394 ANCIENT POTTERY OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 



are good reasons for supposing that certain forms of the handles upon 

 pottery owe their existence to contact with the sister art. This idea 

 is confirmed by their shapes, and by the fact that a large percentage 

 of the pottery handles are useless as aids to suspension or transporta- 

 tion. 



Ornament. — Eim margins are modified for decorative purposes, very 

 much as they are in bowls. See Fig. 363. 



The bodies of these vessels are often elaborately ornamented, mostly 

 by incised figures, but often by punctures, nodes and ribs. The incised 

 lines are arranged principally in groups of straight Hues forming an- 

 gular figures — a very archaic style — and in groups of festooned lines so 

 placed as to resemble scales. The punctures are made with a sharp 

 point, and form encircling lines and various carelessly executed pat- 

 terns. A rude sort of ornamentation is produced by pinching up the 

 soft clay of the surface between the nails of the fingers and thumb. 

 Relief ornament consists chiefly of applied fillets of clay, arranged to 

 form vertical ribs. Rows of nodes are sometimes seen, and in a few 

 cases the whole body is covered with rude nodes. 



Illustrations. — The specimens selected for illustration are intended 

 to epitomize the forms and decorations of a very great number of ves- 

 sels, and are not always the most showy examples to be found. 



A vessel of rather exceptional shape is given in Fig. 391. It could 

 as well be classed with bowls as with pots. The ware is of the rude 



Fig. 304— Pot: Arkansas (!) £. 



kind generally used over the fire. The body is high and cylindrical, 

 the rim flaring, and the bottom quite flat. The form is suggestive of 

 our domestic crockery. 



Another bowl-like pot is illustrated in Fig. 395. It is of the dark, 

 rudely hand-polished variety. The body is globular, the neck is very 

 short and is ornamented with a dentate band. Below this are two 

 pairs of perforations, probably used for suspending the vessel. There 

 are a number of vessels of this variety, mostly smaller than the example 

 yiveu. 



