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The hole in this bowl is intentional.
Bowl
New Mexico, Mimbres Valley, about 1000-1200
Pottery
Charles W. Harkness Endowment Fund 1930.49
Familiarity with objects and their cultural context is paramount in deciding what, if any, treatment should be performed. Restoration can often hide or remove evidence of how an object was originally used. The hole in the base of this Native American bowl was made intentionally as part of a burial ritual. In this ritual the bowl was "pierced" as a symbolic killing of the vessel and placed over the deceased's head to help free his or her spirit. Repairing or hiding this "damage" would thus be inappropriate.
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