no NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



the abundance that later appeared. Large conch shells have been 

 found on certain Neuter sites, especially in Erie and Genesee coun- 

 ties. Now and then a clam shell is found used possibly as a potter's 

 tool. The fresh-water Unio valve was frequently employed for this 

 purpose and they are sometimes found in pits filled with clay 

 scraped in shaping a pot. 



Pottery. The most strikingly characteristic product of Iroquoian 

 manufacture is pottery. Both in form and decoration, generally 

 speaking, Huron-Iroquois pottery differs from that found in other 

 regions. At the same time we must qualify a statement of an abso- 

 lute difference from all others, for on certain sites pottery is found 

 that resembles, in many respects, the pottery of the Ohio village 

 sites, and even certain pottery of Tennessee, but this is the exception 

 and not the rule. 



Typical Iroquoian pottery is known both by its shape and by its 

 decoration. The typical pot has a globular body which as it turns 

 inward toward the top, turns upward and outward into a con- 

 stricted neck, and a flaring or overhanging collar. The width of 

 the neck at its base is about one-sixth of the circumstance of the 

 body and it rises as if from the top of an imaginary hexagon drawn 

 inside the globe. From the top of the neck, which turns outward 

 like the bell of a trumpet, rises a collar, sometimes round but as 

 often four-sided and having an upward turn at each corner. This 

 collar is nearly always decorated by a series of triangles within which 

 have been drawn lines close together and parallel with one side of' 

 the triangle. These triangles contrast with one another as the 

 parallel lines slant obliquely, either right or left, in the adjacent 

 space. At the corners pentagonal figures are often drawn having 

 three round dots punched in to make a conventional human face 

 (eyes and mouth). In a few instances the face stands out in effigy 

 or an entire human figure more or less conventionalized is drawn. 

 (See plate 27.) There are instances where these triangular parallel 

 lines are absent and where the overhanging collar is rare. Certain 

 of the earlier forms of Iroquois pottery have very little of this 

 lined decoration, as in the case of the Ripley site. In other cases, as 

 at Burning Springs, the Gerry village and at the Reed fort, the 

 incised lines appear but they run in wider patterns and far down the 

 wide neck, which is not so constricted as in the ^lohawk valley 

 forms. Another variation is that of a globular squatty bowl with a 

 short neck that turns outward in a rim that is notched, indented, 



