340 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 177 
then, the Indians have adopted European dress and other outward 
aspects of modern civilization, and have abandoned the burial prac- 
tices, stone tools, and to a great extent the pottery making that iden- 
tifies the Rupununi Phase archeologically. 
This reconstruction of British Guiana prehistory is based on de- 
tailed information from four portions of the colony, two on the 
coast and two in the interior (fig. 127). While this leaves large, in- 
tervening sections unknown, there is no reason to believe that future 
archeological investigation will materially alter the general conclu- 
sions presented here. Details of a particular phase may be expanded 
and other archeological phases may be distinguished, but it can be 
confidently predicted that no pottery-making culture will be earlier 
than the Mabaruma Phase in time of arrival and that all will belong 
to the generalized Tropical Forest pattern of culture. The only 
known archeological site that cannot be fitted into the phase classi- 
fication in this report is an urn cemetery at Seba, on the lower 
Demerara River (fig. 58; Carter, 1943), which may represent such 
an undescribed archeological culture, occupying the central British 
Guiana coast. Consequently, although the results of our survey and 
excavations do not exhaust the archeological possibilities in British 
Guiana, we feel that they provide detailed information on the areas 
most strategically placed with reference to potential routes of migra- 
tion and diffusion and thus provide a safe basis for inferences of 
broader scope. 
The cultural sequence in British Guiana has bearing on a number 
of theories and assumptions of general significance. Like the region 
at the mouth of the Amazon, this area acted as a recipient rather 
than an originator of culture traits and complexes. The late post- 
Columbian appearance of pottery making groups in the southern 
part of the colony substantiates the hypothesis that the Guianas func- 
tioned as a refuge area rather than a fountainhead of Tropical Forest 
cultural development as was once postulated (see Meggers and Evans, 
1957, pp. 603-607 for a detailed discussion of the literature on this 
subject). The antiquity of settlement by Tropical Forest groups is 
greatest at both margins of the area—the mouth of the Orinoco and 
the mouth of the Amazon—implying primary migrations and/or 
diffusion down these two major rivers from the west. Spread along 
the coast of the Guianas appears to have been incredibly slow, and 
toward the interior practically nil. In fact, it is an open question 
whether the Rupununi savanna or the upper Essequibo would have 
yet been invaded by Tropical Forest culture had the aboriginal bal- 
ance not been upset by the arrival of Europeans. Infiltration had 
undoubtedly been farther inland than the immediate fringes, but 
what is known of both archeology and ethnography of the central 
part of British Guiana does not suggest that penetration was deep 
