediately adjacent to Mulberry Mound was a small burial mound of sand 

 which, as the nearest land is almost two miles distant, we think must be attributed 

 to the makers of the shell-heap, especially as the earthenware, including fragments 

 of tobacco pipes of similar pattern, was common to the mound and to the shell- 

 heap. 



It must not, however, be assumed from this that neighboring sand mounds and 

 shell-heaps on the mainland are of necessity of the same period. We have seen 

 how in the shell base beneath the Tick Island Mound, was discovered a piece of 

 porous fiber-tempered pottery of a kind not present in the mound itself and never 



Fig. 78. Fiber-tempered ware with fret decoration. Shell ridges, Tick Island. (Full size.) 



found by us in any sand mound of the river. Yet, after a certain depth, in the 

 shell ridges of Tick Island this pottery is abundant. 



Thus, having shown the connection between the shell-heap at Mulberry Mound 

 and some of the sand mounds, through objects common to them, we believe our- 

 selves in a position to trace relationship between Mulberry Mound and a class of 

 presumably older shell-heaps by means of this species of earthenware. 



This porous pottery, which Professor Holmes calls fiber-tempered ware, consists 

 of clay originally reinforced by vegetable fiber, the destruction of which by expo- 

 sure to fire in course of manufacture has left small canals. This variety of ware, as 

 we have stated, is never present in the sand mounds, nor is it found by airy means 

 in all the sherd-bearing shell deposits of the river. We have met with it notably 

 at Huntington's, near Cook's Ferry; in Orange Mound, where it begins about one 



