Page:Mexican Archæology.djvu/244

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192
MEXICAN ARCHÆOLOGY

designs which any archæologist unaware of their real provenance would attribute unhesitatingly to the Peruvian coast. One of these is illustrated in Fig. 41, and a glance will show how it differs entirely from anything Mexican, and yet is absolutely identical with one of the patterns most commonly found on the polychrome tapestries of the Truxillo district of Peru. A peculiar class of Zapotec pottery may be mentioned here, consisting of figure vases of coarse red-brown or black ware, usually very brittle, found in tombs (Pl. XVII, 7-9). These seem to have been made solely for funerary

Fig. 41.—Design on a vase from Cuicatlan, Oaxaca.
(After Seler)

purposes, since the figure element has been developed so as almost to eliminate the vase portion. The figures are represented as sitting or standing; they wear mantles with capes, and head-dresses in the form of a monster's jaws with feather plumes. Many of them are shown with a peculiar mouth-mask, rather resembling the mouth-mask worn by the wind-god in Mexico and Guatemala, and also by certain figures on vases from Nasca in Peru; and occasionally the figure represents a bat. Many of them show traces of red paint, and the faces are very skilfully modelled. On the whole they are more Mayan than Mexican in appearance.

From Monte Alban and Xoxo come pottery frag-