Taíno Ritual Seat (1292 – 1399, Dominican Republic).
This ritual seat, or duho, was found in a cave near Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, and is part of the Chican-Ostionoid archaeological culture. It is 44cm long, 22cm high and 16.5cm wide.
It was carved from the dense hardwood guayacan (Lignum vitae) from the Guaiacum officinale tree, whose flower is the national flower of Jamaica. The chair is in the form of a man crouching on all fours, with the eyes, mouth and shoulders inlaid with gold, and earspool in his ears. The back of the seat is carved in a geometric design, and male genitals are carved underneath.
The man's head is tilted up, and his mouth is locked open in a tense grimace. The inscribed patterns below the shoulders and on the backrest represent cotton armbands and a waistband.
Guayacan wood was very important to the Taíno because of its hardness, durability, and deep black colour, and it was used for their most precious religious objects. Black represented night, and also represented the lack of colour in the invisible spirit realm. The hammered gold inlay in the eyes indicated the ability to “see” into this supernatural world. Gold was also applied to the joints, as they maintained the individual body parts as an integral whole.
A duho was a carved seat, made of wood or stone, found in the house of a Taíno cacique (chief). These seats were very important in Taíno political & ideological systems, and were literally seats of power, prestige and ritual. Chiefs and shamans used these seats of power to intercede with ancestor spirits, or zemís; and to help manage & control the invisible forces that governed the natural world and human affairs.
It is possible that they were also used by the cahiques to smoke cohoba, a hallucogenic snuff that was used in ritual ceremonies.