CHAPTER V
DECORATIVE DESIGNS
In the preceding discussions we have ignored the most interesting and suggestive sides of textiles and ceramics, namely, their decorations. Wherever such products occur we almost always find them richly ornamented by designs in color which constitute the greater part of the decorative art of their makers. Taking the New World decorative designs as a whole, we are impressed with their extreme geometric unrepresentative character and the rarity of realistic art. A stroll through a large museum reveals an astonishing complexity of geometrical design in contrast to similar collections from the Old World. Nowhere else do we find anything in basketry approaching the finest basketry decorations of the Pacific Coast or in pottery that of the Andean region. From the standpoint of æsthetic values, the ancient Old World products may be rated as superior, but the range and richness of geometric design in the New World cannot be denied.
Anthropologists have given the subject of decorative design a great deal of attention, and we consequently have for the tribes of the northern continent a body of special research literature not equalled by that for any other part of the world. Quite recently, the use of ceramic design as an index to chronology and relationship in extinct cultures has appeared as a special method in archæological research and promises a considerable development in the near future.[1] Unfortunately, no such progress has been made in the art of the southern continent or even for the Antilles and Mexico. Our first task, therefore, is to consider rather fully the status of the North American design problem and then to view the southern continent from that horizon.
TEXTILE DESIGNS
If we compare the decorations upon a representative series of baskets from the Rocky Mountain region with those upon
- ↑ Spinden, 1913. I; Kidder, 1915. I.
