_1. Sepulchral Mounds._--This group includes mounds which, originally
constructed for other purposes, were afterwards used as burial sites.
_2. Refuse Mounds._--This group includes kitchen middens, shell heaps,
deposits of waste material remaining after the manufacture of lime, and
heaps of stones gathered from the surface of the ground.
_3. Foundation Mounds._--As the buildings themselves invariably stood
on the summits of flat-topped mounds, such mounds, capped with the
débris of the earlier structures, formed the bases of later ones.
_4. Defensive Mounds._--Some of these mounds were crescent-shaped;
others were in the form of a horseshoe.
_5. Lookout Mounds._--These mounds extend in chains, at intervals of 6
to 12 miles, along the coast and up some of the rivers; they are lofty,
steep-sided, and usually form the nuclei of groups of other mounds.
As a rule they contain neither human remains nor artifacts, though in
one or two of them superficial interments seem to have been made at a
comparatively late date.
_6. Mounds of Uncertain Use._--No trace of human interment was found
in these mounds. Many of them are too small at the summit to have
supported buildings, and it seems probable that they are sepulchral
mounds, in which no stone, pottery, or other indestructible objects
were placed with the corpse, and in which the bones have entirely
disintegrated. The larger mounds of this class, many of them flat
topped, are carefully constructed of blocks of limestone, marl dust,
and earth, and no doubt at one time served as bases for buildings
either small temples or houses--which, being built of wood, have long
since vanished.
Most of the mounds are distributed in small and large groups, the
latter usually containing one or more examples of each class, the
former consisting for the greater part of small burial mounds, probably
of late date, as they are less carefully constructed than the mounds of
the larger groups, and the objects which they contain are of rougher
and cruder workmanship.
The burial mounds comprise more than half of all the mounds opened,
followed in order of numbers by (a) foundation mounds; (b) mounds of
uncertain use; (c) refuse mounds; (d) lookout mounds; (e) defensive
mounds.
It has been found that, as a rule, rich land contains many mounds;
poor land, fewer; and sour-grass savannah, pine ridge, and swamp, none
at all. The better the land the more numerous the mounds scattered
over it, as is natural, since the more fertile the land the denser
the population it would sustain. Not all the mounds opened have been
described, as small burial mounds, especially in the same group, in
both construction and contents, resemble one another closely, as do
foundation mounds also.
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