Pre-Columbian Art

One of the most momentous cross-cultural collisions occurred in the Caribbean in 1492, heralding a period of rapid change in both ‘New’ and ‘Old’ Worlds. During the early years of the colonial period, when new relationships were being established, material objects became active agents in the interactions between the indigenous Taíno and the Spanish. The Taíno gifted the Spanish with objects that had significance in their own world, in an attempt to enmesh the Spanish into Taíno socio-political and economic networks. In turn, Spanish objects entered into Taíno value
systems. Glass and jet beads, mirrors and brass ornaments were integrated into prestigious objects, such as the two surviving Taíno cotton sculptures that form the focus of this paper: a belt in the collections of the Weltmuseum Wien and a composite sculpture in the Museo Nazionale
Preistorico Etnografico ‘Luigi Pigorini’, Rome. These pieces offer a glimpse into how Old World exotics were reinterpreted and integrated into indigenous value systems during a period of cultural transition and change.

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"Vienna’s Museum für Vökerkunde holds in its collections a rare sixteenth-century Taíno cotton
belt from Hispaniola (today’s Dominican Republic/Haiti) – one of only two surviving Taíno
cotton artefacts to feature European ‘exotics’, including mirrors, jet beads and brass. This complex
woven structure – a wearable work of art – offers a rare window on to one of the most prestigious
of Taı´no valuables, a personal ornament that literally wrapped the wearer in wealth, status and
spiritual power. The paper charts the original context and use of Taı´no belts, and provides a
detailed account of the Vienna belt’s collection history, its construction and its chronological
placement (radiocarbon-dated using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) to AD 1475–1635). The
question of how and when the European materials were incorporated into the belt is explored,
critically engaging the entangled histories of association between the two."

This article identifies over 20 different species
and/or genera of animals represented in Saladoid
ceramics. It surveys thousands of Saladoid
zoomorphic ceramics in some 15 institutional
collections in the Lesser Antilles and the United
States with the aim of tracking the geographic
distribution of zoomorphs. Not all important Saladoid collections were visited in this survey, with collections in St. Lucia, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico being some notable omissions. In the surveyed collections, strong regional interests
in certain zoomorphs are appreciable in the
distribution of animal and bird images. Chief among
these regional variances are those between the Lesser
Antilles and mainland Saladoid ceramics of the Lower
Orinoco. Regional differences are also discernable
between different groups of islands within the Lesser
Antilles.

Este articulo esta enfocado en el uso de la secrecion psicoactiva del Bufo alvarius. Esta práctica que crece en popularidad actualmente lleva consigo riesgos y controversias, así que para amplificar el conocimiento sobre el uso tradicional de este preparado revisamos sistemáticamente los textos indizados por PubMED, Web of Science y Scopus. Posteriormente hicimos la reseña literaria y buscamos evidencia sobre el uso ritual de anuros en los códices precolombinos y libros de misioneros y conquistadores. Nuestros resultados demuestran que no existe evidencia literaria sobre la tradicion de uso ritual de Bufo alvarius. Los rituales organizados en el ultimo tiempo son productos basados en la invencion neo chamanica. EnglishThis article focuses on the use of Bufo alvariuspsychoactive secretions. This practice that is growing in popularity nowadayscarries with it risks and controversies. To amplify the knowledge about the traditional use of this preparation, we systematicallyreview the t...

This study examines a painted combat scene on a ceramic vessel of the Moche culture (AD 100–800) of the north coast of Peru. The scene portrays a series of distinctly Moche warriors fighting adversaries who feature characteristics (weaponry, ornaments and dress) that are unconventional for Moche visual culture. Correspondences in Recuay pottery and stone sculpture instead support the argument that the enemies were groups from the neighbouring inland valleys and highlands of the Pacific Andean flanks. The analysis of the imagery and its implications illuminate how societies without writing sometimes perceived and configured interaction with other groups — namely, through representations of warfare.

Los sellos prehispánicos, o estampaderas, son objetos portátiles que combinan el arte de la escultura (por la talla en relieve de sus rasgos) y la decoración impresa (a través de su huella con pintura o en relieve). Además de usarse directamente para la impresión de diseños en las superficies y la decoración corporal, los sellos poseían símbolos ideográficos por medio de los cuales se podían comunicar mensajes. Los sellos están presentes en varias culturas alrededor del mundo y son parte de la cultura material de los pueblos. En ellos destacan rasgos repetitivos con elementos simbólicos propios de la cultura y elementos relacionados a su medio ambiente.

