502 
ANTHROPOLOGY: G. G. M'CURDY 
the mouth opening from the neck of the vase to an equatorial point 
on the side of the body and representing it by means of a painted cir- 
cle. In order to eliminate as it were the neck and aperture of the vase 
from consideration, a large circular panel is formed about this make- 
believe mouth opening as a center. The eight arms converging from 
the periphery of the panel toward the central mouth opening produce 
the same effect as though one were looking down on the vase in figure 3. 
This gives the design that in earlier publications was called the rosette. 
It is simply a variety of the octopus motive and is met with perhaps 
oftener than any other single variety. In order the more easily to 
arrive at a circular panel, the body of the vessel was made spherical and 
the neck small, two characters common to lost color vases. It is there- 
fore probable that the exigencies of the design tended to control the shape 
of the vessel, and vice versa. A good example just rescued from the 
duplicate material in the Yale Museum is reproduced in figure 5. 
Referring back to the key specimen (see fig. 1 , we find the octopus 
body represented by a rhomboidal or lozenge-shaped figure. In some 
realistic examples showing appendages attached to the body, the dots 
representing succers are placed within the field of the body rather than 
on the appendages. Remembering the freedom with which the ancient 
Chiriquian artist suppressed or transposed parts, one would expect to 
find cases where the body is represented and the appendages omitted. 
This would give an octopus body motive. The body motive, a^ was 
the case with appendage motives, is repeated to form zonal or other 
FIG. 4.— TWO VARIETIES OF THE 
OCTOPUS APPENDAGE MOTIVE. 
FOUR ARMS OF EACH KIND RISE 
TOWARD THE NECK OF THE VASE; 
THIS DESIGN IS REPEATED ON 
THE LOWER HALF OF THE VASE. 
HE YE COLLECTION. CAT. NO 746J. 
I. 
FIG. 3.— OCTOPUS MOTIVE. THE SUCCERED 
ARMS RISE LIKE SHORT-BASED TRIANGLES TO- 
WARD THE NECK OF THE VASE WHICH SERVES AS 
THE OCTOPUS BODY. FROM HOLMES. 
