6fi 



ANCIENT AKT OF THE PROVINCE OF CHIRIQUI. 



question very naturally arises as to whether these little figures had 

 any meaning or performed any function aside from that of simple 



decoration. I feel inclined to take the view that in their present con- 

 dition they are survivals of ideographic originals; that if their past 

 could be unveiled we would find that in the primitive ages they were 

 not exclusively employed for ornament. The animals made use of 

 originally were the embodiment of mythologic conceptions, and their 

 images were revered or served as fetiches or charms, and because of 

 this they came to have a permanent place in art. They were applied 

 to the vessel because its office had reference to them or because they 

 were thought to have a beneficial effect upon its functions. It is evi- 

 dent that their employment was governed by well established rules 

 and that they occupied places and occurred in numbers and relations 

 not wholly dependent upon the judgment of the individual potter. We 

 may suppose that they occur in twos because the handles with which 

 they were associated occurred in twos; or, if they serve to take the 

 place of the extremities of the animal forms in the semblance of 

 which the vases were originally modeled, their positions may be re- 

 lated to the original positions of the heads and tails of those forms. 

 It is not improbable that the conventional incised and relieved orna- 

 ments, the meanders, nodes, and varied marks refer also to the 

 creatures or the markings of the creatures with which the vessel was 

 associated. 



It will be seen, from the above remarks, that we cannot fully deter- 

 mine to what extent these ancient decorators followed the traditional 

 pathways of early ideographic usage or how much they were governed 

 by those powers of esthetic discrimination known to us as taste. 



UNPAINTED WARE. 



For convenience of descrii)tion I separate the pottery of Chiriqui 



