Estatuetas de cerâmica na cultura Santarém: classificação e catálogo das coleções do Museu Goeldi

Abstract

The pottery of the Santarem area is one the most widely known complexes in South America because of the exuberance of its art style.In spite of this, no adequate archeological investigations have been made, and its development and distribuition are consequently poorly defined. Comparative evidence and ethnohistorical accounts indicate that it flourished during the late preEuropean perio, probably surviving to contact time. Along with pottery vessels, figurines are among the most typical artifacts.Since figurines are rare in other known Amazonian ceramic complexes although common is parts of Mesoamerica and Andean South America, the characteristics of the Santarem exemples in the collections of the Museu Paraense Emíliog Goeldi shows that the only exixting attempt ate descriptive classification, along with detailed description of the figurines in the collection. General characteristics of Santarem figurines can be summarized as follows. Pasre and temper are like those of the pottery vessels.All are hand made. Hollw examples are slightly more common (43.66%) than solid ones (39.5%), leaving a residual category in which the head is hollow and the bodu solid, or vice versa. There is variation in surface finishm ranging from fine examples with well smoothed and slipped surfaces to crude ones, which are asymetrical in form and neither slipped nor painted. An intermediate category is symmetrical but not as well modeled as the fine examples and bears only occasional traces of paint or slip. All figurines have modeling and incision as part of their elaboration. Assitional decoration may be of the following kinds: 1)red of white slip alone, 2)black or red paint on white slip, or 3) black and red paint on white slip (polycrome). However, 63% show no evidence of either paint or slip.Size range exhibited by complete examples is 3.2 to 28.0 cm: All but 3 are anthropomorphic (97.42%). Of these 34.8% are female, 9.3% male. An additional 55.9% are probably female, but genitalia are not shown (7.5% are unidentifiabre because of absence of diagnostic parts).