34 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 177 
Level .45-.65 m-._ Same conditions as previous level; no sherds. 
Level .65-.90 m__ Reddish, rusty-brown with black granules, giving it a 
dark-grayish tint. Sterile. 
The stone artifact types from this excavation are counted in the Ap- 
pendix, table 1. The shell refuse included Mytilus falcatus Orbigny, 
Phacoides pectinatus Gmelin, Crassostrea rhizophorae Guilding and 
Neritina zebra Bruguiére. 
DATA FROM OTHER INVESTIGATIONS 
The shell middens of the Northwest District and Pomeroon District 
attracted attention in British Guiana as early as 1845, and the litera- 
ture referring to them ranges from serious discussions and speculations 
about these “man-made” structures to fanciful comments by travelers, 
public officials, missionaries, and teachers. The best summary of our 
knowledge of the subject has been made by Osgood (1946, pp. 28-87). 
He suggests that not all of the shell middens belong to the same 
cultural periods. Only those that belong to the Alaka Phase are 
considered in this section. 
BARAMBINA (BARABINA) MIDDEN 
The most carefully studied and described site in A. Hyatt Verrill’s 
archeological explorations in British Guiana in 1917 is Barambina 
shell midden (fig. 4, adjacent to N-23), which extends over an area 150 
by 300 feet on the extreme western slope of Barambina hill in the 
Northwest District (Verrill, 1918 a, pp. 13-14; Osgood, 1946, p. 34). 
Verrill tested the area extensively with pits and trenches. He found 
no fancy, modeled pottery but mentions many fragments of plain, 
poorly made pottery from the surface to the bottom of the deposit, 
which he determined to be as much as 5 feet in depth (loc. cit.). At 
three places in the digging, complete human skeletons were found in 
sitting or kneeling position, facing east, with a rough slab of earthen- 
ware over the occiput (Verrill, 1918 a, p. 18). Osgood revisited the 
site in 1944 and excavated a trench 2 meters wide and 12 meters long, 
controlled in 25-cm. levels (Osgood, 1946, p. 49). This check con- 
firmed Verrill’s observations with one exception; Osgood found sherds 
only in the first level (0-25 cm.), even though he carried the excava- 
tion to sterile soil at a depth of 1.50cm. These sherds were not deco- 
rated. The details of Osgood’s work and the tabulation of the 
artifacts, etc., should be consulted for comparative purposes in the 
original source (Osgood, 1946, pp. 49-50). Although these sherds 
and stone artifacts were destroyed in the Georgetown fire of 1945, 
the general characteristics of this midden conform to those we ex- 
amined, and it can be identified as belonging to the Alaka Phase. 
