Word: earthen
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...boulevards beneath the red, green and blue of neon signs. But 40 miles to the north, the small provincial capital of Phuoc Thanh was shrouded in darkness, and the only sounds were the hoots and crackles of the jungle. Its inhabitants slept uneasily behind the protection of a low earthen rampart and tangles of barbed wire guarded by a handful of sentries...
...lines and gracefully swooping curves, which can be fitted easily into the modern split-level, while at the same time suggesting the ageless charm of antiquity. In the Gibbings collection is a leather-topped folding stool with four sturdy horse legs, which was copied from a mid-6th century earthen plaque in the West Berlin State Museum. Other straight-legged stools are borrowed from a frieze in the Parthenon. Copied line for line and curve for curve from the stele of Hegesco, built in 400 B.C., is a large chair with curved back and legs. Gibbings' couches reflect...
...Barker. It must have been either a ceremonial burial cave or a place for cannibal feasts, possibly both. In it Dr. Barker found human bones that had been broken so that their marrow could be eaten. Other bones were engraved with the faces of gods. There were earthen pots that had perhaps been used for religious or cannibalistic rituals. Dr. Barker is especially stumped by 64 human gall and kidney stones. What this odd hoard may signify he does not know...
...depths of nature also rise religious images and rituals of uncanny beauty and effectiveness. At one point the camera sits in a ring of savages inside a narrow, smoky lodge of woven vines, and watches a witch doctor fling a bag of oracular bones on the earthen floor and read their patterns as Confucius read the sacred stalks of yarrow. At another it investigates the religion of the pangolin, "the animal no one may hurt," an anteater that looks like a waddling artichoke and possesses some of the metaphysical properties of the rose: an image, for the Christian mystics...
Imposed Blessing. For centuries the inhabitants of Ichijo, like the vast majority of Japanese peasants, have lived in tiny wood-and-wattle cottages heated only by a fire pit sunk in the earthen floor. In years when the rice crop was good, Ichijo's farmers eked out a bare existence. When the crop failed, they sold their daughters to the city brothels. Steeped in this tradition, one of Ichijo's wrinkled, kimono-clad elders reflected with horror last week on Mrs. Sato's latest acquisition. "Indecent extravagance," he moaned...