TYPE EXAMPLES IN" THE NATIONAL COLLECTION 81 



logical collections from the Antilles is all the more noteworthy inas- 

 much as both weaving of cotton cloth and body painting were com- 

 monly practiced traits. Flat pattern stamps of clay are figured and 

 described by De Booy, Fewkes, and Krieger from eastern Santo 

 Domingo, and by Harrington from Santiago, Cuba. Similar stamps 

 are described by De Jong from Aruba, an island off the Venezuelan 

 coast, while Fewkes mentions similar examples from Trinidad, Car- 

 riacou, and the Lesser Antilles. Koth also describes discoidal clay 

 stamps from the Grenadines. Gilij describes an earthenware stamp 

 from the Orinoco Valley, while Marcano mentions their use by the 

 Piaroa Indians of the Venezuelan uplands. 



In the United States, ceramics showing impressions made with 

 a flat stamp are described by Holmes from Florida and from the 

 eastern Gulf coast, from Georgia by Thomas and Moore, from Ten- 

 nessee by Holmes and Harrington. We have no evidence that pot- 

 tery vessels from these subareas have decorated impressions fashioned 

 with flat earthenware clay stamps, wooden stamps apparently having 

 been used exclusively. Archeological finds of flat pottery stamps 

 are frequent in Mexico and Central America, where ceramic im- 

 pressions of flat discs have been reported by Gregory Mason from 

 British Honduras and stamps from Loltun in Yucatan have been 

 described by Thompson. From sites in the valley of the Cauca in 

 Colombia and sites described by Uhle in Peru similar flnds are 

 described. 



The cylindrical stamp has a much more limited archeological dis- 

 tribution in Santo Domingo, Mexico, Central America, Colombia, 

 Venezuela, and Ecuador. Fewkes describes one cylindrical earth- 

 enware roller stamp from the Merino Santo Domingan collection, 

 and the writer has described another collected by Abbott from 

 northern Santo Domingo. (PI. 34.) A similar roller stamp in the 

 Eijks Ethnographisch liluseum, Leiden, from Aruba off the Vene- 

 zuelan coast, is described by De Jong, but no similar archeological 

 find comes from any other Antillean site than from Santo Domingo. 

 No cylindrical earthenware stamps are known from the Toltec 

 Teotihuacan horizon in the valley of Mexico, but both types are 

 known from the later Aztec culture level. In Santo Domingo, as 

 in Mexico and northern South America, cylindrical stamps are less 

 frequent than are the flat pattern stamps. Earthenware stamps, 

 whether flat or cylindrical, were infrequently used in stamping de- 

 signs on pottery, their primary importance perhaps being in weaving 

 or for body ornamentation. 



Molds for pottery manufacture have a limited distribution in 

 Mexico and in the Andean region and are not found in northern 

 South America, the West Indies, or in southeastern United States. 



