328 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 177 
pearance in the Rio Branco savanna probably does not greatly ante- 
date its arrival in British Guiana, since glass beads are associated 
with the burial urns in both places. Schomburgk once proposed a 
theory that the Macusi came from the Orinoco on the basis of resem- 
blances between Macusi words and names given by Ralegh of tribes 
along that river (1848, p. 78, footnote.1). Since the Orenoqueponi are 
defined by Ralegh as “all the nations betweene the river [Orinoco] 
and those mountaines in sight called Wacarima [Pacaraima]”. (1848, 
p. 75), this does not place the origin of the Macusi more specifically 
than to suggest that they moved in from the north. Verification or 
rejection of this hypothesis will have to await future archeological 
work in the interior of Venezuela. 
This historical information must be taken into consideration. in 
trying to correlate the archeological and ethnographic data from the 
Rupununi. The archeological sequence, which extends into the 20th 
century, presents a uniform picture in settlement pattern, burial prac- 
tices, and pottery types. However, ethnographically the Rupununi 
is subdivided into two tribes with linguistic affiliation to two different 
language families, suggesting quite different origins, . Culturally, 
the Cariban-speaking Macusi and Arawakan-speaking. Wapisiana do 
not differ greatly, at least in aspects that can be recognized archeolog- 
ically. Farabee’s descriptions of village pattern, pottery making, and 
disposal of the dead are almost identical for the two tribes (see pp. 
323-325). When we first. began to correlate the archeological and 
ethnographical data, we assumed the archeological divisions were the 
same as the ethnographic ones and that our failure to find a difference 
between the remains north and south of the Kanuku Mountains was 
an indication that ceramic complexes are not necessarily correlated 
with tribal entities. When the historical, geographical, and chrono- 
logical data were combined, however, it seemed possible that the arche- 
ological remains of all the Rupununi sites belonged exclusively. to 
the Macusi. .The following evidence supports this conclusion: 
Although sites were investigated on both the northern and'southern 
Rupununi savannas, the seriation chart shows that the early sites are 
all in the south and the late ones in the north.. This site distribution 
is explainable only in terms of a shift in geographical location of the 
culture from south to north through time. The dates (see table L) 
derived from European trade materials place the two earliest sites 
in the north savanna as 1819-50 and 1780-1830, suggesting that this 
shift took place between 1800 and 1850. The majority of the historical 
records tend to support a recent intrusion of the Wapisiana into the 
southern Rupununi with the consequent displacement of the Macusi 
to the north. This movement had already taken place by Schom- 
burgk’s visit in 1835, but probably not too many years before because 
