Juan Carlos G Mantilla. Assistant Professor, Fresno State University.
At the Museo Arqueológico y Centro Cultural de Orellana, MACCO, the Getty Connecting Art Histories ‘Amazon Basin’ seminar had the opportunity to observe and study the Napo vessels from the Upper Amazon dated between the late 11th and the 15th century in the Pre-Columbian period. These vessels are relatively small funerary urns, often indicative of secondary burials. There are two main types: non-anthropomorphic urns with lids and anthropomorphic urns. Both types showcase the decorative elements typical of the Napo phase, including a specific decorative model previously described. [Fig. 1]
The anthropomorphic urns, which occasionally use high relief, modeling, applique, and additions to define their anthropomorphic identity, have been categorized in two ways. First, by their openings: some have openings at the head, some at the base, others where the head itself is the lid, and some in which the head acts like a bottle’s mouth. Second, by how the human figure is represented: some use grooving, painting, and applique on the vessel’s form (these always have openings at the head); others model the head but attach body attributes (like arms and legs) to a vessel; and a third type uses a square base form and limb presentation for more realistic human body depiction (here, the entire head serves as the lid).[1]
The anthropomorphic figures are generally positioned as ‘sitting on the ground with feet on the earth,’ sometimes in a squatting style. However, variations exist, like urns with bent legs or one sitting on a bench. In addition to the head, legs, and arms, these figures often feature faces with various expressions, pierced ears, nipples, and clear sexual identity, marked either by male genitalia or triangular pubic covers with a vertical line overlay.[2]
Archaeologists have often treated these vessels as a kind of historical telescope, attempting to view and define the social and ideological structures of past Amerindian societies through them. Archaeology with ethnographical interest has tried to define social practices and structures through material culture. This approach aligns with what’s termed «Amerindian Perspectivism,» using the vessels to explore the social psychology of indigenous societies.[3]
However, this method is influenced by an «ethnohistorical gaze,» which carries a long colonial history, beginning with European explorations and missionary texts in the Amazon from the 16th and 17th centuries. Ethnohistory is inseparable from this intellectual history and its process of assigning Western terms to indigenous creations, expanding these associations to serve as paradigms for categorizing societies at large. The work of Meggers and Evans on the classification of Amazonian ceramics, despite being pioneering, is criticized for its adherence to now outdated models such as diffusionism and ecological determinism The archaeological focus on iconographic quality, attempting to discern ethnosocietal structures through it, leaves little room for creativity or for the objects to speak for themselves. It presupposes that the material aspect of the vessel can mirror its society.[4] Even the most canonical works have used the material not to let it speak for itself but to organize a positivist understanding of historical time through the epistemology of absolute chronologies.[5] Oliveira, in this sense, has extensively discussed this critique, reflecting a shift in archaeological thought, with a focus on Amazonian polychrome traditions, of which the Napo vessels are a part.[6]
For me, in discussing the Napo vessels and the material culture of the indigenous Americas, it’s important to step back and consider what we mean by the terms we use to describe their objects, in this case, ‘vessel,’ and to be aware of the over determinations we imply when claiming to be able to observe social structures through objects. Commonly, we use ‘vessel’ or ‘vasija’ to categorize an object. This categorization is not just a terminological operation, but also an epistemological one. Recognizing this, it’s useful to define ‘vessel’ as seen through the lens of the Napo objects.
Napo vessels have a human-like form. They result from an artistic effort to depict certain aspects of the human figure, including small-scaled limbs folded over the body of the vessel. The upper part of these vessels represents a human head. Their faces each have unique characteristics, and details that provide them with an individual identity. A key characteristic of Napo vessels is that they have very particular painting that represents aspects of human bodies, body painting, and decorated faces. Their eyes are drawn with fine lines and are wide open, giving the impression that the vessel is observing its surroundings. This aspect of the vessels – their materiality, embodiment, and human-like shape – requires independent attention. [Fig. 2]
The idea of a vessel, when viewed through the perspective of the Napo funerary urns’ wide-open eyes, might offer a different understanding of the object, or maybe new questions. Traditionally, the term ‘vessel’ or ‘urn’ is a product of Western archaeological vocabulary applied to a material corpus of non-Western objects. This understanding is based on qualities like void storage and container use in archaeological contexts. The term originates from the Latin ‘vasculum,’ meaning a small vase or urn, which derives from ‘vas,’ a general term for any container. Over time, the meaning of ‘vessel’ has diversified.
If we theorize ‘vessel’ as seen from the Upper Napo vessels, we might encounter a broader interpretation for the term vessel. These objects, because of their quality as bodies and urns, invite us to reconsider our understanding of what a vessel can be, based on their specific characteristics.
First, a vessel is commonly known as a container for holding liquids, like a pot or jug. The Upper Napo vessel, in this sense, contains a body within a funerary context. It holds what once was, encapsulating it both physically and symbolically. Second, in anatomy, a vessel refers to structures like veins or arteries that transport fluids within an organism. The Upper Napo vessel metaphorically connects the underground with the overground, symbolizing the transition of a being from the world of the living to that of the dead, much like blood vessels connect different parts of a body. Finally, in maritime terms, a vessel is a ship or boat used for transportation across water. Similarly, the Upper Napo vessel serves as a symbolic vessel, transporting the living into the realm of death. The Upper Napo vessel possesses qualities that allow us to define it as a vessel/vasija while expanding our definition of a vessel as an element of connection, receptacle, and transportation. This is due to the object being an artistic and aesthetic effort to represent and contain the body.
