116 BULLETIN 15 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



The numerous forms and incised decorative designs blossoming 

 out in Floridian pottery ascribable to a rich mythology of intensive 

 centers of pottery production are balanced by numerous applied 

 ornaments on Santo Domingan Avare. Few of the so-called grotesque 

 figurine heads appear in Florida designs, and then only occasionally. 

 The 3-pointed bat or owl head figurine is an example of a figurine 

 type occurring in both areas. Handles, which are the utilitarian 

 base for the decorative figurine heads in Santo Domingan ware, are 

 rare in Florida. This may account for the scarcity of figurine heads 

 similar to Santo Domingan forms. 



In a review of northern and southern affiliations of Antillean 

 culture Charlotte D. Gower cites the conclusions of several students 

 in reaching her own conclusion that "A general survey of pottery 

 forms in the Antilles and the Southeast leaves an impression that 

 there is not a sharp break between the two regions, though specific 

 identities are hard to find." For every definite example of identity 

 in ceramic wares we must refer to many other examples of dissimi- 

 larity in form and design from the same subarea. Thus, in the 

 Twentieth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 

 the bowl marked "e" on Plate 76 is identical; with it appear ex- 

 amples of two other decorative embellishments foreign to the 

 Greater Antilles. One of the bowls {d) has a decorative zone formed 

 by pinching the plastic clay with the thumb, while the vase (5) 

 shows a decorative zone marked with the promiscuous stamp design 

 characteristic of the South Appalachian area but foreign to the 

 Greater Antilles. In Plate 79, &, a water jar marked " 6 " from the 

 Florida northwest coast is identical in form and strongly resembles 

 in decorative embellishment water jars from Monte Cristi Province. 

 Yet in the same plate Holmes figures five other water jars from the 

 same northwest Florida coast, each with a form and decorative 

 design totally different from that of Santo Domingan village sites 

 or burial offerings. In Plate 110, f/, likewise appears a shard from 

 Tampa Bay, Fla. The shard has an incised decorative design 

 forming a continuous spiral encircling the vessel just below the mar- 

 ginal incised band. This free-hand incised form of design is iden- 

 tical with similar designs on pots from the north and northeast 

 coasts of Santo Domingo. Yet in the same plate are figured exam- 

 ples of pinched decorative design and of shards showing a peculiar 

 combination of meandered bands foreign to Santo Domingan pot- 

 tery, of punctations characteristic of the northern coastal sites of 

 Santo Domingo. 



The famous vase first cited by Doctor Holmes in the American 

 Anthropologist, volume 7, January, 1891, was similar in design to a 

 vase found in a mound in Franklin County, Fla., and a design carved 

 from the seat of a wooden stool from Turfe Island. It would ap- 



