Offerings in the Mogollon Underworld: Big-Eyed Beings and Birds
Author(s): Scott Nicolay
Year: 2018
Summary
Three Classic Mimbres vessels depict similar ceremonial processions in which individuals carry effigies of animals and/or goggle-eyed beings. The goggle-eyed effigies are versions of a figure common in both Mimbres and Jornada Mogollon rock art that may represent the Mesoamerican rain deity Tlaloc. Similar effigies have been recovered from five cave shrines in southern New Mexico and Arizona: two wooden goggle-eyed figures and one of stone, and two wooden birds. However, modern Pueblo informants recognize neither this ceremony nor its apparatus. Together these effigies and their depictions represent a once-widespread but now extinct tradition related to rainmaking and the underworld.
Cite this Record
Offerings in the Mogollon Underworld: Big-Eyed Beings and Birds. Scott Nicolay. Presented at The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Washington, DC. 2018 ( tDAR id: 443873)
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Keywords
General
Caves and Rockshelters
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Iconography and epigraphy
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Mogollon
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Ritual
Geographic Keywords
North America: Southwest United States
Spatial Coverage
min long: -124.365; min lat: 25.958 ; max long: -93.428; max lat: 41.902 ;
Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 20765