Communicating with the Deceased: The Meaning and Function of the Standing Dog figure, Standing Male Figure Holding Ball...

The Standing Dog, Standing Male Figure Holding Ball, and Model of House Scene are three among many objects featured in The Seeds of Divinity, an exhibit opening at the Williams College Museum of Art on January 1, 2018. While the exhibition covers five Mesoamerican civilizations – Maya, Teotihuacán, West Mexico, Zapotec, and Aztec – these three mortuary objects all come from West Mexico. In this essay, I want to explore the way that these specific objects embodied the common ideologies shared among the five Mesoamerican civilizations mentioned above, as well as those specific to West Mexico cultures. First, I will give a general overview of the sociopolitical situation, geographic location, and religion (which is informed by ethnographic research of the Huichol Indians) of the ancient West Mexico civilizations, such as the shaft tomb culture (from which our three objects came). Then I will discuss the physical description and style of the three objects. Finally, I will examine the context, meaning and function of the objects.