Large effigy bottle with painted decoration

This interesting hollow clay figure comes from Central Veracruz, and corresponds to the so-called Remojadas culture, a group of sculptural manifestations from Central Veracruz that Medellin Zenil studied for the first time in the municipality of Soledad de Doblado. Although these cover the entire time span that corresponds to the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica, this particular type of large bottle with a handle and spout is in fact a product of the pottery from the first three centuries of our era. As with everything, we need to be particularly cautious with the time period of these types of objects as the chronology proposed by Medellin is definitely "pushed back", which means he attributes greater age to these types of vessels than they actually are.

The matter is probably related to the proliferation of the archaeological investigations in the Veracruz region beginning in the forties of the last century and with a certain academic obsession, it could be said that it led to a type of competition, in proving that these cultural developments had an antiquity that was unheard of at that time. Ekholm in La Huasteca, Stirling in Cerro de las Mesas and Medellin Zenil in Central Veracruz began to shape the archaeology of Veracruz, as we know it today, but in the case of the latter, his chronological proposals are not always worthy of consideration. However, this interesting piece, which comes from the region that Medellin excavated for years, must have been made right at the beginning of our era, or the end of the Formative period.

It is a vessel with a full-body effigy of a human being, although the schematics of the facial features and shape of the neck suggest the shape of a squatting animal to which enormous hips have been added. The piece shows all the stylistic features we expect from the artistic manifestations of the Remojadas; the sunken face with small eyes and snub nose is characteristic of certain early figures, normally represented on these large bottles from this region.

The hips and thighs are painted in red from the waist down, just where the arms are resting, formed by clay applications that run down from the shoulders to form a circle that closes in the place where the hands are. All of this is highly schematic workmanship which nonetheless shows exceptional use of lines and proportions of an unusual visual elegance and harmony. To both sides of the vessel, there are two small pointed ears that accentuate the geometric character of these early sculptural expressions from Central Veracruz, which were decorated with fine black strokes made from tar that extend to the eyes and faint mouth that reveals the identity of the figure and whose appearance suggests that it is human.