Low Mound at Dr. Harrison’s, Amelia Island
On the property of Dr. Robert Harrison, about one-half mile in an easterly direction from his house, which overlooks the Amelia river at a point about one mile, in a southerly direction, from Suarez Bluff (Amelia City, Nassau County) was a mound 1.5 feet high and 30 feet across the base. It had sustained little if any previous investigation and was totally demolished by us.
It was composed of yellowish sand with pockets of white sand, and through the central portion a layer of white sand several inches in thickness ran considerably below the level of the surrounding territory.
Interments, probably a dozen in all, were, curiously enough, marginal and beneath the slope, no remains being met with in or near the central portion of the mound. Both forms of burial, the bunched and that in anatomical order, were present. In one case the remains were in part calcined, while other portions of the skeleton were charred in places only. No charcoal or fire-whitened sand lay with these bones which consequently must have been exposed to flames elsewhere.
A number of the burials lay beneath deposits of oyster shells.
The remains were in much better state of preservation than is usually the case in the mounds. One skull, almost intact, was preserved.[7]
With two crania, at different points, were numbers of longitudinally perforated shells (Olivella).
With human remains was found a portion of the shaft of a large pin of shell, showing recent fracture. The remaining part doubtless escaped us.
But two sherds were brought to our attention.