Whistles - Five Animals, Chorrera Culture (1300 - 300 Bc), Ecuador, Pre-columbian Ceramics

Five ceramic figurines representing animals and used as whistles. They show, among others, an owl, a dog (?), a cow (?). The figurines are pierced with two or more holes, so that when blowing into one, the sound comes out of the other. The volume and shape of the acoustic chamber determine the pitch of the sound produced.

Ecuador, Chorrera culture (1300 - 300 BC) / Bahia (300 BC - 500 AD) / Guangala (200 BC - 800 AD).

Length 5.2 cm / 6.4 cm / 6.5 cm / 8.8 cm / 10.3 cm.

The state of conservation is visible in the photographs, there are losses and old repairs.

The vessels comes from the large collection of a Polish engineer who worked on road construction in Ecuador in the 1970s-80s.

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The Chorrera culture (c. 1300 - 300 BC) is, after the Valdivia and Machalilla cultures, the culture in which artists made ceramic vessels. However, it was only from the Chorrera culture that artists developed so many types of vessels and diverse representations of people and animals. Ceramics could have a practical use, such as bottles for holding drinks, but they very often had a religious or ritual significance. Figurines or bottles with additional small holes also served as musical instruments: they could produce a sound similar to a whistle, and the two-compartment vessels also produced a sound when liquids were poured between the compartments. The depictions of animals and people by artists of the Chorrera culture are quite naturalistic, but with some simplifications and more or less stylization. In the region of present-day Ecuador, the Chorrera civilization was followed by a period of regional development, during which several civilizations developed, including La Tolita-Tumaco, Jama Coaque, Bahía, and Guangala. The ceramics of each of these cultures developed many characteristics, often moving away from the "classic" and naturalistic ceramics of the Chorrera culture.