osition unmelted until completely buried,
the appearance of these cavities will best be understood. Some of them
were filled to the top with fine loose ashes which occasionally
contained fragments of bone, shell, and pottery; sometimes they were
nearly empty, with traces of decayed wood at the bottom, mingled with
a little ashes and charcoal. In one was found a long, perfect bone
perforator, shown at a in plate 30; in another near the corner of the
west wall was found the pipe shown in figure 14. About 45 feet from
the front near the east wall were four of them of different diameters
and depths but all in a straight line within a space 2 feet long;
these were in front of a crevice under an overhanging ledge where a
man could not stand upright. Wigwams may have been erected in the
cave, or at least skins stretched to prevent drafts or to confine the
heat of fires in winter and perhaps to insure some degree of privacy
if this were desired; but there are no present indications of such
shelters unless these holes were to secure them; otherwise their
purpose or object is still unsolved. They would probably not contain
posts for hanging things on when the walls afforded so many small
crevices and holes into which poles better adapted for such purposes
could be thrust.

[Illustration: PLATE 20
a, b, Skull from Miller's Cave, Pulaski County, Mo. (a, front; b,
profile). c, Part of skull of child from Miller's cave (front
view)]

[Illustration: PLATE 21
SKULL OF YOUNG WOMAN FROM MILLER'S CAVE a, Front; b, profile; c,
back]

Other holes or depressions, shallow, saucer-shaped, or dish-shaped,
some dug in the underlying clay, others at any level almost to the top
of the ashes, were fire pits or cooking places, containing charcoal
and ashes. Two such depressions were lined with a coating of gumbo
half an inch thick, which, however, was not mixed with sand or shell.
Pots may have been shaped in these. Occasionally a small mass of
gumbo, never so much as a peck, sometimes as small as a pint measure,
would be found loose in the ashes, seemingly thrown there at random.
Two pieces were squeezed into a rough ball; one was patted or rolled
into a flattened sphere with a rounded depression on one side. These
were no doubt intended as material for making vessels, as was a
roughly cylindrical mass of red clay and pounded shell as large as a
quart cup--the "biscuit" of modern potters.

About the middle of the cave a saucer-