The wandering ' Leg of an Indian King '. The cultural biography of a friction idiophone now in the Pigorini Museum in Rome, Italy

Bibliographic Data

ID2633124
AuthorsD Domenici (0000-0001-8469-3390, corresponding author)
Year2016
Volume102
Issue1
Pages79-104
Publication date2016-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal de la Société des Américanistes (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0037-9174 • E-ISSN: 1957-7842
PublisherOpenEdition (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.4000/jsa.14626
OpenAlexW2563282151
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited14

The article presents new data on the history of a Mesoamerican musical instrument, which is a notched human bone used as a friction idiophone, today, held at the Pigorini Museum in Rome, Italy, where it is recorded as MNPE n. 4209. The documentary data allow for the reconstruction of the instrument's cultural biography along a time span of almost five centuries. Collected in the Mixtec Kingdom of Tututepec (Oaxaca, Mexico) during the 16th century, it passed through different Italian collections before reaching its present location in Rome toward the end of the 19th century. The text also analyzes how in its long historical journey through different contexts and regimes of value, the notched bone generated diverse sets of discourses on cultural otherness. It is argued that this discursive agency of the object is due to its enduring coevalness, a quality that allows ancient objects to be always contemporary and meaningful to different cultural audiences

Art · Art history · Biography · Geography · Humanities · Musical · Object (grammar) · Visual arts · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · History

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