Shake It Off: The Ancient Sound of Ceramic Vessel Rattles (Maracas) from Tala and Teuchitlan, Jalisco, West Mexico

Summary

In the past 60 years, the presence of musical instruments, musicians, and dancing in West Mexican art has been frequently discussed but largely unanalyzed, limited to comparison and contextualization of individual pieces, or occasional mention tangentially as part of some other narrative. The cursory treatment of this class of material has resulted in many unanswered questions: who, for example, made these instruments? Who played them? How were they made? How and when were they used? What do they sound like? What did they mean to the people who used them? In order to answer these questions, we must further our understanding of the instruments themselves. In this paper we will present our study on vessel rattles, or maracas. Vessel rattles are one of the true indigenous instruments of the Americas. They are almost always associated with rituals, as evident in iconography and ethnographic records. Seven ceramic vessel rattles from a private collection in Jalisco, ranging from the common gourd shaped to zoomorphic and anthropomorphic are presented. Insights into the possible usage and meaning of these instruments and their organology are discussed as an analysis of ancient West Mexican musical culture.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage