Vila Wolf's Dyslexic Folklorist Ranting

This sizable jar has a flat bottom with strongly flaring walls which curve in at the shoulder towards the spout which is recessed into the center. The burnished surface is covered with light yellow slip. Eight pairs of vertical parallel brown lines divide the surface into even segments.

The Coahuayana River Valley was home to many large villages and towns, and their artists produced a distinctive local version of the large, hollow tomb figure. Coahuayana figural art is characterized by elegant renderings of persons of authority. Most portrayals lack individuality and instead serve as sculptural representations of social position or political rank. This seated female’s serene countenance, shoulder scarification patterns, necklace, and pierced ears denote a person of high status. The artist accentuated the figure with red slip, enhancing her hair, forearms, and legs below the knee. Her identification as a person of authority is further indicated by her sitting on a four-legged stool or bench; this type of seating was closely associated with elevated status throughout the ancient Americas. She raises a small dish in her right hand as if proffering its contents to unseen persons, perhaps participants in an aristocratic feasting event.

“The Feasting Scene” constitutes a unique sculptural ceramic of exceptional quality produced by the Jalisco ceramicists of ancient West Mexico. Four female figures kneeling around a male figure comprise the sculptural assemblage. The figures are arranged on a circular bench supported by six cylindrical legs. The central figure, an imposing chief or cacique holds a tube or pestle in his left hand and an “hacha” or ceremonial axe in his upraised right hand. One female figure, directly facing the “cacique,” holds a small shallow bowl in her right hand and a baton in her left hand. Two of the female figures rest a hand on the “cacique,” a gesture indicating relatedness. A third figure, to the “cacique’s” right, rests one hand on the chief’s shoulder and the other on his elbow. The assemblage has been painted with a red and cream clay slip; details on each of the figures are rendered in resist-paint. Conventional to the Jalisco figural style are elongated faces, full rounded legs and torsos, erect posture, and vacant, staring eyes. The figures represent elite persons of West Mexico society as indicated by their ornate crested helmets, shoulder scarification, body and facial tattoos, and ear disks. Their position on a raised bench mirrors the context of circular, elevated platforms characteristic of Jalisco ceremonial architecture. These platforms were also painted red and white. Shaft-and-chamber tombs of high-ranking families have been found below the circular structures. A sculptural ceramic such as this would have been placed in mausolea of this type. This sculptural assemblage likely represents an elite family feasting ritual or commemorates an ancestral tradition. Such rituals involved consumption of fermented beverages by a select few. Sculptures depicting group rituals are extremely rare among the corpus of West Mexico ceramics. “The Feasting Scene” therefore represents a remarkable exception to Jalisco visual art conventions.

Throughout the ancient Americas, conch shell trumpets were blown to announce significant earthly events, including the arrival of dignitaries at state functions, on the battlefield as a signal to engage the enemy or otherwise direct the regiments, and during religious rites to accentuate the peak spiritual moment. The conch shell also had long-standing symbolic associations with the watery underworld and was connected to certain deities. At Teotihuacan, images of conch shells adorned buildings whose decorative narratives indicate their association with agricultural plenty and the gods’ place of Creation. At Teotihuacan and among various peoples of West Mexico, conch shells denoted high status and special spiritual power, frequently being found in burials of the elite and adorning figures to denote a shaman’s supernatural powers. The Aztec deity Quetzalcóatl, the god of wind, wore a cross-sectioned conch shell as his special emblem, and members of the Mexica elite also wore the wind jewel as a proclamation of authority. Conch shell trumpets were fashioned from the natural shell or replicated in ceramic, as is this example. Shell trumpets are especially plentiful in the shaft tombs of West Mexico where they were intimately associated with elite status and shamanic power. They often are illustrated being played by persons depicted in the anecdotal sculptures for which the region is famous, these sculptural narratives illustrating ballgames, funerary processions, accession rites, and many other communal events of social and religious import.

Conjoined figures constitute an infrequent but not unknown narrative type of West Mexican tomb sculptures. Those from Colima include a family group (man, woman, child), a mother and child, or combat scenes. Combat is mirrored in a warrior-and-captive piece from Jalisco, and male-female pairs are found not only in Jalisco but especially in Nayarit contexts. Other conjoined figures depict a cheek piercing rite in which two or more men and women participate. Some double figures have been interpreted as portrayals of a marriage or otherwise affianced couple given that the man and woman touch or embrace and visually engage each other with what could be interpreted as a tender gaze of affection, as is seen in this sculpture. However, the rendering of personal affection is rare in Mesoamerican art, and the few Classic Maya examples from Jaina Island are interpreted as symbolic renderings rather than depictions of interpersonal intimacy. And although the often published “marriage couple” pairs of similar-looking male and female figures from West Mexico may imply a local tradition for ceramic portrayals of devoted couples, these pairings have no basis in archaeological reality. Instead, they most likely constitute a fabricated grouping invented by tomb robbers and art dealers. A closer examination of this paired figure artwork suggests an alternative interpretation as a healing ceremony by a shaman-curer and his patient. In myriad similar examples, one of the figures wears a curious panache like or hornlike element atop his/her head, as seen here, which may identify the person as a shaman. Other conjoined figures feature one member grasping a rattle, rasp, or drum. These instruments are intimately associated with shamanic practice, and they are frequently integral to healing rituals among present-day shaman-curers in Mexico. In other instances, one of the figures holds a small bowl, implying the ingestion of a curing potion. The weight of the available evidence suggests that this exceptionally expressive and sensitive sculpture portrays a curing ceremony rather than an amorous couple. The piece was extensively examined using x-radiography and thermoluminescence (TL), the latter for dating the last firing of the object. The research establishes that the piece has suffered major damage, with all appendages having been repaired. The x-radiography revealed that the sculpture is composed of two figures, but whether they were originally conjoined is difficult to determine because all points where the bodies touch have been repaired. These repairs probably were done at a different time than the manufacture of the piece; the composition of their clay is different from that of the majority of the piece. The joins of the necks strongly suggest the heads are in their original, intended position, which supports their being an authentic conjoined pair. The four TL date samples were taken from only one of the two clay bodies, this choice being by chance rather than intention as the joins were not visible on the object’s surface when the samples were taken. All four TL samples indicate a production date of 100 -250 CE.