Breaking Bodies and Biographies

Figurines made in Honduras between 900 and 400 BCE established connections among persons through fragmentation, partibility, and enchainment. These figurines were made in two distinct sizes, both miniaturized. Their miniaturization requires concentrated attention to worked surfaces that reveal, on close examination, fine detail, requiring handling and rotation. Larger figurines are rarely recovered intact, often forming assemblages of heads or bodies that imply the dispersal of a partible body. Smaller figurines pierced for suspension as pendants normally are completely intact. They differ in their range of subjects, including both animals and the human subjects typical of the larger figurines. The small figurine pendants were likely to have been objects worn as part of costume. They thus can also be seen as fragmented, separated from the human bodies of which they once formed prosthetic extensions. Together, the larger and smaller figurines create social relations through their miniaturization, focusing attention, and partibility, creating connections.