Presumed Trade and Aberrant Pottery
The pottery in the following sections is not considered to belong to the Alto Focus complex, but to occur with it at different points in the Davis site occupation by trade or other means. If the writer appears to vacillate over what is and what is not trade pottery here, it is due in part to the problem of separating what could have been produced at the site (as extreme variations of resident styles) from what probably was not (because of some distinctive attribute which would mark it as foreign). In certain cases of pronounced deviation, a foreign origin is obvious enough, particularly when the source areas are well known. But where the whole tradition is similar as in the clay-tempered pottery of the lower Mississippi Valley region, and a great range of decorative techniques was employed for long periods of time, the problem is not easy.