ea eae ARCHEOLOGY IN BRITISH GUIANA 311 
Texture: Sandy to fine, depending on the quantity of sand present. 
, Color: About half are red, orange or tan through the cross sections. The 
remainder have a gray core. 
Firing: Incompletely to completely oxidized. 
SURFACE: 
Color: Orange to light tan. 
Treatment: Majority too badly eroded for description ; one slick on exterior. 
Hardness: 2.5-3.5. ) 
Slip: Some sherds have a thin white slip on the exterior, sharply Bettie cated 
in cross section from the ‘underlying orange paste. Texture is fine, sur- 
face eroded. 
Form: 
Rim: Direct or slightly everted, with rounded or eer erd lip. . 
Body wall thickness: 6-11 mm. 
Body diameters: 26-50 cm. 
Base: Fiat, joining sidewalls at angle of 20-25 degrees. 
Vessel shapes: 
1. Globular jar with direct, slightly incurved rim and rounded lip. 
Rim diameter 24 and 44 cm. 
2. Jar with slightly everted rim, diameter 28 cm. 
DECORATION : Two sherds from R—-5 bear narrow red painted lines on the exterior, 
one on a white slip and the other on an unslipped surface, One sherd from 
R-8 shows crude scratches that may be part of a design of diagonal lines. 
TEMPORAL DIFFERENCES WITHIN THE TYPE: Sample too small for analysis. 
CHRONOLOGICAL POSITION OF THE TYPE: Sporadic occurrence in the upper two- 
thirds of the seriated sequence (fig. 125). 
UNCLASSIFIED DECORATED 
The. pottery of the Rupununi Phase is characterized by an almost complete 
lack of decoration. The few ornamented sherds represent a variety of tech- 
niques, none of which is sufficiently frequent or well defined to warrant the 
establishment of a pottery type. Unclassified Decorated includes incision, 
applique, punctate, white paint, white slip and red film. 
Incision: The interiors of four flat base sherds from R-6 have straight 
parallel incised lines on the interior 7-12 mm. apart. The incisions are 
roughly drawn, sometimes jagged, 1-2 mm. wide and 1-2 mm. deep. The 
diameters of the bases are 10-12 cm. 
White paint: Four body sherds from R-2 have white-painted ornamentation. 
Three show fine brush strokes 1-2 mm. wide on the exterior, while one 
has white lines 5 mm. wide on the interior. 
Applique: Simple applique decoration occurs on occasional sherds. Three 
from R-6 have ribs 1.4 em. wide at the base, coming to a rounded top 
1 cm. high, and one has a ring 3.2 cm. in outside diameter formed by 
an applique strip 1.cm. wide at the base and 8-9 mm. high (fig. 123, b). 
Hight sherds from R40 have relief modeling, in two cases on the ee 
surface. 
Punctate: The only sherd with tiatbteliky: decoration is a rim from .R-22 
with a band of 3 horizontal rows of punctates bordered by incised lines 
_ on the exterior just below the rim of a vessel of Form 2. The punctates 
are 1.0-1.5 mm. in diameter and 1.0 mm. deep. 
White slip: Two sherds from R—40 are ‘white-slipped, one on the interior 
and the other on the exterior. The latter is a fragment of an annular 
base 8 cm. in diameter. 
