1020 The Peabody Museum's Explorations in Ohio, [ December, 
that we had at last discovered a grave. Would it prove to have 
any connection with the people who built the earthworks and the 
altar mounds? Our hopes were great, and they were soon to be 
Fealized as far as one grave could tell its story. On carefully 
removing the earth from the eastern end of the grave, close to 
the stone, we discovered the toe bones of a human skeleton, and 
after several hours of the hardest kind of trowel digging, we had 
the satisfaction of exposing the skeleton lying at full length on 
its back. Its skull, slightly turned to the right, rested on a flat 
stone at the western end of the grave. On the left side of the 
skull was a large sea-shell of the genus Busycon, from which the 
central portion had been removed, a common method of making 
vessels among the various peoples of America, and often found 
in burial mounds and graves from the Gulf States to Michigan. 
With the bones of the neck were several shell beads, also of a 
common form, and as widely distributed over the country as the 
Busycon Shells The arms were extended at full length along 
each side, and inclosed by the bones of each hand, resting on the 
hips was a spool-shaped ornament (which our explorations have 
proved to be ear ornaments) made of copper, and like those 
found with several of the skeletons in the mounds of this group. 
We have at the museum ear ornaments of this character from 
burial mounds in various parts of Ohio and west to the Missis- 
sippi in Illinois, and from Central Tennessee, but I have never 
found them in any of the several thousand stone graves of the 
Cumberland valley which I have explored, nor have we founda 
trace of them among the several thousand graves associated with 
the singular ash. pits in the cemeteries which we have explored mo 
the Little Miami valley, nor with the skeletons buried in the 
= stone mounds nor in many of the simple burial mounds of Ohio. 
They seem to be particularly associated with the remains of a 
people who practiced cremation to some extent, and who built 
many of the great earthworks of the Ohio valley. That it is an 
ent form of ornament, made from native copper, there can be 
dants or conquerors of this people in later times; and it is 
atin a all the recent Tudisn graves I have opened 
avail Seo that the form “i the oroare may have 
uliar etr of ornament has not oreen 
ee 
10 doubt, although they may have been made also by the de- — 
