Predators and Preciosities: Acquiring and Displaying Status and Power in the Isthmo-Colombian Area

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Acquiring Status and Power in Transegalitarian and Chiefdom Societies" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Isthmo-Colombian area served as a nexus for communication and exchange among chiefdoms and middle-range societies in southern Central America, northern South America, the Antilles, northern Amazonia, and the northern Andes. Political actors and especially ambitious leaders acquired and openly displayed finely crafted objects of jadeite, gold, and tumbaga to communicate ecological metaphors. They presented themes of their transformations into therianthropic crocodiles in the context of ritual performances depicted in the imagery of elaborate, high-status craft objects. This paper argues that specific individuals parlayed access to rare raw materials and finely crafted jewelry into political power through specific narratives of magical, physical transformation into mythical crocodilian entities whose stories were conveyed through a rich mythology encoded in a variety of material objects, from intricate flying-panel metates to ornate ceramic vessels. This activity appears to have occurred within the context of secret societies in which participants communicated information regarding beliefs shared by individuals from a variety of distant polities. Ambitious “Crocodile Men” communicated their power in the context of metaphors about specific habitats, drawing upon the ecology and the threats posed by dangerous reptiles.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Acquiring Status and Power in Transegalitarian and Chiefdom Societies

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53049