FEWKBS] ANTIQUITIES OF MESA VERDE NATIONAL PARK 71 



SYMBOLS ON POTTERY 



The symbols on the Cliff Palace pottery are reducible to rectangular 

 geometrical figures; life forms, with the rare exceptions noted above, 

 are not represented, and the exceptional examples are crude. Con- 

 trast this condition with the pottery from Sikyatki, where three- 

 fourths of the decorations are life designs, as figures of men or ani- 

 mals, many of which are highly symbolic. The " sky band " with 

 hanging bird design, peculiar to old Hopi ware, was unknown to 

 Cliff Palace potters. Encircling lines are unbroken, no specimen be- 

 ing found with the break so common to the pottery from the Hopi, 

 Little Colorado, Gila, and Jemez subareas. The designs on food 

 bowls are often accompanied with marginal dots. No example of the 

 conventionalized " breath-feather " so common in Sikyatki pottery 

 decoration occurs. Spattering with color was not practiced. 



An analysis of the pottery decorations shows that the dominant 

 forms may be reduced to a few types, of which the terrace, the spiral, 

 the triangle, and the cross in its various forms are the most common. 



Various forms and sizes of triangles, singly or in combination, con- 

 stitute one of the most constant devices used by the cliff-dwellers of 

 the Mesa Verde in the decoration of their pottery. It is common to 

 find two series of triangles arranged on parallel lines. When the 

 component triangles are right-angled they sometimes alternate with 

 each other, forming a zigzag which may be sinistral or clextral. This 

 design may be called an alternate right-angular figure. 



If instead of two parallel series of right-angle triangles there are 

 isosceles triangles, they may be known as alternate isosceles triangles. 

 These triangles, when opposite, form a series of hour-glass figures or 

 squares. This form is commonly accompanied by a row of dots, 

 affixed to top and base, known as the dotted square or hour-glass 

 figure. Hour-glass designs are commonly represented upright, but 

 the angles of the triangles may be so placed that the series is hori- 

 zontal, forming a continuous chain. Often the bases of these serially 

 arrayed hour-glass figures are separated by rows of dots or by blank 

 spaces. 



A row of triangles, each so placed that the angles touch the mid- 

 dles of the sides of others in the same series, form an arc called linear 

 triangles. The St. Andrews cross, which occurs sparingly on Mesa 

 Verde pottery, is formed by joining the vertical angles of four isos- 

 celes triangles. 



The cross and the various forms of the familiar swastika also occur 

 on Cliff Palace pottery. The star symbol, made up of four squares 

 so arranged as to leave a space in the middlCj is yet to be found in 

 Mesa Verde. Parallel curved lines, crooked at the end or combined 

 with triangles and squares, occur commonly in the pottery decoration 



