The Sets of Figurines in Western Mesoamerica: Contexts and Possible Interpretations During the Formative

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In Western Mexico, as in Mesoamerica generally, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines are rather often found in groups, either in caches or in funerary context. These particular contexts allow substantial advances in our understanding of their uses and possible meanings, in particular when the data concerning the arrangement of every element inside the group is known. In this presentation, we shall examine the case of the Chupicuaro’s tradition figurines, a formative culture of Northwestern Mexico, between 600 and 100 BC. Several scenes can be reconstructed from sets found in context, mainly in children’s graves. These examples will be then replaced in the vaster frame of Western Mesoamerica where numerous discoveries took place recently in funerary contexts. According to the age of the deceased, the eventual presence of containers, the arrangement of the artifacts and the protagonists identified, these groups can be interpreted either as a set of objects referring to a function or an activity exercised by the deceased during his life or as scenes intended to accompany him in the afterlife.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Mesoamerican Figurines in Context. New Insights on Tridimensional Representations from Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23475