[35] Gann: On Exploration of Two Mounds in British Honduras, pp. 430-434; On the Contents of Some Ancient Mounds in Central America, pp. 308-317.
[36] Gann, Mounds in Northern Honduras, pp. 666-680.
[37] The interments which are found, superficially placed in mounds which cover buildings, were probably of later date, as Landa distinctly states that the owner was buried within his house. "Enterravanlos dentro en sus casas o a las espaldas dellas" (Landa, op cit., p. 196). Moreover, more than one of these superficial interments are found in mounds covering buildings, and, lastly, human remains have been found beneath the floors of ruined houses, where one would naturally expect to find them.
[38] From Wilson, Daniel, Prehistoric Man, vol. I, pp. 214-15, Cambridge and London, 1862; quoted by Stevens, Edward T., in Flint Chips.
[39] This shell has already been reproduced in the Sixteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, pl. LXIX.
[40] Similar grafiti were discovered on the wall of a temple at Nakum, in Guatemala. See Tozzer, Preliminary Study of the Prehistoric Ruins of Nakum, Guatemala, p. 160, fig. 48a.
[41] Maler, Explorations in the Department of Peten, Guatemala, pp. 100-101.
[42] See Spinden, Maya Art, p. 64.
[43] See Memoirs of the Peabody Museum, vol. II, No. 1, Researches in the Valley of the Usumatsintla, where on several illustrations rows of similar shells are seen decorating the edges of the garments of the persons represented.
[44] It is curious that neither Landa nor Villagutierre mentions this ornamental plugging of the front teeth, as, judging by the number of teeth found, it can not have been of exceptionally rare occurrence. Landa, who describes their ornaments very closely, mentions the filling of the teeth, but not the plugging, which, had it been in vogue at the time of the conquest in Yucatan, he must have heard about or observed. It seems probable that the custom had already become obsolete before the first appearance of the Spaniards in Yucatan.