Photographer: Andrea Blumtritt | Rights management: Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 4.0 International
Small, tubular flute with a bimorph protome. The object has seven openings, two of which were used as finger holes. There are two further openings on the mouthpiece, which were used for suspension. The outside of the instrument has been smoothed, sanded, primed, painted and polished. The paint and primer are partially eroded. The ceramic has a white-yellowish base colour, which was painted red and black. The object has three circumferential picture panels separated by black lines. The panels show ovals and trapezoids in which several dots appear. The central sector is decorated with a massive, seated figure representing a birdman. Symbolic meaning: Holmes (1888: 183) and MacCurdy (1911) refer to discs, trapezoids and squares with dots in their centres as scale or alligator motifs. However, the same decorations also appear on other object groups. According to Holmes 1888: alligator ware. According to Lehmann: Chiriquí style. Cultural significance: Stone (1958: 48) reports that objects of this type were associated with iron objects in a burial. She therefore assumes that these ceramics were still being produced in the Diquís region (Pacífico Sur) after the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors. (Künne 2004)
