ANTHROPOLOGY: H. /. SPINDEN 
327 
is such a feature, reported from the island of Aruba, from the vicinity 
of Maracaibo, Merida, Valera, Carache, Valencia, Maracay, La Tnion 
on the Portuguesa River, San Fernando de Apure, Atures on the Orinoco, 
etc. The urns are from two to two and a half feet in height, usually 
with rather narrow mouths closed by an inverted urn or by a shallow 
bowl. In these urns human remains are encountered in a sitting posi- 
tion with the knees under the chin and with the hands at the side of the 
face. The small size of the urns raises an interesting question concern- 
ing the method of inserting the bodies. It is not unlikely that des- 
iccation preceded burial. These burial urns are sometimes found 
in caves and sometimes in low mounds but for the most part they are 
met with at a depth of about two feet below the apparently unmodi- 
fied surface of the earth. The distribution of this method of burial 
probably extends beyond the limits of Venezuela and may be continuous 
over the open lands of the interior to Brazilian Guiana and even to the 
Island of Marajo in the mouth of the Amazon. On the west um burial 
is well known in Nicaragua. The extension of this feature to the West 
Indies deserves to be studied with care since it is also found in our own 
southern states. 
The statement has already been made that the figurines foimd in 
the Eastern Andes resemble closely those of Central America. This 
might be made stronger and the conclusion brought home that the plas- 
tic art of Venezuela is one and the same with the "archaic art'* already 
known in Mexico and Central America. The proof is both objective 
and subjective. To be sure we must always stand ready to evoke 
the doctrine of divergent development but with a knowledge of transi- 
tional types the very fact that an orderly and systematic change is 
to be observed makes stronger the proof of cultural dissemination. 
In Mexico and Central America the archaic art was succeeded by other 
and higher styles. In Colombia some influence from these later cul- 
tures is manifest in pottery and metal work. But in Venezuela no 
later inflow has been noted and but slight evidence of independent 
local uplift. 
The writer has elsewhere expressed the opinion that the diffusion 
of ceramic art of the so-cafled archaic t3^e was contemporaneous with 
the primary diffusion of the concept of agriculture together with the 
actual passing of certain cultivated food plants such as maize, beans, 
and squashes, that are universally known among American Indians 
on the agricultural plane of life. 
As regards Venezuelan archaeology, the question of time should per- 
haps be held in abeyance. In Mexico and Central America we have 
