ABORIGINAL POTTERY OF THE EASTERN UNITED 



STATES 



Bv W. H. Holmes 



PREFACE 



During the decade beginnino- with 18S0 the writer published a 

 nuiul)er of detailed studies of the aboriginal pottery of the United 

 States. These were based largely on the Cxovernnient <'ollectious, and 

 appeared mainly in the annual reports of the Bureau of Ethnology. 

 The ware of several localities was descriljed and illustrated in a cata- 

 log of Bureau collections for 1S81. published in the Third Annual 

 Report, and the same volume I'ontained a jjaper on •"Prehistoric^ Textile 

 Fabrics Derived from Impressions on Pottery."' The Fourth Annual 

 Report contained illustrated papers on '" Ancient Pottery of the Missis- 

 sippi Valley " and '" Form and Ornament in the Cei'amic Art." In 1885 

 a paper on the collections of the Davenport Academy of Sciences 

 appeared in the fourth volume of the Academy's proceedings, and sev- 

 eral short articles have since appeared in the American Anthropologist. 

 It was expected I)y the Director of the Bureau that the studies thus 

 made, being preliminary in character, would lead up to a monographic 

 treatise on native fictile art to form one of a series of works covering 

 the whole range of native arts and industries. 



The present paper was coumienced in LS90, and in its inception was 

 intended to accompany and form part of the final report of Dr Cyrus 

 Thomas on mound explorations conducted for the Bureau during the 

 period beginning with 188 L and ending in 1891. A change in the 

 original plan of publication dissociated the writer's work from that of 

 Dr Thomas, whose ri^port was assigned to the Twelfth Annual, which 

 it occupies in full. Delay in pul>lishing the present paper afi'ordedan 

 opportunity for additional exploitation and study, and the work was 

 revised and amplified. Its scope was extended from the consideration 

 of the ])i^ttery of the mound builders to that of the entire region east of 

 the Rocky mountains, the volume of matter being more than doubled 

 and the value of the work greatly cnhanc(>d. 



15 



