17. ART? WHAT ART?
It is not at all clear how far individual preferences decided on what pattern was used in what circumstances. An informal survey by the author in a number of collections seems to indicate that most patterns are applied to all sorts of objects as well as in body painting and that individual variations are minimal. In view of their ancient origins and their astonishing stability over time, it is likely that these have a religious meaning, long since forgotten. This impression is reinforced by the fact that many items, canoes and bows especially, were painted only once before being used for the first time and the paint was never renewed but allowed to fade away.
Another set of decorative patterns
A number of authors have casually reported certain patterns of body painting in certain circumstances such as specific ceremonies, rejoicing or mourning, etc. No systematic survey of these reported patterns has ever been made and it is not clear how far they applied within the different groups and what the pattern themselves meant to the Andamanese.
The Andamanese painted only with clay and did not use colors provided by plants or animals. This meant that they were essentially limited to ochre, white and gray/olive, the three types of clay available in the Andamans.
As mentioned earlier, pottery provides us with the only evidence of Andamanese art going back longer a few hundred years. It occupies a curiously detached and somehow "unconnected" place in Andamanese society that we have discussed in chapter 17. What we are concerned with here is the decoration that a minority of pots have received. Excavation of kitchen-midden have brought to light pot shards dating back more than 2000 years. Apart from a steady decline in the potters' skills, there is no stylistic development at all. Throughout the long time, a few pots were decorated, always with the same familiar pattern, while a majority remained plain. Why this should be so we do not know. The only living population accessible for questioning are the Onge and they have stopped making pottery in the 1950s when ready-made metal and plastic pots became available to them. They have now lost all memory of ever having made pots, let alone decorated them.
Decorative pattern on pottery shards found in archaeological excavations in kitchen midden
Very limited though the Andamanese means of artistic expression have been, for at least 2000 years they seem to have been perfectly happy with it and certainly for the last 200 years they have shown not the slightest ambition to create something new or different.