This Tonosí- or Cubita-style jar is painted with two undulating serpent beings, both with birdlike heads and feet, all in black. They are separated into two panels by red rectangles. The space surrounding the serpentine bodies is crammed with so-called filler elements in the form of small rectangular sets of parallel black lines, with or without delimiting lines at each end, as well as tiny crosses. They clearly have some significance as they appear on a wide variety of Tonosí ceramics, but their meaning remains entirely speculative.
Undulating serpents, many with associated elements or beings painted above and below the curves of their bodies, are a common and apparently important theme in ancient Panamanian art, persisting in ever-evolving form for nearly 2,000 years (see M.2011.193.2, M.2019.379.8, and M.2022.280.7). The precise mythological and cosmological connotations are lost, but scholars have used documentary evidence from other regions as well as ethnographic information to suggest that serpents or bird-serpent hybrids (also feathered serpents) were associated with moving water, caves (the underworld), the sky, rain, rainbows, the milky way, fertility, and rebirth.
Selected Bibliography
Grinnell, Alan. Painting the Cosmos: Art and Iconography of the Ceramics of Ancient Panama. University of New Mexico Press, 2025.