Hollow Figurine of a Pregnant Woman from Nayarit, West
Mexico
Virtual Exhibit Video
Cosmic Travellers: Iconography and Function of Two West Mexican Ceramic Figurines
The Williams College Museum of Art (WCMA) has, in its collection, two ancient West Mexican ceramic figurines: one, a pregnant woman, and the other, a standing woman with a pot (fig 1, 7). Without definitively knowing what these figurines meant to their creators, I have chosen to withhold titling them. Instead, will refer to them simply and descriptively as the “pregnant woman” and the “woman with the pot.” Because these figurines are intact, they were likely recovered from burials, where they sat in relative safety for the two millennia since their genesis. Their iconography, function, and meaning remain mysterious, but a comparative examination of them in the context of wider Mesoamerican views begins to reveal the uniquely powerful role they served: as a bridge for living West Mexicans to access different levels of their cosmos.