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Ecuadorean Figurines and the Ceramic Mold in the New World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Gordon R. Willey
Gordon R. Willey*
Affiliation:
Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.
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Extract

In an issue of El Palacio, Mr. Edwin N. Ferdon presents an interesting discussion of a group of pottery figurines from the province of Esmeraldas on the coast of Ecuador. Most of these figurines were made entirely, or partially, with the use of the mold, and they are quite representative of the region. In attempting the assign approximate dates to the figurines Ferdon states (p. 225):

“Mould-made figurines made their appearance in the Valley of Mexico in Teotihuacan 3 times and in the Peten region of the Mayas in the Tepeu phase of Uaxactun Late 3 period, or about 900 A.D. Assuming that the mould-making technique spread southward from the Maya area, its arrival on the Ecuadorean coast must have been after 900 A.D. and possibly around 1000 or 1100 A.D. With the advent of the mould in Esmeraldas, new figurine types appeared, or else the earlier hand-modeled counterparts have not yet been found.“

Type
Facts and Comments
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , July 1947 , pp. 85 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 1947

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References

1 El Palacio, Vol. 52, No. 11, pp. 221–45, Santa Fe, 1945.

2 From the collection of Mr. Max Konanz of Guayaquil.

3 Butler gives a slightly earlier date for the appearance of mold-made figurines in the Old Empire. (Butler, Mary, “A Study of Maya Mouldmade Figurines,” American Anthropologist, N.S., Vol. 37, p. 641, Menasha, 1935.) They occur at Piedras Negras, where dated monuments range from 514 to 830 A.D. (Goodman-Thompson correlation.) It is, of course, possible that the figurines appeared only towards the end rather than the beginning of this time range.

4 Rafael Larco Hoyle, “A Culture Sequence for the North Coast of Peru,” in the “Handbook of South American Indians,” Vol. 2, Bulletin Bureau of American Ethnology, No. 143, Washington, 1946, p. 158.