Learning about physical appearance, material culture and even ephemeral activities and concepts based on their artistic representation is a complex challenge when it comes to events far in the past, in societies with different categories and cultural expressions and, furthermore, with scarce vestiges and without sufficient interdisciplinary research to identify them.
Furthermore, the fact that artistic language is based on conventions provides powerful elements for approaching their meanings and functions. In this sense, the formal characteristics, the materiality and the technique of the images we are considering allow us to attribute them to the shaft tomb culture and, in particular, to recognize that they were produced in the central area of the vast territory where they were established.
From at least 300 BC to 600 AD, this Mesoamerican culture was distributed in the south of Sinaloa and Zacatecas, Nayarit, Jalisco, Colima and neighboring parts of Michoacán. One of its most outstanding artistic expressions is ceramic sculpture modeled in solid and hollow formats. In these sculptures, the diverse communities that made them emphatically expressed their peculiar identities, generating multiple zonal stylistic variants. The work we are focusing on is ascribed to what is called Ameca-Etzatlán. In the current district of Jalisco, pieces of this style are found in the lake valleys around the Tequila volcano, to the east in the Atemajac valley (in what is now the Guadalajara metropolitan area) and to the south in the area around the Atotonilco, San Marcos and Sayula lagoons.
In the male image we see, it is necessary to clarify whether he is wearing a headdress with a veil or, as I stated in the title, it is long hair depicted as a smooth surface falling over his back, barely reaching below shoulder height, and ending in a straight cut. Based on the analysis of hundreds of works from the shaft tomb culture that gave rise to it, I am inclined towards the second alternative. In the aforementioned style that it displays, the hair has the predominant appearance of a tight-fitting, plain cap; only in certain cases was it dyed black. This man, in a standing position, wears a headdress with thick edges topped by a circular crest, which in other images is usually associated with representations of warriors.
Its prominent aquiline nose is a main attribute of this stylistic modality, as it corresponds to the emphasis placed on the tabular erect cranial modeling. Using devices with boards or bandages, this modification was carried out on newborns and during early childhood.
The small rounded bulges on the shoulders are a common attribute in the various regional stylistic modalities of the shaft tomb culture, and their antecedents can be found in works from the initial phase of the shaft tomb tradition, during the Middle Pre-Classic. I have interpreted them as allusions to the bark of the pochote, a tree with sacred significance in Mesoamerica, whose thorny surface resembles the earth's crust.
Scarification is the second permanent modification of this man's body. It consists of scars on the skin that were generated through repeated cuts and perhaps with the introduction of a certain substance to enhance the relief.
Among the archaeological remains of the shaft-tomb culture, skulls of men and women with tabular erect modification have been found, confirming that this was a recurrent practice. When it comes to scarification, we only have the eloquent power of its artistic representation.
