jars, bowls, etc., had generally been deposited close to the body,
as a rule near the head. The skulls of the skeletons were mostly
crushed, and crumbled to dust when exposed to the air. There was no
trace of charring on the bones, although in some cases charcoal was
found close to the skeletons.

To excavate such mounds is slow and tedious work, requiring much
patience. Sometimes nothing was found for weeks. Small mounds gave
results as good as, if not better than, some large ones. In shape they
are more or less conical, flattened at the top; some are oblong, a few
even rectangular. The highest among them rose to twenty or twenty-five
feet, but the majority varied from five to twelve feet. The house
walls inside of them were from eight to sixteen inches thick.

The pottery which was excavated here may be judged by the accompanying
plates. It is superior in quality, as well as in decoration, to that
produced by the Pueblos of the Southwest of the United States. The
clay is fine in texture and has often a slight surface gloss, the
result of mechanical polishing. Though the designs in general remind
one of those of the Southwestern Pueblos, as, for instance, the cloud
terraces, scrolls, etc., still most of the decorations in question
show more delicacy, taste, and feeling, and are richer in colouring.

This kind of pottery is known only from excavations in the valleys of
San Diego and of Piedras Verdes River, as Well as from Casas Grandes
Valley. It forms a transition from the culture of the Pueblos of
Arizona and New Mexico to that of the Valley of Mexico, a thousand
miles farther south. In a general way the several hundred specimens
of the collection can be divided into four groups: