Wearing Culture: Dress and Regalia in Early Mesoamerica and Central America

9. Making the Body Up and Over

295 DOI: 10.5876_9781607322825.c009 9 Making the Body Up and Over Body Modification and Ornamentation in the Formative Huastecan Figurine Tradition of Loma Real, Tamaulipas Sophie Marchegay inTroduCTion By the time of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, the Huastec people living in the northeastern Gulf Coast region of Mesoamerica were renowned for their rich and complex manner of modifying, clothing, and ornamenting their bodies (Sahagún 1959–61:10:185). Permanent body modifications such as artificial cranial and dental modification, tattooing, and scarifications were commonplace and were frequently combined with temporary embellishments of painting the body and ornately coiffing the hair. Considering ethnohistorical sources and archaeological data, scholars have discussed some of the ways in which these practices were central to Huastec identity and social status (e.g., Faust 2009, this volume). While there is a great diversity of iconographic materials including sculpture (de la Fuente and Solana 1980), vessels (Ramírez Castilla, Marchegay, and Florescano 2006), and murals (Zaragoza Ocaña 2003b) from the Late Postclassic period (1200–1521 CE) that highlight these modifications, costume, and adornment of the human body, comparable images of the Formative period (1500 BCE–200 CE) are more limited. Thus, for this early era of Mesoamerican prehistory , cultural practices such as artificial body modification and costume are most commonly approached through studies of clay figurines and—when possible —of human remains. Formative figurines from the Huasteca (Ekholm 1944:435–59; Marchegay 2009:132–38) are most commonly portrayals of nude women that display intentional cranial modification, body painting (Ramírez Castilla, Marchegay, and Florescano 2006:40), and SOPHIE MARCHEGAY 296 sometimes scarifications. Representations of costume on figurines from this period are very rare: aside from the gear depicted on the ballplayer figurines, the most frequently shown garment is a simple bikini-like strap or a loincloth, respectively painted or appliquéd onto the crotch. Low-slung belts and short skirts that encircle the waist are also occasionally featured. In order to approach a more comprehensive understanding of the bodily practices and representations of the people living in the northern Gulf Coast in Late Formative times, I compare the permanent and temporary body modifications , costume, and adornments on Late Formative clay figurines (which I believe to represent actual practices) with ornaments and human remains that have been uncovered in recent excavations at the site of Loma Real in southern Tamaulipas (Figure 9.1). More specifically, I am concerned with highlighting the important ways in which the primary contexts for these figurines and adornments result in more nuanced interpretations of Formative period Huastec social and cultural identity. I further consider the distinctive ways in which these plural identities are reflected in temporary versus permanent body modifications. arChaeologiCal baCkground: The SiTe of loma real The site of Loma Real, located in the Altamira harbor in southeastern Tamaulipas, Mexico, was surveyed and excavated by the Proyecto Salvamento Arqueológico Puerto de Altamira, along with thirteen other sites in the vicinity ,over the course of a two-year period (2007–8).1 The survey area included all of the land encompassed by the industrial harbor of Altamira, which covers almost 10,000 ha. Seventy percent of this landscape is occupied by marshes, lagoons, industrial plants, harbor, and urban constructions, so it comprises an area where few and heavily destroyed archaeological remains have been found. The remaining 30 percent, however, is constituted by land parcels and fields that have neither been modified nor destroyed by urban development and thus contain a high potential for future archaeological investigation. These areas are concentrated around the present-day village of Lomas del Real, which lies to the north of the ancient site of Loma Real (also named Site 1 by the project). In other words, Loma Real is located within the southernmost portion of the unmolested lands, which are likely to contain many additional sites. Thirteen archaeological sites have been located in the harbor of Altamira. Permanent settlements, with mounds, are from the Late Preclassic period while those dating to Postclassic times seem to have been temporary settlements with no evidence of architecture or artificial modification of the natural environment. MAKING THE BODY UP AND OVER 297 The main site of Loma Real is located less than a mile from the seashore on a naturally occurring hilltop that rises 22 m above sea level. The site was discovered several years ago when it was severely damaged by the construction of...