44 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 92 



which is difficult of access and poorly suited for habitation, and from 

 the nature of the artifacts recovered, site i was in all probability 

 an offertory shrine and burial place rather than a dwelling site. In 

 the following discussion of artifacts the collections of both parties 

 have been merged. Bird's collection, which is the most extensive, 

 is in the American Museum of Natural History and ours in the United 

 States National Museum. 



CERAMICS 



No complete vessels were found at this site ; Bird's collection in- 

 cludes 250 sherds and ours 50 sherds. In both collections these were 

 selected, and a large number of sherds, especially undecorated pieces, 

 were left at the site. However, although undecorated, plain red sherds 

 were more common at site i than the following tabulation indicates, 

 the proportion of decorated ware at this site was very high. The 

 combined sherd collection falls into the following main types : 



No. of sherds Type 



10 Thin polychrome (Polychrome I) 



20 Medium polychrome (Polychrome II) 



270 Red, unslipped ware. (Of these, 53 are more or less elaborate 



lugs, 132 are elaborately incised sherds, and 85 are plain 

 sherds.) 



The thin polychrome pottery from this site is very limited in amount 

 but very definite in type. It is characterized by an orange slip and 

 elaborate line decoration in black and red-purple. All 10 sherds are 

 from the Bird collection, as I found no sherds of this ware at 

 the site; hence its rarity in the collection reflects its actual rarity 

 at the site. The body sherds show complex design motifs ; two rim 

 sherds have a typical, double black line above and a red line below, and 

 the other sherds are from the lower portion of vessels and are marked 

 by heavier black, red-purple, or dark orange lines. One rim sherd 

 (fig. II, k), perhaps transitional between this and the next type, has 

 a geometric design in red-purple and black on both surfaces. The 

 sherds are small, the largest being 6.5 cm in length, and they range 

 from 5 to 7 mm in thickness. There are two lugs that, owing to 

 erosion, lack any slip. One of these is of the applique rider type 

 (fig. 22, h), the other a slight variant of the iguana type (fig. 22, c). 

 The temper in most of the sherds is too fine to be visible, but in 

 one or two, gray grit can be distinguished. Since this type of ware 

 (Polychrome I) will be analyzed in detail later in relation to other 

 sites where it was more abundant, further discussion can be deferred. 



