So that the baby not be formed like a pottery rattle: Aztec Rattle Figurines and Household Social Reproductive Practices (original) (raw)
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Americae, 2021
This paper explores human engagement with ceramic figurines in household ritual practice at Postclassic Xaltocan (Mexico). Drawing on the ontological turn, figurines are understood to be other-than-human agential entities and momentary orderings of sacred and vital energy that come into being in the context of relational ritual practice. Considering their depositional context, appearance, and three-dimensional morphology—pierced pendants, standing figures with mouths open as if mid-speech, or kneeling figures holding offering bowls—helps us understand the nature of their embodied engagement with humans. Based on ethnohistoric documents and archaeological excavation data, I argue that flat-backed Aztec figurines were lively, efficacious agents and essential parts of household ritual assemblages, helping to ensure household health and success, especially in stressful contexts such as times of war. I take an inclusive approach to gender in the household and consider the frequencies and excavation context of figurine men and women of the flat-backed type and explore interconnections between human men’s and women’s work and household concerns. This research also provides a window into shifts in household anxieties and the lived experience of men and women within the era’s rapidly changing social, political, and economic contexts. The Middle Postclassic emerges as the period defined by the most fear, uncertainty, and instability for commoner men and women at Xaltocan, more so than the Late Postclassic period, of the Aztec rule, which is often assumed to be the era of greatest household hardship.
Figurine Embodiment and Household Ritual in an Early Mixtec Village
Journal de la Société des Américanistes, 2013
An excavated collection of 3000-year-old fired-clay figurines from the Mixteca Alta, Oaxaca, Mexico, provides evidence for household practices of embodiment at a time of emerging social differences. A holistic interpretation of the figurines, including their unique archaeological associations, mortuary, faunal and ethnographic information illuminates key aspects of the life-cycle termination of both human and non-human subjects. The archaeological contexts at Tayata allow for an integrated application of embodiment theory with cross-field anthropological data, and reveal a deep-seated Mixtec worldview concerning the animism of corporeal objects.
From Flesh to Clay: Formative Period Iconography from Oaxaca's Lower Río Verde Valley
Polity and Ecology in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca, 2013
This chapter presents our analysis of 256 Formative period (1600 BC-AD 250) ceramic figurines, musical instruments, and iconographic vessel appliques from the lower The collection includes anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and transformational figures that combine human and nonhuman traits . The purpose of our analysis is twofold . First, the study allows us to describe physical attributes of the collection, including dimensions and patterns of diagnostic accoutrements such as clothing, jewelry, hairstyles , and anatomical features. We consider these characteristks representative of Formative period figurines from the lower Rio Verde VaUey, as the sample spans two millennia and comes from eight sites in the region . Second, contextual, temporal, and iconographic patterns in the collection inform our arguments about the social significance of the artifacts. Specifically, we interpret ceramic iconographic artifacts as focal points for public and domestic ritual behavior . We argue.that figurine use operated in both private and public contexts and that public activities were carried out in domestic spaces as well as in nondomestic, communal settings (e.g., ceremonial spaces). We
The Wisconsin Archaeologist, 2019
Fired-clay figurines and whistles are common, yet diverse, components of ceramic assemblages at Classic period sites in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. Drawing on a large assemblage of figurines from four excavated sites in this region, we group these representational ceramic objects into eight broad categories to facilitate the examination of spatial and contextual differences in the distributions and uses of figurines. Most prior interpretations of Mesoamerican fired clay figurines have stressed their roles in household ritual. Indeed, we found that most figurines were produced and utilized in domestic contexts, but other classes of figurines, especially certain whistles, were heavily used in public rituals enacted in association with civic-ceremonial structures.
