E d 
aang as ARCHEOLOGY IN BRITISH GUIANA 115 
UNCLASSIFIED RED PAINTED 
The sample is too small and occurrence too sporadic to warrant the establish- 
ment of a named pottery type, but for easy reference the characteristics of 
sherds with red painted surfaces are described below. 
PASTE: 
Although the various plain pottery types of the Mabaruma Phase are repre- 
sented, the majority of the sherds with red painted decoration have the fine 
sand-tempered paste of Hosororo Plain. 
SURFACES: 
Treatment: The red painted surfaces were smoothed but apparently no 
special effort was made to finish this surface better than the rest of the 
vessel, 
FORMS: 
1. Open bowls with gently outcurving walls, direct rim, rounded or tapered 
lip. Flat base. Mouth diameter 18-24 cm. 
2. Bowls with incurving sidewalls, constricted mouth and direct rim. Fiat 
base. 
3. Large bowls with exteriorly thickened, broad, flanged rim. Rim diameter 
20-28 em. Usually a flat base or a flat pedestal base. 
4. Globular jars with externally thickened, everted rim, flat or flat pedestal 
base, and mouth diameter of 26 cm. 
DECORATION : 
Technique: Thick red paint applied to either the interior or exterior or to 
both surfaces in several ways, listed in the order of their frequency of 
occurrence: 
1. Red ocher rubbed on the surfaces when the clay was leather hard, 
creating polishing striations that are redder than the rest of the 
surface. The red is rather uneven in its application. Color is a 
dark brick red. Where the red is unusually thick, crackle lines 
formed when the vessel was fired. 
2. A few sherds have a thick red slip that may have been applied by 
dipping or by several coats with a brush; thickness ranges from 
that of onionskin to heavy No. 20 pound bond paper. 
3. Red lines 3-4 mm. wide, applied by brush on the exterior. On two 
sherds, the surface has a crackle and sheen apparently caused by 
covering the red painted surface with a resin. 
Motif: On both the rubbed and slipped surfaces, the red paint covered 
large sections of the interior and exterior. Some of the sherds sug- 
gest that the entire surface was rubbed or painted red. In other cases, 
the red paint was restricted to the externally thickened, wide, flanged 
rim. Red line designs are composed of large concentric circles or straight 
parallel units. On one sherd, red paint comes up to an incised line, but 
not over it. 
TEMPORAL DIFFERENCES WITHIN THE TYPE: Too few sherds to observe a trend. 
CHRONOLOGICAL POSITION OF THE TYPE: Scattered throughout the Mabaruma 
Phase sequence but with no particular concentration at any one point (fig. 48). 
UNCLASSIFIED WHITE SLIPPED 
Fourteen sherds from various levels and sites of the Mabaruma Phase are white 
slipped; see Appendix, table 3 for tabulations. White-slipped sherds are also 
found in limited quantity in the Koriabo Phase, and it is possible that a few 
of these found in various Mabaruma Phase sites are trade; however, in others 
the paste is typical of the plain pottery types of Mabaruma Phase. 
