Double Headed: Becoming/Transforming in Early Formative Oaxaca

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Checking the Pulse II: Current Research in Oaxaca Part 2" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Figurines, as small, portable anthropomorphic and zoomorphic ceramic images, provide insights into a range of representational and symbolic concepts of the ancient Mesoamericans who created and interacted with them. Figurines have been interpreted as actively deployed in household rituals and social negotiations, as well as displays beyond those of the house. As the human body both tracks and is a medium of social processes and political change, changes in embodiment and aesthetics are recursively related to larger sociopolitical transformations during the Early Formative. At the highland site of Etlatongo, in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico, recent excavations have explored later Early Formative (1400–1000 cal BCE) domestic and public space, recovering a large assemblage of figurines from these diverse contexts. While the corpus resembles some of the figural imagery from the contemporaneous Valley of Oaxaca, there are also substantial differences, especially in terms of rare “special type” figurines such as the physically impossible: two-headed figurines. I examine the range of these figurines' forms at Etlatongo, also exploring the contexts in which they were found. I interrogate both what they may represent as images of becoming/transforming, and the work they do in terms of the objects’ animistic and dialogic nature.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Checking the Pulse II: Current Research in Oaxaca Part 2   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39539.0