l6 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 76 



the decorated vessels w^ere placed in a reversed position, but some 

 of them w^ere still upright. They contained decaying organic matter, 

 probably remains of food. There are in the collection no examples 

 of urn burials, although in some cases a reversed food bowl fitted 

 close upon a human skull. The many scattered fragments implies that 

 vessels were purposely broken — a modified form of " killing " — 

 before they were deposited with the dead. In most cases the Tampa 

 Bay ware has geometrical decorations, but jars bearing on their 

 rims heads of human beings, animals, or birds were rare. In one or 

 two instances the head of a bird was represented in low relief and 

 the accompanying avian body simply smooth without elevation. The 

 decoration of the pottery is exceptional in that the designs are incised 

 and generally formed by series of punctures or incised lines. The 

 exterior, and occasionally the interior, of food bowls was decorated, 

 but the ornamentation of jars is generally limited to their exteriors. 

 This use of dots or punctation (punctures forming lines) is one of 

 the distinctive features of Florida ceramics and the designs are 

 generally conventional figures. 



In a study of the various decorated fragments which the author 

 obtained he was particularly struck with certain resemblances in 

 method of drawing to designs found on West Indian gourds or 

 calabashes, especially when lines are formed by a series of punc- 

 tures. In West Indian pottery, especially the Tainan of Porto Rico 

 and Santo Domingo, the lines terminate both with and without punc- 

 tures. There is here figured (pi. 13, fig. i) an ornamented Cuban 

 calabash, the geometric lines on which recall very closely some of 

 the decorations on the pottery from Florida. It would seem that the 

 style of decoration of Florida pottery is a survival of that used 

 in the decorative technique of calabashes, or that the technique of 

 the ornamentation of gourds had been taken as a motive for the 

 decoration of pottery. 



Besides the regularly formed jars, platters, and bowls resembling 

 those common in prehistoric southwestern ruins we find in the Florida 

 mounds cone-shaped vessels without top or bottom, and long hollow 

 clay cylinders adorned on the outside with decorations of unknown 

 meaning. These elaborately decorated objects are apparently 

 important religious paraphernalia but of unknown significance. Some 

 of these bowls are very deep, often long and narrow, but without a 

 base or too unstable to stand upright when placed in position. It 

 would seem that such a vessel was intended to be carried in the hands 

 of the participants in ceremonial processions or dances ; or set in sand 

 to afiford a base or rest to keep it upright. 



