Fig. 3
HARROUN SITE—41UR10
PROFILE OF MOUND A
(ALONG N20 LINE)
dark gray, sandy mound fill
Feature No. 1
Zone IIb sand, sub-mound
Zone IIa sand
HARROUN SITE
41UR10
PROFILE OF MOUND B
(IDEALIZED SECTION THROUGH CENTER OF MOUND)
floor of House No. 3
central hearth
post molds
stump disturbance
humus
gray, sandy mound fill
whitish, sandy mound fill
undisturbed sub-mound soil
The surface of Feature No. 1 was burned to a conspicuous degree of hardness and was sharply demarcated from the soft, unfired mound fill which overlay it. Beneath the central portion, heat had produced a thin zone of reddish sand which merged gradually with the underlying grayish sand of the mound fill.
Feature No. 1 was situated in the lower portion of the body of the mound. It did not have the appearance of a carefully prepared hearth, but the presence of clay in the burned soil suggests that an irregular-shaped clay base had been laid down where the fire was to be built. It appears that after a layer of sand about a foot thick had been piled up to form the base of the mound, further work on the mound was temporarily interrupted, a crude hearth of sandy clay was prepared near the center of the basal layer of sand, and a fire of considerable intensity was kindled on it. The hardness of the burned, sandy clay of the hearth indicates that the fire was quite a hot one and that it must have burned—continuously or intermittently—for a period of many hours at least. After an unknown interval of time the fire was extinguished and the construction of the mound was resumed and carried to completion. The sharp definition of the hearth surface and the homogeneity of the mound fill above and below the hearth indicate that no appreciable time elapsed between the extinguishing of the fire and the addition of the upper part of the mound fill: otherwise the surface of the hearth should have shown evidence of weathering and the two different stages of mound construction should have been visible in the profiles as separate zones.
Burial No. 1
Beneath the southeast quadrant of Mound A a single burial was found ([Fig. 12], A). The skeleton lay in extended, supine position, with the head to the northeast and the feet to the southwest. Preservation of the bones was poor, and several of them (including the left femur, most of the arm and hand bones, the lumbar vertebrae, and the foot and ankle bones) had been destroyed or displaced by gophers whose runs interlaced the entire burial area. As a result of this disturbance the original position of the arms could not be determined.
Two pottery vessels—a carinated bowl and a bottle, both of the type Ripley Engraved ([Fig. 12], B-C) had been placed beside the left hip as burial offerings, and an arrow point of the Perdiz type ([Fig. 15], O), lying near the outer side of the left knee, appeared also to have been included intentionally with the burial.
The first evidence that a burial was present was the discovery of several foot and ankle bones in a rodent run in square N10-E0. The burrow was traced toward the north for several feet where the distal end of a human tibia was exposed in the northeast corner of square N10-E0. Since it was apparent that the major portion of the burial lay in square N15-E5, that square was taken down. At 0.5-foot intervals the floor of the square was scraped clean with trowels and carefully examined for evidence of a grave outline. However, none was detected in the mound fill.