Ways of making the body on the stilt villages: an archaeological study of the figurines in Maranhão

Abstract

Figurines are human sculptures of animal or hybrid beings of reduced dimensions and made of bone, ceramics, ivory, or stone. This article reviews the ways of making the body in the Amazonian archaeological literature and presents the unpublished ceramic statuettes of the Maranhão stilt villages. The techno-typological classification of the sets and how these bodies were figured reveal a specific and local way of making the bodies. Some iconographic elements shared with the people of the Marajoara phase show stylistic flows of social interaction between groups at the mouth of the Amazon and the Maranhão estuary. The purpose of making these artifacts seems to refer to individualized human beings; to women who participated in puberty rituals; to the transmutational figuration of bodies that focus on the animistic and perspectivist aspects of Amazonian Amerindian ontologies, such as shamanism and animals that helped shamans in their communication with the different tangible worlds.

Keywords
Figurines; Stilt Villages; Marajoara Phase; Shamanism; Making Body