Nopiloa y la representación de la tierra fecunda

Abstract

This rattle-figurine is characterized by jointed arms and a Mayoid style. It was excavated in 1958 in the context of a secondary burial, at Nopiloa in the region known as Mixtequilla in southern-central Veracruz, by the archeologist Alfonso Medellín Zenil, and is now kept in the Anthropological Museum of Xalapa (registration number PJ282). The essay examines five iconographic motifs in the figures dress, consisting of a huipil and a skirt, as well as circular ear-spools molded with the effigy of Tlaloc, the god of rain, storm, lightning and war. The forms, and the ideas transmitted by this Late Classic figurine, point to an imaginary of pan-Mesoamerican inspiration, and the analysis leads to the conclusion that it is a representation of those telluric mother gods whose orographic interiors or wombs generate abundance.