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120 N o t e s o f M i d d l e A m e r i c a n A r c h a e o l o g y a n d E t h n o l o g y Carnegie Institution of Washington Division of Historical Research No. 35 July 28, 1944 Stucco Decoration of Early Guatemala Pottery A. V. Kidder and Anna O. Shepard Four vessels seem to be represented: (A) by a single fragment of a spout (Fig. 35.1a) from Cut 7 (counting from above downward); (B) by a slightly smaller spout (Fig. 35.1b) and five body sherds (two shown in Fig. 35.1c, d), all from Cut 9 and all evidently from the same piece; (C) by two body sherds, perhaps from different vessels (one shown in Fig. 35.1e), from Cut 10, close to the bottom of the test column. All had carried stucco but on only three pieces was it well-preserved. The vessels were identical in paste and slap composition. Their temper is volcanic ash, in which particles of pumice and clear crystals of feldspar are prominent. They had more or less spherical bodies and, to judge from the roughness of their interiors , small mouths. No orifice fragments, except the spouts, were recovered. The interior surfaces are reddish brown (Pecan Brown of Ridgeway), striated as if by finger-smoothing; the exteriors bear an admirably smoothed, faintly glossy slip, Avellaneous in color in all except imperfectly oxidized sherds, but two of the fragments also have thin and ill-defined areas of Cinnamon. It was not determined whether this brighter color represents a flushing caused in firing or was produced by a wash of different material. No distinct surface film, however, can be detected with a magnification of 50x. So much for the nature of the vessels as they came from the kiln. The first step in the secondary, or post-firing, treatment was the application of an extremely thin coat of ferruginous clay (c, Fig. 35.2). Although this is visible to the unaided eye on only Stucco was used for the embellishment of prehistoric Mexican and Central American pottery in various ways: as a coating, tinted in plain colors, for whole vessels or parts of vessels; as a surface upon which more or less elaborate designs were painted; and as a background of which parts were cut away and filled with colored substances, paint cloisonné. These methods and their distribution have been discussed by Linné (1934) and Ekholm (1942). A fourth process, which has apparently not hitherto been reported , and which, as far as we are aware, involves the earliest known employment of stucco in Mesoamerican pottery decoration, is represented by a small group of sherds from the archaeological site of Kaminaljuyu, near Guatemala City. The pieces were found in 1938 by Robert E. Smith in the course of stratigraphic excavation on Finca Miraflores in the southwestern part of Kaminaljuyu. They were taken from the lower measures of a thick stratum of rubbish of the Miraflores phase, the oldest so far identified at Kaminaljuyu and believed, on the basis of its handmade clay figurines, to have been roughly contemporaneous with the Middle (Archaic) cultures of the Valley of Mexico and the earliest (Mamom and Chicanel) phases of Uaxactun. As they came to light in a test column whose excavation was personally supervised at all times by Mr. Smith, and as nine fragments were found, there is no possibility such as might be entertained in the case of a single specimen, that they emanated accidentally from a higher, and much later, stratum which at that point overlay the Miraflores deposit. Stucco Decoration of Early Guatemala Pottery 121 one piece, traces can be detected microscopically on the others; also when a flake of stucco is removed a light streaking of red is seen on both the freshly exposed pottery and on the contact surface of the stucco. There was no apparent advantage in the use of this red wash as it is soft and powdery, but it was nevertheless apparently applied only on areas later to be stuccoed: This is indicated by its absence from the unstuccoed area (y) of Figure 35.1d, and suggests that it had some real or fancied utility. Its occurrence on these pieces is of interest because on a certain group of stuccoed vessels from later tombs at Kaminaljuyu (to be described in the report an that site) there is beneath the stucco...

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