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| Auction Closes At: |
16:34:00 12/11/2023 |
| Time Remaining: |
Closed |
| Lot# & Name: |
178. Taino Stone Crouching Figure Amulet Pendant |
| Estimate: |
$1,000-$1,500 |
| Current High Bid: |
$6,000.00 |
| Auction Closed(Final Price) |
$6,000.00 |
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| Category: |
Pre-Columbian Art
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| Sub Category: |
Central America and the Caribbean - Costa Rica
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| Culture or Country: |
Hispaniola.
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| Period: |
Ca. 1000 - 1500 A.D.
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| Size: |
3”H. x 1-1/2”W. |
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| Description: |
White limestone crouching zemi figure with typical large, hollow eye orbits, wide open mouth and arms segmented by ligatures. Intact with light loss to left hand, chip on right nostril and a few nicks and scuffs. Custom lucite base. The theme of the grimacing, emaciated crouching zemi is ubiquitous in Taíno art, including figurines, pestles, amulets, vomitivos, snuffers and large statues such as this example. In the animistic worldview of the ancient Taíno, a zemi represented anything endowed with sacred power, certain features of the landscape, such as mountains, caves, trees and bodies of water, the spirits of ancestors and deities that inhabited the otherworld, the preserved bones of important ancestors and artifacts that represented any spiritual force. Fray Ramón Pané, who lived among the Taíno for several years, recorded a number of important deities, which contemporary scholars have attempted to assign to surviving sculptures. According to Christopher Columbus, figural zemis were ancestral images related to the cohoba ceremony that chieftains and shamans undertook to contact spirits in the otherworld. The grimacing, skeletal face and emaciated physique stem from the need to starve and purge oneself before the cohoba ritual in order to become like the dead. Participants then inhaled cohoba (Piptadenia peregrina), one of the most powerful psychoactive substances in the New World and still used by shamans in parts of the Amazon, from whence the ancestors of the Taíno came thousands of years ago. Cohoba, or yopa in the Amazon, is the hallucinogenic crushed powder from the seedpods of the Piptadenia peregrina tree. Pané and other sixteenth-century chroniclers describe cohoba ceremonies in which those who inhaled the powder crouched on low stools, babbled incoherently, saw everything upside down and felt as if they were flying. Once recovered, the chieftain or shaman claimed to have traveled to the otherworld to receive advice from spirits and ancestors. The figure wears the decorated cap reserved for chieftains and Deminán, the creator spirit of the Taíno. The large orbits, pierced earlobes and grimacing open mouth were once filled with gold or shell inlays; the orbits mimic the empty eye sockets of skeletons and the mouth, the grimace of a bony cranium. The crouching position reflects the position of cohoba participants on low stools.
Although seemingly paradoxical, the erect phallus symbolized excessive vitality because cohoba celebrants abstained from sex in order to redirect their vital force into their spiritual pursuits as masters of the ancestors, healers and bewitchers of the living. Cohoba participants became the living dead with the exception of this one feature, which speaks to the fecund powers the Taíno associated with chieftains and their ancestors. |
| Provenance: |
Private East Coast collection, acquired by the current collection in 1993 from the Merrin Gallery, NYC. |
| Shipping Fee: |
| National: |
$50.00 |
| International: |
$100.00 (This is approximate and for Postal Service. Prices may vary, especially for private carriers such as: FEDEX, UPS and BAX).
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Taino Stone Crouching Figure Amulet Pendant
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BIDDER |
BID |
QTY |
Original Bid Time |
| 1. |
chico |
$6,000.00 |
1 |
12/11/2023 4:28:08 PM |
| 2. |
artismus |
$5,750.00 |
1 |
12/11/2023 3:54:05 PM |
| 3. |
chico |
$5,500.00 |
1 |
12/11/2023 4:23:51 PM |
| 4. |
chico |
$5,000.00 |
1 |
12/11/2023 3:43:10 PM |
| 5. |
Smilodon |
$2,100.00 |
1 |
12/11/2023 3:53:30 PM |
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