Climbing from the coast into the highlands, one follows the narrow paths into the rainforest, the dense canopy blocking the hot sun. 32 km (20 miles) inland, deeper into the forest, rich with lush foliage and abundant wildlife, ruins of grey volcanic stone rise through the leaves. A classic Mesoamerican archaeological site, El Tajín in Mexico’s Veracruz State consists of paved streets hemmed in with stepped pyramids and open courts of tightly-fitted masonry. This was the centre of what is now known as the Veracruz Culture, which dominated the area from the Cazones to Tecolutía Rivers. A mysterious culture, whose written language has not been deciphered, the Classical Veracruz Culture was based on slash-and-burn agriculture, in which temporary farm plots were carved from the forest, fertilised by the ashes of the plants which used to occupy it, before being abandoned the next year and a new plot opened up. While seemingly a destructive method, this is, in fact, much more in harmony with the natural order: forest fires are, in small doses, an important feature of forest ecosystems, renewing small plots of forest at a time. The Veracruz farming method ensured that the forest had time to recover once that plot had been used for a year. Veracruz architecture and relief sculpture point to a stratification of Veracruz culture, which seems to have had separate elite, warrior, craftsmen and farming classes. Little is known about Veracruz religion, but the iconography associated with it would seem to indicate strong links with common Mesoamerican gods such as an elderly male fire god, and a young and athletic rain god, as well as various human and theriomorphic deities. These deities seem to have been sated by blood sacrifice. Perhaps the most characteristic feature of Veracruz society, however, was the Mesoamerican ballgame (Nahuatl: ōllamalīztli). More than twenty ballcourts are known from El Tajín, the highest concentration in Mesoamerica.

Veracruz art emphasised contrasts, and in particular, the contrast between light and dark. The architecture of El Tajín contains numerous examples of deep relief sculpture, especially scrollwork, which produced what art historian George Kubler described as ‘dramatic chiaroscuro’ (Kubler, G. (1990) Art and Architecture of Ancient America. Third ed. New Haven, CT: 139). Ceramics were largely produced at the site of Remojadas, and were generally expressive sculptures in the round rather than vessels. With shield-shaped faces, a notable feature of the sonrientes (‘smiling faces’), which are a unique form of Veracruz ceramic. In keeping with the interest in depicting lightness versus darkness, Veracruz ceramics often have highlights picked out in bitumen, a far deeper hue of black than the ash- or charcoal-based pigments used elsewhere in Mesoamerica.

One of the most common subjects for Veracruz ceramic artisans was the warrior or ball-player. This exquisite example of a face comes from what would once have been a standing upright figure, perhaps as much as 50 centimetres (19 3/4 in) in height. Usually such warrior figures stand in a solid stance, with legs slightly apart, arms out – sometimes holding a weapon – and dressed in elaborate clothing, sometimes including animal pelts. As in this figure, the warrior often wears an elaborate headdress, in our case a kind of bow across the forehead, a flat top, and a now-lost upright element at the back which may have included feathers to assimilate him to the Eagle Warrior. The whole arrangement is held to the head with a chinstrap. The face is squat and shield-shaped, with a narrow chin and broad forehead. His pill-shaped eyes stare out at the viewer, somewhat surprised and curious. His nose is thin and pinched, highly angular and pyramidal. His mouth is also pill-shaped, with lips slightly curled. A straight hairline pokes out from under the headdress. The skin of the figure is highlighted in black bitumen, though the ears remain in the raw terracotta colour. The ears are weighed down by round ear spools common throughout Mesoamerican cultures.

References: similar faces, with pinched nose and pill-shaped eyes, can be found in Los Angeles (Los Angeles County Museum of Art M.77.50.5) and Boston (Museum of Fine Arts 1993.775); full-length sculptures can be found in New York (Brooklyn Museum 2010.23.3) and Toronto (Gardiner Museum G83.1.74).