​Este artigo relata a questão da análise acerca da cultura asteca, particularmente de
sua religiosidade, produto das discussões e das novos aferramentos ligados à História
Cultural. Cabe ressaltar a magnitude da cultura para compreender os processos de eclosão e
ascensão desta sociedade Pré­-Colombiana.

Catalog of exhibition featuring the Easby Collection of Pre-Columbian Art at the Handwerker Gallery in Ithaca, NY.  Dudley Easby (The legal Secretary for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and amateur specialistic on Pre-Columbian metalwork) and Elizabeth Easby (a curator of Pre-Columbian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Brooklyn Museum of Art) developed their collection during the 1950s and 1960s.  Our exhibition featured objects from their collection and examined the process by which ancient artifacts entered into personal and institutional collections in the United States.  Ithaca College students Gabby Jorio, Ken Robertson, and Sarah McHugh wrote essays for the catalog and co-curated the exhibit with professor Jennifer Jolly.

Metalworking occupies a unique place within Inca artistic production. A surprising percentage of the surviving works in this high-value medium might be considered anthropomorphic or zoomorphic, making them singular in the Inca artistic corpus, famed for its avoidance of flora and fauna. Descriptions by Spanish chroniclers suggest that many more anthropomorphic and even perhaps “naturalistic” works once existed. This essay thereby grapples with the following two questions: why did the Inca approach metal so differently from other sculptural media, most notably stone? And how do we square descriptions of Inca metalwork’s “naturalism” in European chronicles with what we might describe, at best, as anthro- or zoomorphic forms in the surviving Inca corpus? I draw on evidence of precious metal sculptures found in archaeological contexts, recent research on the Berlin museum “Inca” corncob, and an analysis of the chroniclers’ writings to address the prevalence of anthropomorphism in Inca gold and silver production and argue that, for the Inca, the materials with which they worked shaped the representational modes they employed. Rather than inert substances awaiting the intervention of the artisan, materials could be numinous agential entities in their own right. Stone, the Inca material par excellence, possessed inherent agency, in that the Inca perceived stones as living entities; these were often left entirely unhewn. In contrast, gold, with its malleability and potential for fluidity, was not considered a living being in its own right, but instead metallic effluvia, the tears of the powerful sun deity. As tears, gold was charged with the power of this important deity but was not in and of itself living. This distinction between gold as tears of the sun, and stone, with its own intrinsic vitality, explains the contrasting ways in which the Inca worked the two materials: metals were sacred but not living and, due to their fluidity, had no “natural” state or shape. Thus, unlike stone, they could and perhaps should be shaped into anthropomorphic forms without betraying their own essential nature. To grasp this essential difference between metal and stone, it is necessary first to reframe “naturalism” against Spanish chroniclers’ descriptions and to excavate the ways in which Spanish sources have largely and perhaps unavoidably shaped our perception of Inca metalwork.

(To read the complete article, follow this url: http://mavcor.yale.edu/conversations/medium-studies/tears-sun-naturalistic-and-anthropomorphic-inca-metalwork)

Resumen En este artículo presentaremos un corpus iconográfico mochica conformado por vasijas de asa estribo, asa lateral y cántaros en los cuales se destacan en relieve personajes muertos involucrados en una danza. Con una metodología de análisis fundamentada en la convergencia de la semántica visual y la etnoarqueomusicología, abordaremos cuestiones referentes al mundo mochica observables en estas vasijas. Entre ellos, discutiremos aspectos ontológicos de la producción sonora, así como el tema de la muerte y el pasaje entre mundos en la sociedad mochica. Además, suponemos que las variaciones iconográficas entre los distintos subtemas de vasijas encontrados en nuestro análisis pueden indicar una distribución regional de este tema, con una producción especializada de los subtemas en valles específicos.

Simpson, E., ed. The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar: Papers Presented to Oscar White Muscarella. Leiden: Brill, 2018.

