Feature No. 1 was situated in the lower portion of the body of the
mound. It did not have the appearance of a carefully prepared hearth,
but the presence of clay in the burned soil suggests that an
irregular-shaped clay base had been laid down where the fire was to be
built. It appears that after a layer of sand about a foot thick had been
piled up to form the base of the mound, further work on the mound was
temporarily interrupted, a crude hearth of sandy clay was prepared near
the center of the basal layer of sand, and a fire of considerable
intensity was kindled on it. The hardness of the burned, sandy clay of
the hearth indicates that the fire was quite a hot one and that it must
have burned—continuously or intermittently—for a period of many hours at
least. After an unknown interval of time the fire was extinguished and
the construction of the mound was resumed and carried to completion. The
sharp definition of the hearth surface and the homogeneity of the mound
fill above and below the hearth indicate that no appreciable time
elapsed between the extinguishing of the fire and the addition of the
upper part of the mound fill: otherwise the surface of the hearth should
have shown evidence of weathering and the two different stages of mound
construction should have been visible in the profiles as separate zones.
_Burial No. 1_
Beneath the southeast quadrant of Mound A a single burial was found
(Fig. 12, A). The skeleton lay in extended, supine position, with the
head to the northeast and the feet to the southwest. Preservation of the
bones was poor, and several of them (including the left femur, most of
the arm and hand bones, the lumbar vertebrae, and the foot and ankle
bones) had been destroyed or displaced by gophers whose runs interlaced
the entire burial area. As a result of this disturbance the original
position of the arms could not be determined.
Two pottery vessels—a carinated bowl and a bottle, both of the type
Ripley Engraved (Fig. 12, B-C) had been placed beside the left hip as
burial offerings, and an arrow point of the Perdiz type (Fig. 15, O),
lying near the outer side of the left knee, appeared also to have been
included intentionally with the burial.
The first evidence that a burial was present was the discovery of
several foot and ankle bones in a rodent run in square N10-E0. The
burrow was traced toward the north for several feet where the distal end
of a human tibia was exposed in the northeast corner of square N10-E0.
Since it was apparent that the major portion of the burial lay in square
N15-E5, that square was taken down. At 0.5-foot intervals the floor of
the square was scraped clean with trowels and carefully examined for
evidence of a grave outline. However, none was detected in the mound
fill.
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