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Female figure

Caribbean Plains (Zenú) - Early Period-200/1000

Museo del Oro, Bogotá

Museo del Oro, Bogotá
Bogota, Colombia

This woman in position to give birth with extremely short hair and a rounded cut is only wearing a necklace and simple bracelets. The holes in her ears and nose suggest the use of ear and nose rings, maybe in goldwork.
Thousands of women made in clay, chubby, naked and with enhanced sexual organs, kneeling in a position as if they were giving birth and sometimes decorated with goldwork –also modelled in clay– were deposited under burial mounds in the Zenú, the region of the mid and lower valleys of the San Jorge River in the Colombian Caribbean plains. Fertility, an essential concept for this society, was probably represented in these feminine offerings, to protect and induce germination, rebirth and transformation of the dead in the underworlds of gold, in the same way as you sow and protect the seeds for the crops to germinate. JSS

Details

  • Title: Female figure
  • Creator: Caribbean Plains (Zenú) - Early Period
  • Date: -200/1000
  • Physical Dimensions: w201 x h251 mm
  • Type: Ceramic
  • External Link: People and Gold in Pre-Hispanic Colombia
  • Technique: Modeling in clay
  • Finding: Colombia, Sucre, San Marcos
  • Accession number: C13108

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