Images of transformation in the Lower Amazon and the performativity of Santarém and Konduri pottery

Abstract

This article analyses Amazonian objects of the Santarém and Konduri styles (1100–1600 AD), many of them with images of beings in transformation, adopting a framework that goes beyond an emphasis on the visual to recuperate pragmatic aspects of the rituals in which the objects were involved, apprehended through the formal properties and affordances of the artifacts themselves. Different rules are identified in the construction of these artifacts, some displaying anthropomorphic beings that transmute into zoomorphic beings, others that are revealed through the manipulation of artifacts or through a change in perspective enabled by a change in viewing angle. Composite bodies also constitute an important focus of attention. While the Santarém objects are distinguished by the standardization and reproduction of their design, suggesting a social intensification of a set of practices, the chimerical Konduri figurations point to a relationship closer to the paradoxical dynamic of ritual art, which works to reveal and conceal simultaneously.