Archaeologia Nova Caesarea: 1907-1909 . tone, now alone indicate many a grave. The pointthat well may be raised is that the disposition of the body,as to posture was not uniform. Many a dead Indian wasburied lying flat upon his back. In the present flood plainof the river as well as upon the higher ground that skirts itseastern border, the graves vary in this respect. It might beclaimed that the bones became displaced, as the bodydecayed, and became so re-arranged as to deceive us as to ^The History of The Colony of Nova-Caesaria, or New Jersey: BySamuel Smith, Burlington, in New Jersey: MDCCL
Archaeologia Nova Caesarea: 1907-1909 . tone, now alone indicate many a grave. The pointthat well may be raised is that the disposition of the body,as to posture was not uniform. Many a dead Indian wasburied lying flat upon his back. In the present flood plainof the river as well as upon the higher ground that skirts itseastern border, the graves vary in this respect. It might beclaimed that the bones became displaced, as the bodydecayed, and became so re-arranged as to deceive us as to ^The History of The Colony of Nova-Caesaria, or New Jersey: BySamuel Smith, Burlington, in New Jersey: MDCCLXV. 56 the orignal position of the body, but this is shown not alwaysto have been the case, by the disposition of the articlesinterred at the same time and the correct relative position ofeach bone of the skeleton. No confusion in this respect anduniformity of level maintained. A trench evidently, and nota hole had been dug. Wlien skeletons are found in what we may call grotesquepositions, it does not mean that the corpse was that of a. Fig. 5. Highest development of Delaware Indian pottery and char-acteristic ornamentation. despised person and that the body was thrown head-foremostinto a hole and covered with earth. Such skeletons wereevidently in a sitting posture originally, and disturbance dueto natural causes explains all. Imagination has no place ingraveyard investigations. Difficult as it is to deal soberly 57 with the living, the dead surely are entitled to be treated asmatters of fact and not made the butt of a riotous fancy. It is not improbable that much depended upon the promin-ence of the deceased, as to the details of burial, but moreattention is likely to be given to the actual funeral cere-monies, and now the grave of the chief and that of theleast important villager are indistinguishable. The fact,however, that such traces of burials as occur near the sur-face, and are discovered by chance oftener than throughefforts in such direction, are not necessarily the m
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