Sitting figure

The Huasteca is a humid territory described by the first Spanish chroniclers as being of "great heat". It extends along the Gulf coast of Mexico covering territories belonging to Northern Veracruz and Southern Tamaulipas. At the height of Tampico it enters the flood plains of San Luis Potosi, which seem to go on forever at the height of the river Tamuin. The Huasteca speaking populations continue in the mountains of Hidalgo and in the Sierra Gorda de Queretaro; this being an immense cultural area of Mesoamerica whose linguistic unit in reality defines it better than a true cultural unit over time.

There are certainly features that its ancient cities share, such as the architecture and their fabulous sculptures, although it is the artistic style that, in spite of its changes, was able to regulate the appearance of fine art from all eras. Although stone carving reached evident notoriety, the same can be said of the surprising carvings in seashells. The ceramic pieces were those that accompanied the cultural development of the Huasteca from time immemorial, particularly figures that portray nude women, representations of ball players and, beyond the Post-classic, an elegant ceramic manufactured in white clay and painted with black motifs that was highly valued in the northeast of Mesoamerica.

The clay figure that calls our attention here probably makes the image of a woman its own if we take into that this is a reoccurring theme of pottery that tends to distinguish itself through modeling breasts. In this case she is sitting, nude, and barely adorned with a necklace and earrings. The color of the clay and the technique of burnishing suggest that it was obtained in the lower basin of the river Panuco before forming part of the Pre-Hispanic collection of the Amparo Museum. The same face and its features fit well with the conventions followed by the pottery of Northern Veracruz in the Late Classic Period (ca. 600 A.D.). This is a formal approach to the fine arts of the civilization of El Tajin, but does not renounce its own traditions.

The body, a certain facility to reduce the normal development of the limbs, and a unique way of resolving the hands, leaving only four fingers visible, correspond to very ancient stylistic standards. However, our figure, for some reason, was consolidated at the time, leaving in some of her parts--almost always in the folds of the body or in its ts with the clay grooves--a bit of dirt that ended up stuck as a result of the application of a series of substances.

This dirt is the incidental testimony of its setting of origin, and today it is very helpful in determining its place of origin. Thanks to this it is possible to say with a greater degree of certainty that these remains of dirt are very similar to those that could be found in the Panuco basin, and very different than those that would be expected in mountain areas, and to a certain point, on the banks of the river Tamuin itself.