NO. 14 ARCHEOLOGY OF BAY ISLANDS, HONDURAS STRONG 169 



Islands. The same can be said in regard to a number of other rather 

 widely distributed artifact types. Whether these resemblances are 

 more or less fortuitous or are actually generic and derived from some 

 common but as yet undefined cultural substratum, like the Q complex 

 of Lothrop and Vaillant, can only be determined by more exhaustive 

 analysis than is possible here. More specific similarities to Bay Island 

 artifact types occur in the small plumed heads, incised " buttons ", 

 and ear spools of jade or green stone, as well as in the delicately 

 retouched flint knives, all of which come from tombs at Copan. This 

 similarity in certain small jade or green stone artifacts, in carved 

 animal teeth, and in cut shell work, holds for other Maya sites both 

 early and late. Similarly the jars holding votive offerings of this type 

 found beneath certain Maya structures resemble votive caches at 

 Bay Island ofifertories. These more specific similarities between the 

 developed Maya culture and the Bay Islands also occur in the inter- 

 mediate Uloa region. In the Bay Islands they appear to be late, and 

 there is a strong probability that they were transmitted to the Bay 

 Islanders through intermediate peoples at a relatively late date. The 

 bulk of Bay Island ceramic forms and numerous artifact types such 

 as stone pot rests, carved metates with animal heads, mace heads, 

 petaloid celts, and T-shaped axes are rare or lacking in Maya sites. 

 Thus, aside from certain rather general resemblances in structural, 

 ceramic, and artifact types, which may or may not prove to be generic, 

 the relationship lietween the Maya proper and the people of the Bay 

 Islands seems to have been indirect and relatively late. 



Turning to the prehistoric evidence from western Nicaragua and 

 northern Costa Rica, one searching for Bay Island correspondences 

 finds himself much more at home. Both the Pacific and Highland 

 areas share the same style of stone statues, rough stone and earth 

 mounds, rough stone walls and monoliths, inhumation in mounds, gro- 

 tesque applique figurines, figurines seated on stools, carved metates 

 with animal heads, carved green stone amulets of more or less conven- 

 tionalized form, anthropomorphic celts of green stone, stone mace 

 heads, discoidal and cylindrical bark beaters, petaloid celts, and T- 

 shaped axes. All these types occur in the Bay Islands, and many of 

 them, as in the case of mammiform mace heads and anthropomorphic 

 celts, are of identical forms. The urn burials of the Nicaragua lake 

 region are closely similar to those from the Bay Islands. 



In ceramics, the Nicoya Polychrome ware of the Pacific area shares 

 numerous traits of form and decoration with Bay Island Polychrome I. 

 Between Pacific area and Bay Island monochrome wares there are 



