Painted Hollow Female Figure

Date

300 BCE-300 CE

Creator

Figures such as this one allow us to understand aspects of bodily adornment and modification that otherwise would have been lost to time. The decoration on this Nayarit figure most likely represents tattooing. Such body decorations were important in West Mexico as they communicated a person’s individual and group identity, similar to the significance of tattooing today. Tattoos might have been used to mark rites of passage or special occasions. For example, it has been argued that swirls depicted over a woman’s stomach, like you see here, may represent pregnancy. On her shoulders, you see clusters of raised bumps indicative of body modification. This process of scarification involved pricking the skin and then rubbing ash or another material into the cuts so that scar tissue forms in the desired pattern.