Tlatilco Terracotta Nude Female Figure - Fertility Idol

Pre-Columbian, Mexico, Tlatilco. A standing nude female modeled in warm reddish-brown clay, her body rendered with the plump thighs and tapering legs that distinguish the ceramic tradition of Tlatilco in the Valley of Mexico. Punctate eyes and nostrils, a strong ridged nose, and pursed lips animate a wide face crowned by an elaborate coiffure worked into raised locks. The arms are reduced to short outstretched stumps, throwing emphasis onto the swelling torso and hips. Such figures, hand-formed and fired to an earthy patina, likely served as votive images tied to fertility, regeneration, and the cycles of agrarian life. Recovered largely from burial contexts, they speak to a Formative-period preoccupation with the female body as a vessel of abundance and continuity, made vivid here in spare, confident sculptural gesture. Tlatilco, meaning "where things are hidden" in Nahuatl, was a village site on the western shore of the ancient lakes of the Basin of Mexico, occupied during the Middle Formative period. Its cemeteries yielded thousands of small solid figurines, overwhelmingly female, which have become emblematic of Preclassic Mesoamerican art. Scholars connect them to concerns with fertility and lineage, and their persistent burial with the dead suggests a role bridging the living community and the ancestral world. The site also shows Olmec-influenced iconography, marking Tlatilco as an early crossroads of highland and Gulf Coast artistic currents. Item # 203792

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