360 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [n. s., i, 1899
new form of writing from that heretofore known in Mexico, and the first ever found in Zapotecan territory.
In the earth in front of the door were many unadorned in- cense burners. Near the eastern end of the mound there was found a large funeral urn having the shape of a box with the cover, and resembling those which formed the ornament of the facade. A few feet distant there was encountered a low wall, rising from the top of which, at an angle, was a capping of cement which probably covered the entire structure after it had been completed, in the same manner as the capping formerly covered the tomb in Mound 7. Near the back of the tomb were un- covered a large number of terra-cotta cups, vessels, and small funeral urns, which, when the tomb was erected, had been deposited as offerings and covered with earth.
Tomb 4 — In the fields, perhaps a hundred feet north of the large mound (No. 10), the Indians accidentally discovered, during my operations, a large flat stone. Clearing the earth from the edges we found it to be one of the roof-stones of Tomb 4 (a, figure 8), which was not covered by a mound of earth, but had been made by excavating several feet downward in the level field. It was covered by a cement capping which seemed to extend outward in all directions. The vault was long and was sealed by a large stone, in front of which was a small compart- ment with stone steps leading downward, as in Mounds 5 end 9. The roof had fallen in, and no remains of any kind were found in the excavation. The doorway faced the west.
West of Mound 3, in which the first excavations were made, was a large, low mound (No. 6) which I nearly demolished. A few inches below the level of the surrounding field was a cement floor, and in the general digging the remains of earthenware ves- sels and a few red-painted fragments of a human skeleton were taken out.
Several other experimental excavations were made with more or less negative results. One of these trenches, however, brought
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