This small sculpture of uncertain function was modeled to be seen from the front and placed lying down or leaning; the rear part is flat and the legs end in a point. The breasts are not highlighted nor are the genitals represented, but it can be identified as a feminine representation by the well-defined waist, the broad hips and the slight abdominal bulge.
Along with the expressionless gesture and the hieratic attitude, the most outstanding feature in this nude schematic is the head, which measures almost half of the total height of the piece. The very short arms at the sides of the body emphasize this disproportion. Nevertheless, certain features are distinguished with realistic anatomical intentions, such as detail in the eyes with eyelids and pupil, the mouth with lips and the knees in relief. Needless to say, it is ornamental: there is a band over the short hair, it has disc earrings and a necklace from which three small perforations seem to hang.
In Mesoamerica the female nude is not a predominant artistic genre; mostly, throughout their prolonged temporality and vast territory, women were portrayed covered in clothing or dressed in a skirt or slip. The cultures where this theme stands out include the shaft tomb culture; the Chupicuaro, classic from the Cuitzeo basin; the Capacha and El Opeño cultures, all from the western region; also the Preclassic cultures of the Central Highlands of Mexico located in places like Tlatilco and Tlapacoya.
The records of the naked woman are quite varied; there are those with realistic intentions and as basic schematic figurations, as well as imaginative recreations that are enhanced by the volume of certain sections or that geometrically emphasize the bodily aspect. A common feature is the ornamentation through hairstyles, headdresses, body and facial painting, and accessories such as earrings, necklaces and bracelets; I deduce that in addition to embellishing, these elements mainly defined the identity of the person in of their social role.
Thus, the testimonies oblige us to make the meanings more complex of biological fertility and maternity that traditionally are granted to the images of the naked Mesoamerican woman, even if they do not carry an infant or display a state of pregnancy. In that sense, the simple figure we are concerned with here, with such a long head, could be the portrait of a woman of elevated hierarchy.
It is not pertinent to apply a simple ethnographic approach that takes nudity as a common habit in certain cultures; as is well known, art is not a simple reflection of reality; also, it is important to consider that similar forms may have different interpretations; thus, for some Mesoamerican cultures, the nude is associated with a low social status and with captives. Thus, other lines of interpretation to be considered in each extensive corpus of works and their specific cultural contexts could be the expression of power, matrilineal lineages and concepts of corporeality, vitality, beauty, sexuality, sensuality and eroticism; all of them according to their own aesthetics and the canons of each society.
