Model Depicting a Ritual Center
Nayarit (Ixtlán del Río, Nayarit, Mexico)
100–800 CE
- Medium
- Earthenware and pigment
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- 21.3 × 35.6 × 33.8 cm (8 7/16 × 14 1/16 × 13 5/16 in.)
- Culture
- Nayarit state
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Arts of the Americas
- Credit line
- Gift of Ethel and Julian Goldsmith
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
In West Mexico, chiefdoms and statelike societies flourished between A.D. 100 and 800. Advanced agriculture, extensive trade routes, and elaborate religious festivals echoed developments in other regions of ancient Mesoamerica. The distinctive West Mexican sculptures were often included as offerings in tombs that illustrate important themes of life and the afterlife. This model of a circular ceremonial center depicts houselike temples, populated by flute players, a drummer, conch-shell trumpeters, dancers, women with children, and animals. A masked figure—likely the ruler—stands atop the central stepped pyramid.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
