The Work of Feline Bones and Feline Imagery at Early Horizon Etlatongo, Oaxaca, Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Cholula to Chachoapan: Celebrating the Career of Michael Lind" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Large felines play crucial roles in origin narratives, cosmologies, and political authority in Mesoamerican societies, yet actual faunal remains and feline imagery are uncommon for the Early Horizon, from 1400 to 1000 cal BCE, especially in the highlands. Feline imagery appears in the stone sculptural corpus of the Gulf Olmec urban center of San Lorenzo, with both naturalistic examples as well as transforming figures. Feline imagery, however, has not been documented in San Lorenzo’s ceramic figurine corpus, nor have large feline bones been reported in the site’s faunal corpus. At the highland site of Etlatongo, in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico, recent excavations have explored both Early Horizon domestic and public space. Actual large feline bones, possibly from the same young individual, were found in the public space where one bone had been used as a tool; this animal, or parts of it, must have arrived at the site through interaction networks. The public space also yielded ceramic figurines exhibiting feline imagery. We argue that the different media in which felines were materialized, both actual remains as well as ceramic imagery, in a public component of Etlatongo complemented and contributed to increasing complexities in cosmology, ontologies, and society.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Cholula to Chachoapan: Celebrating the Career of Michael Lind

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32750