Identification Help?

Can anyone help with identifying the artifact, and its origin, in this picture? If not, does anyone have any recommendations for how to do so?

The only thing that I know for sure about it is that it is from the South American tropical forests.

I would appreciate any help at all. Thanks.

 

Would you please share with us where you got it and where the information about the source being a South American forest came from?

Debora

 

And please always show the bottom when asking for help

 

Tagging @2manybooks .

 

It is not something I immediately recognize. Perhaps with more information I might be able to do some research to find comparisons.

Yes, please. And do you know if it was recovered archeologically, or was it made more recently?

 

I am a TA at Wheaton College's anthropology department. We have a couple of artifacts that do not have locations and we are trying to figure out where they came from in order to try and either return them or give them to places that are better equipped to take care of them.

Our records do show that they are from South America, probably around Ecuador. I am trying to identify a more specific location.

 

Ecuadorian tropical forest is a start. And it seems to be quite small, judging from the lens cap.

I also see some black inside, does it look like pigment to you? I'm thinking about things like face paint, or pigment for artifacts.
Or is it some other type of blackening?

More photos would help.

 

Are you at Wheaton College Illinois, or Massachusetts? If in Illinois, you might try contacting the Anthropology Department at the Field Museum, to see if they could take a look at your pot. If in Massachusetts, try the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard.

 

I'll explore some of these routes. Thanks for the help.