Funerary figure of a woman
Unknown Artist
The ceramic figure is hollow, and would have required great technical skills to make and fire. She is wearing jewellery body paint or tattoos, and a patterned cloth skirt. The funerary figures showed that the dead person was someone of importance in their lifetime, so the ancestral spirits would recognise their status in the afterlife. The bowl may hold symbolic food offerings for the ancestors. It is a type of pottery know as El Arenal Brown, made by highly skilled potters
Glazed ceramic
Images and text © Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, 2017
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