Photographer: Andrea Blumtritt | Rights management: Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 4.0 International
Hollow, standing figure with seven small openings. The anthropomorphic sculpture depicts a female figure resting both hands on her thighs. The object has been smoothed, sanded, primed, painted and polished. The primer and paint are partially eroded. The ceramic has a white-yellowish base colour, which was painted black and red. The figure wears a round cap and a red mouth mask. Almost all parts of the sculpture's body were painted with geometric motifs. They show trapezoids with at least one point in the centre. Only the upper body of the standing figure was left undecorated. Symbolic meaning: Holmes (1888: 183) and MacCurdy (1911) refer to discs, trapezoids, triangles and squares with dots in the centre 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)
