564 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 60 



of subsistence it is not easy to draw inferences, except to say that 

 full village farming was unlikely. Possibly marine subsistence was 

 supplemented with incipient cultivation, although we have no proof 

 of this. The Valdivia and the Panamanian (Monagrillo) pottery 

 is reasonably well made and fired, the forms are rather simple, and 

 the vessels are decorated with incisions, excisions, punctations, and 

 very simple band painting. These early Ecuadorean and Pana- 

 manian styles may be part of a stratum of ancient Nuclear American 

 pottery that underlies both Middle America and Peru. There are 

 some indications that this may be the case, although the oldest pot- 

 tery so far known in the Middle American and Peruvian areas dates 

 from several centuries later [46]. In figure 1 the interpretation is 

 offered that Nuclear American pottei^y is oldest in southern Middle 

 America (for this there is as yet no evidence) and in the Intermediate 

 area (for this there is evidence). Whatever the point of origin for 

 pottery in Nuclear America, there is fairly general agreement that 

 the ceramic ideas generated there carried to much of outlying North 

 and South America. 



The second major pottery tradition of the Americas is widely recog- 

 nized by the term Woodland. Apparently not indigenous, but derived 

 from northern Asia, it is best known from the eastern woodlands of 

 New York and the Great Lakes region. So far, its presumed long 

 trek from the Arctic down through Canada has not been traced [47]. 

 Woodland pottery is generally of simpler design than the early Nu- 

 clear American wares. Of an elongated form, it is frequently finished 

 only with cord-marked surfaces (pi. 3, fig. 1). As already noted, the 

 oldest of this cord-marked pottery in the Americas may go back to 

 2500 B.C. [48]. Even if this early dating is not accepted, there is 

 little doubt but that Woodland pottery was well established in eastern 

 North America before 1000 B.C. 



In spite of the fact that the Nuclear American and Woodland pot- 

 tery traditions are so radically different, there are, interestingly, a 

 few similarities. The most notable of these is the technique of rocker- 

 stamping combined with incised zoning of plain surface areas, known 

 in Nuclear America and in the eastern United States (pi. 3, fig. 2). 

 The distinctive rocker-stamped treatment of pottery was accomplished 

 by impressing the soft, unfired surface of a vessel with either a small 

 straight-edged implement manipulated rocker-fashion or, possibly, 

 with a fine-edged disk used like a roulette. The impressions left on 

 the pottery may be either plain or dentate, and they always have a 

 characteristic "zigzag" appearance. Rocker-stamping is found in the 

 Valdivia phase in Ecuador, and it also occurs at about 1000 B.C. in 

 parts of Middle America and in Peru [49] . In eastern North America 

 it is not found on the earliest Woodland pottery but is found on 



