A series of male and female clay figures which were produced from the beginning of the Classic Period with highly stylized bodies that highlight their apparent nudity. However, many of them take special care in representing a bulky belt over a skirt usually painted with tar that often identifies the attire of the ball players.
More than just a game, it was also a ceremony closely linked to the ritual of human sacrifice. The ruler was considered a ball player, and the "game" itself was the way in which he interceded with the gods so that they favored his community. His figure was undoubtedly at the center of social relations of the era. Although the worship of the ruler could not better express the long-standing sacredness and extraordinary power that this person represented, he was also the only one capable of interceding with divinity.
The ritual ball game also formed part of a cultural tradition that spread from an early era through a large part of Mesoamerica, always linked to the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Along the coastal plain, the buildings consecrated for this ritual multiplied; two parallel platforms with a corridor between then for moving a solid rubber ball. The enormous weight of the ball made it necessary to wear various pieces of clothing to protect the body of the player from the maceration it caused with the constant friction. For this reason, the use of a belt, probably made from a very tough leather, was not sufficient and one or two knee pads were also added depending on the variety of game and the size of the ball. Gloves also began to be used.
The Huasteca, an enormous territory in the east of Mesoamerica whose uniformity in cultural activities comes from a proven ethnic and linguistic unity, stretches between the sea of Tamaulipas and the mountains of Hidalgo, Queretaro and San Luis Potosi. Crossed by impetuous rivers and contrasting climates, it was witness to the emergence of multiple settlements of a surprising age which attest to the great political and social complexity; they not only shared the ancestral language, but also the way they organized their symbolic universe from the ritual of the ball game and human sacrifices, offered to the gods during these propitiatory ceremonies.
They modeled entire groups of figurines in kaolinite-rich clay for centuries with the symbolism of the ritual ball game. Although some have been recovered in controlled excavations, there are many more that come from archaeological looting activities, and this is why we have irremediably lost the context that they were part of. They are most likely linked to offerings or burials, but there are so many of them that it would not be prudent to rule out their inclusion in domestic worship of immemorial origin.
A series of male and female clay figures which were produced from the beginning of the Classic Period with highly stylized bodies that highlight their apparent nudity. However, many of them take special care in representing a bulky belt over a skirt usually painted with tar that often identifies the attire of the ball players.
