NO. 8 LA VENTA CERAMIC COMPLEX — DRUCKER 3 



surmise is true, it indicates considerable centralization of authority 

 and an elaborate organization. A series of 40 test pits was dug to 

 locate the areas of continuous occupation. Thick beds of culture- 

 bearing deposit were found to be few and small, although in many 

 places extensive thin caps of deposit occur. On the basis of the evi- 

 dence supplied by the test pits, three stratitrenches were put down. 

 One, stratitrench 2, ran into sterile soil a few inches down — a recheck 

 of the nearby deep test pit showed that a little gully or pocket had 

 been filled with refuse, but the areal extent of deep deposit was negli- 

 gible. The other two trenches had respectably thick layers of sherd- 

 bearing refuse, 4 and 5 feet each, and between them yielded a total 

 of a little over 24,000 pottery fragments. 



From the esthetic point of view. La Venta ceramics are disappoint- 

 ing. One would scarcely anticipate finding so drab a lot of wares 

 among the remains of the makers of the great sculptured monuments 

 and the carved jades. Of course, part of this drabness derives from 

 the poor preservation of the sherds, heavily eroded and leached by 

 soil acids ; now and again a better-preserved fragment shows a 

 lustrous surface that suggests that the general efifect of the pottery 

 may have been more pleasing. Similarly, rare but well-executed bits 

 of modeled ornaments, and occasional examples of graceful vessel 

 forms (pi. 2) demonstrate that the manufacture of artistic wares 

 was not beyond the makers' capacity. It would seem that the people 

 of La Amenta had but slight interest in ceramics as a field for artistic 

 expression, not enough to lead them to elaborate the painting of their 

 vessels, or to carve or incise anything but the simplest of designs on 

 them. Painted decoration is extremely infrequent in our samples, 

 and incised ornament, though a little more common, most often con- 

 sists of a few circumferential lines about the rim or lip of a pot. A 

 number of decorative techniques were known : in addition to model- 

 ing and pre-firing incising, heavy pre-firing grooving, punctation, and 

 rocker stamping (pi. i, c-e) occur in the local ware, but were utilized 

 so infrequently that they scarcely show in the percentage tables. The 

 high priest who conceived a monumental theme and chalked the 

 guide lines on a huge block of basalt, and the master artisan who 

 translated the guides into delicately modeled planes, both would seem 

 to have been indifferent as to the appearance of the everyday vessels 

 from which they ate and drank. Even the pieces which must have 

 served ceremonial ends, to judge by the fact that they were placed 

 in the cists in the Ceremonial Enclosure, were of the same rudely 

 made types as the pots in daily use in the occuption areas. 



On the basis of thickness of deposit, a most inexact criterion but 



