The weasel is a small and elusive carnivore with an elongated and slender body. Its movements are agile and, to a certain extent, nervous. It is reputed to be ferocious and aggressive. It leads a solitary life and only in certain periods forms small family groups. It climbs easily, and explores burrows and crevices in search of prey. It has a powerful set of teeth which it uses to bite its prey on the back of the neck to kill it. Among the weasel's hunting habits is drinking the blood of its prey before dragging it back to its den.
In Pre-Columbian times it was considered a "malodorous beast" capable of entering the underworld to commune with the dead. The Memorial of Solola or the Annals of the Cakchiquel (Guatemala) describes ritual dances where several animals were dramatized, including the owl, the centipede and the cux or weasel. There is no doubt that this little animal had a well-earned place in religious thought in Mesoamerica. This piece of fired clay is definitely a representation of this small animal, simply by observing the head shape, size and arrangement of the ears, and snout with big teeth, we can tell that this is the image of one of these small animals with an elongated body.
There are many things missing from this figure: it is not the clay, nor the finish, which certainly correspond to Central Veracruz; it is not the style of pottery which, without doubt (at least at the level of the features of the face), fits the pattern of the potters of the coastal plain of the Gulf of Mexico. Indeed, any doubts as to this piece relate more to its amazing state of preservation.
In fact there is no other weasel like it among the ceramic objects preserved today from this area of the Veracruz coast; actually, there is no other piece of such dimensions that has reached us without recording any damage. This being the only clay weasel in existence, for now, is something that could be accepted, barring any other finds. Such a degree of conservation would only be explained if it came from a burial offering, but since burial sites were refilled with earth, it is an extraordinary fact that the pressure of the soil didn't fragment the body, or at least broke it in half.
On the other hand, these kinds of figures are often associated with ceremonial offerings and part of the rite required that they were all ritually "killed". It is certainly a very beautiful figure and the theme of the weasel is entirely possible in of symbolic thought in ancient Mexico; it is probably one of the best representations of animals of the Gulf coastal plain, and due to its style must have been modeled in the Classic period, that is, between 600 and 900 A.D.
The weasel is a small and elusive carnivore with an elongated and slender body. Its movements are agile and, to a certain extent, nervous. It is reputed to be ferocious and aggressive. It leads a solitary life and only in certain periods forms small family groups. It climbs easily, and explores burrows and crevices in search of prey. It has a powerful set of teeth which it uses to bite its prey on the back of the neck to kill it. Among the weasel's hunting habits is drinking the blood of its prey before dragging it back to its den.
