**Originally Listed At $750**

Pre-Columbian, West Mexico, Jalisco, Ameca type, ca. 300 BCE to 300 CE. A hand-built pottery warrior with red and cream painted details over grey slip, holding a thick club with both hands, and wearing a traditional crested helmet with barrel-shaped armor and a segmented neck guard created via several impressions around the neck. The stern visage of the warrior is composed of coffee-bean-shaped eyes, a prominent aquiline nose adorned with a red-painted ring, a thin incised mouth, and tall tab-shaped ears. Size: 3.5" W x 8.25" H (8.9 cm x 21 cm).

West Mexican shaft tomb figures like this example derive their names from the central architectural feature that we know of from this culture. Jalisco, located on Mexico's southwestern coast, was part of the shaft tomb culture during this time, along with neighbors in nearby Colima and Nayarit. These people would build generally rectangular vertical or near-vertical shafts down from the ground level - usually about 3 to 20 meters deep - through tepetate, the volcanic tuff that makes up the geology of the region, to narrow horizontal tunnels that led to one or more vaulted or rounded burial chambers.

These shafts were almost always dug beneath a dwelling, probably a family home, and seem to have been used as family mausoleums, housing the remains of many related individuals. Figures like this one were placed into the tombs; researchers believe that they were placed around the edges facing inward, as if in conversation with the dead. Grouped with other figures, and alongside clay bowls, and boxes, figures like this one were positioned around the body (or bodies), near the skull.

Provenance: ex-private Los Angeles, California, USA collection

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#145678

Minor nicks and abrasions to head, body, and legs, with fading and chipping to pigmentation, and light encrustations. Nice earthen deposits and traces of original pigmentation throughout.