Burial mounds of earth and sand are numerous, and have yielded many relics, especially in the peninsula, where it was the custom to place with the dead many crude objects of fired clay, vessels of fanciful shapes, and rude effigies of creatures or things real and fanciful, as mortuary offerings. Especially in west Florida large deposits of earthenware utensils are found with the dead, the forms sometimes suggesting a distinct type of mortuary vessel, and like those of the peninsula, they were often perforated in the bottom, or "killed." Methods of burial varied: the body was (I) extended, or (2) flexed; (3) it was exposed until the flesh decayed, when the bones were gathered and interred; (4) the remains were cremated. Urn burial, of cremated or non-cremated remains, common in Georgia, was rare on the peninsula.
The houses were built of poles and thatch, often in circular village groups and surrounded by palisades as a means of defence; but only traces of these have been found. Along the Gulf coast pile-dwellings also were once used. Pottery, sometimes of pleas ing forms, but not painted, was extensively manufactured, and in the western part of the area life forms were skilfully modelled, and engraved and indented designs were used. Elsewhere the surfaces of vessels were embellished with the figured stamp or paddle, some of which are so closely analogous in motive, group ing, and execution to certain designs on wooden objects from the West Indies as to create the belief that they could have arisen only through identity or by intimate relationship of the peoples employing them. Traces of distinctive Caribbean treat ment and motive are found almost as far north as the boundary of Virginia and North Carolina, in the valley of the Tennessee near Knoxville, and westward on the Gulf coast in southeastern Alabama. Earthenware pipes are usually of angular trumpet shapes with bowls expanded into human or animal heads, but in west Florida they were more clumsily made.
Finely carved stone bowls and strange plates with ornamented rims have been found; but stone sculptures are exceptional, hence earthenware forms the chief basis of study of the culture status of the early inhabitants of the re gion. By the recovery of various remarkable mask s, figurines, dishes, stools, and other carved and painted wooden objects from the canal muck on Key Marco, on the southwest Florida coast, in a region occupied by the Calusa in late prehistoric and early his toric time, a degree of art was attained that is not suggested by the stone and pottery articles of the area, making it probable that the culture represented by these objects and by those of shell and bone found in association, was exotic. Cutting and incising tools of shell and of sharks' teeth appear to have been the main reliance of the craftsmen of the Florida keys, some of whose products bear patterns identical in motive with designs found in the West Indies.
In the northern part of the culture area flint was utilized for the manufacture of the usual kinds of chipped implements, a phenomenal abundance of which is found in Georgia. Only in
limited areas are found the varieties of stone usually employed in manufacturing the pecked-ground implements, hence tools of this kind are comparatively rare, with the exception of the celt. The grooved axe also is of rare occurrence, although abundant in the northern sections of most of the Gulf states, where it is closely associated with the celt. Comparison has been made with the occurrence of great numbers of celts and the rarity of the grooved axe in the West Indies, the celts from those islands and from Florida bearing closer resemblance than those from any of the more northerly districts, hence suggesting in sular influence as in the case of the pottery. A further sug gestion of intrusion of culture is the occurrence in Florida, and in other Gulf states, of a perforated hoe-shape stone implement which corresponds closely with a type of axe prevalent in South America, and pile dwellings in the south and suggestions of the practice of cannibal ism on St. Johns river point in the same direction. Wood com monly took the place of stone in fashioning mortars and pestles. Ornaments of gold and silver have been found in the peninsula, and while some of the more elaborate pieces may have been derived from Mexico or Central America, the skill of the Florida metal-workers is shown by objects of wood and bone overlaid with sheet-copper, and by certain plates of sheet-copper with symbolic devices executed in repousse fashion with much pre cision. As in the ceramic art, the metal-work of the South Atlantic area indicates a higher degree of culture than that of the northern area.
III. Middle and Lower Mississippi Valley Area.—This in terior area, with much outlying territory, is characterized by remains which in many respects represent the highest culture attained by any of the aboriginal peoples north of central Mexico. This is what is commonly known as the mound-builder culture, exemplified by many earthworks of varying forms and magnitude, and designed by their sedentary builders for domiciliary, religious, civic, defensive, and mortuary uses, and in some instances no doubt as places of refuge in times of flood. Effigy mounds, numerous in the Upper Mississippi and Great Lakes area, are uncommon; the Serpent Mound is notable. The builders of the mounds were long regarded as a race distinct from the Indians, but archaeological investigation has proved that these tumuli are solely the product of the Indians : that indeed many of them south of the Ohio valley were in use and even in process of erec tion after the coming of Europeans, as attested by the finding of articles of civilization as original inclusions. Tribes of this region known to have occupied the mound area and to have been builders of earthworks belonged to the Siouan, Algonkin, Iro quoian, Muskogin, Tunican, Chitimachan and Caddoan linguistic families, and these may have been preceded by other Indian groups in prehistoric times.