Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744Fewkes, Jesse Walter
History
Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895: Seventeenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1895-1896, Government Printing Office, Washington, 1898, pages 519-744
The use of crosshatching is very common on the most ancient Pueblo
ware, and is very common in designs on cliff-house pottery. This style
of decoration is only sparingly used on Sikyatki ware. The
crosshatching is provisionally interpreted as a mosaic pattern, and
reminds one of those beautiful forms of turquois mosaic on shell,
bone, or wood found in ancient pueblos, and best known in modern times
in the square ear pendants of Hopi women. Figure 340 is one of the few
designs having terraced figures with short parallel lines depending
from them. These figures vividly recall the rain-cloud symbol with
falling rain represented by the parallel lines. Figure 341 is a
perfectly symmetrical design with figures of stars, rectangles, and
parallel lines. It may be compared with that shown in figure 340 in
order to demonstrate how wide the difference in design may become by
the absence of symmetrical relationship. It has been shown in some of
the previous motives that the crook sometimes represents a bird's
head, and parallel lines appended to it the tail-feathers. Possibly
the same interpretation may be given to these designs in the following
figures, and the presence of stars adjacent to them lends weight to
this hypothesis.
[Illustration: FIG. 342--Continuous crooks]
[Illustration: FIG. 343--Rectangular terrace pattern]
An indefinite repetition of the same pattern of rectangular design is
shown in figure 342. This highly decorative motive may be varied
indefinitely by extension or concentration, and while it is modified
in that manner in many of the decorations of vases, it is not so
changed on the exterior of food bowls.
There are a number of forms which I am unable to classify with the
foregoing, none of which show any new decorative design. All possible
changes have been made in them without abandoning the elemental
ornamental motives already considered. The tendency to step or terrace
patterns predominates, as exemplified in simple form in figure 343. In
figure 344 there is a different arrangement of the same terrace
pattern, and the design is helped out with parallel bands of different
length at the ends of a rectangular figure. A variation in the depth
of color of these lines adds to the effectiveness of the design. This
style of ornamentation is successfully used in the designs represented
in figures 345 and 346, in the body of which a crescentic figure in
the black serves to add variety to a design otherwise monotonous. The
two appendages to the right of figure 346 are interpreted as feathers,
although their depart forms widely from that usually assumed by these
designs. The terraced patterns are replaced by dentate margins in this
figure, and there is a successful use of most of the rectangular and
triangular designs.
[Illustration: FIG. 344--Terrace pattern with parallel lines]
[Illustration: FIG. 345--Terrace pattern]
[Illustration: FIG. 346--Triangular pattern with feathers]
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