148 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull, 177 
caricaturelike adorno, with large coffee-bean eyes, exaggerated nose, 
and applique construction. Adornos of similar style are known from 
the Corobal Phase on the Ventuari River, a tributary of the Upper 
Orinoco in the interior of Venezuela (Evans, Meggers, and Cruxent, 
1960, pp. 359-369). Contact between this area and that occupied 
by the Mabaruma Phase would have been easy via land and 
the inland waterways of southeastern Venezuela. The fact that 
no similar modeling is reported from coastal Venezuela, the other 
Guianas, or the Amazon suggests that the style is not wide- 
spread in northern South America and tends to strengthen the im- 
portance of the Corobal Phase resemblances. If this is the correct 
explanation, it follows that connections between the two groups were 
less close or intense than those between the Mabaruma Phase and its 
neighbors in British Guiana. This would explain the absence of trade 
sherds between the Corobal and Mabaruma Phases and the failure of 
either to adopt the most typical forms of decoration used by the 
other. 
The Mabaruma Phase is unusual in the strength of the influence 
that it exerted on its coastal neighbors. The most striking example 
is the Abary Phase, the pottery of which shows considerable evi- 
dence of acculturation in both vessel shape and decoration. ‘The 
abundance of trade sherds of Mabaruma Phase origin in the earliest 
Abary Phase site can be used to arrive at an approximate date for 
the beginning of this contact, which is estimated to have started be- 
tween A.D. 1000 and 1200. Since no comparable Abary Phase 
influence on the Mabaruma Phase can be detected, evidence of the 
relations between the two Phases has been discussed in detail in the 
analysis of the Abary Phase (see pp. 182, 185-186). Mabaruma Phase 
trade sherds also occur in sites of the Koriabo Phase, a late arrival 
in the Northwest District. In this case, there is evidence of trade 
in both directions because Koriabo Phase decorated sherds have been 
recovered from late sites of the Mabaruma Phase. The late 
portion of the Mabaruma Phase sequence is, in fact, characterized 
by this evidence of Koriabo Phase contact as well as by the loss of 
virtually all the diagnostic early Barrancoid features (fig. 48). 
At atime not precisely identifiable, but probably during the middle 
period, the Mabaruma Phase expanded its territory eastward (fig. 
58). Several sites have been reported from Hast Coast Demerara, 
all of which are characterized by the typical late Mabaruma Phase 
vessel shapes and forms of decoration (this bulletin, fig. 59, pp. 186- 
187; Osgood, 1946, figs. 12-13; Im Thurn, 1884, pp. 126-187 and pls. 
15-17). The descriptions do not specify details of temper and paste, 
but the implied abundance of decoration is far greater than that in the 
Abary Phase so that it does not seem likely that the sherds are of trade 
