150 ABORIGINAL POTTERY OF EASTERN UNITED STATES [eth.ann.20 



fiviiueiit occurrence of a thickened collar, sometimes slightly over- 

 hanging, after the Iroquoian stj^le, but marked with cords and cord 

 indentino-.s. characteristic of the rim decoration of the Upper Missis- 

 sippi and Lake Michigan pottery. More extensive collecting may 

 enable us to separate these wares into two or more groups or varieties. 

 Pipes of the simple form common in the eastern Algonquian country 

 arc found on some of the sites. A number of sherds illustrating this 

 pottery are brought together in plate cxxxiii. The people concerned 

 may have belonged to the Algonquian stock, for Algonquian features 

 decidedly jjrevail. but there is a possibility that they were Siouan. 



Several sherds from a village-site burying ground 3^ miles north 

 of Luray, Virginia, are presented in plate cxxxiv. The simj^le but 

 extremely neat pots to which these fragments belong were buried with 

 human bodies in individual graves on the V)ottom land near a mound, 

 but this mound itself, though containing the remains of many hundred 

 bodies, did not yield any pottery whatever." About Harpers Ferry 

 and Point of Rocks we have the same ware, but at Romaey, West 

 Virginia. Iroquoian types prevail. 



The pottery of upland Virginia and West Virginia is disting'uished 

 from that of the tidewater provinces by the prevalence of handles, 

 few examples of which ha\'e been found in the latter areas, and the 

 ware of the g-eneral Piedmont zone also differs from that of the lowland 

 in the prominence given the neckband — a feature appearing frequently 

 west of the fall line, but rather exceptional east of it. 



PoTOMAC-CHESArEAKE W.\KE 

 GENERAL FEATURES 



The central ethnic g-roup of the Potomac-Chesapeake province in 

 historical times was the Powhatan confederacy, seated for the most 

 part between Chesapeake bay and the James ri\-er. The art of this 

 district was probably, in the main, developed within the general region, 

 and was practic-ed in conuuon by the confederacy and other tribes of 

 the same stock along the Carolina coast and throughout the Virginia- 

 Maryland tidewater province. It was probably practiced in more or 

 less modified forms by isolated tribes of other stocks coming within 

 the Algonquian influence. Possibly the conditions of existence along 

 the thousands of miles of tidewater shore line, where the life of the 

 inhabitants was largely maritime and the food was principally marine, 

 may have had a strong influence on the potter's art, tending to make it 

 simple and uniform. The shifting of hal)itation. due to varying food 

 supply, and possibly to the necessity of avoiding the periodic malarial 

 season, must have restricted the practice of an art whif h is essentiallj^ 

 the offspring of sedentary existence; or the exclusive practice of simple 



a Fowke, Oerard, Archeologic investigations in James and Potomac valleys, Bulletin of the Bureau 

 of Ethnology, 1894, p. 4'.i. 



