Classic Veracruz culture

[2] Burials, monumental sculpture, relief carvings, and the distribution of architecture within the regional centers all point to a stratification of Classic Veracruz society, including the presence of an elite rank as well as craft specialization.

Elite hereditary rulers held sway over these small- to medium-sized regional centers, none over 2000 km2, maintaining their rule through political and religious control of far-flung trade networks and legitimizing it through typical Mesoamerican rites such as bloodletting, human sacrifice, warfare, and use of exotic goods.

Equally large ceramic statues show female earth goddesses with snake girdles connected to the site of El Zapotal.

[6] Otherwise similar ceramic statues of earth goddesses, however, standing or seated, do not have dead faces and should therefore not be compared to the Aztec cihuateteo.

[7] Many ceremonially clad ceramic figurines have been found that testify to the importance of public ritual, while the ceramic figurines of persons with smiling and laughing faces (the so-called sonrientes) seem to represent ritual performers; they may point to a cult similar to that of the much later Aztec deity Xochipilli.

[12] A defining characteristic of the Classic Veracruz culture is the presence of stone ballgame gear: yokes, hachas, and palmas.

This ornamentation produces dramatic contrasts of light and shadow, what art historian George Kubler called a "bold chiaroscuro".

Since then, the recovery of thousands of figurines and pottery pieces from sites such as Remojadas, Los Cerros, Dicha Tuerta, and Tenenexpan, some initially by looters, has expanded our understanding and filled many museum shelves.

[19] Artist and art historian Miguel Covarrubias described Classic Veracruz ceramics as "powerful and expressive, endowed with a charm and sensibility unprecedented in other, more formal cultures".