Evan ad 
Mesperel ARCHEOLOGY IN BRITISH GUIANA 9 
United States city. We wholeheartedly support the comments made 
by another visitor to the tropical forests of South America more than 
50 years before us: 
Whenever a Huropean hears that a traveller has buried himself in the solitudes 
of Amazonia, he willingly believes that this is a most exceptional exploit, and 
that the lucky mortal who returns from it has been in countries where never 
before has the foot of civilised man been set. It must be admitted that the tales 
of adventure which now appear as if they were serious stories of travel, are 
likely to spread these gross errors. Let us hasten to warn these imaginative 
persons, who are too prone to credit the picturesque and the marvellous. The 
authors of the books to which we refer only journeyed through parts inhabited 
by Brazilians, or by foreigners established in Brazil, where reside Government 
officials, merchants, soldiers, and very sociable human beings. As to the famous 
Indians of whom such wonderful tales are told, they remain almost always out 
of sight, unless they can make themselves useful by their special knowledge of 
the country. In any case they are generally much less to be feared than... 
the savages in the great Huropean cities. [Nery, 1901, p. 308.] 
PRESENTATION OF THE DATA 
The writing of a large archeological report always raises the prob- 
lem of how to organize the material to permit both easy reference 
to data by the technical scholar and quick access to the major conclu- 
sions by a reader concerned only with the general results. It is prob- 
ably impossible to achieve maximum compliance simultaneously with 
two such different requirements, but as a step in this direction, we 
have tried to separate the factual and interpretative portions of the 
report as completely as possible, and to subdivide the presentation 
of data in a logical manner. 
The two chapters following the Introduction deal with British 
Guiana asa whole. The geographical description is designed to high- 
light differences and to bring out the major topographical, vegeta- 
tional, and climatic features that may have influenced aboriginal set- 
tlement, and it does not aim to be exhaustive in its coverage. The 
preceramic lithic horizon is treated in terms of the colony as a whole 
rather than by geographical subdivisions because what little informa- 
tion is available makes more sense viewed on a larger scale than the 
areal subdivisions permit. The remainder of the report is organized 
under four geographical areas: the Northwest lowlands, the Abary 
River, the upper Essequibo rain forest, and the Rupununi savanna. 
Each of these is distinct geographically and each exhibits a unique 
archeological sequence. The order of presentation is chronological 
throughout. The Northwest lowlands was the first region to be 
occupied by pottery-making groups, the Rupununi savanna the last. 
Within each area, description of the archeological phases begins with 
the earliest, and presentation of the data follows a standard order. 
Except for the section on “The site sequence and its implications,” the 
