82 BULLETIN 15G, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The patterns for decorative designs common to earthenware stamps 

 from Santo Domingo, the Lesser Antilles, and northern South 

 America are quite similar to those from Central America. They are 

 almost identical with earthenware stamps recovered from the Florid- 

 ian and Gulf coasts. Designs carved from wood or bamboo usually 

 differ entirely from those produced with an earthenware stamp, 

 whether flat or cylindrical. The idea of a mechanical stamping 

 device is coextensive with the area of intensive pottery production. 



In the Southeastern States stamped earthenware vessels are known 

 from Florida, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and 

 Alabama. Also from Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and 

 Michigan. Check-stamp pottery, also the promiscuously stamped 

 ware from Florida and the Gulf coast, has an exceedingly limited 

 distribution. Stamped earthenware of more varied designs has a 

 much wider range. There is much more resemblance in the incised 

 wares of the southeast and of Santo Domingo than there is in 

 stamped designs on earthenware from any of the States enumerated. 

 Aside from the archeological finds of stamped earthenware from 

 British Honduras described by Gregory Mason, much of the earthen- 

 ware showing stamped designs comes from the eastern United States 

 rather than from the Antilles, Mexico, or Central or South America. 

 Among modern Indian tribes, the story is a different one, many 

 South American tribes being known as stamping their earthenware, 

 however, not with earthenware stamps. In the United States 

 the modern Cherokee wares are typical of the stamp-impressed 

 decorative embellishments. 



A cylindrical pattern stamp showing a meandered fret with in- 

 terstices of concentric triangles, ends set off with encircling bands 

 of two incised lines leaving a central relieved ridge; also a circular 

 flat pattern stamp consisting of a central pit surrounded by crescen- 

 tic recurved lines forming quadrants with a transverse line at each 

 of the four quadrants, are from the Archbishop Merino collection, 

 also another cylindrical stamp collected by Dr. W. L. Abbott near 

 Guayabin and figured by the writer (pi. 34) shows curvilinear in- 

 cised designs more crudely executed. Cylindrical stamps from Santo 

 Domingo are rare, no other examples being known from the Greater 

 Antilles. 



In Plate 25 are illustrated a series of pottery fragments incor- 

 porating decorative designs consisting of series of pits. One of 

 these fragments (U.S.N.M. No. 341039) shows parallel rows of shal- 

 low pits evenly spaced. These pits were made with a blunt end of 

 a stick, but were applied with such force as to make a corresponding 

 raised dot on the reverse or inner surface of the potsherd. All the 

 fragments have a surface color of dull brick brown, but have been 

 blackened by use on one or both surfaces. One has pitted decorative 



