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Woodland pottery Woodland tradition pottery features a variety of designs incorporating stamps. These grit-tempered rims from a site in La Crosse County, Wisconsin, fall into a Middle Woodland type archaeologists call Naples Dentate Stamped. A notched tool, such as a carved stick, was pushed into the clay to create a pattern of shallow impressions. Because the tool had tooth-like notches, the stamp is called “dentate” (think “dental” or “dentist”). The sherd on the left has a row of stamp impressions near the rim made by a tool with one or more columns of notches. Below that is a row of circular punctates (holes from pushing a tool into but not completely through the clay) and then another row of stamps. The smaller sherd on the right shows similar stamping on the rim. This pottery was made about two thousand years ago.