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Putnam.] 302 [December 3, 
Mr. Bouvé described the opening of an Indian burial 
ground at Hingham, on the occasion of the Society’s visit to 
his house, some twenty-five years ago. The skeletons were 
well preserved, and with them a copper kettle was found, 
showing that the burial had taken place after the arrival of 
the whites. 
Mr. F. W. Putnam occupied the rest of the evening with 
an account of his explorations of the ancient mounds and 
burial places in the Cumberland Valley, Tennessee. 
The excavations had been carried on by himself, assisted by Mr. 
Edwin Curtiss, for over two years, for the benefit of the Peabody 
Museum at Cambridge. During this time many mounds of various 
kinds had been thoroughly explored, and several thousand of the 
singular stone graves of the moundbuilders of Tennessee had been care- 
fully opened. The material obtained from the explorations is now 
arranged and on exhibition in the Peabody Museum. Mr. Putnam’s 
remarks were illustrated by drawings of several hundred objects 
obtained from the graves and mounds, particularly to show the great 
variety of articles of pottery and several large and many unique forms © 
of implements of chipped flint. He also exhibited and explained in 
detail a map of a walled town of this old nation. This town was situ- 
ated on the Lindsley estate, in a bend of Spring Creek. The earth 
embankment, with its accompanying ditch, encircled an area of about 
twelve acres. Within this enclosure there was one large mound with 
a flat top, fifteen feet high, one hundred and thirty feet long and ninety 
feet wide, which was found not to be aburial mound. Another mound 
near the large one, about fifty feet in diameter, and only a few feet 
high, contained sixty human skeletons, each in a carefully made 
stone grave, the graves being arranged in two rows, forming the 
four sides of a square, and in three layers. From these graves many 
interesting articles were obtained. The most important discovery he 
made within the enclosure was that of finding the remains of the 
houses of the people who lived in this old town. Of them about 
seventy were traced out, and located on the map by Prof. Buchanan 
of Lebanon, who made the survey for Mr. Putnam. Under the floors 
of hard clay which was in places much burnt, Mr. Putnam found the 
graves of children. As only the bodies of adults had been placed 
in the one mound devoted to burial, and as nearly every site of a 
