Georgia -- Antiquities; Mounds -- Georgia; Ocmulgee National Monument (Ga.)
Of course the Master Farmers made other types of pottery, too. Some were
open bowls, and others had an incurving rim which gracefully repeated
the curve of the lower portion just below the belly. There were also
deep, straight-sided jars with extremely thick walls, and big shallow
bowls several feet in diameter which have been called salt pans from the
belief that the type was sometimes used in the making of that substance.
Actually they were probably the large family food bowl in common use
also in later times. Impressions of a twined cloth fabric on the outer
surfaces of the latter, some cord marking, and crude scoring or other
treatment of the sides of the former were exceptions to the general rule
of smooth surfaces during this period.
In place of surface decoration, however, we find another form of
elaboration which is somewhat less common but equally distinctive. This
is the attempt to depict some form, either natural or supernatural, in
the body of the vessel or attached to it in some way as an independent
figure. Small heads suggesting a fox or an owl or some night creature
with big staring eyes grow out of the rim of a bowl and peer into it.
The small handles which are fairly common on the straight-shouldered
jars often have two little earlike knobs at the top; and knobs and
bosses with more or less modeling of the body of the pot are frequently
used to represent gourds or squashes or some other vegetable which is
not easy to identify. One curious style of jar has a neck which is
closed at the top, something like a gourd, but has an opening about an
inch in diameter below this on the side. Modeling at the top suggests
ears, a style of hair arrangement, or some other human or animal feature
that gives rise to the name, “blank-faced effigy bottle.”
[Illustration: Effigy bottles were usually a finer grade of pottery and
generally accompanied burials. The hole in the human figure is in the
back of the head; the face is painted white, the body red, and the hair
the natural brown of clay. Diameter of bottle, 5⁵/₁₆ inches.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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