Which Serpent Are We Talking About?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In many parts of the world including the Americas, snakes are incorporated into symbolic and metaphorical constructs in order to better describe and understand natural and social components of various cosmologies. As a result, their depictions are often enhanced with attributes that depart from nature, granting them the visual characteristics that define their various roles. In this paper we review the portrayals of the horned and often feathered serpent in the Greater Rio Grande Tradition in the American Southwest, which includes Paquimé. We identify variations in its temporal and spatial distribution and distinguish it from other modified snakes. While details vary, its depiction is remarkably stable throughout, an indication of ideological standardization. For at least 1000 years, its attributes in the archaeological record and its meaning today among the ethnographic Pueblos, confirm its link to the complicated Quetzalcoatl complex of Mesoamerica in its many manifestations. Its cosmological dualities are more specifically defined via its ties to terrestrial waters, plus Venus and warfare in the celestial realm, and finally in leaderships roles.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22838