Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) by Hiram Bingham Page A

and polished. In this they differed markedly from the fire-blackened cooking pots, or
ollas
, in which the Incas made their soups and stews.
    A common form of
olla
has a handle on one side and a single foot or base. The side opposite the loop handle is usually decorated in low relief, possibly the echo of the base of a second handle. These beaker-shaped
ollas
were usually 9 or 10 inches high. The form undoubtedly was the result of a long process of evolution beginning with the introduction into the fire of a simple two-handled pot. Then somebody discovered that by adding a base or a foot to it the pot could stand better in the embers of a small fire. Later it was discovered that only the handle nearest the cook was really necessary since the otherhandle got too hot to be of much use, and it was finally abandoned, its place being taken by a little ornament in low relief that was attached to the pot just before it was baked.
    Another common design was a two-handled food dish with band-shaped handles ordinarily attached horizontally below the rim, wider than it was high and broad enough so that the hands of the diners might readily extract the delicacies therein, undoubtedly stews, which were an essential part of the ancient fare. These dishes were not used in the fire, but were of fine clay, carefully polished and soberly decorated on both sides with conventional geometric patterns.
    Loving cups and dishes connected with drinking
chicha
were frequently amusingly decorated with fierce-looking jaguars or pumas glaring at each other with open mouths and bared teeth. Or the handle might consist of the head of a laughing fox or coyote, exquisitely modelled. The spirit in which the modelling of these Inca dishes was worked out shows great artistic ability and frequently a nice sense of humour. Sometimes a drinking jug would be made in the form of a fat man with his hands comfortably supporting his stomach.
    One-handled jugs were sometimes decorated with a human face in low relief, sometimes partly in relief and partly painted. Or a jug might have a handle decorated with a head of a fierce jaguar partly hollow so that a string could be passed through the teeth in such a manner as to support the jug from a peg.
    Perhaps one of the most interesting and rarest forms of Inca pottery was a three-legged brazier with a band-shaped handle attached to its top, its mouth irregular in form, placed on one side. In the top were three openings or vent holes, the legs were solid and cylindrical and long enough to permit of a small fire being built underneath. Consequently the braziers were fire-blackened within and without. The Inca metallurgists gave them such hard usage that the frail little braziers did not last long and no perfect specimens have been found.
    The usual size of the three-legged brazier was about 7 inches high, 6 inches wide and 7 inches long. They appear to have been intended for a charcoal fire in which metal could be kept hotwhile being worked. The vent holes on top would have admitted the insertion of blow pipes, a practice referred to in several of the early Spanish chronicles, and they were made thin enough to enable them to be rapidly heated. They were undoubtedly used in the manufacture of bronze knives, axes, chisels, and shawl-pins in which repeated heating and annealing were necessary.
METALLURGY
    Inca bronze has been found to be remarkably pure, except for very small quantities of sulphur. The proportion of copper in Inca bronze varies from 86 per cent in some articles to 97 per cent in others. Some archaeologists take the view that since the greatest quantity of tin is usually found in those bronzes that, for the purposes for which they were intended, would seem to require it least, the presence of tin in Inca bronzes should be regarded as accidental. This hypothesis has been carefully considered by the experts of the largest copper companies now operating in the Andes. They all agree that so far as known ores of copper