FEWKES] SYMBOLISM OF CERAMIC DECORATIONS 657 
PALEOGRAPHY OF THE POTTERY 
GENERAL FEATURES 
The pottery from Sikyatki is especially rich in picture writing, and 
imperfect as these designs are as a means of transmitting a knowledge 
of manners, customs, and religious conceptions, they can be interpreted 
with good results. 
One of the most important lessons drawn from the pottery is to be 
had from a study of the symbols used in its decoration, as indicative 
of current beliefs and practices when it was made. The ancient inhabi- 
tants of Sikyatki have left no written records, for, unlike the more 
cultured people of Central America, they had no codices; but they 
have left on their old mortuary pottery a large body of picture writings 
or paleography which reveals many instructive phases of their former 
culture. The decipherment of these symbols is in part made possible 
by the aid of a knowledge of modern survivals, and when interpreted 
rightly they open a view of ancient Tusayan myths, and in some eases 
of prehistoric practices.! 
Students of Pueblo mythology and ritual are accumulating a con- 
siderable body of literature bearing on modern beliefs and practices. 
This is believed to be the right method of determining their aboriginal 
Status, and is therefore necessary as a basis of our knowledge of their 
customs and beliefs. It is reasonable to suppose that what is now 
practiced in Pueblo ritual contains more or less of what has survived 
from prehistoric times, but from Taos to Tusayan there is no pueblo 
which does not show modifications in mythology and ritual due to 
European contact. Modern Pueblo life resembles the ancient, but is 
not a facsimile of it, and until we have rightly measured the effects of 
incorporated elements, we are more or less inexact in our estimation 
of the character of prehistoric culture. The vein of similarity in the 
old and the new can be used in an interpretation of ancient paleo- 
graphy, but we overstep natural limitations if by so doing we ascribe 
to prehistoric culture every concept which we find current among the 
modern survivors. To show how much the paleography of Tusayan 
has changed since Sikyatki was destroyed, I need only say that most 
of the characteristic figures of deities which are used today in the 
decoration of pottery are not found on the Sikyatki ware. Perhaps 
the most common figures on modern food bowls is the head of a mytho- 
logic being, the Corn-maid, Calako-mana, but this picture, or any which 
resembles it, is not found on the bowls from Sikyatki. A knowledge 
of the cult of the Corn-maid possibly came into Tusayan, through 
foreign influences, after the fall of Sikyatki, and there is no doubt that 
‘Symbolism rather than realism was the controlling element of archaic decoration. Thus, while 
objects of beauty, like flowers and leaves, were rarely depicted, and human forms are most absurd 
caricatures, most careful attention was given to minute details of symbolism, or idealized animals 
unknown to the naturalist. 
17 ETH, PT 2—_13 
