Known colloquially as slab figures, stylized human sculptures such as this from the Middle Cauca Valley are formed of a solid slab of clay with equally solid arms and legs attached. (There are hollow examples; see M.2007.146.5.) This figure is not explicitly sexed, but most other examples are male. Hands, feet, eyes, and mouth are rendered in a minimalist and stylized way, but the prominent nose is realistically modeled. A hole in the septum would once have held a metal nose ring (see M.2007.146.276).
The function of these serenely composed figures remains elusive. Based on excavations conducted by Luis Duque Gómez and Karen Bruhns in the twentieth century, along with looted evidence, we know that these statues were placed in shaft chamber tombs plunged deep into the earth, and that they surrounded the dead, as if keeping watch. Given their archaeological context, as well as local ethnographies, such as those of the Tukano, which tell us that a sitting position denotes a chief or a state of balance and wisdom, these figures likely represent ritual specialists undergoing hallucinogenic transformation. Many cultures of the Cauca believe that through such an experience, these individuals are able to cross the cosmological divide between the living and the dead. Upon death, souls are thought to wander, causing harm to their living family members. Ritual specialists—or in this case, a ceramic substitute—negotiate that interaction, protecting the family and ushering the soul beyond the grave.
Slab figures are often assigned to the Quimbaya culture. However, the Quimbaya arrived in the Cauca Valley around the fifteenth or sixteenth century, several centuries after the production of slab figures began. LACMA has thus chosen to label them not by a culture name but simply their geographic provenance.
Anthony J. Meyer
Selected Bibliography
Meyer, Anthony J. “A Scholarly Journey through the Cauca Valley.” LACMA Unframed, July 18, 2017, https://unframed.lacma.org/2017/07/18/scholarly-journey-through-cauca-valley.