The Zemi Figures from Vere,

Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...

(this area is situated in the modern parish of Clarendon) are an important collection of

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...

wooden figures found in the Carpenters Mountains in Jamaica in the late 18th century. They were originally made by the

Taíno The Taíno are the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, Indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles and surrounding islands. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now The ...

people and may have served as venerated objects that housed local spirits or deities. They now form part of the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

's collection.Zemi figures
British Museum Collection, retrieved 15 December 2013

Discovery

The three figures were found by a surveyor in a cave near the settlement of Vere in the Carpenters Mountains in June 1792. They were exhibited for the first time at the

Society of Antiquaries of London The Society of Antiquaries of London (SAL) is a learned society of historians and archaeologists in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1707, received its royal charter in 1751 and is a Charitable organization, registered charity. It is based ...

in 1799 by Isaac Alves Rebello. The figures' subsequent

provenance Provenance () is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, p ...

after this remains obscure before their acquisition by the British Museum.

Description

All three figures are carved from a tropical hardwood called guayacan (Guaiacum officinale L.). The surface of the sculptures were probably polished with pebbles to bring the resin to the surface and attain the black lustre. The largest figure (the head of which is illustrated here) represents a male spiritual being, with prominent genitalia and powerful limbs, demonstrating masculine strength and virility. The second figure, at 87 cm high slightly smaller than the male

zemi A zemi or cemi (Taíno: ɛmi was a deity or ancestral spirit, and a sculptural object housing the spirit, among the Taíno people of the Caribbean.Bercht et al, 23 Cemi’no or Zemi’no is a plural word for the spirits. Theology Taíno ...

, mixes human and animal characteristics. The head can be described as birdlike with a protruding beak and teeth made of inlaid shells, but the body is more human-like with male sexual organs. The third sculpture has an unusually wide face carved below a canopy, which was probably used for the ritual inhalation of a hallucinogenic substance called cahoba.

Original purpose

As the Taíno's written record is in the form of

petroglyphs A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art. Outside North America, scholars often use terms such as "carving", "engraving", or other descriptions ...

(a type of

Proto-writing Proto-writing consists of visible marks communication, communicating limited information. Such systems emerged from earlier traditions of symbol systems in the early Neolithic, as early as the 7th millennium BC in History of China, China a ...

) on which very little research has been done, the purpose and role of these figures is based on records kept by the Spanish during the early colonial period. It appears that the Taíno actively sought contact with spiritual beings who were capable of performing many deeds on their behalf. The taking of hallucinogenic drugs seems to have been an important part of communicating with these deities. The ingredients of the substance called cahoba is thought to have been based on powdered tobacco but other additions including brine and lime have been proposed and hallucogins prepared from ''

Anadenanthera peregrina ''Anadenanthera peregrina'', also known as yopo, jopo, cohoba, parica or calcium tree, is a perennial tree of the genus ''Anadenanthera'' native to the Caribbean and South America. It grows up to tall, and has a thorny bark. Its flowers grow ...

''.

References

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Discovery

Description

Original purpose

See also

References

Further reading