The importance of the category of style and its study in art is fundamental. Particularly for societies from periods in the distant past that are known only in fragments, perhaps due to the lack of interdisciplinary research, such as many of those that inhabited Mesoamerica, stylistic analysis allows us to identify attributes or conventions of appearance, subject matter, materiality, and technique. Similarly, when information about the original context of a work is lacking, the ideas we have about its style can indicate its location in time, geographic origin, and cultural attribution, among other aspects.
This is the case with this fragment of ceramic sculpture modeled in a hollow volume. In particular, the conical headdress is evidence of the Ixtlán del Río style, one of the most important stylistic modalities of ceramic art in the form of sculptures and vessels created in the framework of the shaft tomb culture.
This culture represents the second and final phase of the shaft tomb tradition. At the least between 300 BC and 600 AD, its bearers inhabited a large part of the western Mesoamerican region, from southern Sinaloa and Zacatecas, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima, and neighboring parts of Michoacán.
The system of forms, or the distinct form that constitutes the style, in the words of Meyer Schapiro, enhances the eloquence of a fragment such as the head on which we are focusing, since it is possible to affirm that it belongs to a male figure, certainly of medium or large format, and dressed in elaborate and sumptuous attire.
The work exhibits the naturalistic variant of this style, whose name was taken from a municipality in the south of the state of Nayarit. Among its qualities is the abundant use of pastillage, which here is preserved on the band that s the headdress and from which two hanging strips can be seen at the back. This same ribbon es under the jaw. These details of the manufacture deserve to be highlighted as they bear witness to the relevance of the attire in the identity of the person depicted. The applications of small portions of clay paste, or pastillage, also formed the earrings and have been lost in the ornamentation worn on the nasal septum.
Regarding the peculiar composite earrings, María Teresa Canto Macías, in her research on the representation of clothing in the Ixtlán del Río style, described them as a series of hoop-shaped pendants held on part of the helix and on the earlobes, on which other elements are superimposed, which here have a spherical shape.
Regarding the conical male headdresses in this style, the same author determines that it could have been a rectangular basket weave whose rolling to adjust to the head formed the conical silhouette.
Multi-coloring is another quality of the works of Ixlán del Río, in which anatomical elements, clothing and body paint are depicted in black, white, ochre and orange. In the fragment we see, on a red engobe, there are remains of white paint in the form of small spots on the neck, which would represent a necklace.
Another aspect to be highlighted is that the rear flattening of the head corresponds to tabular erect cranial modeling; this modification of the head was done by means of devices with boards or bandages on newborns. Skulls of this shape, both male and female, have been found among the remains of the shaft tomb culture.
The use of sculptural images like this was recurrent in the grave goods of the shaft tomb culture, even in a fragmented state. Another possibility is that after the placement of the complete human figure in the tomb, most probably a shaft and chamber tomb, the work was broken due to telluric movements, animal or human actions.
The importance of the category of style and its study in art is fundamental. Particularly for societies from periods in the distant past that are known only in fragments, perhaps due to the lack of interdisciplinary research, such as many of those that inhabited Mesoamerica, stylistic analysis allows us to identify attributes or conventions of appearance, subject matter, materiality, and technique. Similarly, when information about the original context of a work is lacking, the ideas we have about its style can indicate its location in time, geographic origin, and cultural attribution, among other aspects.
