Comments on John Scarry's Fort Walton Type-Variety Paper more

240 COMMENTS ON JOHN SCARRY'S FORI WALTON TYPE—VARIETY PAPER Jeffrey M. Mitchem Scarry's paper represents the first attempt to devise a type-variety system for pottery found in Florida sites. As such, it is bound to cause a good deal of dissent and argument among people actively working on Fort Walton sites and collections. Even though I am not working in northwest Florida and have little firsthand experience with ceramics from the Fort Walton area or adjacent culture areas to the north and west, I can offer some comments from my more southern Safety Harbor perspec- tive. Because many of the pottery types encountered on Safety Harbor sites are very similar (especially in regard to surface decoration) to Fort Walton ceramics, there is a need for a better system of classification in order to study the relationships between the ceramics from the two areas. As Scarry notes in his paper, Willey's (1949) typology has proven to be too restric- tive as more data have been gathered from Fort Walton sites. The same situation is becoming apparent in the Safety Harbor area as well. A type- variety system seems to be the next logical step in trying to standarize terminology both within the State of Florida and in relationship to the Southeast as a whole. If we are to correctly interpret pottery and other artifacts, it is important that we Speak the same language as archaeolo- gists working on similar sites in other regions. The inclusion of a table or a list within each description of which of Willey's types were being subsumed by each new type-variety would have been a useful addition to the paper. Obvious- ly, this would be impossible in some cases, but would be helpful for those of us who are familiar with Willey's typology. I do not feel that it is a good idea to try to define a number of plain varie- ties (such as the Lake Jackson Plain type) as separate. It looks to me as though it would be very difficult to classify a plain sherd on the basis of the description given here. There classification appears to depend mainly on the context of their discovery. In var. Pinellas is supposed to replace Willey's Pinellas Plain, some mention of the laminated, contorted paste should be made. This is a major attribute of this ware in the Safety Harbor area. In the discussion of Pensacola Incised, I would like to point out that inci- sions made in dry paste are generally referred to as engraving (Shepard 1956:198). I mention this in the interest of standardized terminology. On a more general level, I believe that a number of Florida researchers, myself included, will have difficulty adjust- ing to a type-variety system because we have never used one in Florida before. We have used Willey's 1949 typology for sites on the Gulf Coast (and other parts of the state as well), and it will be quite a chore to rethink old site reports without actually reana- lyzing the collections themselves. Though some archaeologists feel that a type-variety system will not work in northwest Florida (Brose 1981) or even in the greater Southeast (Sears 1969), it should be tried, and Scarry's version appears adequate on paper. However, the real test will be the analysis of a large collection without duplicating the efforts of others or going overboard by creating a constant- ly expanding list of varieties. More harm than good would be done if each researcher created new types and Volume 38 Number 3 THE FLORIDA ANTHROPOLOGIST September, 1985 241 varieties without regard to previously defined types and varieties from adjacent areas. If Phillips• (1970:26- 28) "Ground Rules for Type-Variety Formulation" are followed, along with careful review of the literature before defining new varieties, Scarry's system should prove useful to archaeologists working on Fort Walton sites, and should also aid researchers in adjacent areas to better interpret the results of work on Fort Walton sites. REFERENCES CITED ■rest, David S. 1981 Mississippi*!) Cultures In the Are* of North-western Florida: A Teaporal and Geographic Perspective on Fort Hal ton. riper distributed at the Avery Island Conference on Gulf Coast Prehistory, New Iberia, Louisiana. Phillips, Phillip 1970 Archaeological Survey In the lower Yazoo ■allh. Mississippi. 1949-19!>!>. Peabody Museua Papers V6I. fcO. Peab6dy Museuei of Archaeology and Ethnology. Harvard Univer- sity, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sears, MHllaa H. 1960 Ceraalc Systems and Eastern Archaeology. American Antiquity 25:324-329. Shepard, Anna 0. 1956 Ceramics for the Archaeologist. PubUcttlbn 809. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Washington D.C. Hilley, Gordon R. 1949 Archeology of the Florida 6ulf Coast. SaUhsonlan Mlscei lah*6us to 11 ceteris 113. Salthsonlan Institution, Washington D.C. Jeffrey M. Mitchem Department of Anthropology University of Florida Gainesville, Florida 32611