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PA R T V I I I. APPENDICES APPENDIX I NEGATIVE PAINTING In Grave I below the floor of Room VII were found two clay vessels, almost identical in appearance, which were decorated by the so-called negative painting method. The presence in Teotihuacan of this decoration technique is interesting not least on account of the vessels being of a type especially characteristic of the locality, so that they may in all certainty be presumed to have been manufactured there, cf. fig. 23. The »genuine» Teotihuacan vessels of the tripod type are devoid of painted decoration with the exception of the abovementioned two, a heterogeneous vessel from Grave 3, fig. 39 and the »in fresco painted ceramics», fig. 36. The remainder of the vessels from Grave I are, besides, of classical Teotihuacan type. As is apparent from the picture, the decorative pattern is very simple: two borders composed of horizontal lines and between the borders there is a row of circles inscribed with round figures. Nowhere else among the ceramical material is this simple pattern found, but on the other hand it is a familiar motive in architectural decoration. »Casa de los Frescos» and »Los Subternineos» thus have, inter alia, decorations consisting of green annular disks encircling red cores.' As to my knowledge no detailed description of negative painting in America, its technique and distribution, has ever been published, it may be expedient here to adduce certain data and some viewpoints. As early as 1888 Holmes brought forward his solution as to the technique of negative painting, arrived at by purely theoretical reasoning. In the main, his theories have proved correct: The complete solver of this problem was C. V. Hartman. During his stay in Salvador in 1896-97 he pursued ethnographical studies in which he, inter alia, found that only in one single Indian village were calabash vessels manufactured to any considerable extent.3 This was at Izalco, in the Aztec region. The calabash vessels were manufactured exclusively by women, and were decorated in the following way: the outer skin of the calabash was rubbed off, whereupon the surface was finely polished. The ornaments were then painted on with a small hair brush dipped in melted wax contained in a clay bowl set on red-hot embers. When the wax painting had dried, the whole surface was coated with black paint consisting of powdered charcoal and the pods of a certain tree, mixed with sugar. The calabash 1 Gamio 192Z: Torno J, vol. I, p1. 27-30. 2 Holmes 1888: Il3. a Hartman 1910: 137 seq.; 1911: 268. was then again left to dry. After that it was dipped in boiling water. The wax then melted, and along with it came away the black paint that had covered the figures painted in wax. The pattern then showed up in the light colouring of the rind itself, against the black coating. In the Ethnographical Museum's collections, in Stockholm, are also preserved calabashes from Guatemala decorated in this way, and a calabash originating from that republic and published by Stoll has evidently been decorated by the same method.' As can be seen from map I, negative painting of clay vessels is a technique which is common to Mexico, Central and South-America. In what place the invention was first made, or whether it originated independently in more than one place, or again whether in one or more places it developed out of one or more other technical methods, are questions still without an answer. In a discussion in September, 1924, at Gothenburg Museum, Professor Max Uhle asserted his opinion that the method, together with a great many of other culture elements, had been imported to South America - Ecuador in particular - by culture waves that emanated from Central America. In a number of works he has subsequently vindicated his theories: Uhle undoubtedly being the leading connoisseur of the archaeology of western South America - surely no one has through field work enriched science with so much material as he - the greatest importance must be attached to his opinion. Jijon y Caamafio agrees with Uhle as to the origin of the technique.3 Such an eminent scientist, and, inter alia, specialist on Central American archaeology , as S. K. Lothrop is on the other hand of a diametrically opposite opinion.' For he considers that the invention in question forms part of the contribution that the potters of northwestern South America made to the ceramic art of the New World. In this connection he points...

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