Lapidary art had an enormous importance in Mesoamerica. This was due to at least two factors: on the one hand, jewelry and ornaments were very important as emblems of power. In societies where there is virtually no money, personal valuables are the clearest sign of status; all the more so if these objects are worn on the face, on the neck and on the head. They represent the person; they express their hierarchy. On the other hand, goldsmithing did not begin to develop in this region of America until the Late Classic, and fully in the Post-Classic, so that the metallic jewels arrived late, when centuries of development of lapidary ornaments had ed. These ornaments could be jade, which was the most valued stone, and also other minerals such as quartz, obsidian and a variety of colored stones (green, blue, pink) especially abundant in the basin of Balsas. Turquoise was also much appreciated, almost as much as jade; in general, the mosaic technique was applied and applied to wood and gold, especially in the last centuries of Mesoamerican history.
The abundance of stones of different colors, which are often called "semiprecious," in Balsas River Basin was used by the groups of the region to develop a specialty in lapidary that came to characterize them to the point that their pieces were appreciated as tax and trade goods, and were imitated in other areas.
The so-called Mezcala Tradition is the most characteristic cultural expression of the Middle Balsas River Basin, and it is a tradition that is distinguished and described almost exclusively for its lapidary works. In this collection there are magnificent expressions: it is possible that the repertoire in the custody of the Amparo Museum is the most extensive and varied in the world as far as the Mezcala Tradition is concerned.
A good part of the well-known Mezcala pieces correspond to burial trousseaux: masks, characters and accompanying animals, some urns, some scepters, and of course the jewels worn by the deceased whose bodies were buried in those tombs. Of these jewels the necklaces with carved stones stand out. These, in the shape of a butterfly, are among the richest. Particularly striking is the process of abstraction to clearly allude to the butterfly while maintaining a simple schematism.
Butterflies appear associated with at least two semantic fields in Mesoamerican iconography: water, fertility, rivers and that of the souls of the deceased, especially the warriors.
Lapidary art had an enormous importance in Mesoamerica. This was due to at least two factors: on the one hand, jewelry and ornaments were very important as emblems of power. In societies where there is virtually no money, personal valuables are the clearest sign of status; all the more so if these objects are worn on the face, on the neck and on the head. They represent the person; they express their hierarchy. On the other hand, goldsmithing did not begin to develop in this region of America until the Late Classic, and fully in the Post-Classic, so that the metallic jewels arrived late, when centuries of development of lapidary ornaments had ed. These ornaments could be jade, which was the most valued stone, and also other minerals such as quartz, obsidian and a variety of colored stones (green, blue, pink) especially abundant in the basin of Balsas. Turquoise was also much appreciated, almost as much as jade; in general, the mosaic technique was applied and applied to wood and gold, especially in the last centuries of Mesoamerican history.
