Page 8 - philipmillsjones1923
P. 8

1923]         Jones: Mound Excavations Near Stockton        119

               the heads and pelves were in contact. Immediately beneath them
               was a bed of ashes and charcoal, and the bones of the legs showed
               blackening and charring by fire. At the feet were a rough paint
               mortar and three rounded brook pebbles of the variety generally
               used as hammerstones, together with the bones of two birds and one
               bird bone which had been pointed as an implement. On the left side
               of the chest of the lower skeleton, between the ribs and the flexed
               forearm, with its mouth directed toward the feet (east), was a cylin-
               drical vessel of magnesian mica, some 10 inches long and of oval
               section. This "vase" was empty and the position in which it was
               found showed that it had been hugged to the left side by the left
               arm of the person with whom it had been buried. While the soil in
               which these skeletons were found was rather loose and not at all
               tightly packed, the cavity formed by the arching ribs was nearly
               empty; only two handfuls of dirt had sifted through the spaces
               between the ribs of the lower skeleton. The interments thus seem
               comparatively recent in spite of the fact that other bodies had been
               buried above these two. That the two recovered individuals had been
               buried simultaneously was equally manifest.  These two skeletons
               were located 4 feet from the edge of the levee and in what must have
               been the outer edge of the upper flat portion of the mound at the
               time of its occupancy.

                                     'STRATIFICATION
                  On the southwest side of the levee was a strip of the mound
               remaining undisturbed. It was from 5 to 10 feet in width between
               the rise of the levee and the ditch cut in dredging, and presented
               toward the false channel of the slough an almost vertical face, repre-
               sented in the map as the portion between A and B. This vertical
               face through the mound nearly at the edge of the high central portion
               which must have been the place of erection of huts, exhibited the
               stratification of the original mound. From the surface to the base
               at the highest part of the section, midway between A and B, the strata
               are as follows.
                  Surface stratum: light yellowish brown clay mixed with sand and
               humus and covered with weeds and brush: 18 inches thick, tapering
               to 6 inches at either end of the section.
                  Second: at the junction of the surface stratum and the third layer
               is a clearly defined series of ash deposits, not continuous, but pretty
               well distributed, and varying in diameter from a few inches to 2 or
               more feet, and in thickness from a mere trace to 3 inches.
   3   4   5   6   7   8   9   10   11