Prehistoric India to 1000 B.C. c11.112

c11.112

(Fig. 7). Above the major animals W-shaped figures may represent conventionalized birds, a fish is present in at least one instance, and various rosettes and other symbols fill the background on some pots and express, as Childe has remarked, a horror vacui reminiscent of that of the Dipylon vase-painters of prehistoric Greece. A stylistic sequence of degeneration seems to exist on the Kulli pots, in which the background becomes progressively crowded with irrelevant symbols and the drawing of the cattle and trees becomes heavy and clumsy, until one reaches the absurdities of the balloon-bodied stag-beetles which seem to peer out in distress from an atmosphere thick with disintegrating goats and ‘sigma’ motifs.