“Pottery” in the Aleutian Islands

Abstract Pottery was reported from the eastern Aleutian Islands in 1945. Recent petrographic examination of the supposed sherds reveals that they are fragments of carved stone vessels rather than tempered clay pots. The dissimilarity of the Aleutian specimens to well-documented southwestern and western Alaskan pottery, and negative evidence from the central and western parts of the chain suggest that the Aleutian cultural area lay beyond the prehistoric distribution limits of Alaskan pottery.