{"id":3638,"date":"2026-05-08T15:16:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T19:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moadmdcedu.wpenginepowered.com\/kislak-collection\/offering-vessel-in-the-form-of-a-bat-taino-circa-900-1500-ce\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T14:31:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T18:31:32","slug":"offering-vessel-in-the-form-of-a-bat-taino-circa-900-1500-ce","status":"publish","type":"kislak-collection","link":"https:\/\/moad.mdc.edu\/es\/kislak-collection\/offering-vessel-in-the-form-of-a-bat-taino-circa-900-1500-ce\/","title":{"rendered":"Offering Vessel in the Form of a Bat, Ta\u00edno"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For the Ta\u00edno, the indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean and the first New World people to encounter Columbus, many objects represent a deity or ancestral spirit, or contain the spirit. This dish in the form of a bat has skinny arms and legs that hold a shallow inner bowl, and a small phallus below, suggestive of the bat\u2019s fertile power as a pollinator. An important creature in Ta\u00edno religious culture, the bat is associated with death and represents the <em>opias<\/em>, the spirits of the dead, to the Ta\u00edno. Here, the bat\u2019s exaggerated ears suggest a fruit-eating species, such as the Jamaican fruit bat, <em>Artibeus jamaicensis<\/em>, which loves feeding on guavas. Guavas were also the favorite food of the <em>opias<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Present throughout the world, with the exception of extremely cold regions, many bats are insectivores, and most of the rest are frugivores (fruit-eaters) or nectarivores (nectar-eaters). They are important in ecosystems for pollinating flowers and dispersing seeds, and many tropical plants depend entirely upon bats for these services. Because bats live in caves\u2014which the Ta\u00edno regard as portals to the underworld\u2014and fly at night, when spirits are active, they are seen as messengers of the dead. Bats are representatives or reincarnations of the dead in many pre-Hispanic cultures. The Ta\u00edno also closely associated them with shamans as mediators between the living and the deceased, traveling between the two worlds.<\/p>\n<p>This dish is made of polished greenstone, a hard material that could facilitate a <em>cohoba<\/em><br \/>\nritual. It may have been used to grind <em>cohoba<\/em> seeds from the <em>coj\u00f3bana<\/em><br \/>\ntree (<em>Anadenanthera<\/em>) into a paste or fine particles for a ceremony in which it was inhaled through snuff tubes to produce a hallucinogenic, entheogenic, or psychedelic effect. Led by a shaman, the ritual\u2019s participants communicated with the spirit world of the deities and of the dead. The presence of the bat on this ritual dish elevates its status from the world of nature to the realm of the spirits.<\/p>\n<p>Exhibited: <a\nhref=\"https:\/\/moad.mdc.edu\/es\/exhibition\/culture-and-change-in-the-early-americas\/\"><em>Culture and Change in the Early America<\/em>s<\/a>, Kislak Center, Miami Dade College, May 20, 2018\u2013January 31, 2021.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the Ta\u00edno, the indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean and the first New World people to encounter Columbus, many objects represent a deity or ancestral spirit, or contain the spirit. This dish in the form of a bat has skinny arms and legs that hold a shallow inner bowl, and a small phallus below, suggestive [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":4122,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"content-migration-status":[],"class_list":["post-3638","kislak-collection","type-kislak-collection","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Offering Vessel in the Form of a Bat, Ta\u00edno - Museum of Art &amp; Design<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/moad.mdc.edu\/es\/kislak-collection\/offering-vessel-in-the-form-of-a-bat-taino-circa-900-1500-ce\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"es_ES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Offering Vessel in the Form of a Bat, Ta\u00edno - Museum of Art &amp; Design\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"For the Ta\u00edno, the indigenous inhabitants of the Caribbean and the first New World people to encounter Columbus, many objects represent a deity or ancestral spirit, or contain the spirit. 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