‘Circle of Friends’ terracotta figure

Well, it DOES have ancient antecedents, but ‘circle of friends’ appears to be a modern epithet or nickname. We’ve come across three examples, from different cultures, which we illustrate here. The first (pic 1) is in our ‘Aztec Music’ section, in a feature titled ‘Ancient musical instruments from western Mexico’ (link below). The caption reads ‘Scene featuring several figures circling a central person playing a drum. Nayarit, late preclassic’. Nayarit is a small state in western Mexico between the forested mountains of the Sierra Madre Occidental and the Pacific Ocean.

Pic 1: Dance figures circle a musician - terracotta figurine from Nayarit

And our third example (pic 3) we spotted ourselves on exhibition in the Diego Rivera Anahuacalli Museum in Mexico City - but we’ve yet to locate any cataloguing information on the piece, which is amongst other pre-Hispanic artefacts (Diego Rivera, the famous Mexican mural painter was an avid and lifelong collector). In this case there are seven individuals with arms linked, appearing to dance around a couple in the middle of the scene. We have requested more information on the piece from the Anahuacalli Museum. As and when we learn more, we’ll add it to this page...

NOTE 1: A friend has informed us that there is more on this in the book Anecdotal Sculpture of Ancient West Mexico by Hasso Von Winning & Olga Hammer, Ethnic Arts Council of Los Angeles, 1972.
NOTE 2: Another friend has pointed out that there’s a similar figure in the Museo Nacional de Antropología’s collections - it was the inspiration for a recommended book: Cooperation and Collective Action: Archaeological Perspectives, edited by David M. Carballo, 2013, University Press of Colorado, Boulder (see pic 4).

Pic 3: Group of terracotta figures appear to dance round a central couple; Anahuacalli Museum, Mexico City