DIVERGENT POTTERY GROUPS IN THE ANTILLES 121 



form, perhaps of a turtle. MacCurdy figures a similar design from 

 Chiriqui, Panama. It reappears as a banded incised decoration on 

 gray- ware water-bottle necks from Monte Cristi Province. (PL 37.) 

 The same recurved volute figure reappears as a painted design on pot- 

 tery from St. Kitts. In other details of aboriginal pottery forms 

 and designs the Bahamas appear more closely linked with the Porto 

 Rican-Santo Domingan pottery area than with the peninsula of 

 Florida. 



Ahoriglnal pottery of Cuba. — Cuban aboriginal earthenware is 

 imperfectly known and no extensive series of vessels exists anywhere 

 in museum collections. It consists of shallow, flat bowls incised on 

 inner margin; also of globose bowls with sharply defined shoulder 

 ridge and straight-walled sides forming angles with the equatorial 

 ridge, while the walls below the shoulder are convexly rounded. 

 Boat-shaped vessels, plain like Jamaican funerary vessels, also like 

 those described by Fewkes from Porto Rico and by De Booy from 

 St. Croix, are most tj^pical forms. Figurine heads of burnt clay 

 are applied on shallow, flat bowls as in Santo Domingo. The fig- 

 urines have eye forms either of simple punctated or of the coffee- 

 bean type flanked with clay ribbons representing arms or other 

 members of the body. Nostrils may be represented or not; mouth 

 is represented by means of a bisected oblong clay knob of coffee- 

 bean type, or of a simple horizontal incised line ; headdress is rep- 

 resented by noded clay ribbons and lobed projections; face is 

 modeled in concentric circular planes. In the decorated globose 

 bowls the figurine heads with loop handles attached project above 

 the upper rim. 



As in Santo Domingo, the white slipped w^are is superior to the 

 terra cotta and buff wares in hardness of paste, in the thorough 

 pulverization of the ingredients, and in smoothness of surface 

 finish. Except, then, for the plain trencher-shaped vessels (pi. 44), 

 which resembles Jamaican types (pi. 42), Cuban aboriginal pottery, 

 so far as is known, is identical with that of Santo Domingo. 



M. R. Harrington, who stresses the distinctions supposedly exist- 

 ing between the Ciboney of Cuba and Tainan cultures generally, 

 notes certain features and elements of Ciboney pottery : 



Pottery of any kind is very rare on Ciboney sites, exceept in certain cases 

 where it is found on or near the surface and is obviously Tainan and intru- 

 sive but once in a while, as at the early village site at Mesa Buena Vista, near 

 Jauco, may be found sherds, usaully plain, but sometimes decorated with 

 simple angular patterns, of rather crude vessels which seem to have been of 

 flattened globular form, like the more recent Pinar del Rio vessels shown in 

 Figure 93, or of the type known as boat shaped, oval in outline and pointed 

 at both ends. Now, semiglobular and boat-shaped forms and angular patterns 

 are by no means unknown to Tainan ware, although they are not common ; 



