40 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 191 



decorated in black, except for the red shadows under the eyes. The 

 manner of hair indication is similar to that above and the feet are 

 like those on many Veraguas buff ware effigies. The style, however, 

 seems completely unrelated to any Panama pottery published here- 

 tofore and seems more lifelike than the usual humanoid effigies. 



INCISING 



The main design technique consists of incising with the thumbnail 

 or a pointed tool in a linear fashion to form various animal drawings. 

 These are then elaborated with incising or punching by various 

 mechanical tools so as to fill in the design or further elaborate the 

 body outlines. Punched holes, shell marks, thumbnail marks, and 

 various combinations of markings made by a hollow reed have been 

 identified. The reed marks are in patterns of full circles, concentric 

 circles, circles with central dots, and half circles. Many designs are 

 executed with a mixture of several techniques. The frequency of 

 appearance of single and mixed designs is as given below and as illus- 

 trated by selected examples in plates 16-18: 



Number of pooled decorated sherds 339 



Number incised 328 



Linear 185 



Punched 67 



SheU 38 



Reed 13 



Circle-dot 12 



Concentric circles 10 



Half circles 19 



Fingernail 5 



Raised ridges along incised lines are present in some examples, 

 but most designs are clean and would indicate incising the "leather- 

 hard" rather than in wet clay, causing uneven grooves due to subse- 

 quent polishing. 



SURFACE DESIGNS 



Surface designs are shown in plates 19-20. Of the out-sloping 

 plates and shallow bowls, the most frequent rims are those with molded 

 ridges and/or one or more concentric iacised rings. The ridge may 

 be above the ring, below it (pi. 19, a), or both above and below 

 (pi. 19, e). In some examples either the edge or the ridged edge 

 was scalloped (pi. 19, b, d). Other designs are simple shell stamping 

 (pi. 20, i) and punching or notching of the rim (pi. 20, d). They 

 are apparently notched in the leather-hard state. 



Of the vertical, and chiefly brown-ware rims, designs consist of 

 geometrical patterns of alternating incised lines and punched dots 

 (pi. 20, a-c). In contrast to the former group, incising appears to 



