Seated male figure

In the Nayarit region of West Mexico, nearly-identical pairs of male and female hollow ceramic figures like this one were placed in shaft tombs to accompany the dead (for this figure’s companion piece, see MMA 2005.91.3). While their gender is indicated by their dress and what each figure holds, both members of a pair are otherwise depicted as complementary in every way. Examples range greatly in size and in style, but the two figures making up each couple are remarkably similar. There are even examples known where both figures are conjoined into one ceramic piece (see MMA 1978.412.156).

The couple’s matching expressions engage with the viewer, their mouths open as if they are about to speak, revealing incised teeth. Both sit in exactly in the same position, with ankles crossed in front of them, the right leg over the left. Their arms are in front of their chests, where the female figure holds a small cup painted with a diamond pattern and the male holds a ball of the same size. Cloth turbans of red, cream, and black diagonal stripes wind around both their heads, and they wear several pieces of identical jewelry. The representation of a netted or woven collar, perhaps made of pieces of shell, has been painted around their necks. Small loops and balls of clay were used to create matching earrings, armbands, and nose rings. Similar adornments, made of shell, obsidian, greenstone, and other materials have been found in area shaft tombs among the skeletal remains, figures like these, and other offerings. The black markings covering much of the surface of both figures are the result of manganese and iron present in the soil and water that would have seeped through from the surface over time, fixed to the surface by corpse-eating bacteria (Pickering and Cuevas, p. 246-247).

The figures’ distinct gender identities are most clearly indicated by the clothing they wear. Both are naked from the waist up, and so the distinction between the man’s chest and the woman’s breasts is clear. The man wears an orange-red loincloth, and the woman a short skirt of a woven step design in red and cream. The skirt and loincloth were first formed from flat slabs of clay and painted by the artist, and then wrapped around the already-formed bodies, in essence dressing them. Representations of clothing and textile patterns in paintings and sculptures such as these are particularly important because so few examples of cloth have survived the burial techniques and climate conditions of Ancient Mesoamerica.

The items they hold are also gender-specific and tell us something of the roles of men and women in West Mexican society. In many of these pairs the man holds a staff or weapon of some kind, an indication of his status or occupation. Often the woman, as here, holds a cup or other vessel, signifying her domestic role, or perhaps identifying her as a potter. The ball this man holds most likely represents the solid rubber ball used in the ritual ballgame played throughout Mesoamerica. As can be seen in painted and sculpted illustrations, the game in its many variations was a male activity (see MMA 2005.91.1, 1970.138 a,b), and its players may have held a special place in society.

The peoples of West Mexico buried their dead in shaft tombs dug under the house floors or grouped into cemeteries outside the village proper. These vary in size and configuration but follow a general pattern: a single vertical shaft, dug to a depth of one to nineteen meters, leads to one to four chambers containing a number of the deceased, surrounded by ceramic vessels and other offerings. Figures, including couples like this one, could have been placed in the chambers to accompany those buried there, or to represent them. Aside from couples and individual human figures, ceramic figures and vessels in the form of animals and plants were also placed in the shaft tombs, thus transporting the natural world to the underworld (see MMA 1979.205.5, 2007.345.1).

Many shaft tombs were dug beneath houses, and so it may be that figural couples like this one represent ancestor figures, the origin of a particular family. They may also represent the primordial couple, the origin of life, and of the community as a whole. The rounded stomach of the female could indicate pregnancy and thus the continuation of the family, or of the community, from the distant past, through the present, and into the future.

Patricia J. Sarro, 2024

Further Reading

Baumbach, Otto Schöndube. EL HORIZONTE CLASICO: Las Culturas de Jalisco, Colima y Nayarit / THE CLASSIC HORIZON: The Cultures of Colima, Jalisco, and Nayarit. Artes de México, no. 119 (1969): 23–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24315718.

Butterwick, Kristi. Heritage of Power: Ancient Sculpture from West Mexico: The Andrall E. Pearson Family Collection. New York, New Haven, London: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004, pp. 85–86, no. 38.

Cabrero G., Ma. Teresa and Carlos López Cruz. Las Tumbas de tiro de El Piñon, En El Cañon de Bolaños, Jalisco, Mexico. Latin American Antiquity 9, no. 4 (1998): 328–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/3537031.

Gallagher, Jacki. Companions of the Dead. Ceramic Tomb Sculpture from Ancient West Mexico. Los Angeles: University of California. 1983.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Sculpture of Ancient West Mexico, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima. Los Angeles: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989.

Pickering, Robert B., and Ephraim Cuevas. The Ancient Ceramics of West Mexico: Corpse-Eating Insects and Mineral Stains Help a Forensic Anthropologist and a Chemist Determine the Authenticity of 2,000-Year-Old Figurines. American Scientist 91, no. 3 (2003): 242–49. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27858214.

Pickering, Robert B. and Cheryl Smallwood-Roberts. West Mexico: ritual and identity. Tulsa: Gilcrease Museum, 2016

Townsend, Richard, ed. Ancient West Mexico: Art and Archaeology of the Unknown Past. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1998.

Zepeda, Gabriela, Nayarit prehispánico. In Introducción a la arqueología del Occidente de México. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia: 2004, pp. 371-396.