Given the variety of materials used in their production, and due to the blurriness that the artistic style may appear to us now, or as foreign as they might have been to the iconography of El Tajin, what is really important about this widespread production of axes, yokes and palm trees is the identical ritual value conferred on them from ancient times. That is, its association with the ritual behavior of the elites from various routes in Mesoamerica.
Their demand as exotic products and the need to reproduce locally can only indicate the unitary nature that the cults of Mesoamerica had at that time. Both in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Maya region, regardless of the Yucatan Peninsula, the jungles of Peten or the Pacific Coast of Guatemala, these small sculptures inform us unequivocally of their relationship with the ritual ball game and blood sacrifices.
Despite their antiquity, they only became trade pieces in the Classic period, and it is likely that they would have reached the most remote territories in the Epiclassic period. Moreover, if we review the pieces involved in long-distance trade, we find that not all were carved in the lands of El Tajin. There are a significant number of axes corresponding to products from Central Veracruz and those sculpted in distant areas with local raw materials and decorations that have very little or practically nothing to do with the iconography of El Tajin are not uncommon.
This is the case of this splendid piece from the Pre-Columbian Collection of the Amparo Museum; a small canine carrying a sort of slab on its back. Carved in volcanic rock, it appears to be seated with its legs apart and has a large abdomen on which its forelegs rest. The extremities are almost human-like; its elbows on its knees, the hands clasped together almost at the height of the snout. The upper part of object is unfortunately broken, and on the head with big eyes there is further evidence of the ears would have completed the figure.
Interestingly, this kind of slab, which it carries on its back, though broken and thus difficult to recognize, forms with its base a cut on the same angle as can be seen in the axes from the El Tajin region. Its angle matches the shape of the sculptures that are typical of the north coast of Veracruz. All of these are extensively decorated with weaving, of which little remains on our piece, but can be discerned by a number of hooks arranged on each side of the base.
There is no doubt that this is a sculpture carved in lands far from El Tajin. Perhaps it comes from Central Veracruz if we take into the characteristics of the process of its integration into the Pre-Columbian Collection of the Amparo Museum. In any case, the sculpture of this small canine is exceptional in the set of yokes, axes and palm trees to which it belongs due to its great dynamism, which by definition seems denied to the sculptures that were more conservative or closer to their prototypes.
Given the variety of materials used in their production, and due to the blurriness that the artistic style may appear to us now, or as foreign as they might have been to the iconography of El Tajin, what is really important about this widespread production of axes, yokes and palm trees is the identical ritual value conferred on them from ancient times. That is, its association with the ritual behavior of the elites from various routes in Mesoamerica.
