Photographer: Andrea Blumtritt | Rights management: Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 4.0 International
Round-bottomed bowl with a deep rim and a straight wall. The object has a hollow base. There is an anthropomorphic face on the wall. The object has been smoothed, sanded, primed and lightly polished on both sides. Its exterior is painted. The heavily fragmented ceramic has many breaks and flaws. The object has a red-orange base colour, which is painted white-yellow on the outside of the vessel. The lip is decorated with a white-yellowish line. There is a surrounding frieze on the wall consisting of four panels. The central panel is occupied by an anthropomorphic facial sculpture, which is partially painted. The three remaining sectors show a geometric motif. According to Hartman (1901), it depicts a highly stylised, zoomorphic head with two opposing snouts. Circumferential horizontal lines and wavy lines appear on the base. A red band runs along the inside of the pottery. According to Lothrop 1926: yellow line ware. Cultural significance: only a few polychrome ceramics appear in the ceramic system of the Central Highlands of Costa Rica. Their position is largely replaced by groups with monochrome or bicolour decoration. Geometric object decoration also appears in an abbreviated form in the Pitahaya Banda Blanca group (1550-1000d.C.). (Künne 2004)
