Unidentified Animal.—It is difficult to tell exactly what animal was intended to be represented by that shown in [plate 5, figure 2]. Its head and mouth are not those of any of the horned animals already considered, although it has some anatomical features recalling a mountain sheep. The extension back of the body has a remote likeness to a fish, but may be a bird or simply a conventional design. The geometrical figure covering the side of the body bears some likeness to one depicted on a bird, as shown in [plate 3, figure 1]. The same geometrical figure sometimes also occurs separated from any animal form in Sikyatki pottery.[42]
The bowl is ten inches in diameter, five inches in depth, and the figures are painted red on a white ground.
Unidentified Animal.—One of the most remarkable of many figures on bowls from Oldtown in the collection of Mr. E. D. Osborn is shown in figures [27], [29] (p. 38). Three colors enter into the decoration of this bowl, black, white, and brown, and there are two types of ornamentation, one zoic, the other geometric. The bowl itself was much broken when found, but not so mutilated as to hide the main designs.
The zoic figures represent animals with square bodies, four legs, ears, head, and tail like a young antelope. There is no design on the side of the body, but in its place four broad parallel bands extend from the belly across the bowl. Each group of parallel lines changes its direction, widening in their course or near the ends where they enlarge for the accompanying figure. The markings on the necks of these figures suggest those on fawns.
The elaborate geometric figure composed of a scroll and comma-like dot and eye is a highly conventionalized symbol, possibly of some animal, as a bird's head, common on Casas Grandes pottery.
There is a bowl on exhibition in the Chamber of Commerce at Deming with a picture of a quadruped resembling a deer, but the base is so fractured in killing that it is difficult to determine the shape of the body or its decoration.
Unidentified Animal.—One of the most instructive figures of the collection appears in duplicate on a large food bowl ([pl. 5, fig. 1]). This vessel is black and white in color and measures fifteen inches in diameter by six inches deep. The two designs occur on the two sides of the interior of the bowl, the middle of which is left without decoration.
The body of this creature is elongated and tapers backward, being continued into a tail like that of the lizard. The head is long and the snout pointed. Only two legs are represented, and these are situated far back on the body near the point of the origin of the tail from the body. A lozenge-shaped symbol forms the geometrical design on the side.
Fig. 27.—Unidentified animal. Oldtown Ruin. (Osborn collection.)