128 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 189 



The house walls at Demery were distinctly visible as a line separat- 

 ing the mixed earth of the house fill from the undisturbed native soil 

 outside the house. The irregular nature of the house walls as mapped 

 is a reflection of the actual situation at the site ; the oval shape of the 

 house floor area in Houses 1 and 3 may have resulted from rebuilding, 

 but the flattened arc on the southeast side of House 4 may have some 

 other explanation. The house with the simplest floor plan, House 

 2, was not rebuilt nor unduly complicated, and here the floor was 

 roughly circular. The source for the innovation of building houses 

 without vertical wall posts at Demery is unknown. These houses 

 stand, therefore, as an interesting variation from a more nearly uni- 

 versal mode of construction. 



POTTERY 



The ceramics from Demery are varied and complex. Fifteen groups 

 of rim sherds are described that probably relate to a single, major 

 occupation termed the Demery Component. Two pottery types, Riggs 

 Straight Rim and Riggs Cross-Hatched Rim, relate to an earlier 

 occupation by a group which left tlie remains designated as the Thomas 

 Riggs Focus Component. 



The pottery of the major occupation is characteristically very thin 

 and quite hard, and vessels are of excellent quality. The largest re- 

 stored vessel (pi. 14, h) seems to be typical in form and execution. 

 The malleating, shaping, and firing of this vessel required extremely 

 fine control of the techniques of pottery making. This vessel weighs 

 7^/2 pounds, and even larger vessels are represented among the sherds. 

 In contrast, the extremely thick sherds of Riggs Straight Rim (pi. 13, 

 I) , with their contorted cores and less compact paste scarcely approach 

 the pottery of the Demery Component in skill of manufacture. The 

 thinness of the Demery pottery is a characteristic feature of the 

 ceramics, a feature shared by sites of the La Roche Focus and related 

 foci farther south along the Missouri River. 



The Demery Component pottery was probably made by building up 

 the vessel by lump modeling, and shaping the walls by malleating it 

 with a grooved paddle or, more rarely, by a cord-wrapped paddle. 

 The six vessels represented by the Group 5 pottery are unif onnly and 

 conspicuously cord-roughened from the lip to the base. One vessel 

 of Group 3 and two rims of Group 9 carry nearly obliterated markings 

 that suggest they were originally cord-roughened. Only one-half of 

 1 percent of the Demery pottery was so treated ; the remainder was 

 simple-stamped, or so smoothed that the original surface finish is 

 indistinguishable. 



There arc 1,350 vessels attributed to thci occupation by the Demery 

 Component. The range of variation in rim form, illustrated in fig. 



