236 



ISLA:yD CULTURE AREA OF AMERICA 



[ETH. ANN. 34 



surface is characteristic. This cylinder was probably used as a 

 roller for stamping decorations on pottery or fabrics, since iden- 

 tical designs to those upon its surface are on the surface of 

 earthenware vessels. Similar cylinders have been collected on 

 other islands of the Santo Domingo-Porto Eico area, and have 

 been reported likewise from the Lesser Antilles, where, however, they 

 are generally replaced by disks with a knob or handle in the middle. 

 These latter apparently serve the same purpose as the cylinders, al- 

 though that has not j'et been definitely determined. Another use to 

 which these cylinders and circular stamps may have been put is sug- 



gested by a study of certain 

 tribes of Venezuela and Guiana 

 who are said to use similar ob- 

 jects in stamping patterns on 

 woven fabrics. Woven prehis- 

 toric Antillean fabrics are rare, 

 but a few show evidences of repe- 

 tition of the same designs as if 

 stamped with cylindrical rollers 

 or flat tablets. 



Circular stamps with central 

 knobs are not rare in some of 

 the Antillean shell mounds and 

 village trash heaps. Some of 

 these from Santo Domingo 

 caves, as shown in the collections 

 obtained bj- De Booy, are orna- 

 mented with figures in I'elief. 

 Other stamps have slender han- 

 dles projecting from the middle 

 of each end of the cylinder, 

 at each end (fig. 62), impart- 

 ing an ovate form to the object. One of these is elsewhere figured.*' 



Fig. «2.- 



-Clay stamp or die witb iuclsed 

 meander. 



These cylinders sometimes taper 



I'OTTEKY 



The pottery from the Haiti-Porto Rican region is rather coarse 

 as compared with that of the Lesser Antilles, especially Trinidad and 

 St. Kitts. It is, as a rule, thick, its surface unpainted, but decorated 

 with incised lines, ridges, and raised figures that appear to have 

 been added after the rest of the bowl had been fashioned. The in- 

 cised lines are generally rectilinear, but are sometimes spiral, in the 

 former case being arranged in triangular and in the latter in cir- 

 cular figures. The spaces about the center, which is occupied by a 



** Notes on Archaeology of Porto Rico. Amer. .\nthroi>., n. .-.. vol. x, no. 4. lOOS. 



