Wearing Culture: Dress and Regalia in Early Mesoamerica and Central America

2. Barely There but Still Transcendent

29 DOI: 10.5876_9781607322825.c002 2 Barely There but Still Transcendent Ancient Nicaraguan and Costa Rican Dress, Regalia, and Adornment, ca. 800 BCE–300 CE in Greater Nicoya Laura Wingfield inTroduCTion Early Nicoyans appear to have been barely adorned, sporting merely thongs, headdresses, maces, jewelry, and body art, but these were symbolically filled with messages of transcendence from this world to the next. Today early Nicoyan dress, regalia, and adornment can be seen in the remains from tombs dating to ca. 800 BCE–300 CE. These Formative period tombs of southwestern Nicaragua and northwestern Costa Rica (Greater Nicoya) include earthenware vessels, metates, maceheads, and jewelry.The vessels and metates depict humans scantily clad with what appear to be pubic coverings, woven headwear, horns, masks, jade jewels, shell necklaces, earspools, and body decoration. Body art designs painted on figural vessels spiral and swirl in visionary patterns, perhaps indicative of images seen in trance to the spirit realm. Also, most early Nicoyan figural vessels were sculpted in poses of meditation and transformation to animal-humans, further suggesting the representation of spiritualists. These tomb treasures and their imagery offer a view of a formative Greater Nicoya led by spiritual specialists who believed in a cyclical universe, one where new life constantly replaced old. This view of the world is reflected in the beliefs of today’s Chibchan groups in southern Costa Rica and western Panama, the Bribri, Cabécar, Boruca, and Guaimí, likely the distant kin of the inhabitants of Formative Greater Nicoya. As may be inferred from ceramic effigies of females and males from early Greater Nicoya, the typical dress of the day consisted primarily of a pubic covering for females and no clothing for males (Figures 2.1–2.4).1 No early Nicoyan clothing remains have thus far been LAURA WINGFIELD 30 Figure 2.1. Vessel in the form of a kneeling woman wearing a tanga. Rosales Zoned Engraved; after an object in the collection of the Instituto Nacional de Seguros, San José, Costa Rica. Figure 2.2. Vessel in the form of a seated woman wearing a necklace and a tanga. Rosales Zoned Engraved, Rosales Variety, 24.5 × 21.5 cm; after an object in the collection of María Eugenia de Roy and published as Snarskis 1981b:179, cat. no. 11. uncovered in the archaeological record (Coe and Baudez 1961; Haberland 1986, 1961; Healy 1980; Lange 2006, 1971; Lange and Haberland 1992; Ryder 1986a, 1986b), as the tropical lowland climate of the region prohibits preservation of textiles (Coates 1997), although ancient spindle whorls for spinning fibers (presumably to be used in weavings) have been recovered for the Florescent period of 300–800 CE.2 There are written records, however, from the period of Spanish contact that detail a tanga (“thong”), a pubic covering worn by Chibchan-speaking3 women in northern Costa Rica: “The women wear an elaborately worked breech-clout, which is an apron about three spans wide on a single string, at the back; and this string being tightened, they bring the cloth between the legs,covering the privy parts,and insert the end beneath the string in front. All the remainder of their bodies is unclothed . . .” (Oviedo as cited in Lothrop 1926, 1:36–37; see also Wingfield 2009:100–101).This colonial description fits well with the images on ancient Nicoyan figural art of pubic BARELY THERE BU T STILL TRANSCENDENT 31 Figure 2.4. Large vessel in the form of a seated ejaculating man. Rosales Zoned Engraved, Rosales Variety, 68.6 cm h × 48.3 cm w; after an object in the collection of the Denver Art Museum (1993.762). This figure has been heavily restored, resulting in loss of detail for some of the body painting. Figure 2.3. Vessel in the form of a kneeling, birthing woman wearing a diadem and a tanga, front and back views. Rosales Zoned Engraved, Rosales Variety, 26.7 × 14.6 × 12.1 cm; after an object in the collection of Jan and Frederick Mayer, Denver, Colorado (6160). coverings (Figures 2.1–2.3). These tangas are sculpted (Figure 2.1) or painted (Figure 2.2) pubic triangles with lines emerging from each point of the triangle ,two of which wrap around the waist and one through the intergluteal cleft; then all three lines meet at the figure’s back above the buttocks.The gathering of fabric around the waistband at front (as described by...