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Ornament as Veneration in Ancient Pueblo Art

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Memory & Oblivion

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Abstract

Pictographs of kachinas (typically thought of today as ceremonial dancers representing cloudlike ancestral spirits that embody rain) begin to appear on precontact Pueblo ceramics around 1300 CE; some have interpreted this (in association with other findings) as evidence of a “kachina cult” that spread rapidly across the Pueblo Southwest in the fourteenth century. This paper suggests that kachinas can be defined in a less representationally literal way, and thus can be understood as having long been venerated aniconically. White Mountain Redware types employing spiral- and scroll-like motifs and red slips (along with other changes in material-culture traditions) provide one possible example of such aniconic veneration prior to the fourteenth century. The written paper directs methodological attention toward: (1) the issue of “conceptual images” in non-Western tribal arts; (2) the constancy of iconographic “configurations” in the Pueblo Southwest from precontact to postcontact times; and (3) conversely, the necessity of avoiding limited, literal “readings” of Pueblo symbols because of the processes of analogy and association that inform their initial establishment and subsequent use.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Austin College, Sherman, Texas, USA

    Richard B. Wright

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  1. Richard B. Wright
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Utrecht University, The Netherlands

    Wessel Reinink (Professor Emeritus of Architectural History) & Jeroen Stumpel (Professor of Iconology and Art theory) (Professor Emeritus of Architectural History) &  (Professor of Iconology and Art theory)

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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Wright, R.B. (1999). Ornament as Veneration in Ancient Pueblo Art. In: Reinink, W., Stumpel, J. (eds) Memory & Oblivion. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4006-5_78

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-4006-5_78

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-010-5771-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-011-4006-5

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