Woman with skull modification

Seen in profile, the flattening of the front and back parts of the head shown by the female sculpture in question is very noticeable.  It is an intentional modification of the erect tabular type that has been artistically recreated. It is not a realistic representation but one that emphasizes it and this acquires enormous relevance because, along with other formal features such as the volume of the body, the state of pregnancy. and the way of sitting, the artists made tangible certain cultural practices, stereotypes of the feminine, and concepts of corporeality. Its appearance alludes to the ideological values that were assigned to them by the Shaft Tomb Culture, a very long-term development and extensive territorial occupation in the western region of Mesoamerica, ranging from the southern portion of the Sierra Madre Occidental to the maritime coastline of Colima.  

It is possible that one part of these values was with the religious sphere of the burial, because it is very likely that the work comes from a burial setting, as part of the offerings that accompanied the deceased. Precisely, in the archaeological records of burials in shaft and chamber tombs, in pits, and arranged directly, it is verified that skull modification was a recurring practice in this cultural development, both in female and male individuals. I emphasize that this modification was even more frequent in artistic representations than in the format of ceramic sculptures that were abundantly created, which leads us to the praxis of the image, with functions that are distant from those of an inert object. Instead of that, they would have transcendental repercussions in the supernatural sphere, in the underworld level of the cosmos, which at the same time is the space of the dead and the ancestors and, of course, in the future of their creators in the world of the living, in the political, ritual, sacred, social, and aesthetic, as an attribute of individual or collective identity or beauty.  

In this way, in the multiple zonal artistic styles that can be seen in the territory of the Shaft Tomb Culture, skull modification is recurrent in the sculptural representation of humans, to the point of becoming a stylistic feature. The erect tabular type is accentuated in the Tala-Tonala styles, also known as sheep face, and in the Chapala styles; the latter is the one that best fits the female image to which we direct our attention. The two styles are seen to be related.  

The enhancement of the skull alteration lengthens the height of the head and makes the projection of the nose, in this case aquiline, appear exaggerated. In the Tala-Tonala style, the elongation of the head was modeled as a tablet adorned with bands, with ornamentation absent in the case of the pieces from the still little-known Chapala style.  

The provenance of similar works has been attributed to sites in the Lake Chapala basin, hence the name. Its paste appears gray or light brown and no traces of pigments can be distinguished. The variation of tones in this sculpture is due to the firing process, probably in a reduction atmosphere kiln that generated smoke, which provided the dark color to a large part of the surface.  

It goes without saying that in Mesoamerica the intentional deformation of the head was widespread. It is a permanent alteration of the body that necessarily had to be done during infancy, when the bone structure of newborns retains its plasticity. Physical anthropologists detect several methods: using rigid compressors ed by bandages, in the manner of a head apparatus, or body structures, such as cradles, where the infant was tied. For the erect tabular modification, an anterior splint would be used, which was placed on the top front and another on the back, on the occipital bone, which would be tightened on the head with bands; the two slats would be parallel and vertical. The infant used them for weeks, months, or even years.