Front page | Photographer: Andrea Blumtritt | Rights management: Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
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Deep, three-legged bowl with legs designed as anthropomorphic creatures. Each leg has a narrow, vertical opening and a rattle ball. The object is smoothed on both sides, slurried, primed, painted and highly polished. The ceramic has a cinnamon-coloured base, which is painted black and red. The rim is decorated with a circumferential red band. On the outside of the object there is a circumferential, central frieze showing two intertwined bands. They appear to imitate textile or wickerwork. The inside of the wall is decorated with upright, circumferential bands and lines. A zoomorphic creature with a snake-like body appears in the base of the vessel. It has two triangular, opposite heads, a long, thin tongue and four legs. According to Lothrop 1926: highland polychrome ware, two headed monster. Cultural significance: the ceramics of the Mora group were produced in north-west Costa Rica and traded to the Central Highlands and the Atlantic region of the country. It uses design elements (seated anthropomorphic figures with headdresses, mat motif, Kan cross) that are also known from the Maya ceramics (Copador group) of the Clásico Tardío (900-600d.C.). The variant has been documented both in burials and in settlement contexts. It does not occur in Nicaragua. (Künne 2004)
