FORM AND DESIGN" IN SANTO DOMINGAN POTTERY 47 



These inclosures are square or rectangular and their floor level is 

 slightly below the surrounding surface. The stones forming their 

 boundary walls are roughly hewn and sometimes bear pictographs, 

 in one or two cases the upper end being rudely fashioned to repre- 

 sent the head or body of an idol. The structures are called "' cercados 

 de los Indios " or " juegos de bola," from the belief that they were 

 used in a game of ball called " batey." Oviedo described this ball 

 game, sajdng it was plaj'^ed in inclosures outside the pueblos, where 

 there were seats for the cacique and the spectators. 



We know that the Borinqueiios had elaborate mortuary dances 

 called " areitos " which occurred at the burial of a chief or cacique. 

 An inclosure at Utuado on the left side of the road to Adjuntas is of 

 the type where such ceremonial dances might have taken place. 



ELEMENTS OF FOIiiSI AND DESIGN IN SANTO DOMINGAN ABORIGINAL 



POTTERY 



The making of earthenware forms in North, Middle, or South 

 America is generally coincident with the cultivation of maize and 

 cassava (yucca in the West Indies). In South America the pottery- 

 making area is a continuous one, extending from the Isthmus of 

 Panama soutliAvard along Pacific and Atlantic coasts approxi- 

 matelj^ to latitude 40° south. This distribution leaves without a 

 knowledge of pottery a group of tribes occupying the colder regions 

 of the Patagonian pampas, inhospitable Tierra del Fuego, and on 

 the west, the humid southern Chilean coast. Apparently these tribes 

 did not establish contact with the higher cultures of the Andean 

 highlands far to the north. Another area in eastern Brazil is 

 occupied by isolated tribes whose knowledge of pottery manufac- 

 ture is meager. An enumeration of South American tribes who 

 possess no knowledge of pottery would be premature at this time, 

 but the rule holds that where maize production and the utilization of 

 cassava products is nonexistent pottery production remains unde- 

 veloped. The limits just mentioned as marking the boundaries of 

 ceramic productivity in South America are also the southern bound- 

 aries of maize or cassava production. Isolated tribes without pot- 

 tery, whose culture is but sketchily known, and that occupy territory 

 within the pottery area of Peru and Chile, may represent older 

 culture strata dating back to a time when pottery was more generally 

 an unknown primitive industry in the New World. 



Coincident with pottery distribution in aboriginal South America 

 within the limits of maize and cassava culture is a pottery area of 

 aboriginal North America which is, for the most part, coextensive 

 with maize culture. We have in North America four distinct areas 

 of primitive pottery production. Even the maize-producing, pot- 

 tery-making tribes are separated by an "ethnological sink" extend- 



