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Pre-Columbian Americas Maya culture, Chiapas (?), Mexico Ornament in the Form of the Fat God Late Classic period, A.D. 600–900 Bone, cinnabar H. 1 3/8 in. (3.5 cm) Raymond and Laura Wielgus Collection Indiana University Art Museum, 76.147 The heavy, closed eyelids, round face, and puffy cheeks identify this ornament as the Fat God, a little-understood deity who, among the Maya, is sometimes accompanied by hieroglyphs suggesting that he was considered gluttonous and given to other excesses. The traces of cinnabar, a red mineral ore, suggest that this ornament may have had ritual significance, for that material had been rubbed on ritual objects by Mesoamerican peoples since Olmec times. |