Material Relations: The Marriage Figurines of Prehispanic Honduras

6. Travesía

99 DOI: 10.5876_9781607322788.c006 6 Travesía Difference and Identity When we began this project, we identified sites to discuss strictly on the basis of the presence of marriage figurines: a single object depicting a human pair. In addition to the detailed examples we have discussed in the previous chapters from Copán, Tenampua, Campo Dos, and Currusté, our initial sample included a schematic version of the theme, originally illustrated by Mary Butler (1935, figure 6d), described by her simply as from the Ulúa Valley. This particular figurine shows two heads emerging from a single garment (figure 6.1). The drawing Butler provided indicates some differences between the right- and left-hand figures in headdress treatments. Yet since the distinctive clothing that is the most reliable indication of sex in Ulúa figurines —loincloths and skirts—is not delineated,it is not truly possible conclusively to identify this figurine as a male-female couple. While Butler gives the provenience of this figurine only as “Ulúa Valley,” the Peabody Museum catalog number she provided, C1292, allows us to identify it as an object excavated in the 1890s by George Byron Gordon (1898, plate IXa) at a site called Lagartijo. This was the first of three localities where Gordon worked, in a contiguous zone along the banks of the Ulúa River, in the center of the Ulúa Valley (figure 6.2). At Lagartijo, Gordon collected more than 80 figurines and whistles, in deposits that associated pottery demonstrates spanned a period from around 800 BC to AD 850. He then moved on to Santana, an old oxbow of the Ulúa River, and Travesía, an adjacent locality. Here mounds representing collapsed buildings were visible on the surface (Sapper 1898; von den Steinen 1900). At Santana and Travesía, Gordon recovered collections of TRAVESíA 100 figurines and whistles equal in size to his collection from Lagartijo. At Santana, the accompanying pottery dated from as early as 800 BC to as late as AD 1000. At Travesía, Gordon’s excavation stopped at shallower depths, and accompanying pottery suggests dates from AD 650 to 1000 (table 6.1). Gordon ignored the mounds visible on the surface at Travesía, sampling only buried deposits. Archival documents show that Gordon was led to his excavation locations by a prior investigator, Erich Wittkugel, who excavated in the mounds at Travesía starting in 1888 (Sapper 1898; von den Steinen 1900). His collection, curated today at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, includes 325 figurines from Travesía. Among them is a second example of a double human figurine remarkably similar to the one excavated by Gordon at the Lagartijo site. Figure 6.1. Human pair figurine from Lagartijo in the collection of the Peabody Museum. Figure 6d from Mary Butler (1935) “A Study of Maya Mouldmade Figurines,” American Anthropologist n.s. 37. TRAVESíA 101 The Wittkugel human pair figurine from Travesía (figure 6.3) shares the distinctive enveloping cloak that makes it impossible to identify the sex of either figure.The headdresses do distinguish between the two figures and can be identified using the catalog of variants developed by Jeanne Lopiparo (2003). The right figure wears a turban with diagonal lines that were reemphasized by added grooving after the figurine was molded (AU002).The left figure wears a turban that has two diagonal grooves at right angles, with the resulting zones filled with round impressions giving the effect of a puffy material (AF003). While double human figurines are rare, and several of those we discuss are known from only one example,the specific imagery from Travesía and Lagartijo Figure 6.2. Map of central Ulúa Valley showing Travesía hinterland and sites with figurine production along the Quebrada Chasnigua. Drawing by Rosemary A. Joyce, used by permission. TRAVESíA 102 is also found in three other examples. Two are in the National Museum of the American Indian. Another is part of the collection made by a papal diplomat to Honduras, Federico Lunardi, now housed in Genoa (Sánchez Montañés 1981). None of these has clear site level provenience. The NMAI examples are reported to be from the city of San Pedro Sula (figure 6.4) and the Río Ulúa (figure 6.5), which places them in the lower Ulúa Valley, along with the Travesía and Lagartijo examples. The Lunardi example has...