The Glazed Ware of Central America, 



with Special Reference to a Whistling 



Jar from Honduras 



By Marshall H. Saville 



j]HE type of Central American pottery designated as 

 glazed ware has long been known; indeed Professor 

 Holmes made it a subject of study twenty-five years 

 ago. The specimens of this peculiar class of American 

 ceramics are easily recognized wherever found, being 

 distinguished by a surface luster more nearly approaching a true 

 glaze than that found on any pottery hitherto discovered in ancient 

 America. The vessels are nearly all of a grayish-blue or greenish 

 shade, mottled in places with spots or patches of darker hue; some 

 are mottled with dull-red spots, while others are almost wholly of a 

 brick-red color. Many of the vessels are decorated with the represen- 

 tation of a bird, an animal, or a human figure, modeled on the sides 

 of the jar in relief; and these figures are hollow as a rule, being made 

 separately and put on after the body of the vessel had been finished. 

 In January, 1892, while in charge of the scientific work of the 

 first Honduras Expedition sent out by the Peabody Museum of 

 Harvard University, the writer explored an important tomb (No. 1) 

 near the southern slope of the Main Structure of Copan. In the 

 tomb were uncovered, besides the skeletons, two beautiful peccary 

 skulls engraved with figures and hieroglyphs, and five pottery vessels, 

 four of which bear the glaze-like luster. One was broken into many 

 fragments and was of reddish color; the others are of a steel-blue 

 shade. The three unbroken specimens are shown in our plate 1. 

 Numbers 1 and 2 are now among the collections of the Peabody 

 Museum; number 3 became the property of Honduras in the division 

 of material under the terms of the concession, which granted to the 

 Museum half of the objects found during the work of the expedition: 

 it was placed in a small structure built by the expedition as a museum 

 building, but it later disappeared with nearly all the collection 

 retained by the representative of the Honduras government for the 

 local museum. These vessels were the only ones found during the 

 continued excavations made by the Peabody Museum in its several 



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