l88 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 93 



The texture of the Sterns Creek culture pottery is crumbly rather 

 than flaky. It is fairly hard, however, and has a gritty, chalklike feel- 

 ing. The tempering is of grit varying from coarse gravel to that of an 

 almost imperceptible fineness. Tempering containing mica has been 

 used in a considerable number of cases. The color ranges from a gray- 

 black to a light yellow. Of the 264 body sherds, 50 are light-colored, 

 1 2 are intermediate, and 202 dark, the gray-black ware predominating. 

 Surface finish is rough, only one sherd marked with fine vertical 

 scratches showing any degree of polish. They have for the most part 

 been smoothed inside and out, but the surface remains granular. 

 Cord marking on the body is absent. Several sherds have the rough 

 surface and vertical ridges observable on the complete pot found in 

 the gully at A (pi. 19, fig. i, a). Some such implement as a straw- 

 wrapped paddle appears to have been used to produce this rough, 

 vertically ridged exterior. On some of the sherds only traces of such 

 ridges remain, owing to subsequent polishing. Straw-marked pottery 

 is very much in the minority, however, as the above list indicates. 

 Eight body sherds suggest in their horizontally ridged surfaces either 

 the imperfect eradication of coils or else molding in a coiled basket. 

 In the laboratory modeling clay pressed down into an open-mouthed 

 coiled basket received much the same sort of ridges. In general this 

 ware appears to have been coiled rather than molded by the paddle and 

 Jinvil method. The vessels, to judge from the restored pots and other 

 sherds, were characteristically small with a small mouth opening. 

 From the degree of curve observable on the rim sherds Sterns esti- 

 mated the average mouth opening to be 8 inches. This seems to me 

 to be too large for an average. The scarcity of rim sherds generally 

 ( II out of 275) argues for a small mouth opening, and this is borne 

 out by the restored and the complete pots. 



The inside of many of the sherds retain a thick black soot and all 

 seem to have come from utilitarian vessels. There is considerable 

 range in thickness from a few heavy, coarsely tempered pieces to 

 very thin delicate sherds. The sherds range from 3 to 9 mm in thick- 

 ness, with the thin ware predominant, and all seem to have come from 

 small to medium-sized vessels. No trace of any lugs or handles has 

 been encountered. All the 1 1 rim sherds in the present collection are 

 decorated around the rim by a delicate thumb-nail scallop applied by 

 what might be called a " pie-crust " technique or by simple incisions 

 (pi. 19, fig. I, b). This scalloped band is from 2 to 4 mm in width, 

 and the impressions are applied diagonally or vertically, approaching 

 but not crossing the lip of the vessel. Of the 43 rim sherds recovered 

 by Sterns (191 5 a, II, p. 187) from the deep strata, 40 had incisions 



