376 Philip Ainsworth Means, 



Let us now turn to a brief examination of the same period 

 further down the coast, designated by the name of Nasca. The 

 reader is urged to consult Uhle, 1913b. The tradition of rich 

 coloring noticed hitherto in the southern coast-region did not 

 die out with the Tiahuanaco period. As we have already seen, 

 the Epigonal period carried on the forms of Tiahuanaco art to 

 the point where they were on the verge of falling to pieces 

 as the direct result of too-long repetition. The last pre-Inca 

 period of the southern coast exhibits an art which derives its 

 color from both the Proto-Nasca and the Tiahuanaco periods 

 and which still preserves a few of the motifs that mark the 

 latter art. Look, for example, at Plate X, Figure 9 of Uhle, 

 1913b. On the vessel there shown the reader will notice a bird- 

 figure which is considerably like the bird-figures in Tiahuanaco 

 art or in Epigonal. All the other motifs on the vessel, however, 

 are new, and they are distinctive of the peri'od we are now 

 studying. At the same time, the matter of pottery forms is an 

 interesting one. Besides the more usual bowls and dishes, Nasca 

 art shows a new pottery form, namely, the large globular vessel 

 with a fairly wide flaring neck. In most cases, it should be 

 noted, the body of the vessel has a slight tendency to be oval 

 rather than spherical. In the Inca period this tendency becomes 

 emphatic, in the Nasca region, as we shall see. The textiles 

 of this period are practically all adorned with geometric designs. 

 Our old friend the "stair-sign" is a motif that is often found. 

 Color in the textiles becomes duller. 



To sum up the period just before the Inca period on the coast 

 in one sentence we may say that the northern half of the littoral 

 preserved the old tendency toward modelled forms in pottery and 

 toward animal forms in textile-designs, and, at the same time, 

 that the southern half of the coast continued to make many- 

 colored pottery although both the pottery and the textiles show 

 a preponderance of geometric forms over life forms. In both 

 parts of the coast it was essentially a period in which creative 

 forces of the race's imagination were at a low ebb. This may be 

 indicative of the state of affairs in other branches of human 

 activity at that time. The old culture of Tiahuanaco had died 

 away from some shock at the centre and the communities on 

 the coast that had been dependent on it for artistic stimulation 

 fell into a period of stagnation which was only brought to a 

 close by the Inca invasion. 



