Lot 99
Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Colima, ca. 300 BCE to 300 CE. A pottery figure of a person with a severe hunchback and dwarfism. The face is sensitively modeled and largely realistic, with a long, straight nose, a mouth that juts outward slightly, lips parted, and coffee-bean eyes that are characteristic of the Colima. The face has a calm, almost passive expression on it. Bright red details accentuates the arms, lower body, chin, and head; the figure also has a horned headdress, symbolizing his shaman status. Large turtle shell pectoral worn upon his chest. Size: 8" W x 11" H (20.3 cm x 27.9 cm)
Hunchback and dwarf individuals are very common in Colima sculpture - indeed, they heavily outnumber portrayals of women (and some have theorized that this relates to their relatively high social status in the society). Some scholars attribute the hunched back in West Mexican shaft tomb culture to a particular form of tuberculosis; the protruding shoulders and lower spine of this figure may be part of the figure's deformity or the result of an emaciated, shamanic state. Colima, located on Mexico's southwestern coast, was during this time part of the shaft tomb culture, along with neighbors to the north in Jalisco and Nayarit. In this culture, the dead were buried down shafts - 3 to 20 meters deep - that were dug vertically or near vertically through the volcanic tuff that makes up the geology of the region. The base of the shaft would open into one or more horizontal chambers with a low ceiling. These shafts were almost always dug beneath a dwelling, probably a family home, and seem to have been used as family mausoleums, housing the remains of many related individuals. This is a figure made to be placed inside those mausoleums, perhaps to mediate between the worlds of the living and the dead.
Provenance: private R.D. collection, Long Beach, California, USA collection, acquired from the 1980s to 2000
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#189585
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Condition:
- Right foot reattached at ankle, loss to some of the remaining pigment else quite fine.
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