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Pre-Columbian Art :
Ixtlán del Rio Style : Ixtlán del Rio Style Nayarit
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Ixtlán del Rio Style Nayarit - CK.0801
Circa: 300
BC
to 300
AD
Dimensions:
9.25" (23.5cm) high
x 6.75" (17.1cm) wide
$6,000.00
Location: United States
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| Photo Gallery |
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| Description |
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There are many distinct groups within the
agglomeration referred to as the Western
Mexico Shaft Tomb (WMST) tradition, foremost
among them the Jalisco, Nayarit, and Colima.
Their relationships are almost totally obscure
due to the lack of contextual information.
However, it is the artworks that are the most
informative. All of the cultures encompassed
under the WMST umbrella were in the habit of
burying their dead in socially- stratified burial
chambers at the base of deep shafts, which
were in turn often topped by buildings. Originally
believed to be influenced by the Tarascan
people, who were contemporaries of the Aztecs,
thermoluminescence has pushed back the dates
of these groups over 1000 years.
Although the apogee of this tradition was
reached in the last centuries of the 1st
millennium BC, it has its origins over 1000
years earlier at sites such as Huitzilapa and
Teuchitlan, in the Jalisco region. Little is known
of the cultures themselves, although
preliminary data seems to suggest that they
were sedentary agriculturists with social
systems not dissimilar to chiefdoms. These
cultures are especially interesting to students of
Mesoamerican history as they seem to have
been to a large extent outside the ebb and flow
of more aggressive cultures – such as the
Toltecs, Olmecs and Maya – in the same vicinity.
Thus insulated from the perils of urbanization,
they developed very much in isolation, and it
behooves us to learn what we can from what
they have left behind.
The most striking works of the Nayarit subgroup
are the ceramics, which were usually placed in
graves, and do not seem to have performed any
practical function. It is possible that they were
designed to depict the deceased – they are often
very naturalistic – although it is more probable
that they constituted, when in groups, a retinue
of companions, protectors and servants for the
hereafter. Just as in other sophisticated social
systems around the world – such as the
Egyptians or Dynastic China – figures were
made to represent the sorts of people and
resources that might be needed in the
hereafter. They were in this sense symbolic of
actual people, who were buried with the
deceased as retainers in more sanguineous
Central and Southern American societies.
- (CK.0801)
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