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Anthropomorphic Imagery in the Mesoamerican Highlands: Gods, Ancestors, and Human Beings. BRIGITTE FAUGÈRE and CHRISTOPHER S. BEEKMAN, editors. 2020. University Press of Colorado, Louisville. xii + 456 pp. $103.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-60732-994-7.
This volume considers a variety of anthropomorphic imagery from the Mesoamerican highlands, including the Basin of Mexico, West Mexico, and northeastern Oaxaca. Moving chronologically from the Formative to the Postclassic, contributors explore representations of bodies in multiple media, from ceramic figurines to stone sculpture to murals, with consistent attention to their archaeological context. The chapter authors demonstrate a careful application of ethnohistoric and ethnographic material as a way of accessing Mesoamerican ontology. Editors Brigitte Faugère and Christopher S. Beekman explain in their introduction that the study of anthropomorphic imagery can enable a better understanding of personhood, conceptions of the body, and relationships between humans, nature, and the divine. Although the editors suggest a number of themes that emerge from the contributed chapters, several stand out as particularly trenchant: the role of objects in performance and storytelling, the body and body parts, and the fluidity and stability of representations over time. Combined, the chapters offer an invigorating glimpse into the various roles of anthropomorphic imagery in diverse cultural contexts.
Studies of figurines and ceramic effigies are a particular strength of the volume. Many of these analyses coalesce around themes of storytelling and performance. Considering Formative Chupícuaro figurines within their depositional contexts, for instance, allows Faugère to suggest that they served a variety of functions, including as visual referents...