122 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 146 
forest environment, the intensive agricultural production needed to 
support a highly differentiated social system could not be maintained. 
As people were increasingly diverted from specialized activities to the 
role of food production, the culture underwent a gradual simplifica- 
tion that transformed it into something resembling the Tropical 
Forest pattern. 
A few centuries before the European conquest, another wave of in- 
fluence can be identified by the appearance on the middle and lower 
Amazon of pottery decorated with carefully drawn parallel incised 
lines, and modeled and punctate adornos. The best-known example is 
the elaborate pottery from the Santarem region. In sites such as those 
of the Mazagao Phase in Brazilian Guiana, this pottery is associated 
with glass beads of European origin. On the Orinoco River, carbon-14 
dates place the appearance of the related Arauquin style at around 
A.D. 1000. This time difference suggests a movement from the Orinoco 
via the Casiquiare into the Rio Negro and down the Amazon. 
Among new vessel forms introduced at this time is the griddle, 
usually associated with the preparation of cassava bread from bitter 
manioc. While manioc must have been cultivated considerably prior 
to this time, its preparation took forms for which no corresponding 
pottery artifact has been identified, if one exists. 
Habitation sites producing this incised and punctate ceramic style 
are typically small in area and have shallow refuse accumulations, 
suggesting a continuation of the pattern of shifting fields and fre- 
quently moved villages characteristic of earlier groups. Secondary 
burial or cremation deposited in urns grouped in cemeteries is as- 
sociated, but there is no clearcut evidence of differential treatment of 
the dead. Historic accounts from Brazilian Guiana describe typical 
Tropical Forest elements of social organization and religious belief 
(Meggers and Evans, 1957) . 
In view of postulations of earlier writers that Amazonian cultural 
development was influenced by movements around the Guiana coast 
and up the river, it is of interest to mention a final movement in late 
pre-European times, which brought the Arua Phase to the islands of 
Marajo, Mexiana, and Caviana in the mouth of the Amazon. This is 
the only culture showing numerous relationships with the Antilles, not 
only in aspects of pottery decoration and vessel shape, but also in 
other items of material culture. Burial was in large urns placed on 
the surface of the ground in cemeteries. Villages were small and fre- 
quently moved, and although apparently not protected by stockades 
were located on the banks of small streams away from the coast, where 
they would be concealed from view. Whether aggressiveness was a re- 
