82 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



Constant presence at the site enabled us to employ a somewhat 

 different technique from that used last year. Trenches 10 feet broad 

 were extended across undisturbed parts of the site. This increased 

 exposure, in contrast to the previous short 5-foot trenches, clarified 

 the picture considerably. The initial trenches were run in the field 

 to the east that had been under cultivation last season. Here we had 

 hoped to find an entrance to the stockade, but were disappointed. As 

 elsewhere about the site, the post holes are so numerous, presumably 

 as a result of replacements and relocations of the original wooden 

 structures, that the details are obscured. Some time was devoted also 

 to trenching the accumulated refuse along the bluff overlooking the 

 creek. In places these deposits reach 4 feet in depth but give evidence 

 of having received accretions from the plow. 



Attention was distracted from these features toward the close of 

 the season by two important finds of a different nature : A deep pit 

 containing a type of pottery unlike that prevailing on the surface, and 

 an ossuary. The finding of the ossuary offered us the opportunity 

 to expose the bones from above in order to show their arrangement. 

 Circumstances usually do not allow time for this procedure. In the 

 present case we succeeded in making a good record of about one-third 

 of the burial pit before heavy and prolonged rains interrupted. 



As the accompanying photograph (fig. 88) shows, individual bodies, 

 still somewhat articulated, can be distinguished in this ossuary. A 

 typical method of contracting the body appears to have been that 

 in which the lower legs were flexed forward unnaturally at the knees 

 so that the feet came to touch the abdomen. Two other features of 

 the ossuary are of interest: 1, at one place there was a mass of 

 charred bones, the remain perhaps of a deliberate cremation or sacri- 

 fice ; 2, in connection with some of the skeletons there were great 

 numbers of shell beads, and in one of these cases the largest beads 

 had been placed within the skull, obviously at the time of burial. 



As regards the strange type of pottery (see fig. 87), it is charac- 

 terized by shell tempering, basketry impression, and line decoration 

 in contrast to the grit tempering and cord marking of the prevail- 

 ing type. The full significance of this find, aside from probable cul- 

 tural succession, is not yet apparent. Pottery of this general type 

 occurs along the Rappahannock River and in nearby Maryland. 



It was necessary to discontinue the work on the above-mentioned 

 date in order that the writer might reach Mexico City in time to 

 attend the International Congress of Americanists, meeting there 

 August 5 to 15, to which he had been appointed a delegate represent- 

 ing: the United States Government. 



