Dogs, Graves and Scholars

by Mildred Boyd

      The pre-Columbian sites in Western Mexico are never likely to replace Teotihuacan or Monte Alban as tourist attractions. Simple tools, humble dwellings and clay figurines are not much competition for lofty pyramids, princely palaces and golden ornaments. Yet, to serious scholars, such sites are even more informative than the grandiose ceremonial centers, in that they can tell us much about how ordinary people lived.
Shaft tombs, some 45 or more feet deep and with several burial chambers, were typical graves in Nayarit, Jalisco and Colima. They have yielded an astonishing array of funeral offerings, especially ceramics, from crude flat figures to sophisticated sculpture in the round. The potters of Colima were particularly adept in depicting tiny vignettes of everyday life. Animals were favored subjects, but birds and insects, hunchbacks, water carriers, family groups, warriors and priests were all wrought in faithful detail to accompany and protect the dead on their journey to the underworld.
Though some are now badly discolored from centuries of contact with the earth, every example shown here was originally finished with the polished red slip distinctive of Colima’s pottery. All date from the six century.

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