Pottery with anthropomorphic design in ancient cultures of Pacific: Jomon (Japan) and Ylama (Colombia)

The publication is devoted to the research on the practice of the utilization of anthropomorphic features (eyes, faces, heads, parts of bodies, whole bodies) in the decoration of pottery vessels in ancient cultures of the Pacific. As an example for current publication we are analyzing the pottery of Jomon culture (Neolithic period for the Japanese Archipelago) and Ylama culture (Formative of southwestern Colombia, South America). Original pottery of Jomon culture is its special feature. There are found both relief and convex types of anthropomorphic design found in the dwellings and as separate complexes. Pottery probably was used in ritual practice of hunter-gatherers and early agriculturalists. Four principal groups of pottery vessels with anthropomorphic motives may be recognized in the context of early agricultural Ylama culture (faces and heads, figurine-vessels, “body-vessels”, vessels with several personages). We suggest that all these vessels were functioning mostly in ritual practice than in everyday use. The decoration reflects such features of ritual practice as consumption of drugs, special body painting or tattoo, along with the amulets and ceremonial paraphernalia.