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THE COUPLE IN THE CAVE: Origin Iconography on a Ceramic Vessel from Los Naranjos, Honduras

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2007

Jesper Nielsen  and
James E. Brady
Jesper Nielsen
Affiliation:
Department of American Indian Languages and Cultures, Institute of Regional and Cross-Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen, Artillerivej 86, 2300 KBH.S, Denmark
James E. Brady
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, California State University, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90032, USA
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Abstract

This article analyzes the iconography on a ceramic vessel collected from the site of Los Naranjos, Honduras, over 70 years ago by Danish archaeologist Jens Yde. The relatively more naturalistic representation of the scene on the vessel allows us to interpret the motifs called “dancing figures” as relating to a well-documented corpus of Mesoamerican origin mythology. We then turn our attention to the site of Los Naranjos and document the fact that the area of Lake Yojoa closely mirrors the idealized Mesoamerican landscape associated with the place of the earth's creation. Combining this insight with the depiction on the Yde vessel, we suggest that the Cave of Tauleve may have been considered the place of human creation or human emergence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , July 2006 , pp. 203 - 217
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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