This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 Excerpt: ...the error of supposing (Distribution of Stone Implements in the Tidewater Country, Am. Anthropologist, Jan., 1893, p. 8) that jasper was not at hand for blade-making in the tidewater region. On Monday, January 4, I dug a trench 15 feet wide and 15 feet long into the talus at the spot. The labor was severe on account of ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1897 Excerpt: ...the error of supposing (Distribution of Stone Implements in the Tidewater Country, Am. Anthropologist, Jan., 1893, p. 8) that jasper was not at hand for blade-making in the tidewater region. On Monday, January 4, I dug a trench 15 feet wide and 15 feet long into the talus at the spot. The labor was severe on account of the continual caving down of the bank that thickened above us as we proceeded, though by noon we had advanced into a thick deposit of human bones mixed with charcoal, bedded about 3 feet below the black village site stratum, and much disturbed as if by the digging above mentioned. Before evening, however, all such trace of disturbance had ceased, and we had laid bare the true inner stratification of the bluff, reaching a hard-set horizontal bed of human bones and skulls, many of them well preserved, about 1-2 feet thick, 10 feet long, 3 feet under the village site stratum, and running indefinitely into the bank (see Fig. 31). Evidently we had encountered a burial pit of some sort, and the questions were: How far did it continue under the bank? What did it contain? Who made it? What relation had it to the black stratum three feet above it? Having faced the bone bed with a trench 2 feet deep, so as to be able to undermine it and rescue the contents, we proceeded to shovel away the whole superincumbent mass of dune and bluff 25 feet thick above it, working on Tuesday and Wednesday with two men and on Thursday and Friday with four, until the entire ossuary was laid bare, and we stood upon a layer of human remains of irregular, circular shape, 25 feet in longest by 20 feet in shortest diameter and 1 to 2 feet thick (thickest in the middle, and tapering at the sides). Fortunately it had trended to the right rather than directly inwards as we advanc...
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