CUSHING.] 



EVOLUTION OF DECORATION. 



507 



We cannot explain those characteristics, and the conventional aspect 

 of the higher and symbolic Pueblo ceramic decorations which grew out 

 of them, in a better way than to suppose them, like the forms of this 

 pottery, to be the survivals of the influence of basketry. (See, for com- 

 parison, Figs. 543, 544.) I shall be pardoned, therefore, for elaborating 



Fig. 544. 



Amazonian basket decorations 



suggestions already made in this direction, in the paragraphs which 

 treated of the ornamentation of spiral ware, and of the derivation of 

 basket decorations from stitch- and splint-suggested figures. All stu 

 dents of early man understand his tendency to reproduce habitual forms 

 in accustomed association. This feeling, exaggerated with savages by 

 a belief in the actual relationship of resemblance, is shown in the repro- 

 duction of the decorations of basket vessels on the clay vessels made 

 from them or in imitation of them. 



In entire conformity with this, the succession in the methods of the 

 ornamentation of Pueblo pottery seems to have been first by incision or 

 indentation ; then by relief; afterward by painting in black on a natural 

 or light surface ; finally, by painting in color on a white or colored sur- 

 face. 



As before suggested, the patterns on the coiled, regularly indented 

 pottery (which came to be first known to the world as a type, the " cor- 

 rugated," through the earlier explorations and reports of Mr. William H. 

 Holmes) were produced simply by emphasized indentation, more rarely 

 by incision, and were almost invariably angular, reproducing exactly 

 the designs on wicker work. Even in comparatively recent examples 

 of the corrugated ware this is true ; for, once connected with a type, 

 a style of decoration, both seem to have been ever after inseparable, 

 with at most but slight modification of the latter. One of these modifi- 

 cations, in both method and effect, was in the adoption of the raised or 



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