Mesoamerican Figurines - Small-scale Indices of Large-scale Social Phenomena
Although figurines are among the most abundant class of artifacts known in the vast Mesoamerican culture, this is the premier single volume to examine 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. ""Mesoamerican Figurines"" brings together many seasoned and respected 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.