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Stone Graves or Cists
These are of considerable
interest, not only from their somewhat rare occurrence, except in
certain localities, but from the manifest care taken by the survivors to
provide for the dead what they considered a suitable resting-place. A
number of cists have been found in Tennessee, and are thus described by
Moses Fiske: [Footnote: Trans. Amer. Antiq. Soc., 1820 vol. 1, p. 302]
"There are many burying grounds in West Tennessee with
regular graves. They dug them 12 or 18 inches deep, placed slabs at the
bottom ends and sides, forming a kind of stone coffin, and, after laying
in the body, covered it over with earth."
It may be added that, in 1873, the writer assisted at
the opening of a number of graves of men of the reindeer period, near
Solutre, in France, and they were almost identical in construction with
those described by Mr. Fiske, with the exception that the latter were
deeper; this, however, may be accounted for if it is considered how
great a deposition of earth may have taken place during the many
centuries which have elapsed since the burial. Many of the graves
explored by the writer in 1875, at Santa Barbara, resembled somewhat
cist graves, the bottom and sides of the pit being lined with large flat
stones, but there were none directly over the skeletons.
The next account is by Maj. J. W. Powell, the result of
his observation in Tennessee. "These ancient cemeteries are exceedingly
abundant throughout the State, often hundreds of graves may be found on
a single hillside. In some places the graves are scattered and in others
collected in mounds, each mound being composed of a large number of cist
graves. It is evident that the mounds were not constructed at one time,
but the whole collection of graves therein was made during long periods
by the addition of a new grave from time to time. In the first burials
found at the bottom and near the center of a mound a tendency to a
concentric system, with the feet inward, is observed, and additions are
made around and above these first concentric graves, as the mound
increases in size the burials become more and more irregular:
"Some other peculiarities are of interest. A larger
number of interments exhibit the fact that the bodies were placed there
before the decay of the flesh, while in other cases collections of bones
are buried. Sometimes these bones were placed in some order about the
crania, and sometimes in irregular piles, as if the collection of bones
had been emptied from a sack. With men, pipes, stone hammers, knives,
arrowheads, &c., were usually found; with women, pottery, rude beads,
shells, &c.; with children, toys of pottery, beads, curious pebbles, &c.
"Sometimes, in the subsequent burials, the side slab of
a previous burial was used as a portion of the second cist. All of the
cists were covered with slabs."
Dr. Jones has given an exceedingly interesting account
of the stone graves of Tennessee, in his volume published by the
Smithsonian Institution, to which valuable work [Footnote: Antiquities
of Tennessee, Cont. to Knowledge, Smith. Inst., 1876, No. 259, 4 deg.,
pp. 1, 8, 37, 52, 55, 82.] the reader is referred for a more detailed
account of this mode of burial.
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Introduction to the Study of Mortuary Customs
Among the North American Indians
Native American Nations
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