120 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 97 



Polychrome I (Upper Mayoid, plus southern influences) and the iden- 

 tical Bay Island Polychrome II (Upper Bold Geometric) (1935, 

 p. 145). Actually the Mayoid and the Bold Geometric have been 

 shown to be parallel developments ; thus Vaillant's Ulua Polychrome 

 V is contemporaneous with his Ulua Polychrome I and II (his 

 Ulua Polychrome IV contains both Upper Mayoid and Upper Bold 

 Geometric constituents), and Strong's Bay Island Polychrome I 

 is, in all probability, contemporaneous with his Bay Island Polychrome 

 II. Vaillant (1927, p. 266) was careful to point out the entirely tenta- 

 tive nature of his assumed sequences. Further, in regard to the Ulua 

 Polychrome V (and Salvador Polychrome VI) he states: "There is 

 a strong suspicion of the same non-Maya factors influencing both 

 these styles. The source of the influence is not discoverable in Maya 

 districts, and one thinks vaguely of the south and east, of Nicaragua, 

 eastern Honduras, and Costa Rica to locate a source " (1927, p. 170). 



Recently Tschopik (1937), in a brief but valuable analysis of tex- 

 tile motifs on Gordon's Ulua Polychrome pottery, has independently 

 pointed out this stylistic dichotomy. He groups Vaillant's Ulua Poly- 

 chrome I-IV as Ware A [Mayoid], and the latter's Ulua Poly- 

 chrome V as Ware B [Bold Geometric]. Tschopik points out that 

 there are consistent differences in both form and decoration between 

 the two, and that A is Mayoid, whereas B has a definite relationship 

 in form and decoration with ceramic types from Salvador, Nicaragua, 

 and Costa Rica. He, too, repeats the theory that naturalistic designs 

 are apt to be earlier than geometric, suggesting that Ware A is earlier 

 than Ware B, thus falling into the same error as Vaillant and Strong. 



At Santa Rita these two major styles (Mayoid and Bold Geometric) 

 are intermixed throughout almost 4 meters of Ulua Polychrome de- 

 posits. Although they blend in certain intermediate types of vessels, 

 each style in general keeps to its own particular genius, and each shows 

 a parallel development from a finer and somewhat more realistic dec- 

 oration in the lower levels, to a more conventionalized and geometric 

 decoration in the upper levels. Thus, the Lower Mayoid has priestly, 

 processional, and " dancing " figures in open panels, whereas the Up- 

 per Mayoid has florid, conventionalized, over-all designs, geometric 

 motifs and, often, animal head lugs. The Lower Bold Geometric has 

 intricate linear and geometric designs with remarkable, cursive ani- 

 mals or birds in open panels, whereas the Upper Bold Geometric be- 

 comes simpler, drops the animals, but retains textile and geometric 

 designs. At Las Flores, also, both the Mayoid and the Bold Geometric 

 styles occur in the same excavation, but here both are of the upper 

 and later, conventionalized type. It is worth noting that the only 



