Shark with Headdress500 BCE–500 CE

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Title: Shark with Headdress
Culture: Tumaco-La Tolita
Place Made: Colombia and Ecuador, Pacific Coast (Tumaco-La Tolita Tradition)
Date Made: 500 BCE–500 CE
Medium: Earthenware
Dimensions: 4 × 10 3/8 × 6 1/4 in. (10.2 × 26.4 × 15.9 cm)
Credit Line: The Muñoz Kramer Collection, gift of Camilla Chandler Frost and Stephen and Claudia Muñoz-Kramer
Accession Number: M.2007.146.538
Classification: Ceramics
Collecting Area: Art of the Ancient Americas
Curatorial Notes: Sharks have the ability to continuously regenerate their teeth, and the sculptor of this vessel has accurately rendered the rows of new teeth pushing forward to replace older ones. In contrast with other, more naturalistic representations of sharks by Tumaco-La Tolita artists, this example is adorned with a large, semicircular headdress. The meaning of this is unknown to us.

Living in a vast territory spanning the Pacific coastline from La Tolita on the Santiago River in Ecuador to Buenaventura in Colombia, people of what we now call the Tumaco-La Tolita culture were intimately familiar with the marine animals of the region. Sharks, of which a number of species inhabit this particular stretch of ocean, clearly held a position of significance not only in the daily lives of local people but also in their imaginations and mythology.

Julia Burtenshaw

2024
Selected Bibliography: Burtenshaw, Julia, Héctor García Botero, Diana Magaloni, and María Alicia Uribe Villegas. The Portable Universe = El Universo en tus Manos: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2022.

Shark with Headdress500 BCE–500 CE

Not on view

No image

Title: Shark with Headdress
Culture: Tumaco-La Tolita
Place Made: Colombia and Ecuador, Pacific Coast (Tumaco-La Tolita Tradition)
Date Made: 500 BCE–500 CE
Medium: Earthenware
Dimensions: 4 × 10 3/8 × 6 1/4 in. (10.2 × 26.4 × 15.9 cm)
Credit Line: The Muñoz Kramer Collection, gift of Camilla Chandler Frost and Stephen and Claudia Muñoz-Kramer
Accession Number: M.2007.146.538
Classification: Ceramics
Collecting Area: Art of the Ancient Americas
Curatorial Notes: Sharks have the ability to continuously regenerate their teeth, and the sculptor of this vessel has accurately rendered the rows of new teeth pushing forward to replace older ones. In contrast with other, more naturalistic representations of sharks by Tumaco-La Tolita artists, this example is adorned with a large, semicircular headdress. The meaning of this is unknown to us.

Living in a vast territory spanning the Pacific coastline from La Tolita on the Santiago River in Ecuador to Buenaventura in Colombia, people of what we now call the Tumaco-La Tolita culture were intimately familiar with the marine animals of the region. Sharks, of which a number of species inhabit this particular stretch of ocean, clearly held a position of significance not only in the daily lives of local people but also in their imaginations and mythology.

Julia Burtenshaw

2024
Selected Bibliography: Burtenshaw, Julia, Héctor García Botero, Diana Magaloni, and María Alicia Uribe Villegas. The Portable Universe = El Universo en tus Manos: Thought and Splendor of Indigenous Colombia. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2022.