Page 7 - philipmillsjones1923

118 University of California Publications in Am. Arch. and Ethn. [Vol. 20

Several trenches were run from the northern edge of the mound
to the line of the levee, but as I had promised that the levee would
not be disturbed I did not tunnel under it nor remove any of it.
Everywhere, except at the place marked 1, were signs of previous
digging to a depth of from 2 to 4 feet, and where skeletons had been
exhumed the soil was filled with miscellaneous human bones and
fragments of skulls. The soil itself is a brown, sandy clay, mixed
in places with adobe, and contains large quantities of ashes, charcoal,
and bones of animals, together with fragments of baked clay balls;
fireplaces, kitchen refuse, and skeletons.seem to have been promis-
cuously distributed through the mound. Very few stones are encoun-
tered and these in almost every instance show clearly that they have
been used as hammerstones; at one place in trench 1 a cache of several
fine and much used hammerstones was found near a fireplace. Rude
bone and horn tools, a small number of partly or wholly worked flints,
together with large numbers of fragments and some fifty unbroken
baked clay balls, were found unassociated with any human remains.
In this portion of the mound north and northeast of the levee,
four undisturbed skeletons were found. The first was encountered
in running trench 1, 5 feet from the beginning of the trench; it was
lying on the back, slightly towvard the right side, extended, with the
head toward the northwest. One foot southeast of the feet of this
skeleton were found five hammerstones, while in the soil surrounding
the head, and some 6 inches from it, were a few perforated shell disks.
The second skeleton was found on the same level with the first, 2 feet
nearer the levee; the position was the same as that of the first one
found, except thaf he head was some 5° more to the north. Nothing
whatever lay with tis second skeleton, nor in the soil about it. The
first skeleton encountered was at a depth of 3 feet and the second at
a depth of between 3 and 4 feet; the difference is due to the rise in
the elevation of the surface of the mound as the trench was carried
forward toward the levee.
Two more skeletons were found, in trench 2, near the spot marked
2. They lay at a depth of between 5 and 6 feet, and the soil above
them, to a depth of slightly over 4 feet, had been previously dug:
it was a mass of miscellaneous human bones and fragments of bones
which had been dug out and afterward thrown back. These two
skeletons were lying on the back, extended, with heads toward the
west, the upper one across the lower, the spinal column crossing and
in contact with the lower portion of the chest of the under skeleton;