The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar: Papers Presented to Oscar White Muscarella, edited by Elizabeth Simpson, is a Festschrift celebrating the career of one of the foremost archaeologists of the ancient Near East. Oscar Muscarella is a former curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a formidable scholar who has excavated at sites in Turkey, Iran, and the United States. He has published eight books and nearly 200 articles, excavation reports, and reviews on topics ranging from the arts of antiquity and the importance of connoisseurship, to the difficulties of dating and the problems of forgeries, the looting of ancient sites, and the antiquities trade. The forty-seven contributors are experts in the areas of Muscarella's interests and are major scholars in their fields. This volume constitutes an unusual, important, and timely addition to the archaeological and art historical literature.

Located along the Peruvian coast, the Chimú and Chancay cultures thrived during the Late Intermediate Period. Both the Chimú, situated along the north western coast, and the Chancay along the central coast, utilized aqueducts and irrigation systems to expand their agricultural economic systems.

Columbus had a wealth of information, including maps, that he pursued and then used in order to explore the Atlantic in search of The Indies. He not only used fairly accurate maps, but probably had a guide to lead him to already discovered Caribbean Islands.

El libro relata la historia del Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino entre 1981 y 2011 a través de las voces de sus propios integrantes, de quienes lo integraron por algún tiempo y de quienes giraron o giran todavía en torno a su quehacer. Parte recordando los tiempos en que se ideó el Museo, para luego recorrer su trayectoria desde los comienzos, durante la dictadura militar, pasando por el retorno a la democracia, hasta la pasada década del Bicentenario de la República. Teniendo como eje del relato la trama interna de treinta y tres de las exposiciones que la comunidad de memoria más valora o recuerda, cada testigo cuenta “su” Museo, “su” exposición, “su” recuerdo, según los diferentes espacios y tiempos en que le tocó actuar. El conjunto de todas esas remembranzas individuales muestra las razones, la complejidad y la ambivalencia de las cosas que sucedieron en la institución a lo largo de estas tres décadas, manteniendo como telón de fondo el acontecer nacional e internacional. Por...

La antara es un instrumento sonoro frecuentemen-te representado en el arte moche, particularmente asociado a rituales y ceremonias ambientados tanto en el mundo de los vivos (kay pacha) como en el mundo de los muertos (hurin o uku pacha). Con esta contribu-ción pretendemos presentar y discutir un corpus icono-gráfico moche protagonizado por parejas de antaristas. Proponemos un ejercicio interdisciplinario, en lo cual la combinación de la arqueología, la historia del arte, la ar-queomusicología y la etnohistoria nos permite interpre-tar el papel que jugó la antara en las grandes ceremonias moche. Al llevar la discusión más allá del período prehis-pánico, identificamos algunas características simbólicas en las prácticas sonoras de la antara en el mundo moche, que pueden ser interpretadas a la luz de los fenómenos musicales andinos contemporáneos, como las tropas de sikuris.

This multidisciplinary Ph.D. thesis from 1985 which provides an ethnobotanical, chemical and pharmacological outlook on intoxicating enema and snuff rituals in the western hemisphere.

Please note that two important recent reviews of this topic were uploaded separately to Academia.edu in 2020:

- An extensive update of the chapter about intoxicating enema rituals in pre-Columbian Maya vase paintings: 4P-9: Drink/enema rituals in ancient Maya art. Part one: text (4P-9a); Part two: figures (4P-9b).

- A completely new review of intoxicating nasal liquids in the Americas: 4P-8: Liquid nasal intoxicants in Latin America: modern practices and ancient implements.

Análisis de las descripciones de cuatro fiestas de los antiguos mexicanos hechas por Bernardino de Sahagún y Diego Durán. Diferencias, similitudes y contradicciones entre ambas descripciones, para formar una idea de lo que fue la fiesta precolombina con todos sus elementos teatrales.

Las nociones de teatralidad y performatividad relacionadas con la fiesta Tóxcatl dedicada al dios Tezcatlipoca. Al poner bajo la lupa una de las más importantes fiestas prehispánicas, poco a poco se nos develan los significados de sus símbolos y los nexos entre la teatralidad y el poder.

Research in the northeastern Peten region at Holmul and nearest minor centers shows a complex history of public ritual activity
from the Middle Preclassic onward. Patterns of public architecture, monumental sculpture, iconography, caches, and burials at sites
such as Holmul and Cival document early development of the ideology of Maya kingship. Late Preclassic monumental sculptures
adorning large pyramid temples provide immediate and elaborate metaphors for the ancestral patrons of emerging dynasts. Middle
Preclassic architecture and caches are encoded with the ideological program of the earliest ruling institutions, incorporating themes
of cosmological order; sun, water, and maize deities; the agricultural cycle; and ancestor veneration. All of these early remains are
found in the sacred space of the first “E-group” plazas.

