maskaron, fragment

Moulded appliqué ornament in the form of human beings, animals or fabled creatures play an especially prominent part in the decorative schemes of more richly ornamented clay vessels. As a rule they are attached immediately below the lower junctures of the handles, i. e. on the shoulder just above the rim marking the videst circumference of the vessel, as can be verified from the portion of the vessel adhering to their back, this being always thicker behind larger specimens than behind smaller ones.

Montell har delat upp föremålen efter motiv som 'human', 'monkey' och 'lion faces' samt 'wolves´ heads'. Se Montell 1936 sid 172 ff.

"Monkey faces, or more properly speaking, something between human beings and monkeys, is what I should like to call those numerous appliqué ornaments of which examples are seen in Pl. VIII, 1, 4. In the following I shall recur to the peculiar moneky figures that have been recovered in such a large numbers at Yotkan. The reliefs here delt with show the typical features of the monkey representations, namely the deeply furroved forehead, the round eyes and hari parted in the middle. The fact of their having been used as appliqué ornaments below the handles of vessels is confirmed by Hoernle´s illustrations (Hoernle 1902, pl. IX, 13, 16, 17), but that they also occurred in other combinations may be seen from Fig. 27 and from Stein´s acquisitions (Stein 1928, vol III, pl. 1 (Yo 01)." Montell sid 173 ff.