HUMAN REMAINS
Exclusive of loose bits of bone, doubtless thrown from the previous excavation, seventy-four skeletons, all seemingly in anatomical order, were met with, and one deposit of charred and calcined human remains. We are, of course, unable to estimate the number of skeletons thrown out or carried away prior to our visit. The first interment was encountered 10 feet in from the southwestern margin of the base. With very few exceptions no art relics lay with human remains, and if we except a stone hatchet found with a skeleton 8 feet from the surface and some beads of shell with another interment, no art relics were associated with burials in the body or on the base of the mound.
In no previous mound work have we found so great a percentage of pathological specimens as in this mound, and, as has not been the case in other mounds, entire skeletons seemed affected, and not one or possibly two bones belonging to a skeleton. The pathological conditions were so marked and cranial nodes so apparent that, in view of the fact that no objects positively indicating White contact were discovered in the mound, though the utmost care was exercised by a trained corps of assistants, we are compelled to regard the bones with the greatest interest since evidence of contact with the whites being wanting we must look upon these bones as of pre-Columbian origin. We may state here that all bones preserved by us came from depths in the mound which insure their derivation from original burials. These bones, found 8 to 12 feet from the surface, and lying beneath numerous undisturbed layers are as unmistakably of an early origin as any yet described and much more reliable than most.
Dr. Washington Matthews, whose memoir on the human bones of the Hemenway collection is so well known, has kindly consented to study and to report upon these bones from the Light-house mound.
Perforation of the humerus
| Left | Right | ||
| Male | Perforated | 3 | 3 |
| Not Perforated | 7 | 14 | |
| Female | Perforated | 6 | 4 |
| Not Perforated | 2 | 3 | |
| Uncertain | Perforated | 3 | 4 |
| Not Perforated | 2 | 3 |
CANINE REMAINS
Professor Wyman, as we have stated in a former paper, found no remains of dog during his researches among the shell heaps of the St. Johns river. In point of fact no practical work was done among the sand mounds by this pioneer of the archæology of Florida.
In a shell-heap near the bank of the Econlockhatchee creek, Orange County, we discovered a canine lower jaw which Professor Cope minutely examined, giving his results, with figures, in the American Naturalist.[9]
Professor Cope concluded that the jaw under examination belonged to an unknown kind.