56 BULLETIN 15 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



native cultures in the areas compared perpetually made for succes- 

 sive changes in form and design. Individual idiosyncrasies must 

 also be taken into account if we are to explain satisfactorily slight 

 variations in the vessels from any one site, let alone from widely 

 separated pottery-making areas. Availability of tempering mate- 

 rials of different sorts made for divergent usage as tribes occupied 

 new homes or migrated from the coast to interior habitations.. 

 Contrasted with these forces making for lack of identity within 

 one culture area or within two closely associated localities is a series 

 of motives constraining the native potter to follow certain forms 

 and conventional designs. The general level of culture as pertains 

 to food habits would dictate the use of shallow bowls, the circular 

 griddle, and perhaps other forms of food vessels. Ceremonial 

 forms, as braziers, censers, ceremonial deity modelings, and incised 

 or painted designs, depend on tribal religious development. The 

 important motives dictated by religion and myth impelled the West 

 Indian aborigines to shape a stone image of the same type ranging 

 throughout the Bermudas and Greater Antilles."" Apparently it 

 is the same with zoomorphic designs applied to earthenware vessels. 

 We may easily trace certain modeled life forms, applied to earthen- 

 ware vessels in a decorative way, from Cuba and Venezuela to 

 Colombia and to Panama, likewise to the Gulf States and to the 

 Huastecs of Yucatan. 



The general culture level as pertains to the potter and his craft, 

 however, dictated the use of incised ornamental design alike in the 

 Guianas, the Antilles, and in certain of the Eastern and Gulf States. 

 These are elementary, protean designs appearing also in modified 

 form, of course, in the Neolithic in Europe, and on modern x\.frican 

 wares. The Ashanti incised line terminates in shallow pits, identical 

 with what has been termed unmistakable evidence of Santo Domin- 

 gan aboriginal decorative design on pottery. (This design does not 

 appear on shell, bone, or wood objects.) Then, too, there is the 

 meandered scroll, incised on Antillean pottery wares, wood and shell 

 objects, painted on pueblo pottery, also on South American wares. 

 Scarification and Crosshatch, manifestations of elementary decora- 

 tive tendencies apparently cropping out wherever the primitive 

 potter emerges with liis craft, appear alike on Siberian, Alaskan, 

 . Floridian, Antillean, and Pueblo vessels. 



The substitution of paint for incised technic is an advanced de- 

 velopment and possesses chronological value, paint always appear- 

 ing on late forms, never on early wares. It is this decorative feature 

 that makes doubtful the antiquity of archaic figurines from the 

 valley of Mexico. Painted archaic types from the valley of Mexico 



23 De Booy, Theodoor, Certain Similarities in Amulets from the Northern Antilles. 

 Holmes Anniversary Volume, Washington, pp. 24-30, 191G. 



I 



