346 Philip Ainsworth Means, 



human face. Typical forms of this headdress are shown on 

 Plate II, Figure 3, on Plates III and IV. 



(5) The Ceremonial Staffs. The Plates already mentioned 

 show good examples of the staffs. It is to be noted that in vase- 

 paintings where the mouth-mask, headdress and hands preserve 

 the greatest amount of naturalism the staff most closely approxi- 

 mates the spear-thrower shown in Plate II, Figure 2, though at 

 no time is the resemblance very strong. In the more conven- 

 tionalized designs, however, the staffs (here usually two in num- 

 ber and so arranged as to be bilaterally symmetrical) are 

 themselves so conventionalized as to be scarcely definable in 

 regard to their use. 



Bearing in mind the well-known principles that apply to dec- 

 orative arts, the principles of elimination and simplification which 

 will be spoken of later, the writer ventures to suggest that of 

 the two groups of pottery that we have been studying, that exem- 

 plified by Plate II, Figures i, 2 and 3, is the older, and that 

 the "Centipede Gods" on Plates II, III and IV were a later 

 style. So much, then, for the modelled ware and for the "Centi- 

 pede God" motif. 



We will now examine another motif which may be called, for 

 the sake of convenience, the "Multiple-headed God." Our Plate 

 II, Figure 5, shows an excellent specimen of this motif. Another 

 is shown by Joyce (191 2, Plate I). In this motif the heads of 

 the personage consist of hardly more than eyes and mouth and 

 tongue. In some cases, the body of the 'god' has a chief head 

 in approximately the correct position. Then, running out from 

 the shoulders, are a lot of subsidiary heads attached to the body 

 by their run-out tongues. The subsidiary heads are decorated 

 by feather-like rays reminiscent of the decorations on the mouth 

 mask seen on Plate III, Figure 3. . Sometimes, as in Joyce's 

 Plate I, the chief head has a headdress of the type associated with 

 the "Centipede God." Also, the "Multiple-headed God" and 

 the "Centipede God" have other points in common, notably: 

 (i) The occasional presence of a centipede-like girdle with the 

 tongue sticking out (see Joyce, 19 12, Plate I) ; (2) The pres- 

 ence of four-digit hands (though five-digit hands sometimes 

 appear in both) ; (3) The presence of the minor decoration, 

 seen in our Plate II, Figure 3, and in Joyce's Plate I, made up 



