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Lot 123A
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Caddo Incised Pottery Bottle - Globular Body, Engraved Shoulder
Caddo Incised Pottery Bottle - Globular Body, Engraved Shoulder
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Native American, Southeastern Woodlands, Caddo, ca. 1200–1600 CE. A long-necked ceramic bottle whose spherical body swells to a burnished, smoke-clouded surface ranging from soft gray to warm tan. The slender neck rises to a gently everted lip, while the shoulder carries a delicate engraved register: a circumferential line from which pendant scroll and triangular motifs descend, executed with the fine, controlled incision characteristic of Caddo potters. Coil-built and hand-finished, then burnished to a low sheen before firing, the vessel embodies the technical refinement of Caddoan ceramic tradition. Such bottles, recovered chiefly from mortuary contexts across the Caddo homeland of the trans-Mississippi South, likely held liquids as grave offerings, their elegant proportions reserved for ritual and prestige rather than utilitarian use. The mottled fire clouding records the open-firing process, lending each example its own atmospheric character. Size: 7" D x 9.8" H (17.8 cm D x 24.9 cm H).

The Caddo Mississippian peoples occupied a region spanning present-day northeast Texas, northwest Louisiana, southwest Arkansas, and southeast Oklahoma, where they built mound centers and sustained extensive trade networks from roughly the 9th through 17th centuries. Their fine engraved and incised bottles, with tall necks and rounded bodies, are among the most accomplished ceramics of the prehistoric Southeast. Surfaces were typically smoothed and burnished with a polishing stone, then decorated with engraved scrolls, meanders, and hatched fields whose motifs may encode cosmological symbolism. Many surviving examples come from cemetery excavations, where they accompanied the dead, a context that accounts for their remarkable preservation.

Provenance: private Colorado, USA Collection; ex-private Denver, Colorado, USA collection; ex-private Flushing, New York and Ridgeway, Colorado, USA collection

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Item # 203027

  • Condition: Very Good. Rim and upper part of neck have been professionally restored. Some small chips to rim and nicks and abrasions in areas, commensurate with age. Otherwise, very nice with good remaining detail and rich encrustations to interior.

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by Artemis Fine Arts
June 25, 2026 9:00 AM MDT
686 S. Taylor Avenue
Suite 108
Louisville, CO, US 80027

Artemis Fine Arts

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Bid Increments
From: To: Increments:
$0 $299 $25
$300 $999 $50
$1,000 $1,999 $100
$2,000 $4,999 $250
$5,000 $9,999 $500
$10,000 $19,999 $1,000
$20,000 $49,999 $2,500
$50,000 $99,999 $5,000
$100,000 $199,999 $10,000
$200,000 + $20,000