Photographer: Andrea Blumtritt | Rights management: Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Attribution - NonCommercial - ShareAlike 4.0 International
Large, fragmented bowl with a straight rim. The object has a domed base. It has been smoothed, slurried and primed on both sides. Its matt exterior is painted in polychrome. The red-orange colour was applied after the black-brown decoration. The primer and paint are partially eroded. The restored object has a large missing part. The pottery has a white-yellowish base colour, which was painted black-brown and red-orange on the outside of the vessel. On the wall there is a frieze running around the lower edge, which shows stylised stepped elements. Four large, semi-circular pictorial fields decorating the body are attached to the ornamental band. They consist of a red-orange semicircle surrounded by two concentric rings. The ribbon-shaped, black-brown rings are separated from each other by a red-orange line. They have diagonal bundles of lines reminiscent of textile or wickerwork. Irregular traces of a white-yellowish primer are visible on the inside of the ceramic. A red-orange band runs along the edge. Symbolic meaning: according to Lothrop (1926), the highly stylised central motif represents the open maw of a snake, which appears in frontal perspective. Lehmann (1913) assigns the decoration to his "Chorotega style". According to Lothrop 1926: Nicoya polychrome ware, conventionalised serpent pattern, type H. Cultural significance: the diagnostic decorations of the variant also appear in the Jicote Policromo, variedad lazo group (1350-1000d.C.). They are also known from the Guasave (1400-700d.C.) and the Aztatlán complex (site Culiacán, 1530-900d.C.) of northwestern Mexico (states of Sinaloa and Nayarit) (Ekholm 1942; Kelly 1945; Stevenson-Day 1984: 310). (Künne 2004)
