28 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. I26 



the mineral celestite). The sherds range in thickness from 3,5' to 

 II mm., with the mode at about 6 mm. Interior surfaces are rather 

 smooth to the touch, but are frequently uneven, as though the fingers 

 or small objects of some sort had been used to support the vessel 

 walls on the inside during the manufacture. 



Three fragments, one a rim sherd, have smooth exterior surfaces. 

 The body sherds are too small to yield information as to vessel shape, 

 but the rim is apparently from a heavy-walled, open bowl (pi. 5, a, i), 

 the rim of which is thickened both inwardly and outwardly to give 

 the perfectly flat lip a width of 15 mm. in contrast to the lo-mm. 

 thickness of the vessel body. This specimen is very similar to a rim 

 sherd in our collections from a late level in Birdshead Cave, in the 

 Owl Creek Mountains of western Wyoming (Bliss, 1950, p. 193), 

 except that the surfaces of the latter have a gritty feel lacking in 

 the present collection. The exterior surfaces of the remainder of 

 the sherds were impressed with fibrous material of some sort, ap- 

 parently never twisted (pi. 5, a, 2-^). The impressions are invariably 

 shallow and in three instances they are relatively fine and lie parallel 

 as though the individual elements of the impressing object were 

 wrapped about a paddle. On another specimen, parallel grooves about 

 2.5 mm. wide and spaced about i mm. apart lie across, and perpen- 

 dicular to, shallow elongated depressions, about 75 mm. wide, which 

 alternate with low ridges (pi. 5, a, j) ; a similar effect was created 

 in the laboratory by impressing modeling clay with coiled basketry. 

 Still another sherd (pi. 5, a, 4) may have been treated in the same 

 fashion, but the evidence is less clear. All but one of the sherds with 

 roughened surfaces bear traces of decoration, which in every instance 

 appears to consist of a shallow, crudely trailed line following a zigzag 

 path about the vessel (pi. 5, a, 2-3). The one specimen in which the 

 lip is present is a rim which appears to slope somewhat inwardly 

 (pi. 5, a, 2). The flat lip bears a series of slightly elliptical impres- 

 sions, the creation of which, perhaps with the fingers, has thickened 

 this feature toward both surfaces of the vessel. The upper points of 

 the trailed zigzag line reach nearly to the lip. Another specimen 

 consists of what appears to be a segment of an angularly S-shaped 

 rim and of the constricted neck of a jar (pi. 5, a, 3). A series of 

 nearly circular impressions, probably made with the finger tips, en- 

 circles the rim at its maximum circumference and the trailed decora- 

 tion is on the shoulder area. One other sherd, probably from a 

 different pot, also indicates the presence of a constricted neck (pi. 5, 

 a, 4). Except for the features noted above, the sherds in the small 

 collection yield no information relative to the shape of the complete 



