Figurines as Representations and Products at Paso de la Amada, Mexico

It is useful to view ceramic figurines from the Early Formative site of Paso de la Amada, Mexico, as both representations and products. That analysis links changes in a tradition of small, solid figurines to the rise of a novel social discourse concerning the elaboration and beautification of the human body. An increasing symbolic emphasis on the body may have been an important backdrop to the emergence of chiefly ideologies in the region.