112 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 92 



There were no surface indications other than several irregular pits, 

 each about 6 feet square ; elsewhere the deposit was covered by several 

 inches of soil. The depth of the deposit is close to 2 feet at the center, 

 thinning out toward the edges. A number of large wild fig and other 

 great trees grow around the site, and dense thickets of corozo palms 

 and other shrubs hem it in. Since no view is obtainable from here 

 and it has no marked topographic features, the reason for its selection 

 as an offertory is obscure. 



This site was visited by the party of Mitchell-Hedges, and the 

 various pits were made at that time and later by Joe Saba. The latter, 

 who accompanied Hedges, stated that over 100 more or less complete 

 crude pottery vessels had been removed from the site and that there 

 had been many nested pots of which all but one or two inner vessels 

 were broken. These inner vessels were of plain ware and contained 

 nothing but fish bones and small shells. Joe stated that in all his work 

 here he had never encountered a painted vessel or sherd, and my 

 rather brief excavations at the site corroborated his observation. 

 Unslipped pottery, however, is present in enormous C[uantities, though 

 we found only two complete vessels (pi. 31, a, b). Joe also stated 

 that he had found human bones and teeth at this site but no regular 

 burials. In our brief examination a few small fragments of human 

 bone were encountered scattered at random amidst the sherds. 



The predominant feature of the site is the enormous c^uantity of 

 undecorated monochrome pot sherds and the comparative rarity of 

 other artifacts. No metates were seen, but several subrectangular 

 manos about 20 cm long and one cylindrical, polished granite frag- 

 ment 12.5 cm in diameter were found. There were numerous rough 

 pestles or hammerstones, often merely conveniently shaped pebbles 

 or boulders. The most interesting ground stone artifact was a frag- 

 mentary, ridged and grooved oval bark beater of calcite (cave onyx) 

 (pi. 16, fig. I, /). The specimen had evidently received long and 

 hard usage. There were numerous large pieces of unworked rock in 

 the deposit, and several of these had been subjected to great heat. Their 

 crumbling texture was the same as that employed for tempering in 

 the coarser pottery. Fragments of schist, green serpentine, and 

 pumice, one piece of the latter being used as a rattle in a pottery foot, 

 were preserved. One fragment, 5 cm in length, of a black obsidian 

 prismatic flake knife, its edges blunted with much use, was found 

 (fig- ^5> 9) but no other chipped stone artifacts were seen. On the 

 whole, stone artifacts of any sort were remarkably scarce, and the 

 larger forms such as metates with legs were lacking. Conch and whelk 

 shells were present, but no shell or bone artifacts were noted. 