Clay embodiments: Materializing Asymmetrical Relations in Pre-Hispanic Figurines from Ecuador
CLAY EMBODIMENTS: MATERIALIZING ASYMMETRICAL RELATIONS IN PRE-HISPANIC FIGURINES FROM ECUADOR, 2021
The longest tradition of figurine production in the Americas is found on the Ecuadorian coast, beginning with the Valdivia culture around 3500 BC and ending with the arrival of Spanish conquistadors, or possibly even later. In this article, figurines from different cultures and time periods in this tradition are analyzed with an emphasis on body politics, presenting the author’s reflections about how these artifacts embody ancient relations between people, especially with regard to gender asymmetries. It also discusses at some length the question of how contemporary perspectives for analyzing ancient materials are often influenced by western, patriarchal, ideology-laden interpretations. Although the corpus of figurines analyzed in this research is well known, prior to this study it has not been considered from the perspective of gender asymmetries, even though it is an excellent source of data for such analyses, especially in a diachronic perspective. The study argues that the figurine traditions of particular cultures implicitly emphasize some ideals, such as naturalizing the idea of females depending on males. The author argues that the frequent representations of female individuals associated with pregnancy and childcare can be seen as a political agenda designed to idealize the roles of mother and wife for women, and to limit the influence of female individuals in public activities connected to power and authority.
Perinatal Rites in the Ritual of the Bacabs, a Colonial Maya Manuscript
Ethnohistory
Pregnancy and childbirth were among indigenous Maya women’s most dangerous life experiences, with very high maternal and perinatal death rates from pre-Hispanic times through the first decades of the twentieth century. This article contributes to the knowledge of colonial Yucatec Maya women through the interpretation of documentary evidence of three indigenous rites meant to facilitate women’s perinatal health and successful childbirth. This evidence is contained in the eighteenth-century collection of healing chants known as the “ritual of the bacabs.” The chants include those for cooling the steam bath used in indigenous perinatal treatments, for difficulty in childbirth, and for rites surrounding the disposal of the afterbirth. Through an analysis that combines philological approaches with ethnographic interviews of contemporary Maya speakers, this article provides new insights into the intersection between ritual and culture-specific notions of the body among the colonial Maya.
THE HUMAN BODY IN MESOAMERICAN RITUAL: BONES, SYMBOLS AND THE UNDERWORLD
RITUALS PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
The paper presents a study of the figures carved in a set of archaeological–osteological samples from the tomb site at Zaachila in Oaxaca, Mexico from a Quantitative Semiotics approach. It also advances a description to explain the ritual use of the human body as a support of writing to represent mythological scenes from a Pre-Hispanic indigenous worldview. Through the representations of glyphs carved in bones both synthetic and analytical readings of written records buried in the tomb at the Zaachila were undertaken. The text consists of an archaeological description that adapts semiotic concepts used in interpretation of offerings through horizontal and vertical axes. It also carries out a description of the archaeological material and its interpretation from the Quantitative Semiotics method. In the end, we advance an explanation about the elements in the tombs through a systemic synthesis of the components that articulate the mythical story.
Sex in the City: The Relationship of Aztec Ceramic Figurines to Aztec Figurines Made of Copal
2009
Sex in the City A Comparison of Aztec Ceramic Figurines to Copal Figurines from the Templo Mayor Cecelia f. Klein and Naoli Victoria L.ona Scholars have often noted that of the thousands upon thousands of cached artifacts unearthed at the Aztec Templo Mayor, or "Great Temple, " the largest and most important temple-pyramid in the Aztec imperial capital, Tenochtitlan, none is a ceramic figurine. 1 This is surprising because thousands of Aztec ceramic figurines exist in museum and archaeological site collections. Averaging between 3 and 15 centimeters in height and generally entirely or partially mold-made, these ceramic figurines were both widely available and easily transportable. Regardless, they are usually recovered, broken and fragmented, from household debris, often in towns and peasant villages located outside the largest urban centers. Michael Smith (1997: 79) has uncovered evidence that some of the Postclassic period (ad 950-1521) ceramic figurines excavated at the Nahuatl-speaking villages of Yautepec, Cuexcomate, and Capilco in Morelos were kept in wall niches inside the home, recalling the sixteenth-century Dominican Diego Durán's (1967: 1: 248; 1971: 235) report that the Aztecs placed "idols" in their household shrines. 2 In the Teotihuacan Valley, Susan Evans (1990) found Late Postclassic (ad 1340-1500) ceramic figurines not only inside Aztec houses but also nearby at temascales, or sweat baths. Other ceramic figurines in Central Mexico had been buried in fields and, rarely, graves, as well as found at the bottom of ancient canals, springs, rivers, lakes, and in temples and palaces (