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MEXICAN ARCHÆOLOGY

elaborate specimens the entire background is cut away, or an intaglio design produced which is filled with. a coloured slip. Fragments of the "champ-levé" ware, with its blue-green filling, have also been found. Moulded ornament again is very common, ranging from the mere gadrooning of a vase-body (Fig. 36, 5) to animal heads in relief, with the other details painted in slip on the sides of the vase (Pl. XIX). The vases with a bird's (or beast's) head in relief, and the details of the body incised, as figured on Pl. XVIII, 2, are very characteristic, and are, further, of particular interest since they, as well as vases in other forms, are often found to be coated with a leaden-coloured glaze hard enough to resist the point of a knife. This is of course an accidental earth-glaze, produced in firing by the action of the smoke or heat on the surface of the slip. Vases, identical in form and with the same accidental glaze, have been found at Atlixco, and also in the neighbourhood of Coban in the Alta Vera Paz district of Guatemala. It seems probable that they have reached these localities as articles of trade. Many vase-feet also are moulded in the form of animal heads (Pl. XIX).

Similar vase-feet are found at Tehuantepec, at Cuicatlan, at Teotitlan and, as we have seen, at Cho-lula. Of these localities the first pair seem to stand in close relation one to the other, and also the second pair, from the fact that the Cholulan and Teotitlan vase-feet are most commonly in the form of grotesque human heads, those of Cuicatlan and Tehuantepec in the form of heads of snakes. However, the distinction is by no means absolute. As far as the Totonac region is concerned, the beast heads seem to be in the majority. Impressed patterns are found on the bottoms of bowls from Sacrificios (Pl. XVIII, 9), but these form regular designs, instead of being, as in Mexico, mere series of incised lines. Similar bowls are found at Atlixco