West Coast Mexico
Colima (Otomies)

Terra cotta
ca.  200 CE
Length: 8.5 in
Idiophones – Indirectly Struck – Rattles

A Pre-Columbian Colima gourd-shaped rattle.  This hand-finished earthenware ceramic rattle shows post-firing polychrome painted stripes.  The rattle has a bulbous ellipsoid center with a longer pointed end handle and a smaller/shorter pointed end tip. There are three holes in the side of the body, and the stripes circumvent the curved side of the rattle in three sets of two thin yellow bands. Between these is a reddish-brown background which comprises the rest of the rattle.  While the meaning of this rattle is somewhat elusive, it may have served as a musical instrument, or a ritual mechanism used as a grave offering as it comes from the shaft tombs of West Mexico.

Colima is a state name and is also the name of the capital city.  The people in this region, who settled in Prehispanic times, came by successive waves of people arriving from the north: the Otomies may have come through the area around 250-750 CE, followed by the Toltecs who flourished between 900 and 1154 CE, and the Chichimecs who came to the area during the twelfth century.  This ocarina dates back to the Otomies and Pre-Columbian times.

COA – Artemis Gallery