Ancient female sculpture found in eastern Mexico

Mexico City – Farmers digging in a citrus grove in the Mexican state of Veracruz found a female sculpture nearly six feet long that could represent an elite woman instead of a deity, or a combination of both, experts said Friday.

According to the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), it is the first statue of its kind to be found in the Tuxpan basin, to the south of the Huasteca of Veracruz.

The woman in the carved sculpture has an elaborate headdress and other signs of her social status, and could date back to between 1450 and 1521, the INAH claimed. Although the piece was found near the pre-Hispanic ruins of El Tajín, it shows some Aztec influence.

Farmers digging on the farm found the statue on New Year’s Day and quickly alerted the authorities. The area where it was found was not considered an archaeological site and the stone statue could have been moved from an unknown location.

It is not certain who represents the statue, which has wide eyes and an open mouth.

María Eugenia Maldonado Vite, an archaeologist from INAH, wrote that this piece represents a young woman “possibly a ruler because of her attitude and dress, rather than a deity.

The figure could be “a late fusion of the Teem goddesses with the images of women of high social or political status in the Huasteca,” Maldonado said. These goddesses were part of a fertility cult.

Elsewhere, pre-Hispanic figures have been found representing ruling or high-ranking women in Mexico.

In 1994, at the Mayan ruins of Palenque, archaeologists found the tomb of a woman they called the Red Queen because of the color of the pigment that covered her tomb. But it has never been definitively established that the woman, whose tomb dates back to between AD 600 and 700, was a ruler of Palenque.