Ceramic: Escavada Black-on-white, frog effigy (fragment), AZRU-00008/5023

Escavada Black-on-white, probable frog effigy vessel (fragment), Accession AZRU-00008, Catalog #5023, Morris FS 4220. Analyzed by Lori Reed 2006. Sand/sherd temper and bright white washy slip suggests the bowl was manufactured in the Chaco Cibola region. Fragments represent less than 20% of vessel. Image AZRU8-5223 A: fragment of head and face showing washy white slip and painted design. Single dot is the eye which is painted over a slight protrusion representing the eyeball of the effigy. Recovered from Earl Morris excavation of Room 109, lower level, Aztec West Ruin. Room 109 was described as having “two floor levels, one, 1 foot 8 inches below the other. Refuse of Chaco age filled the space between the floors…Continuing from the upper floor to the surface of the mound, the fill was of refuse containing Mesa Verde wares…All four walls are of stick and mud construction and constitute the best example of this type of wall thus far found…In the south wall, 7 feet from the west end, was a thimble-shaped hole, 3 inches deep and the same in diameter, which was plugged with clay” (Morris 1928:286). Reference: Earl Morris, 1928, Notes on Excavations in the Aztec Ruin, Volume XXVI, Part V, Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History, New York.