In the bison area the encroachments are chiefly among the Siouan-speaking tribes. Then, if we recall the limits of maize culture, we note a rather close agreement between the distributions for the two traits. As we know that maize came up from the South, it is reasonable to suppose that pottery came by the same road. As to their time relations, we cannot be so sure, for though pottery has gone a little farther than maize culture, there is a climatic limit to the latter.
Over the Antilles, through Mexico, and on into South America was the great pottery region. In some places archæologists have uncovered deposits of sherds many feet thick, suggesting an intensive pursuit of the art similar to that for textiles (p. 59). Outside of the Andean area pottery is less intense. It has been reported from sections of the manioc area throughout, from which we may infer that its distribution there is approximately continuous. In the South, somewhere near the 30° of latitude, it disappears altogether, so that about the only part of the southern continent that did not make some pretense of pottery was lower Patagonia and a portion of the Brazilian highlands.
PROCESSES OF MANUFACTURE
The process of manufacture varied according to locality, but one general characteristic applies to all, no wheel was used in the New World. It is true that large vessels were often built up on shallow baskets and turned slowly to bring the successive parts within easy reach, but this does not involve the principle of the wheel. Even the Lacandone (Guatemala) method of supporting the pot upon a block which is turned by the feet, is not a true wheel, for the turning is merely for the sake of bringing all parts of the surface to the potter's hand.[1]
As a rule, all the New World potters used the coil method; i.e., slender rods of clay were rolled out to convenient lengths and the vessel built up spirally. In some vessels from the Pueblo area the original traces of the coils were retained as decorative motives, but as a rule, the surfaces were afterwards scraped smooth and to the requisite thinness. So far as we have data, the coil method was used in all of the Amazon
- ↑ Tozzer, 1907. I.
