112 BULLETIN 15 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



features which was practiced by the tribes of Arkansas and eastern 

 Tennessee. A peculiar combination of applied and free-hand ge- 

 ometric incised design, together with distinctive technic, notably 

 the overhanging marginal frieze, giving an angular effect to a glo- 

 bose bowl or jar, characteristic of Iroquoian prehistoric forms, sets 

 off the Iroquoian area again as distinct from that of other areas in 

 the eastern United States, centering about New York and Pennsyl- 

 vania and extending in places into Canada. 



Perhaps the most important group of wares come from the middle 

 Mississippi Valley. These are characterized by plastic modeling of 

 the human head in realistic and artistic style, also by a richness of 

 effigy forms, which is delimited by the marginal potterj'^ forms com- 

 ing from the upper Mississippi or the Northwest. The Ohio Valley 

 also oilers distinct forms. Then we have the typical Algonquian 

 ware with the conical base, and wavy oral margin, also the South 

 Appalachian ware. The Gulf coast ware appears to have more 

 subdivisions and areas of local development in form and design. 

 Some of these groups of pottery forms are so distinctive as to make 

 classification easy, for instance the free-hand modeled animal fig- 

 urines from the east coast of Florida, or the peculiar style of cur- 

 vilinear roulette punctated design from the Florida west coast 

 characterized by the finds made by Fewkes at Weeden Island. So 

 far as is known, not one of the areas here cited makes use solely 

 of incised or applied decorative forms. Everywhere we have a 

 combination of the two, as in Santo Domingo. 



If we refer to a Gulf coast type of pottery we would perhaps 

 single out the tribes occupying the coast east of the delta of the 

 Mississippi and extending to northern Florida. This is perhaps the 

 traditional home or historical habitat of the Muskhogean tribes but 

 was occupied by branches of the Sioux as well. Here appear 

 stamped designs so characteristic of the area somewhat farther east. 

 Animal features are modeled in relief and are attached to the vases 

 and bowls or are incorporated in the walls of the vessel as in the 

 middle Mississippi area, but much less frequently. We also find here 

 the beginning of the practice of " killing " the pottery placed in 

 graves as grave offerings. This custom, as is well known, extended 

 eastward to Florida and the Atlantic coast, but was not practiced in 

 the middle Mississippi Valley area, or in Santo Domingo. 



Identity in form and in ornamental features with Santo Domingan 

 wares does appear in Gulf coast pottery. A sample specimen of 

 this, figured by Holmes in the Twentieth Annual Report of the 

 Bureau of American Ethnology, Plate 55 a, from Georgia, has com- 

 pressed rounded wall with truncated bottom, well-marked equatorial 

 ridge and short, sharply defined incurved upper portion covered with 



