WARMER PENDANT CULTURE TIMOTO-CUICA, VENEZUELA... - Lot 108 - Giquello

Lot 108
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Estimation :
3000 - 4000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 3 900EUR
WARMER PENDANT CULTURE TIMOTO-CUICA, VENEZUELA... - Lot 108 - Giquello
WARMER PENDANT CULTURE TIMOTO-CUICA, VENEZUELA 1000-1500 AP. J.-C. Green stone with white veining. L. 44,5 cm Timoto-Cuica bat pendant-figure, green stone with white veining, Venezuela W. 17 1/4 in Provenance: Private collection, Zurich Vente Schuler Auktionen, Switzerland, March 2012, lot 1072 Private collection, Paris Before the conquest, many pre-Columbian cultures established in a geographical area from Honduras to Venezuela produced pendants depicting bats with outstretched wings, including the Tainos in the Caribbean, the Taironas in Colombia and the Timoto-Cuica in Venezuela. The largest number of these bats have been found in northwestern Colombia, in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The Taironas have lived there since the 11th century. Their descendants, the Kogi Indians, still live in this region. Among the Kogi Indians, the bat today retains an ambivalent role. In particular, it is associated with the dark world of the night, thus with the death and blood of menstruation, and with the life and fertility of women. The ethnologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, in his work on the Kogi Indians, discusses the role of these plates, called maxalda, which were used as musical instruments during ritual celebrations: "The dancer would suspend two of these plates with cotton thread on either side of the elbow, so that the rhythmic movement of the arms produced a melodic tinkling" Reichel-Dolmatoff (1985:142). The continuity since the sixteenth century between the Taironas and the Kogi Indians suggests that these bat pendants had a comparable role in the past. The Timoto-Cuica Culture, established in the Andean area to the west of present-day Venezuela, also produced many stylised bat-shaped pendants. Its geographical proximity to the Taironas may suggest that these plaques were once used in a similar way in one of the Andean countries.
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