PROCEEDINGS OF THE UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



U. S. NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Vol. 88 Washington : 1940 No. 3091 



A PREHISTORIC ROULETTE FROM WYANDOTTE COUNTY, 



KANSAS 



By Waldo R. Wedel and Harry M. Trowbridge 



In the American Antliropologist for 1892, in two papers under the 

 title ''Studies in Aboriginal Decorative Art," Dr. W. H. Holmes 

 discussed the use of the stamp or figured paddle by native potters of 

 the Eastern LInited States. The second of these articles, devoted to 

 "the rocking stamp or roulette," pointed out the logical relationsliip 

 evidenced in decorative technic(ues between certain simple stamped 

 wares of the Ohio-Illinois-Indiana area and a rouletted or rocked 

 stamp ware (since termed Hopewell or Hopewellian) more widely 

 distributed in the upper Mississippi Basin. Holmes indicated the 

 relative ease with wdiich straight wooden (?) stamps or dies with 

 carved ends, such as those suggested by sherds "coming from the 

 vicinity of Naples, Scott county, Illinois," could have developed into 

 handled forms with curved edge or face, and these in turn into a 

 wheelUke type of implement. By mounting a notched cardboard 

 disk on a penholder, and inking the edge of the disk, he produced 

 broken-line designs closely resembling the impressions characteristic 

 of his rouletted pottery ware (1892b, pi. 2, fig. 1; 1903, fig. 72). His 

 observations ended on the somewhat pessimistic note (1892b, p. 152) 

 that — 



It is not to be expected that examples of these notched decorating tools will 

 ever be recovered. Their burial with the dead would at best be of rare occurrence; 

 besides, they were probably of wood and thus subject to rapid decay unless buried 

 with copper or imbedded in some form of preservative salts. The exact form of 

 the tool as a whole cannot be fully determined, but there need be no question 

 as to its general character and the methods of its use. 



224250—40 ^^' 



