Clay bodies, people’s bodies: Metaphors in iconography of polychrome funerary urns

Abstract

In recent years Amazonian ethnology has proposed a theory of the Amerindian body which sees it as a matrix of relationships and transformations. The resulting possibilities of fluidity between different bodies and perspectives inscribed in these models would be some of the pillars of a Lowlands’ cosmopolitics and would be represented through different expressions such as images, rites, songs, dances and artifacts. In this sense, aesthetic expressions are understood as agent elements within the circles of human and non-human relations and can materialize certain aspects of particular universes and of social and symbolic performances. Based on these propositions, we explore a dialogue between Archaeology and Ethnology, analyzing the iconographic language of the funerary urns of the Polychrome Tradition of the Amazon, in the lower and medium Solimões River. Such artifacts can be interpreted as bodies, composed of two- and three-dimensional human and animal references and are covered with elaborate motifs. This essay aims to interpret the iconography of these objects based on their body elements and how they may reveal notions related to the production and constitution of bodies and social agents.