TYPE EXAMPLES IN THE NATIONAL COLLECTION 75 



revealing patches of a firmly incrusted red or lavender hued slip. 

 Many of the shards are thin-walled, but occasionally an unusually 

 thick fragment appears. A few plain-necked water-canteen frag- 

 ments were recovered from Boca del Infierno, while a few shallow 

 globose bowl fragments similar to the shallow Tainan ware from 

 the peninsula were uncovered from the midden in the " Railroad " 

 cave. 



One well-fired globular brick-colored bowl was dug up from Upper 

 Orange Key (U.S.N.M. No. 341056). Quality of the paste and fir- 

 ing is superior to the more granular shards recovered from ordinary 

 Taino sites. The bowl is 5.5 inches (14 cm.) in diameter and 4.7 

 inches (12 cm.) high. The %-cm. thick walls have a coating of 

 ashes and lime. A similar incrustation adhered to the inner and 

 outer walls of pottery objects recovered from the two Orange Keys. 

 Incrustations due to the dripping of lime-impregnated water from 

 the cave ceiling of Boca del Infierno cave also adhered to the shards 

 recovered from the cultural deposits there. Shards from the vicinity 

 of the hearth on the cave floor are thickly coated with carbon, be- 

 speaking their former use as cooking vessels. The small number of 

 canteen fragments from the caves is remarkable in view of the fact 

 that drinking water had to be carried to the caves from a distance 

 of one-half to 2 kilometers. 



Food bowls from the burial cleft of Upper Orange Key, with few 

 exceptions, were broken beyond recognition of their original form. 

 It is probable that some of the pottery fragments found with the 

 burials were used as funerary urns in which the skull and long 

 bones were placed. 



Characteristic of the form of pottery from the caves are such 

 details as handles or lugs of flat ribbons of clay and raised rims. 

 These lugs are not luted on to the vessels after the fashion of the 

 usual Tainan ware but form an extension of and are incorporated in 

 the coil block of the vessel. 



Shallow bowls and food dishes from the caves and from sites on 

 the peninsula are not always globular or hemispherical. Rectan- 

 gular vessels have raised rim sections alternating with depressed sec- 

 tions. The elevated portions are at the ends if the vessel is oblong, 

 and bilateral elevations and depressions appear if the vessel is 

 rectangular. A peculiar reinforcement of the walls of certain forms 

 of earthenware vessels is noted in the parallel series of raised ridges 

 extending from the rim coil vertically to the shoulder. These up- 

 right ribbons of clay are utilized as surface decorative embellish- 

 ments and always terminate at the highest point in vessels with 

 raised rim sections. Vertical reinforcement ridges are illustrated 

 in No. 2, Plate 47. 



