Figurines are among the most abundant class of artifacts known in the vast Mesoamerican culture. This volume examines these figurines from the Olmec to the Aztec civilizations. These small, often ceramic objects are commonly found at many archaeological sites. They appear in the shape of humans, supernatural beings, animals, and buildings. This book brings together many scholars of art history, archaeology, ethnohistory, anthropology, and social theory to analyze these objects by their stylistic attributes, archaeological content, function, and meaning. Because of their variety and number, fig ... More

Figurines are among the most abundant class of artifacts known in the vast Mesoamerican culture. This volume examines these figurines from the Olmec to the Aztec civilizations. These small, often ceramic objects are commonly found at many archaeological sites. They appear in the shape of humans, supernatural beings, animals, and buildings. This book brings together many scholars of art history, archaeology, ethnohistory, anthropology, and social theory to analyze these objects by their stylistic attributes, archaeological content, function, and meaning. Because of their variety and number, figurines represent a rich dataset from which ancient Mesoamerican identity and practices can be ascertained, including human body symbolism, materiality, memory and human agency, trade and interaction, and religion.