340 Philip Ainsworth Means, 



The former, for example, have the black "stockings" that are 

 so frequently seen in Proto-Chimu vase-paintings; also, the 

 painted men have a very different headdress from the modelled 

 man. But most important of all is the fact that the painted men 

 appear to be either wearing masks or else to be adorned with 

 face-paint. Indeed, if the latter is the case, the "stockings," 

 "knee-caps" and "sleeves" must be assumed to be nothing less 

 than body-painting. From all of these elements of decoration 

 the modelled man is entirely free. Figure 2 is another type of 

 modelled vase from the Proto-Chimu period. It shows a per- 

 sonage, apparently masked to represent a fox or some such ani- 

 mal, sitting facing a semicircle of five foxes. The personage's 

 headdress, though different from that in Figure i, is, neverthe- 

 less of the same general type. The striking features about this 

 figure are the headdress and the fangs, to both of which we shall 

 refer later. Again, the back of the middle fox is adorned with 

 a design which Posnansky calls signo escalonado — stairsign.^ To 

 this also, we shall refer, in another connection. Around the base 

 of the vessel, in the region analogous to that occupied by the 

 painted hunting-scene in Figure i, we see a landscape. The trees 

 and plants are shown by means of shallow lines engraved, appar- , 

 ently with a blunt stick while the clay was still moist, in the 

 reddish slip of the vessel. This landscape is full of charm 

 because of its quaint realism. It is even possible to attempt to 

 identify the tree as an algaroba and the smaller plants as cactus. 

 This sort of vessel sometimes leads students into attempting an 

 "interpretation" of the scene. While the modelled portion of 

 the vessel imdoubtedly represents some sort of ceremony 

 employed by the people of that period, it is, nevertheless, danger- 

 ous to reconstruct, let us say, a totemic clan organization, from 

 such evidence as this. 



As the vases shown in Figures i and 2 represent a very large 

 and important sub-type of the Proto-Chimu pottery, it will be 

 well to summarize briefly our impressions of them before going 

 on to an examination of the other sub-types. 



We see that the vessels of this sub-type comprise two separate 

 areas of decoration, each marked by a distinct technique. In 

 both the painted (or engraved) area and the modelled area of 



* Posnansky, 1913. 



