98 



A STUDY OF CHIRIQUIAN ANTIQUITIES. 



from arm-pits to knees is lost in the body of the vessel. Only one shoulder orna- 

 ment remains, the other two having disappeared, one of them evidently while the 

 vessel was still in use, as the place where it stood had been rubbed down and 

 painted before the tripod was buried — an example of prehistoric pottery mending 

 that should not escape notice. This specimen is from El Banco. 



One marked character of the 

 group is the tendency in the 

 tripods toward short legs placed 

 close together. The latter were 

 so arranged in order that they 

 might be made as short as pos- 

 sible, and they were made short 

 because long legs of such coarse, 

 friable, poorly baked paste would 

 not long endure. They are gen- 

 erally either blunt pegs or are 

 slightly spread at the extremity, 

 so as to suggest a three-toed 

 foot, probably that of the tapir. 

 The feet of the flat-bottomed 

 tripods have completely dis- 

 appeared. The open-mouthed 

 bowl represented in figure 168 

 is a typical example of the 

 bunching of three short legs. 



Two of the tripods are ob- 

 long basins, with the rim carried 

 up to a point at the ends, near 

 each of which are two rim nodes. 

 Figure 169 is an example. There 

 are four scarified areas on each 

 vessel — two on a side, an upper 

 and a lower, separated by a 

 narrow, horizontal, smooth band. 

 The areas of one side are sep- 

 arated from those of the other 

 by a wide, vertical, smooth band 

 at both ends and along the 

 bottom, where the band spreads 

 into a field in which the three 

 stump legs are set. A thin coat 

 of maroon paint covers the entire surface, both inside and outside, including the 

 incised patterns. In another boat-shaped tripod vase, the paint was applied to 

 the smooth surfaces only. That it was applied after the incised patterns were 

 made, is evidenced at numerous points by the careless way in which the paint 

 was allowed to fill the incisions that border on smooth fields. This is best seen 



ig. 167. — Tripod in which shoulder ornaments and supports rep- 

 resent the head and arms, and the legs of the human figure, 

 respectively; from El Banco. Scarified ware. V 2 



Fig. 1 68.— Open-mouthed bowl with three short supports placed 

 close together. Scarified ware. V> 



