TYPE EXAMPLES IN THE NATIOISTAL, COLLECTION 63 



bulbous knobs, forming a design about the equatorial ridge, or near 

 the lip presenting a new form, distinct from the ordinary incised 

 or applied decorative designs. 



DESCRIPTION OF TYPE EXAMPLES IN THE NATIONAL COLLECTION 



Subareas of aboriginal 'pottery in Santo Domingo. — At each of the 

 sites studied by the writer during the 1928, 1929, and 1930 seasons 

 many variations in the decorative design, form, and style of earthen- 

 ware vessels were observed. The range in decorative design and in 

 form for each of the aboriginal provinces of Santo Domingo is 

 much greater than had been anticipated. What at first glance 

 appears to be a borrowing of a ready-made form or design from 

 another pottery-making area is on more careful study found to be 

 one of a series linking up with characteristic Tainan designs of the 

 Santo Domingan-Porto Rican pottery area. 



There are indications that the range of the Santo Domingan-Porto 

 Kican aboriginal design area in earthenware extends well beyond the 

 limits of those two islands and is linked on the south with lowland 

 forest areas of South America and extends on the north to the 

 margins of the eastern Indian pottery area, including pottery of the 

 Iroquois of eastern Canada and contiguous United States. Again, 

 other elements of aboriginal form and design as executed in pre- 

 historic Santo Domingan pottery occur in representative collections 

 from the upper Mississippi Valley, from the Gulf States of the 

 Southeast, and from the Florida Peninsula. This observation does 

 not imply that designs were consciously copied or that a diffusion 

 of culture traits generally is responsible for the similarities in 

 pottery. It is rather that tribes occupying a marginal position with 

 regard to eastern centers of aboriginal pottery production combined 

 certain elements of form and design in such a manner as to simulate 

 a tribal culture diffusion, when even indirect contact can scarcely 

 be proved. 



There is no question but that we must consider the entire Mexican, 

 middle American, highland and lowland South American pottery- 

 producing areas as sharing a common heritage in their agricultural 

 culture trait complexes centering about the culture of maize, cotton, 

 cassava, and other root crops. With this common heritage of pot- 

 tery production went certain details of technic and design. We must 

 combine one other element in explaining pottery development in 

 Santo Domingo, that is, the influence of local environmental differ- 

 ences, physical and spiritual. Attempts at decorative design through 

 the more or less random incising of straight or curved lines on the 

 walls of pottery vessels while still pliable are universal and human ; 

 the details of modeling and application of clay figurines on pottery 



