Macanas: the Art of Clubs from Amazonia

Abstract

Wooden clubs from Amazonia, called macanas, have been identified and valued by Europeans since the Conquest and quickly became essential additions to Wunderkammern. However surviving pieces often lack a detailed collection history, as they have been brought to Europe over a period of fifive hundred years by various kinds of visitors with different goals and sets of mind. The first section reviews the early reports and descriptions mentioning those pieces, whether in situ (e.g. chronicles of Columbus voyages or later travelers), or in European collections. We present in the second part a nonexhaustive selection of eleven types of clubs from Amazonia that belong to European (mostly public) collections, and we try to connect these types to the abovementioned historical sources. The aim of this paper is to show the diversity of shapes and also the historical depth of the club tradition in Amazonia.