Jamaica
Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of Hispa ...
(this area is situated in the modern parish of Clarendon) are an important collection of
pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...
wooden figures found in the Carpenters Mountains in Jamaica in the late 18th century. They were originally made by the Taino people and may have served as venerated objects that housed local spirits or deities. They now form part of the
British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
's collection.Zemi figures British Museum Collection, retrieved 15 December 2013
Discovery
The three figures were found by a surveyor in a cave near the settlement of Vere in the Carpenters Mountains in June 1792. They were exhibited for the first time at the
Society of Antiquaries of London
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soci ...
in 1799 by Isaac Alves Rebello. The figures' subsequent
provenance
Provenance (from the French ''provenir'', 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art but is now used in similar senses i ...
after this remains obscure before their acquisition by the British Museum.
Description
All three figures are carved from a tropical hardwood called
guayacan
''Guaiacum'' (''OED'' 2nd edition, 1989.Entry "guaiacum" in lustre. The largest figure (the head of which is illustrated here) represents a male spiritual being, with prominent genitalia and powerful limbs, demonstrating masculine strength and virility. The second figure, at 87 cm high slightly smaller than the male zemi, mixes human and animal characteristics. The head can be described as birdlike with a protruding beak and teeth made of inlaid shells, but the body is more human-like with male sexual organs. The third sculpture has an unusually wide face carved below a canopy, which was probably used for the ritual inhalation of a hallucinogenic substance called cahoba.
Original purpose
As the Taino's written record is in the form of
petroglyphs
A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...
(a type of
Proto-writing
Proto-writing consists of visible marks communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in Eastern Europe and China. They used ideogra ...
) on which very little research has been done, the purpose and role of these figures is based on records kept by the
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
during the early colonial period. It appears that the Taino actively sought contact with spiritual beings who were capable of performing many deeds on their behalf. The taking of
hallucinogenic
Hallucinogens are a large, diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mood, and perception as well as other changes. Most hallucinogens can be categorized ...
drugs seems to have been an important part of communicating with these deities. The ingredients of the substance called cahoba is thought to have been based on powdered tobacco but other additions including brine and lime have been proposed and hallucogins prepared from ''
Anadenanthera peregrina
''Anadenanthera peregrina'', also known as yopo, jopo, cohoba, parica or calcium tree, is a perennial tree of the genus ''Anadenanthera'' native to the Caribbean and South America. It grows up to tall, and has a horny bark. Its flowers grow ...