Ritual Cache
Salado (New Mexico, United States)
1300–1400
- Medium
- Wood, stone, plant fibers, cotton, feathers, hide, and pigment
- Classification
- Religious/Ritual Object
- Dimensions
- Male figure: H.: 64 cm (25 1/4 in.); Female figure: H.: 36 cm (14 3/16 in.)
- Culture
- New Mexico
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Major Acquisitions Centennial Endowment
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Discovered wrapped and hidden in a remote, dry cave, this cache of ritual figures comes from the Salado culture, which flourished in the mountains of southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Brilliantly colored and adorned with flicker feathers and dyed cotton string, these effigies once formed an altar as agents for communion with the life-giving spirits of the earth and sky. The large male figure, with his feather necklace and bold black-and-turquoise zigzag pattern, features sky symbolism. The smaller, female figure is a more self-contained form, probably corresponding to the earth. Her ocher color likely refers to maize and pollen, symbols of sustenance and fertility. The accompanying figures are a mountain lion (the chief predator in the region) and two serpents (carved from cottonwood roots), representing agents of communication with the earth and the seasonal cycle of fertility. Curved wooden throwing sticks for rabbit hunting complete the ensemble. Testimony to the antiquity and endurance of the worship of earth and sky and to the spiritual bonds between people and animals, these objects bear close resemblance to…
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
