Ladd] PARITA AND SANTA MARIA ARCHEOLOGY, PANAMA 49 



curved hair thin lines is another highly characteristic trait of the 

 style. The angular style exhibits the same trait, but the line exten- 

 sions are short and stubby. 



Ground color ranges from a light-cream slip (sometimes light gray) 

 through an orange to a reddish-brown hue. Although, like the angular 

 style, designs appear in sohd black and in red outlined with black, 

 there is a much more frequent use of purple in the curvilinear style, 

 especially the alternate use of purple and red in repeating elements 

 such as claws along a crocodile's plume or in alternate plumes. Dots 

 are rarely used as a form of massive fill, but individual filler elements 

 such as small triangles, double stemmed T's, circles with three radi- 

 ating equidistant lines of dots, and small barred elements are frequent. 



Shapes are less varied within the major categories than is the case 

 with the angular style. In fact, the extreme regularity of the bird 

 effigy bowl examples or the incurving bowls on pedestals is striking. 

 Two vessels may appear almost identical in shape, size, and design, a 

 pairing of vessels which is a characteristic of Cocl6 styles (Lothrop, 

 1942, p. 10). Among the most frequent shapes are pedestal plates, 

 shallow pedestal bowls with incurving rims, globular and subglobular 

 jars with flaring collars and rounded or angled shoulders, and gourd- 

 shaped bottles. Effigy vessels are also present, and bird effigy 

 pedestal bowls are extremely common at the El Hatillo site. Open 

 bowls with straight or flared-out sides are represented by only a few 

 sherds and no complete vessels. Relatively large open bowls with 

 incurving rims and somewhat pointed bases are fairly common, 

 but in most cases are known on the basis of rim sherds only, thus the 

 base form is a matter of conjecture. The range of size from minia- 

 tures (5 cm. in diameter for example) to very large (e.g., 104 cms. in 

 estimated diameter) vessels is a striking feature of this style, although 

 the number of miniatures recovered far exceeds the examples of 

 very large vessels. 



Although the grace and fluidity of the curvilinear style creates a 

 strikingly different impression from that of the angular, both styles 

 share a highly developed sense of design balance and proportion 

 and a mastery of decorative planning and technique. Each uses a 

 continuous design on some shapes and a breakdown into panels on 

 others, apparently depending on the area to be decorated, although 

 the curvilinear style resorts to panels more often and emphasizes them 

 by the use of the broad black band. Both tend to terminate corners 

 in some sort of line extension; in the curvilinear a finely graduated 

 point, in the angular a short and blunt projection. Both rely on 

 black for delineation of design, and on black or red for solid fill. 

 Red is never used by itself, either as a line or as solid design. Purple 

 is always bordered with black. No designs in white were found in 



