Front page | Photographer: Andrea Blumtritt | Rights management: Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
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Ceramic in the shape of an anthropomorphic head with moulded decorations and sculptural applications. The object has an opening at the base with a protruding rim and a broad, flattened lip. Both sides of the sculpture have been smoothened and sanded. Its exterior is primed, scratched and lightly polished. The undercoat is heavily eroded. The ceramic has several fractures. The object has a red-orange base colour. There are applied and pressed-out decorations on the outside, which depict an anthropomorphic face. It has a high forehead, a small mouth and a squat nose. The forehead, temples and cheeks were decorated with geometric incisions (vertical bands of lines, guilloche motif, concentric crosses, hatched triangles), notches, dots and stamped indentations (concentric circles). They seem to suggest face painting. The facial area is separated from the rest of the vessel by an applied bead. The back of the head remains undecorated. Symbolic meaning: trophy head (?). According to Lothrop 1926: orange brown ware. According to Lehmann 1913: El Viejo style. Cultural significance: the type is known both from burials and from household contexts. Its ceramics show design influences from the Central Highlands and the Atlantic Slope of Costa Rica. (Künne 2004)
