Photographer: Andrea Blumtritt | Rights management: Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 4.0 InternationalSmall, two-part vessel consisting of a horizontal, bean-shaped (shoe-shaped) body with a projecting rim. The object has been smoothed and slurried on both sides. Its exterior has been primed. There is a linear depression around the rim. The vessel has a break in the rim. The monochrome ceramic has a red-brown base colour. The size of the object and the cord-shaped indentation around the rim indicate that it was primarily used outside the immediate burial complex. The vessel was probably not made in the Diquís region (Pacífico Sur). Lothrop (1926) treats the object form under his zapatero ware. He understands the body as an avimorphic shape (1926: 254). Haberland (1971f: 21f) refers to the shape as a cat-like head. Cultural significance: in the Gran Nicoya region, shoe-shaped vessels were used for secondary burials (Bransford 1888: 7-19; Lothrop 1926: 254-56; Haberland 1971f, 1992a). On the island of Ometepe, the production of reddish-brown, shoe-shaped vessels reached its manufacturing peak in the El Gato phase (1200-1000d.C.) (Haberland 1992: 106, 111 f.). Many shoe-shaped jars of the Policromo Tardío (1520-1350d.C.) were found in burials and were associated with objects of the Luna Policromo type (Bransford 1881). Shoe-shaped vessels containing glass beads are known from the island of El Muerto and the Arquipiélago Solentiname (Lothrop 1926: 254). Little is known about the "profane" use of the objects. (Künne 2004)
Cataloguing data
Height: 12,4 cm
Depth: 17,9 cm
Width: 11,9 cm
Provenance and sources
Production
Collecting
Assignment to a curated holding:
American Archaeology
Information about the record
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