In the work provides a variety description of religion, mythology, military and political history as the Incas and their ancestors. Author is one of the few Indians of Peru, who included in his book original drawings. The text have the words in Quechua, Aymara and Puquina language. The edition contains two dictionaries. One is made up of an Indian's vocabulary. Second - this is the first time published in Russian dictionary of the extinct language Puquina (once common in the vicinity of the lake Titicaca). In this language, presumably, initially said the ancestors of the Incas. Also, in a separate application submitted list of sanctuaries "waka" and the main places of worship of the Incas that existed in the region Chinchaysuyu from Cusco to Quito. This list is first translated into Russian language from the book Cristóbal de Albornoz "Instructions for the detection of huacas of Peru and their servants, and estates". The book is intended for students and teachers of the history departments of higher educational institutions, as well as all those interested in the history of South America (Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador), the Age of Discovery, the conquest of the New World and pre-Columbian civilizations in particular by the Incas and other less well-known people.

В произведении перуанского автора дается разнообразное описание религии, мифологии, военного дела и политической истории как инков, так и их предков. Он один из немногих индейцев раннеколониального Перу, включивших в свою книгу оригинальные рисунки. В тексте используются слова на языках кечуа, аймара и пукина. К изданию прилагаются два словаря. Один составлен из индейской лексики автора. Второй — это впервые публикуемый на русском языке словарь вымершего языка пукина (некогда распространенного в окрестностях оз. Титикака). На этом языке, предположительно, изначально говорили предки инков. Также в отдельное приложение вынесен список святилищ-вак и главных мест поклонений у инков, имевшихся в регионе Чинчайсуйу от Куско до Кито. Данный список впервые переведен на русский язык из книги Кристобаля де Альборноса «Инструкция по обнаружению всех вак Перу и их служителей, и имений». Книга рассчитана на студентов, аспирантов и преподавателей исторических факультетов высших учебных заведений, а также всех тех, кто интересуется историей центральноандского района Южной Америки (Аргентина, Боливия, Перу, Чили, Эквадор), эпохой Великих географических открытий, завоеванием Нового Света и доколумбовыми цивилизациями, в частности инками и другими менее известными народами.

Previous studies have interpreted greenstone objects referred to as Olmec "spoon" pendants based on hypothetical utilitarian functions that they might have served. This study argues that the unique form of these pendants is actually based on the shell of the wing oyster (Pteria), a nacreous pearl-forming bivalve found on either coast of Mesoamerica. The study of these skeuomorphic recreations of shells sheds light on conceptual relationships between jade and iridescent shell, as well as the ideological motivations behind such material substitutions. Although wing oyster pendants were produced during only the Formative period, the Classic Maya continued to value pearls, formed by such nacre-producing mollusks. This study demonstrates the frequent appearance of pearls in Mesoamerican artwork. Wing oyster pendants constitute an early basis for the ritual interchangeability of jade, shell, and pearl, and the widespread conceptual associations of these valued materials with breath, wind, and ancestors among later Mesoamerican traditions.

The Moche art style is best known through its highly refined ceramic vessels, which frequently accompanied burials. Estimates suggest that there are over 100,000 Moche vessels in museum and private collections worldwide. The vessels, often decorated in a strongly pictorial style uncharacteristic of art of the Central Andean region, offer modern viewers tantalizing glimpses of Moche worldview. The highly consistent and formalized iconography on Moche vessels has been the topic of numerous studies, beginning around the middle of the last century, which have shed light on important aspects of Moche society such as mythology, social organization and ceremonialism. A particularly confounding subset of Moche ceramics portrays figures, including deities, skeletal beings, humans and animals, engaged in sexual acts. While such vessels inevitably arouse the interest of modern museum visitors, to date, relatively few scholarly studies have investigated the emic meanings of Moche sexual vessels and the artistic intent behind their creation. This study focuses on portrayals of an often-depicted Moche deity who, in this instance, copulates with a woman and argues that such images drew upon widespread beliefs concerning the functions of a vital cosmos and the role of ancestors to make potent ideological claims of legitimacy in a richly metaphorical visual landscape.