126 DAVENPORT ACADEMY OF NATURAL SCIENCES. 



The borders of this district are necessarily not clearly defined. 

 The characters of the art products blend more or less with those 

 of neighboring sections. This is a usual phenomenon and is prob- 

 ably due to a variety of causes. The mere contact of peoples leads 

 to the exchange of ideas, and, consequently, to similarities in the 

 products of industry. 



A change of habitat with its consequent change of environment 

 is capable of modifying art to such an extent that certain characters 

 are entirely lost. Groups of relics and remains attributed by arch- 

 aeologists to distinct stocks of people, may, in extreme cases, be 

 the work of one and the same people executed under the influence 

 of different environments and at widely separated periods of time. 



How Found. — All peoples have resorted, at some period of their 

 history, to the practice of burying articles of use or value with the 

 dead. It is to this custom that we owe the preservation of so many 

 entire pieces of these fragile utensils. They are exhumed from 

 burial mounds in great numbers, and to an equal extent, perhaps, 

 from simple, unmarked graves which are constantly being brought 

 to light by the plough-share. Fragmentary ware is found also in 

 refuse heaps, on house and village sites, and scattered broadcast 

 over the face of the land. This ware, at its best, has probably not 

 been greatly superior in hardness to the soft pottery of our own 

 furnaces, and the disintegrating agencies of the soil have often re- 

 duced it to a very fragile state. Some writer has expressed the 

 belief that a considerable portion of the ware of this province has 

 been sun-baked merely. This view is hardly a safe one, however, 

 as clay, unmixed with lime or other like ingredient, no matter how 

 long exposed to the rays of the sun, would, from ages of contact 

 with the moist earth, certainly return to its original condition. I 

 have seen but few pieces that, even after the bleaching of centuries, 

 did not show traces of the dark mottlings that result from imperfect 

 firing. There probably was a period of unbaked clay preceding 

 the terra-cotta epoch, but we cannot expect to find definite traces of 

 its existence except, perhaps, in cases where large masses, such as 

 mounds or fortifications, were employed. The relations of the 

 various articles of pottery to the bodies with which they were asso- 

 ciated seem to be quite varied. The position of each ves.sel was 

 determined by its contents or by its real or symbolic use, or, other- 

 wise, by the pleasure of the depositor. With one tribe bottles 

 of water may have been placed by the head and vases of food or 



