Mexican Tlatilco Pottery Torso Fragments (15 pcs)

Pre-Columbian, Central Mexico, Tlatilco. A group of fifteen Pre-Columbian pottery figure fragments of the Tlatilco culture. Each fragment preserves the torso and legs of a hand-modeled female figure with the broad hips, tapering legs, and pinched waists characteristic of Tlatilco figurine types, several with incised or appliqued details and traces of red pigment. Figurines of this kind were produced in large numbers at Tlatilco and related Early Formative villages, where they are associated with household ritual and fertility. The fragments show buff to reddish brown burnished surfaces with earthen deposits from burial. Tlatilco, a brickyard site on the western shore of the ancient Lake Texcoco, yielded thousands of burials excavated from the 1940s onward, producing one of the richest bodies of Early and Middle Formative ceramic art in Mesoamerica. Its figurines are famous for slender hourglass bodies, elaborate coiffures, body paint, and occasional prodigies: two-headed figures, split faces half fleshed and half skeletal, dancers and acrobats. Olmec-related motifs in the pottery of the same graves testify to contact with the Gulf Coast, making Tlatilco a key witness to the earliest interregional currents in Mesoamerican art. A Certificate of Authenticity will accompany all winning bids. Item # 203823

Estimate:$225

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