Subsequently, the Alto Caddos also used this mound for burials, digging four large shaft tombs and three smaller pits. All but one of these features contained offerings of superior quality. The most spectacular of the graves was a large crater-shaped pit adjoining the Coles Creek pit. It was nineteen by seventeen feet in dimensions, and was cut through the mound to a depth of four feet below its base. In it were the skeletons of twenty-one persons, from elderly adults to unborn infants. An adult male, six feet tall, was provided with numerous personal effects which included a sheathed knife on his left forearm and a well-preserved five and one-half foot bow of bois d’arc wood placed by his left side. He is thought to have been the paramount person whose death occasioned the immense tomb, the ceremonial offerings, and the presumed sacrifice of tribal members to accompany him in the afterlife. Part of the tomb was covered with a framework of cedar logs, thus accounting for the unusual preservation of many cane and wooden objects. [Illustration: Prehistoric Caddoan stone knives, finely chipped arrow points, and ceremonial polished greenstone celts from Gahagan Mound site. These Early Caddo artifacts date to the 11th century A.D.] Preserved offerings included an ornate pottery bowl, decorated with a thumb-finger cross and eye symbols, flint knives of Gahagan type, fifty-three arrow points, a long-stemmed pipe, copper-plated ear ornaments, puma teeth, and objects of wood which included knife handles, a comb, a baton, several small bows, and wooden frames. Also present were leather, plaited cording or twine, and about 200 fragments of split cane woven mats, some of them with diamond or bird head designs. A half pint of seeds beside the important male were identified later as purslane (_Portulaca oleracea_), a plant sometimes used for food by aboriginal people. Also beside the male were four objects typical of Poverty Point or late Archaic manufacture: two long polished stone beads, a polished hematite plummet, and half of a perforated slate gorget. These ancient objects, from a time 2000 years before the Caddo burial occurred, must have been found and kept as venerated talismans by the Caddo leaders. Gahagan and Mounds Plantation have their counterparts as early Caddoan ceremonial and trade centers at a dozen similar large sites in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The best known is the Spiro mound center on the Arkansas River in eastern Oklahoma, where enormous amounts of well-made and exotic objects from the entire midportion of the United States were gathered or made as offerings. Close contact between these large ceremonial centers is shown by the similarity of objects, materials, or artistic concepts across the entire Caddo area. Contacts with other cultural centers in the Mississippi Valley and into the Southeast also are seen.