Additional mounds of Duval and of Clay counties, Florida; Mound investigation on the east coast of Florida; Certain Florida coast mounds north of the St. Johns riverMoore, Clarence B. (Clarence Bloomfield)
History
Additional mounds of Duval and of Clay counties, Florida; Mound investigation on the east coast of Florida; Certain Florida coast mounds north of the St. Johns river
Moore, Clarence B. (Clarence Bloomfield)
Florida -- Antiquities; Mounds -- Florida
June, 1896.
ADDITIONAL MOUNDS OF DUVAL AND OF CLAY COUNTIES, FLORIDA
Mound at Arlington. Mounds at South Jacksonville (2). Mound at Point
La Vista. Mounds South of Point La Vista (3). Mound at Mulberry
Grove. Mound at Peoria.
LOW MOUND AT ARLINGTON, DUVAL COUNTY
About three miles below Jacksonville, on the opposite side of the St.
Johns, at Arlington, on the property of William G. Matthews, Esq.,
of Philadelphia, was a low mound in pine woods. We are indebted to
W. H. Wilson, Esq., in whose charge the estate is, for permission to
investigate.
This mound was not considered of aboriginal origin by the inhabitants
of the neighborhood and had sustained no previous investigation
though it gave evidence of cultivation in former times; its height of
two feet, at the time of our investigation, was probably considerably
less than its original altitude. Its shape was irregular, its major
and minor axes being respectively 57 feet and 36 feet.
It was totally demolished.
It was composed of yellow sand with the usual admixture of charcoal.
HUMAN REMAINS
Human remains were encountered at twenty-five points, some as deep as
3 feet from the surface, beginning at the very margin of one portion
of the mound. Bones were in the last stage of decay, but minimum
portions of the skeleton being represented—at times parts of the
cranium alone and again small pieces of bone almost too fragmentary
for identification.
EARTHENWARE
Sherds were present in great quantities, the majority undecorated,
though some bore the complicated stamps found in Georgia and in
Carolina. Two had the stamp familiar in Florida, consisting of small
diamonds.
The material of all the ware present in the mound, with the exception
of certain fragments, was very inferior.
There were present numerous sherds showing separation from the
vessel, not by a clean break but by the aid of a pointed implement,
and a number of vessels had pieces removed from the margin by the
agency of pointed tools. We have before referred to this peculiar
custom as occurring in Duval County mounds and occasionally in other
parts of Florida.
At several points in the mound were nests of fragments of earthenware.
In the northwestern margin of the mound, together, just below the
surface, with a deposit of charcoal but apparently with no human
remains, were two tobacco pipes of earthenware, of the usual type
found in the mounds of Duval County, where the orifice for the stem
often equals in size the aperture of the bowl.
This type, probably in vogue before White contact, is present in the
stone graves of Tennessee. We have elsewhere found tobacco pipes of
much more modern appearance in mounds containing objects essentially
European.
In loose sand was another tobacco pipe in appearance similar to the
foregoing.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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