Mound No. 32
Fig. 75.—Pottery vessels found in Mound No. 32.
Mound No. 32 was situated quite close to No. 31, which it very closely resembled in both size and construction. At a depth of 9 feet the end of a small building constructed of squared blocks of limestone was brought to light. The walls were still standing to a height of 2 to 3 feet, and showed traces of a red stucco covering on their inner surfaces. The cement floor of the building and the platform upon which it stood could also be traced. Lying upon this floor were five pottery vessels and an unfinished flint celt. Two of these vessels were precisely similar to that shown in figure [73], a; one is a large, circular, shallow plaque, of rather thick reddish-brown pottery, in the center of which a small hole has been made, evidently with the object of rendering the plaque useless. The last two vessels are illustrated in figure [75], a, b. A is an unusually large vessel of very coarse, thick, red pottery, 18 inches high, which had probably been used to contain corn or some such dry material, as the pottery was too friable and soft for a cooking pot, or even to hold water. B is a small three-legged vase, 4 inches high, of coarse, unpainted pottery. Each of these five vessels, with the exception of the plaque, contained a single polished greenstone bead. The celt was roughly blocked out of yellowish flint. No objects except those above described were found with these vessels, nor were there any traces of human burial. Excavations were made in the mound to the ground level, and it was found to be composed below the platform upon which the building stood of a solid mass of rubble and limestone held together by loose, friable mortar. There are numerous groups of mounds of all sizes in the neighborhood, and judging by these, and by the potsherds and flint and obsidian chips which one finds strewn over the surface of the soil in great profusion, it must have been a densely populated region at one time. The two life-size human heads shown in figures [76] and [77] were found close to these two mounds in digging a posthole. Figure [76] represents a grotesque head cut from a solid block of crystalline limestone. Figure [77] is a mask, rather crudely cut from greenstone and unpolished. Both were buried in the marl and were unaccompanied by other objects.