64 BULLETIN 15 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



vessels are the common heritage of middle American tribes; but the 

 lack of certain reptiles, mammals, and aviforms in Santo Domingo, 

 and conversely the presence of genera of edible rodents, many species 

 of owls and bats, belonging to a localized type of fauna — each of 

 these three powerful factors serves to account for resemblances and 

 differences in Santo Domingan earthenware forms and designs. 

 The first two factors make for resemblances, while the latter accounts 

 for differences such as accrue in the normal chronological develop- 

 ment of traits in an isolated island culture. Then, too, the growth 

 in Santo Domingo of a primitive religion centering about a number 

 of potent zemis or local gods is apparently entirely distinct from 

 Mayan, Muskhogean, and Andean culture areas. 



Certain types and wares of aboriginal pottery from Andres on 

 the southeast Caribbean coast of Santo Domingo are identical with 

 those recovered by the writer in the Provinces of Monte Cristi and 

 Samana on the Dominican north coast. There is also apparently a 

 similarity of certain forms and decorative designs with vessels and 

 shards from the mountainous interior of La Vega Province. A 

 type of low-rimmed, shallow black-ware hemispherical bowl (not 

 the type with incurved rim), undecorated as to surface and crude 

 as to form, is apparently much more prevalent in the mountainous 

 interior than on the Caribbean coast site at Andres, where the 

 shallow food bowl (cazuela) has passed through a developmental 

 stage and appears with an incurved rim covered with a banded in- 

 cised decorative design. A rough correspondence does exist be- 

 tween bowls recovered at Andres and those from the interior, the 

 Andres specimens being much thinner walled, and having a more 

 conventionalized form with an incurved shallow rim, while the 

 cazuela type of the interior provinces has thick walls, irregularly 

 rounded contours, including a flattish, rounded bottom, and no in- 

 curved marginal rim or oral sector. (Pis. G, 7.) 



If the Constanza type of cazuela had been found along with 

 non-Arawak skeletal material or culturally distinct objects, one 

 might conclude that it had been fashioned by representatives of some 

 non-Arawak tribe. The Constanza cazuela was found, however, in 

 every instance with deformed skulls of the typical Arawak type in 

 association with earthenware, including figurine heads of the well- 

 known Arawak type. This low-walled, crude, undecorated cazuela 

 is then to be considered an early undifferentiated Arawakan pottery 

 form. 



Variant from the known types of potter}^ from Santo Domingo 

 !S the thin- walled oblong or oval food bowl from the Arawak ceme- 

 terj^ at Andres. This bowl has a clearly marked indentation or con- 

 striction surrounding the vessel midway between the margin and 



