It was possible to identify vessel forms from 3.4% of the shell tempered
sherds collected. These forms are listed and their frequency of
occurrence shown in Table 4, Column I. The most common forms were the
wide mouthed bowl of small to medium size and wide mouthed jars which
showed extreme variation in size from small jars of perhaps a pint
capacity to very large ones of several gallons capacity (Fig. 9). Water
bottles were a very uncommon form of vessel if judged from the sherd
collection.
Among the complete vessels recovered the water bottle was over 50% of
the total while the sherd collection yielded only 1.3 of this class
(Table 4). This is a strong example of a mortuary vessel form which
found little use in the daily domestic scene. The water bottle at
Lawhorn was apparently not a vessel of utility to the living but only to
the dead.
TABLE 4—COMPARISON OF DOMESTIC AND MORTUARY VESSEL FORMS
Column I Column II Column III
Vessel Shape Vessel Shape Vessel Shape Vessel Shape
From Sherds 31 Vessels 23 Mortuary
Vessels
Water Bottles 1.3 45 52
Shallow Bowls 6.3 13 13
Deep Bowls 37 30 26
Plates 1.8 0 0
Jars 49 13 9
Salt Pans (?) 2.5 0 0
Flat Bases 3.3 61 65
The vessel forms found at Lawhorn can be described as bowls, jars and
water bottles.