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6 FROM PATAS TO PEDESTALS The Guadual Phase The Guadual phase begins with a bang. There is a major shift from polypod patas to tall, often flamboyantly shaped or decorated pedestals. There is a sudden and related transformation in serving vessels: plates with chalky pastes are replaced by compoteras with fine sandy pastes. Although several vessel forms persist from Selva Alegre, two of these increase dramatically in frequency, and a suite of seven new forms appears for the first time in Guadual. Black resist decoration, always executed as a postfire addition to a red-slipped background, becomes common. This series of innovations lends Guadual pottery a novel cast and suggests a major shift in Santiago-Cayapas "foodways." Moreover, this new culinary technology, however fancy in its elaboration of ceramic form and design, intimates a standardized aspect that departs from the more playful artistry of Selva Alegre (one happy consequence of this impression is that Guadual ceramics are fairly easy to recognize). It is as if the "happy forest" of Selva Alegre were supplanted by the repetitive nodes of a stalk of bamboo (guadua means bamboo in Cayapas Spanish). Perhaps these phase names are not so inappropriate after all. The most salient difference between Selva Alegre and Guadual, however, is the change in vessel supports. Although continuing in reduced numbers, patas are on the way out. A requiem for the passing of the pata and a respite from the tedium of humorless pottery description are both in order. A Digression into Base Symbolism The follOwing vignette, one dared by amused or even alarmed colleagues, begins with several anecdotes. One night in 1986, perched on the elevated floor ofJesusitos house with the Cayapas rushing below, Elka Weinstein, Paul Tolstoy, and I chatted after a dinner ofbeans, bala, and slices of papaya. Just that day, Elka had returned from the Boca Onzole with news of a pata shaped like a draconic crocodilian. This was not totally remarkable because dragon-cayman representations are relatively common in La Tolita art. ResponSible for drawing all the artifacts coming in from the field, I knew about the mammiform patas characterizing the still nascent Selva Alegre phase. Furthermore, I had seen and sketched an obviously phallic pata in the collection of a local North American expatriate. As a cooling breeze picked up to promise rain, seemingly unrelated thoughts fleetingly came together. Trained by Don Lathrap, I remembered his obsession with the cayman (specifically the monstrous black cayman, Melanosuchus niger) and his argument that this beast is the primordial nexus of Neotropical cosmology- FROM PATAS TO PEDESTALS 107 the androgynous monster mediating between night and day, earth and sky, and female and male. With a vague sense of discovery and levity, I suggested to Elka and Paul that we coauthor an article to be called "The Tit, the Prick, and the Croc." Immediately Paul replied that this was a bad idea as many readers would assume that the title referred to the authors. Elka found the idea completely silly. The rain began to pound, the candles went out, and the coauthors of a stillborn article retired to their hammocks. Anecdote two--spring semester, 1991. Lynda Carroll and Kimberly Pierce pick away at the soil matrix filling several hollow Selva Alegre patas. They discover water-rolled quartz pebbles embedded in the matrix of one. Their discovery is important-it demonstrates that patas were occasionally rattling vessel supports. I remember the rattle-base beer mug used in recent Shipibo-Conibo female puberty ceremonies. An identical vessel form is attested in the millennium old Cumancaya ceramics of the Peruvian Amazon. As a more general observation , it should be recalled that semen-associated quartz crystals and shamans go together throughout Amazonia and that quartz is the preferred rattler for the shamanic gourd rattle, the focal instrument, simultaneously phallus and womb, linking the multiple tiers ofthe cosmos (Lathrap 1977; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1979). Anecdote three-June vacation in Oaxaca, 1991. Tripod vessels on exhibit at the Frissell Museum at Mitla include patas faithfully modeled in crocodilian, mammiform, and phallic representations. A vessel realistically modeled as a human foot is also on display. Back in Oaxaca City, I buy a copy of Pueblos de la Sierra Madre and read of the important role that beings with a missing foot play in Otomi folklore. According to Galinier (1987: 437-38), the Otomi liken the foot to the phallus, whereas both (or perhaps better stated, all three) are symbolically equated with the triad of stone pot-rests found...

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