HOLMES ANNIVERSARY VOLUME 



as actual information goes, the communal character of burial and 

 the sub-base interment of cremated remains are features exclusively 

 of the Tremper mound. 



As is to be expected in mounds of the Hopewell culture, it was 

 found that the site of the Tremper mound had been occupied by a 

 structure serving as a sacred place, in which the dead were cremated, 

 their ashes deposited in prepared receptacles, and the doubtless 

 intricate ceremonies accompanying these proceedings, including the 

 depositing of implements of the deceased, were carried out. The 

 structure proper had been a large oval inclosure, approximately two 

 hundred feet long and half as wide. A number of chapel-like 

 additions, possibly to afford more space or to supplement that of 

 the main structure, had been built from time to time. Upright posts 

 averaging six inches in diameter, set into the ground to a depth of 

 about two and one-half feet, formed the outer walls of the complex 

 structure, as well as the partitions separating them into various com- 

 partments. The remains of a kind of wattlework woven of twigs 

 and limbs were found, which doubtless had been used to close the 

 interstices between the upright posts, which were set about three 

 feet apart. The floor of the area comprising the sacred structure had 

 been carefully leveled and smoothed, and in places fine sand had been 

 spread over it. Doubtless parts of the structure at least had been 

 provided with some kind of roof or thatch, as indicated by the arrange- 

 ment of certain of the posts, but no direct evidence of the existence 

 of such a roof was found. 



Reference to the plan of the floor of the Tremper mound (fig. 2) 

 explains the arrangement of the structure into rooms or compart- 

 ments. The postmolds indicate the outline of the entire building 

 and of the additions, as well as various partitions and supports. The 

 most important of the additions to the main structure, it will be noted, 

 were on the east and southeast, with others in the nature of passage- 

 ways and inclosures, with openings leading to the interior principally 

 along the northern side. There appear to have been several openings 

 at the extreme western end. It was the covering over with earth of 

 these secondary additions, in constructing the mound, which gave it 

 the anomalous shape suggesting the erroneous idea of an intentional 

 animal effigy. 



SPECIAL FUNCTIONS OF THE COMPARTMENTS 



The great room comprising the central and western portion of the 

 structure, and particularly the southern side thereof, was devoted 

 entirely to the care of the dead. Here the greater number of the 



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