68 BULLETIN 15 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



find the decorative handle or lug representing some animal form. 

 Perhaps at the other end of the series we might expect to find such 

 highly developed examples as the 2-compartment, thin-walled, 

 knobbed red ware (pi. 47), or the painted and slipped thin-walled 

 oval or boat-shaped type, neither of which could have been fashioned 

 by the Arawakan potter in the early stages of his development. 



If we were to compare the pottery of the Santo Domingan 

 Arawaks with that of the Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, the former 

 might be designated as unpainted and the latter as painted ware. 

 This broad distinction, however, does not adequately characterize 

 the two groups, as at the center of intensive pottery production in 

 the Greater Antilles, that is, in southern and western Porto Rico, 

 also in southeastern Santo Domingo, painted ware makes its ap- 

 pearance. Then again on the north coast of Santo Domingo in 

 Samana and in Monte Cristi white and red painted ware are not 

 infrequent. Also it is frequently impossible to distinguish between 

 the incised decorative designs on pottery forms from Santo Domingo 

 or Porto Rico and from the Lesser Antilles. Closer inspection, 

 however, usually reveals definite distinctions in the incised ware 

 from these two areas; the Caribbean pottery from the Lesser An- 

 tilles having isolated, deeply incised lines, while the incised designs 

 from Santo Domingo scarcely ever appear as single rectilinear or 

 curvilinear lines, but appear as encircling bands or decorative 

 panels of parallel lines, somewhat resembling in this respect the 

 trailed incised bands from certain Choctaw sites in Mississippi. 

 Distinctions in form between the wares of the Greater and Lesser 

 Antilles might readily be pointed out, such as basal forms from the 

 Lesser Antilles consisting of free standing legs, annular rings or 

 flat-bottomed pedestal bases, as contrasted with rounded or flat 

 bottoms, and the rarely appearing low annular bases characterizing 

 Santo Domingan wares. A distinction frequently made regards 

 applied or secondary decorative design, namelj^, that figurine heads 

 from the Greater Antilles are supposedly mostly anthropomorphic 

 while those from the Lesser Antilles are more of the so-called bloated 

 head type, with additional designs, such as turtle figurines, inclined 

 to the zoomorphic. This distinction is of little significance, as 

 aviform and other zoomorphic t3'pes of molded figurine heads are 

 common to Monte Cristi, Samana, La Vega, Puerto Plata, and 

 southeastern Santo Domingo. The distinction also has been made 

 that stamped design on pottery was characteristic of the Lesser 

 Antilles but not of the Greater Antilles. Dominican and Porto Rican 

 pottery collections include examples of earthenware cylinder and 

 flat disk stamps, not all of which, however, were used in applying 

 pottery designs, although some of them were undoubtedly so used. 

 Spindle whorls are common to both areas. The more rounded so- 



