I believe that this piece was made by the same workshop or craftsperson as another similar piece in the Amparo Museum's collection, with record number 1146. Both pieces show, insofar as features anomalous to the Comala style of "trophy heads" are concerned, locks of hair and quadrangular sections with conical protrusions to represent hair that has been tied up; both appear to have shaved parts of their heads; their modeling is also ineffectual and the incisions are very marked. In this piece, the hair serving as a base for the piece and the naturalist silhouette of the ears are equally atypical
Insoluble concentrations of manganese and iron can be observed, as can be seen on many pieces from the shaft tomb culture; they are remnants of bacterial colonies and look like black blemishes. This feature emphasizes the predominantly underground burial origin of ceramics in the form of sculptures and vessels decorated by what is known as the shaft tomb culture.
The tombs that share this name all have the same basic design: a long vertical, cylindrical or quadrangular entry and a domed chamber that opens at the end, which is where the dead and offerings were placed. They represent an architectural design that is unique in the Mesoamerican context because the construction of tombs, as accessible spaces used for the burial of the deceased, was highly restricted in other cultures. In the shaft tomb culture it is possible to observe their use by the community, while in other cultures burial in a tomb was limited to of the elite.
The stains on the surfaces of the objects were formed in the burial chamber as a result of certain microorganisms rather than geological phenomena because of the propitious micro-environment produced in the space, resulting from water filtration, for example .
According to Meredith Aronson, bacteria, such as Metallogenium and Leptothrix discophora, use the electrons in certain metals, especially iron and manganese, to produce ATP or adenosine triphosphate. This is a molecule used by all living organisms to produce energy for chemical reactions, colonies grow on the deposits of oxidized metal and produce black stains. The forensic anthropologist Robert B. Pickering argues that the source of these metals was surface water that infiltrated the shaft tombs over time and penetrated the objects. As the water filtered down through the ground it was enriched by minerals.
I would like to add that the type of ground in which the majority of these tombs were dug was tepetate or volcanic tuff, a material characterized by a lower porosity that blocked water infiltration. Therefore, it is very likely that this is why many pieces from shaft tombs do not have dark stains. Lastly, I would like to reiterate that the formation of these stains was circumstantial; besides, the level of compaction of the tuff varies along with many other factors, such as earthquakes and digging by animals, which could have favored the development of environments propitious to the bacterias that feed off metal.
I believe that this piece was made by the same workshop or craftsperson as another similar piece in the Amparo Museum's collection, with record number 1146. Both pieces show, insofar as features anomalous to the Comala style of "trophy heads" are concerned, locks of hair and quadrangular sections with conical protrusions to represent hair that has been tied up; both appear to have shaved parts of their heads; their modeling is also ineffectual and the incisions are very marked. In this piece, the hair serving as a base for the piece and the naturalist silhouette of the ears are equally atypical
