These are of considerable interest, not only from their somewhat rare
occurrence, except in certain localities, but from the manifest care
taken by the survivors to provide for the dead what they considered a
suitable resting-place. A number of cists have been found in
Tennessee, and are thus described by Moses Fiske: [Footnote: Trans.
Amer. Antiq. Soc., 1820 vol. 1, p. 302]
"There are many burying grounds in West Tennessee with regular graves.
They dug them 12 or 18 inches deep, placed slabs at the bottom ends
and sides, forming a kind of stone coffin, and, after laying in the
body, covered it over with earth."
It may be added that, in 1873, the writer assisted at the opening of a
number of graves of men of the reindeer period, near Solutre, in
France, and they were almost identical in construction with those
described by Mr. Fiske, with the exception that the latter were
deeper; this, however, may be accounted for if it is considered how
great a deposition of earth may have taken place during the many
centuries which have elapsed since the burial. Many of the graves
explored by the writer in 1875, at Santa Barbara, resembled somewhat
cist graves, the bottom and sides of the pit being lined with large
flat stones, but there were none directly over the skeletons.
The next account is by Maj. J. W. Powell, the result of his
observation in Tennessee. "These ancient cemeteries are exceedingly
abundant throughout the State, often hundreds of graves may be found
on a single hillside. In some places the graves are scattered and in
others collected in mounds, each mound being composed of a large
number of cist graves. It is evident that the mounds were not
constructed at one time, but the whole collection of graves therein
was made during long periods by the addition of a new grave from time
to time. In the first burials found at the bottom and near the center
of a mound a tendency to a concentric system, with the feet inward, is
observed, and additions are made around and above these first
concentric graves, as the mound increases in size the burials become
more and more irregular:
"Some other peculiarities are of interest. A larger number of
interments exhibit the fact that the bodies were placed there before
the decay of the flesh, while in other cases collections of bones are
buried. Sometimes these bones were placed in some order about the
crania, and sometimes in irregular piles, as if the collection of
bones had been emptied from a sack. With men, pipes, stone hammers,
knives, arrowheads, &c., were usually found; with women, pottery, rude
beads, shells, &c.; with children, toys of pottery, beads, curious
pebbles, &c.
"Sometimes, in the subsequent burials, the side slab of a previous
burial was used as a portion of the second cist. All of the cists were
covered with slabs."
Dr. Jones has given an exceedingly interesting account of the stone
graves of Tennessee, in his volume published by the Smithsonian
Institution, to which valuable work [Footnote: Antiquities of
Tennessee, Cont. to Knowledge, Smith. Inst., 1876, No. 259, 4 deg., pp. 1,
8, 37, 52, 55, 82.] the reader is referred for a more detailed account
of this mode of burial.