3G8 ANCIENT POTTERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



This study is intended to pave the way to a thorough classification of 

 the multitude of relics, and to the discovery of a method of procedure 

 suited to a broad and exhaustive treatment of the ceramic art. 



I do not expect to discuss ethnical questions, although ceramic studies 

 will eventually be of assistance in determining the distribution and 

 migrations of peoples, and in fixing the chronology of very remote 

 events in the history of pottery -making races. 



Some of the results of my studies of the evolutionary phase of the 

 subject are embodied in an accompanying paper upon the " Origin and 

 Development of Form and Ornament," and a second paper will soon 

 follow. Before the final work is issued I hope to make close studies of 

 all the principal collections, public and private. In such a work the 

 importance of great numbers of examples cannot be overestimated. 

 Facts can be learned from a few specimens, but relationships and prin- 

 ciples can only be derived from the study of multitudes. 



I shall probably have occasion to modify many of the views advanced 

 in these preliminary papers, but it is only by pushing out such advance 

 guards that the final goal can be reached. 



Since the origiual issue of this paper in the Proceedings of the Daven- 

 port Academy of Sciences, a careful revision of the text has been made 

 and much additional matter and a number of illustrations have been 

 added. 



I wish in this place to express my obligations to the officers and mem- 

 bers of the Davenport Academy of Sciences, and especially to Mrs. M. 

 L. D. Putnam and Prof. W. H. Pratt, whose generous aid has been of 

 the greatest service to me. 



