INTRODUCTIOISr / 



pottery and utensils of conch shell {Strovibus gig as) with arti- 

 facts and skeletal remains undoubtedly Arawakan. If we could point 

 to a definite stratigraphy in the cave deposits of Samana Province 

 with this undecorated pottery at the bottom in association with 

 burials of undeformed crania and with Arawakan artifacts at the 

 top, our problem would be solved in a different way and we should 

 accept Harrington's Cuban Ciboney as having likevdse produced 

 ceramic forms in Santo Domingo. Nowhere do we find such strati- 

 fication, however. In all the cave deposits of Samana and La Vega 

 Provinces investigated by the writer potsherds were found but 

 rarely and wdien found were typically Arawakan in form or detail 

 of decorative design. The flat-bottomed, shallow bowl " cazuela " 

 with its thick and heavy walls offering no decorative design for 

 identification is occasionally uncovered in the central cordillera of 

 the island in La Vega Province along with rock ledge burials of 

 Arawak with deformed crania. The writer obtained two such ex- 

 amples of flat-bottomed, heavy-walled shallow food bowds — one in 

 a cave, the other in a rock ledge burial in the mountains adjoining 

 the valley of the Limoncilla, near Constanza, each accompanied by 

 Arawakan artifacts; one also by a skull showing frontal-occipital 

 deformation. 



Methods applied in determining the elements of Santo Domingan 

 ceramics as typified in finds from the Provinces of Samana, Monte 

 Cristi, La Vega, and Santo Domingo may here be summarized. 

 With the exception of the " cazuela " examples accompanying rock 

 ledge burials, also with the exception of the numerous earthenware 

 vessels of varied description excavated from the Arawak cemetery 

 at Andres, Province of Santo Domingo, on the Caribbean coast, 

 most of the examples of Santo Domingan aboriginal ceramics are 

 from the open village sites and consist principally of shards. The 

 earthenware vessels obtained from the cemetery at Andres are from 

 a depth of from 3 to 8 feet and are for the most part intact. 



In describing the wares of Santo Domingan pottery areas or sub- 

 areas the writer follows a scheme somewhat as follows: The pri- 

 mary characteristics of ceramic material, namely, the paste, the 

 form, the surface finish or polish, and the decorative design, if 

 an}'^, gives us a conception of the type. The type of ceramics is 

 clearly indicated when we have stability in each of the four primary 

 characteristics of ceramic material. Type is considered distinctive 

 from a ware in which all of the elements of the paste and surface 

 finish are more or less constant. We are also able to distinguish 

 by comparative method the so-called style of a ware or of a type 

 by the presence of some outstanding feature. In the case of earth- 

 enware from Santo Domingo the style is characterized by combined 



