This plate depicts a spotted eagle ray. The artist carefully rendered the iconic patterning on its back using black and white with alternating blue and red spots. The shape of the plate has also been altered to more accurately represent the animal’s diamond shape. The base of a ray’s tail, just behind the pelvic fins, has several venomous, barbed stingers, two of which are depicted on this vessel.
Stingrays are a common subject on ancient Panamanian ceramics, represented in two- and three-dimensional forms (see M.2016.348.29 and M.2009.150.8 ). Their spines are also a prevalent motif, especially in depictions of the so-called dancing shaman on Macaracas-style pedestal plates, sometimes completely surrounding the figure and filling most of the rest of the space (see L.2017.6.3). Actual spines have been found at ancient Panamanian sites and were used widely in Mesoamerica and Central America for ceremonial bloodletting. Piercing your body with such a spine enabled you to make the most precious offering to the gods: your own pain and blood. Pain was also one way to bring forth visions and thus access the spirit world.
In modern Guna (also Kuna) culture, images of stingrays reference the afterlife: when a fisherman dies, it is said that a manta ray transforms into a boat to take the fisherman to all the places he wanted to see when he was alive. Also, Guna people are wary of eating sea creatures considered to have a bad temperament, because biting or stinging fish like sharks or stingrays will pass their mood on to human beings. Understanding the symbolic richness and diversity of meaning for Indigenous Panamanians in their interactions with nonhuman entities is fundamental to our interpretation of ancient motifs. However, we must be cautious when using Guna cosmology to interpret ancient Panamanian ceramic designs. The Guna migrated to their current coastal home relatively recently. They originally lived in what is now northern Colombia and the Darién Province of Panama, moving to their San Blas Islands territories (Guna Yala) in the mid-1800s, and most of their mythology is based on animals, plants, and spirits of the forest.
Selected Bibliography
Fortis, Paolo. Kuna Art and Shamanism: An Ethnographic Approach. University of Texas Press, 2012.
Grinnell, Alan. Painting the Cosmos: Art and Iconography of the Ceramics of Ancient Panama. University of New Mexico Press, 2025.