BH d 
ane an ARCHEOLOGY IN BRITISH GUIANA 159 
butt slightly convex, a long slender pestle and two objects unidenti- 
fiable in the photograph. 
The second site was a cemetery. It was located on a knoll “several 
hundred feet from the river and . . . surrounded on all sides by a deep 
swamp and almost impenetrable high grass. It rose about 10 or 
12 feet above the river [and savannah] level and formed a spur 
or promontory to a low ridge [about 6 feet in height] extending 
parallel with the river for about one thousand feet. . . . Close to the 
first knoll the ridge was broken by swampy spots or sloughs, thus 
isolating the knoll . . .” (op. cit., p. 22 and figs. 2,3). Excavation re- 
vealed a series of burial urns just below the surface. Their situation 
is described as follows: 
In each and every case a thin layer, about 6 inches, of loam, covered a heavy 
roughly fashioned piece of baked clay,—evidently the cover to a large vessel, 
and directly under this were the remains of an immense pot; collapsed and 
broken to be sure, but easily traced, with the bottom resting on a bed of char- 
coal, black mud and lumps of burnt clay. This same material also surrounded 
each pot and there could be no question that the pots had been placed in the 
midst of a fire, the whole had been surrounded by a wall of earth and that 
in the process of burning the fire had baked the irregular lumps of clay in 
the earth to semibrick. In many cases two, or even three, layers of these 
pots and fires were found, and in every case deeper excavations revealed the 
undisturbed bed of clay and sand of the savannah. ... No traces of bones, 
stone implements or other utensils were found within the pots, but each was 
filled with a fine, pasty, black material which might well have been the re- 
mains of incinerated bones or flesh. [Op. cit. pp. 22-23 and fig. 4.] 
The area occupied by the cemetery is described as very large. Urns are 
said to extend for nearly 600 feet along the ridge over a width of 150 
feet. Tests showed them to be so close together that the sides 
touched (loc. cit.). Although Verrill estimates the total number 
of urns as approximately 30,000, experience with other urn 
burial cemeteries suggests that this figure is entirely too high. 
Unfortunately no description is given of the burial urns, except 
that they are “immense.” One shown in a sketch (op. cit., fig. 4) has 
an annular base, a rounded body, and an everted rim. 
Walter E. Roth (MS., p. 46 and pl. 83-1) speaks of a “chest orna- 
ment” from the Abary. The illustration (fig. 64) shows a flat disk 
with a sprawled figure incised on the surface. Its provenience is 
unknown, its material is not stated, and it resembles nothing else 
from the area. 
ANALYSIS OF MATERIAL 
All Abary Phase artifacts are of pottery or stone. Pottery is by 
far the most abundant, although fragments of stone implements came 
from all three sites. This material will be discussed by types; details 
of ie and provenience are given in the Appendix, tables 24 
and 25. 
