The shape of the head, the wide mouth and the eyes, as well as the flattened roundness of the body of the two objects refer to frogs, mainly the one with the legs shrunken under the body and a perforation in the back that indicates its function as a pendant. Given the specialized manufacture of both lapidary pieces we can consider it a piece of jewelry, which does not eliminate the possibility of its use in certain ritual paraphernalia. The identification of the second work is not entirely clear due to the lobule-like protuberance on the back, and also because of the tendency to the schematic that distinguishes the Mezcala style. The representation of a folded bow on the back of the head stands out, which could be linked to one of the meanings given to this species.
In the representative repertoire of the semiprecious stone art of the cultural tradition with the same name, frogs are among the few species of fauna represented in notably smaller quantities than human images. Immediately, this can be seen in other works from the same art collection of the Amparo Museum. The fundamental relevance of the material in this art guided the choice of the form to be carved--within a certain cultural framework of options--and finally the personal skill of the artist ended up defining the quality and singular appearance of each image in this art. It is feasible that the eyes of both frogs, seen as circular punctures, were inlaid with shell or other material.
In the Mesoamerican worldview, amphibians, like frogs, embody a frontier space between the aquatic underworld and the terrestrial level. The development of their life cycle in both environments represented that ambiguous and transitional place, which did not concern two merely physical levels, but strata culturally conceptualized with supernatural values. Anurans, that is, frogs and toads, abound in the iconography of Mesoamerican art, in whose plastic diversity we find them in solutions that oscillate between naturalism, abstraction and fantastic modifications, as well as varied formats.
In the Late Preclassic, the so-called "thrones" of the Izapa culture stand out, medium or larger stone sculptures whose terrestrial horizontality integrates a complementary dichotomy with the verticality of the stelae, associated with the upper celestial plane. Some of these "thrones" were drilled in the upper part to contain water, and in this order of ideas, in other societies small sculptures were incorporated in offerings to divine entities of the rain as the materialization of something ephemeral: the croaking that precedes the rainfall and is accentuated with the fall of the vital liquid, which in turn refers to agricultural fertility and the wet season of the year.
This second aspect of the symbolism of the frogs has an affinity with the bow of the second piece we see, because in the Nahua art of the central basin of Mexico, both in the late Post-Classic and in the early colonial period, sculptural and pictorial images were made in which the rain god holds a pleated paper bow on the nape of his neck, sometimes with rubber stains. In addition to its symbolic functions, it is also consumed as food.
The Mezcala cultural tradition developed around a fluvial environment, the great Balsas-Mezcala River, which crosses Guerrero. The territory is located in the central, northern, and Tierra Caliente areas of that state, and in the border with Morelos, State of Mexico and Michoacán. Among its characteristic elements are sites with outstanding architecture, Blanco Granular and Yestla-Naranjo type ceramics, and lapidary production. As evidenced by the two frogs we are studying, this last art is distinguished by schematic carvings in formats usually smaller than 20 cm; therefore, they are easily transportable objects.
Portability is an important feature since it was through pieces such as these that plastic codes and ideological systems were configured and transmitted among the various societies that inhabited the Mesoamerican cultural macro-area over the course of four thousand years.
Verónica Hernández Díaz
