#Huasteca

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Hunchback Leaning on Staff.

Date: 10th–12th century

Place of origin: Mexico, Mesoamerica, Veracruz

Culture: Huastec

Medium: Sandstone

[city-of-ladies]

"The woman, carved in pale stone, wears a peaked headdress, circular earrings and the wide hip belt and kneepads of an ancient Mesoamerican athlete. Her expression is fierce, her pose triumphant. In her right hand, she grips the severed head of a sacrificial victim by the hair.

The sculpture is the first life-size representation of a ritual ballplayer found to date in the Huasteca, a tropical region spanning parts of several states along the Gulf Coast of Mexico.

Like virtually every other Mesoamerican society, the inhabitants of the Huasteca played what is simply known today as “the ballgame,” in the time before the Spanish conquest. Despite its name and ties to modern soccer, this game was more sacred rite than sport.

For the players, who bounce a solid, dangerously heavy rubber ball off their hips, it was a means of communing with the gods, one that sometimes culminated in human sacrifice.

The ballplayer will be among the most important artifacts in an exhibit, “Ancient Huasteca Women: Goddesses, Warriors and Governors,” at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, opening Friday. This is the first time the piece, which was discovered by landowners about 50 years ago near Álamo, Veracruz, has been on public display.

“It is a totally atypical sculpture,” said David Antonio Morales, an archaeologist with the National Institute of Anthropology and History in Veracruz, who stumbled upon it last November when he was visiting private collections.

He contacted María Eugenia Maldonado, one of the few archaeologists specializing in the pre-Columbian past of the Huasteca. At first, she didn’t think the figure could be real. It would be the first stone sculpture of a ballplayer found in the region, the first female ballplayer and the first at this scale holding a decapitated head.

“It’s putting all the elements into a single sculpture that had never been seen together before,” she said. “That is the importance of this sculpture.”

Kim N. Richter, a historian of pre-Columbian art at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles and an expert on female statues from the region, had not seen the piece. It “would be really important because we don’t have any monumental sculptures of ballplayers in the Huasteca to date, male or female,” she said. “So that would be a huge discovery in itself.”

Dr. Maldonado says she hopes the exhibition, with 100 artifacts, will challenge what she calls “superficial” interpretations of women’s roles that have riddled scholarship of the region. For decades, archaeologists have described sculptures of men as individuals in positions of power, like priests or rulers. They’ve tended to brush aside sculptures of women as images of a fertility goddess.""

[kalesierra]

Cascada del Meco. Huasteca potosina. Foto mía. 📸

[ioryogi-takumi]

🇲🇽🐊 Cap . 8 Kiichoa el Sol y Landíh la hermosa, Mitología Tenek - Huaste...

[sorems-art]

Mural jade

[itriptwiceaweek]

La Huasteca, Santa Catarina. Nuevo León. México

[speaknahuatl]

Call To Action 📢Support the Nahua youth of the Huasteca Potosina by reaching out to @tlatoanitsin our Teacher David Marcelino Cayetano at 📩idiomanahuatl@nauatlajtolli.com to make a donation.

Un Llamado a la Acción 📢Apoya a la juventud Nahua de la Huasteca Potosina comunicándote con @tlatoanitsin nuestro Maestro David Marcelino Cayetano al 📩idiomanahuatl@nauatlajtolli.com para hacer una donación.

Repost de Tlamach. @tlatoanitsin

Tlaskamati - Gracias por sus donaciones a cada uno de ustedes por hacer posible que los niños de nuestras Primeras Naciones tengan un regalo en este fin de año...

[gabrielsond]

[gxalex]

[annakbones]

[baudez]

Primer ofrenda #Xantolo #huasteca #tamazunchale (en Buenos Aires, El Piñal) https://www.instagram.com/p/CkY4KseOjCOqYlhyNMal70RWNB46V3YricL53Q0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[ellaesbonita]

Dicen que pa conseguirte, necesito una fortuna. Que debo bajar del cielo las estrellas y la luna.

Yo no bajaré la luna. Ni las estrellas tampoco. Y aunque no tengo fortuna, me querrás poquito a poco.

[centraldenoticiasmx]

Continuar con la cuarta transformación quiere decir seguir apoyando a la huasteca potosina

🖊#Nacional | Continuar con la cuarta transformación quiere decir seguir apoyando a la huasteca potosina +INFO:

[1108866]

[ioryogi-takumi]

🇲🇽🐊 Cap . 7 Miim Tsabaal, la peligrosa naturaleza. Tenek - Huasteco NO A...

[jaszo]

la huasteca