Female nudes predominate in the Cerro de Garcia style, although the body details are minimal and schematic, with exclusive attention given to the front, it is possible to observe varied decorations in the figures. Chokers were one of the common adornments. These two pieces have headdresses with different bands, one of them has earrings in the shape of a disk with a slit in the part of the lobe above the earrings, and the other has pill-shaped earrings but no ears.
On the left hand piece the scratched lineal motifs, which contrast with the reddened surface stand out and give the impression of a tattoo or paint, not of clothing, because they are on the face and the body. It is appropriate to assume that they represent a decoration that was carried out during a ritual or that they indicate the prestige or the superior hierarchy of the person wearing it. Meanwhile, the right hand piece has red facial paint on orange. Because it is unusual for pieces from this style to have associated figures or objects, the most distinctive element of this piece is the child she carries, or more specifically, which is attached to her extended arm.
The tiny child, of indeterminate sex, replicates its mother's posture and the facial features: with a wide upper part of the head, eyes marked with a double perforation, a triangular nose and a mouth that is not separated from the nose, and with arms raised on the sides of the body and separated legs.
Pieces representing motherhood and ornamented nudes were made with great diligence in Western Mesoamerican art from the Middle Preclassic period. Sculptural figures from the shaft tomb culture are particularly famous for their realism and the expressive eloquence of the ceramics. It is important to emphasize that while the subjects were repeated, there were different styles shaped them throughout time and they correspond to different aesthetic sensibilities and artistic processes, to innovations in plastic languages and changes in concepts regarding the body, women, maternity and childhood, and of course, profound cultural transformations.
As evidence of this we find that pieces from the Cerro de Garcia style, generated within the framework of the little known Epiclassic period of central Jalisco, fulfilled different purposes to those of the previous shaft and chamber tomb culture. By the year 600 of our era they stopped building this type of subterranean constructions and with that the creation of the aforementioned sculptures, which they often offered to the dead and had implicit religious-burial functions. The Cerro de Garcia style Epiclassic pieces were rarely placed with the dead, they have mainly been found on the surface in purposefully made landfills or those created through prolonged periods of sedimentation, without any specific association with buildings or other material ruins.
These contexts do not determine whether they had a secular or religious purpose; in any case it is significant that they were interested in creating small images with qualities that made them very portable and easy to distribute, of women who seem to be young and do not have features that are traditionally associated with femininity in of fertility, such as wide hips, or a thin waist, genitals or a bulging abdomen.
Female nudes predominate in the Cerro de Garcia style, although the body details are minimal and schematic, with exclusive attention given to the front, it is possible to observe varied decorations in the figures. Chokers were one of the common adornments. These two pieces have headdresses with different bands, one of them has earrings in the shape of a disk with a slit in the part of the lobe above the earrings, and the other has pill-shaped earrings but no ears.
