ETHNOLOGY. 



THE LATIMER COLLECTION OF ANTIQUITIES FROM PORTO RICO IN THE 

 NATIONAL MUSEUM, AT WASHINGTON, D. C. 



By Otis T. Mason. 



The remarkable beauty and finish of the stone implements of Porto 

 Eico and others of the Antilles Islands are not wholly unknown to 

 students of American Archaeology. oSow and then a small collection 

 has found its way to London, Copenliagen, or New York; but they 

 had never been collected in sufficient numbers for a comparative study 

 until this important gift was bestowed on the Smithsonian Institution. 

 For the convenience of description, the specimens may be separated 

 into the following classes : pottery^ celts, smoothing-stones, mealing-stones^ 

 stools, discoidal and spheroidal stones, beads, cylinders, amulets, rude 

 pillar-stones, mammiform stones, maslcs, and collars. In some of these 

 classes the objects are so similar to those found in other parts of Amer- 

 ica and throughout the world, that the briefest description will suffice. 

 In others the number of specimens is so large, and the objects so rare, 

 as to merit the most careful scrutiny and description. Whether from 

 accident or design, there is not in all the collection a single flaked or 

 chipped implement or weapon. Indeed, I have searched in vain in the 

 National Museum for flaking or chipping from a Carib area. Although 

 the historians of the voyages of Columbus mention arrows pointed with 

 stone, they more frequently speak of bone, teeth, and shells as the 

 materials used. Herrera, in speaking of their celts, says that they exca- 

 vated their canoes with flint implements. (Herrera, Stephens's Transla- 

 tion, i, p. 60.) 



POTTERY. 



There is not an entire vessel in the collection, all of the specimens 

 being fragments of variously shaped, coarse, red pottery, well baked, 

 one or two pieces being glossy on the surface. (Figs. 1 and 2.) Nearly 

 all of the ornamentation is produced by animal forms luted on. The 

 most of these are monkey heads adorned with scrolled, circular, and 

 fluted coronets, and by deeply incised lines, often forming very ingeni- 

 ous patterns. Others bear human faces, all grotesque, and the figures 

 of mythological animals. (Figs. 3-7.) In one of them a W-shaped 

 wreath or festoon is luted on the outside. (Fig. 8.) A fragment of the 

 bottom of a cup or jar deserves especial mention, on account of the inge- 

 nious labyrinthine design traced on it by a deep furrowing, produced 

 evidently by a sharp instrument when the vessel was soft. (Fig. 9.) 

 This bold, deep tracing is characteristic of all the ornamentation on the 



372 



