**First Time At Auction**

Pre-Columbian, Yucatan or Campeche, Mexico, Late Classic, Maya, Chochola style, ca. 600 to 900 CE. A sizeable and extensively carved terracotta vessel presenting a rich display of Mayan iconography around the exterior walls in low relief. The imagery includes several elaborately dressed seated figures - perhaps deities, lords, and/or scribes - each one wearing a grand feathered headdress - some of these headdresses with avian visages as well - and waist wrap. Several are sitting upon thrones adorned with zoomorphic elements as well. Between these primary figures are other elements such as jaguar visages and anthropomorphic masks. Size: 8" in diameter x 4.25" H (20.3 cm x 10.8 cm)

Chochola pottery stands out for its extensively carved surfaces. Michael D. Coe introduced these forms in his "A Maya Scribe in His World" (1973); however, since then only one scholar, Carolyn Tate (1985), has attempted to explore our understanding of Chochola pottery. It is still an understudied form of Mayan visual culture. Tracy Ardren of Yale University, in her paper "The Chochola Ceramic Style of Northern Yucatan: An Iconographic and Archaeological Study", confirms "One could hardly describe the Chochola style ceramics of Northern Yucatan as well understood. Only a handful of scholars would claim to understand the geographical or temporal placement of these pots, and fewer still would attempt to fit them within Maya ceramic chronology as a whole." Ardren does provide a basic understanding of what Chochola pots are and what they are not. She explains that these pots are neither incised nor mold-made, but rather deeply carved featuring reliefs that are the "deepest known for Maya ceramics" and resemble those of "carved lintels and stelae of sites like Yaxchilan and Piedras Negras". (http://www.mesoweb.com/pari/publications/RT10/Chochola.pdf)

Provenance: ex-private T.S. collection, San Diego County, California, USA, acquired between 25 and 40 years ago

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#140590

Normal surface wear commensurate with age. Otherwise excellent. Scattered mineral deposits as well.