This body is represented not as living or dead, but in a form specific to this kind of vessel. Artists of the Upper Napo have reinterpreted both the urn and the human body, merging them into a new form that is neither one nor the other. According to Barreto (2009), secondary burials in some Amazonian societies involve two lengthy cycles: decomposition of the body and preparation of the bones. However, the preparation of the urn is a parallel process. The body of the urn and the painting on its surface, and the body of the deceased within, are the results of simultaneous craft processes.[7]
These processes aim at a similar interest. Viteri suggests that surface painting might highlight individual subjectivities and transformation processes toward other forms of existence. This effort to highlight individual characteristics in each object, however, cannot necessarily be resolved by understanding it as a «social event» or fulfilling ‘functions.’[8] Moving beyond anthropological structuralism, and the social life of objects, we can approach the Upper Napo vessel from an art historical perspective, considering it as a vessel form that doesn’t aim to represent either a living or a postmortem body, but rather a different state of the body – its ‘vessel’ form.
Barreto’s reflections consider the urn manufacturing process as revealing strategies to anchor humanity, contemplating cycles of predatorial practices, human-non-human interactions, and the dangers associated with death. This can be expanded to the different processes of creating/ending life involving substances, emotions, and intentions, integrating vessels into the broader cycles of sociality among indigenous Amazonians.
The painting and adornments on these vessels – including braids, bracelets, and leg bands on modeled arms and legs, necklaces, masks, and diadems – are significant. In some cases, the depicted figures carry objects like discs, and facial painting often features asymmetrical motifs. The legs are painted to resemble feline skin, while the patterns on the modeled arms suggest the skin of a Boa constrictor.[9]
In general, I don’t think of this as a naturalistic effort to depict the dead or the living, but taking into account all the effort involved in its craft, it is an aesthetic and iconographic creation. It incorporates elements from the environment into its iconography, that could express creative and craftful connections mentioned by Barreto between the individual and community, the world of the living and the dead, and processes of transmutation and transformation. These aren’t just social representations; they are the result of individual and unique aesthetic efforts to make these metaphysical ideas or fictions tangible, visible, and expressive in the vessel format and its painting. This involves inventing the format, the treatment process of the deceased’s body and the urn’s body, and aesthetically representing each new body in the vessel’s surface painting. Craft, technique, and uniqueness might be key.
I want to highlight a new possible way for art historians to relate to these objects, moving away from seeking the ideological structures the objects fulfill. From the perspective of art. The approach I want to suggest distances itself from ethno-social-historical readings, iconologies, typologies, horizons, and phases. It focuses on the object in all its dimensions, without sociology or ethnology, concentrating solely on the artistic prowess, and the creative processes involved that are visible in the sculpture, and its surrounding actions of necromancy, painting, and ephemeral funerary rites. It views the object as a third possibility, an art form that depicts neither alive nor dead, neither body nor urn, but all these at once in a vessel shape.
[1] Arroyo-Kalin, M., & Panduro, S. R. (2016). Tras el camino de la boa arcoíris: las Alfarerías precolombinas del bajo Río Napo. In C. Barreto, H. P. Lima & C. J. Betancourt (Orgs.), Cerâmicas Arqueológicas da Amazônia: rumo a uma nova síntese (pp. 463-479). Belém: IPHAN; Viteri, T. A. (2020). Entre naturalismos y metáforas: el código icónico en la pintura corporal de las urnas funerarias de la fase Napo. Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas, 15(3), e20190122. doi: 10.1590/2178-2547-BGOELDI-2019-0122
[2] Jastremski, Nicole & Sánchez Polo, Alejandra. (2021). Human Skeletal Remains Recovered from a Napo Funerary Urn in the Ecuadorian Amazon: A Taphonomic and Mortuary Assessment. 10.5744/bi.2020.0025.
[3] Viteri, 2020
[4] Arroyo-Kalin, Manuel & Panduro, Santiago. (2019). La arqueología del río Napo: noticias recientes y desafíos futuros. Revista del Museo de La Plata. 4. 331-384. 10.24215/25456377e080.
[5] Evans, C., & Meggers, B. (1968). Archaeological investigations on the Rio Napo, Eastern Ecuador. Washington: Smithsonian Institute.
[6] Barreto, C and Oliveira, E. Para além de potes e panelas: cerâmica e ritual na amazônia antiga. Habitus, v. 14, p. 51-72, 2016. Oliveira, Erendira. Corpo de barro, corpo de gente: Metáforas na iconografia das urnas funerárias polícromas. Boletim do Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi. Ciências Humanas, 15, 2020.
[7] Barreto, C. (2009). Meios místicos de reprodução social: arte e estilo na cerâmica funerária da Amazônia antiga (Tesis de doctorado). Universidad de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brasil.
Barreto, C. (abril, 2013). Beyond pots and pans: ceramic record and context in pre-colonial Amazonia. Paper presented at the 78th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Honolulu.
[8] Viteri, T. (2019). Las composiciones pictóricas en las urnas funerarias de la fase Napo. Una perspectiva iconográfica y etnoarqueológica. Antropología: Cuadernos de Investigación, 21, 91-110.
[9] Viteri, T. (2019).