Nayarit Seated Couple with Turtle Shell, Ixtlán del Río Style, Protoclassic, 100 BC - AD 250

John Jordan, Los Angeles
Edwin and Cherie Silver, Los Angeles, acquired from the above between 1968-1970

Inventoried by Hasso von Winning, March 28, 1970, no. 42, a and b

Hasso von Winning, The Shaft Tomb Figures of West Mexico, Los Angeles, 1974, p. 158, fig. 254 and p. 165, fig. 282

This male figure playing a large turtle carapace with an antler is a prominent display of the musicality of ritual feasting ceremonies. A turtle’s carapace served as an ideal resonant object, and their use as instruments was well documented through the Aztec period; the instrument was known as an ayotl used during monthly feasts. Turtles were associated with rain and water in ethnographic ceremonies and thus ideal for agricultural ritual events.

The male figure wears an alternate type of headdress seen on Ixtlán figures, of a broad striped cloth or likely an animal pelt, folded at the back with tapered ends. His armbands include a shell tucked onto the right arm and disk on the left. The female has carefully painted fingernails and her legs are tucked beneath a long striped skirt. She is adorned with tasseled armbands, multiple necklaces and the identical stiff nose rings and overlapping disk earrings of her mate. The detailed treatment of her headgear reveals the twisted headband is actually a thick cord wrapped with an additional slender dotted  band with ties extending at the back, possibly also of an animal pelt.

For another figure playing a turtle shell as part of a feasting couple, see Townsend, ed., Ancient West Mexico, 1998, p. 127, fig. 29.