Pre-Columbian Pottery Mushrooms from Mesoamerica

Abstract

AbstractUntil recently, pre-Columbian mushroom-shaped pottery objects were known only from El Salvador. New evidence indicates that they were also used in Chiapas, Tabasco, and Veracruz, in Mexico, in the Lowland Maya Rain Forest area, and possibly on the Pacific coast of Guatemala. They seem to be diagnostics of the latter part of the Late Pre-Classic and Proto-Classic periods. Due to their resemblance, when turned upside down, to round-bottomed, tall-necked jars, an undetermined number of specimens may have been classified by archaeologists and illustrated in the literature as jars. Their function is still unknown, but it is believed that, like the mushroom stones, they were used in connection with the ceremonial consumption and adoration of hallucinogenic mushrooms.