Potbelly sculpture
The precise purpose of potbelly sculptures is unknown, although they appear to have been the focus of public veneration and ritual directed by the ruling elite.
The monuments are generally of indeterminate gender and are usually carved from porphyritic basalt, a kind of rock with a combination of large and small grains of mineral that is common along the foothills of Central America.
[6] The dating of the monuments to the Late Preclassic indicate that the potbelly style may be a later derivative of earlier Olmec colossal heads, although it does not answer the question of the ethnicity of the sculptors.
[10] One theory is that the sculptures represent deceased individuals with bloated bodies, closed eyes, distended bellies and puffed out faces.
It is possible that Pasaco Monument 2 and the potbelly from San Juan Sacatepéquez portray the placement of a jade bead in the mouth of the sculpture.
[12] Potbelly sculptures are distributed along the Pacific slope of southern Mesoamerica from Chiapas in Mexico, through Guatemala to El Salvador, as well as in the Guatemalan highlands.
[14] The core of the distribution area falls within a humid piedmont zone with the land consisting of volcanic soil and rubble carried down from the mountains, with naturally occurring basalt boulders of varying sizes that provided a practical raw material for sculpture.
[11] Examples have been found at many sites on the Pacific coast of Guatemala including Takalik Abaj, Monte Alto, Bilbao and El Baúl.
[1] Well-preserved examples of Late Preclassic potbelly sculptures have been found at Bilbao, on the coastal plain, and at Kaminaljuyu in the Guatemalan highlands.
[19] There is some variation in the exact features, those at Kaminaljuyu have fat bodies with short, thick necks and large heads, sometimes wearing a wide collar.
The monuments at Sin Cabezas were headless when they were found and no fragments of the missing heads were evident, suggesting that they had already been damaged when they were re-erected by later occupants of the site.
[25] At Copán in Honduras, another important Maya site, archaeologists found a potbelly sculpture on top of the Northwest Platform, to the west of the Great Plaza.
[28] Three potbelly monuments were found resting on a large terrace in Santa Leticia in El Salvador, a site near Chalchuapa consisting of various mounds and platforms.
Monument 3 is a finely carved potbelly figure with stylistic affinities to some of the sculptures found at Monte Alto in Guatemala, it measures 1.8 metres (5.9 ft) high.
The monuments were arranged in a north-south line on a 70-metre (230 ft) wide terrace projecting from a hill, Cerrito de Apaneca.
[10] Although the Teopán sculpture has typical Monte Alto-style traits such as closed puffy eyes, no neck, wrap-around arms, a clearly marked naval and grooves forming portions of the nose and mouth, it also includes some unusual features such as clearly indicated breasts, wide hips, buttocks and a 10-centimetre (3.9 in) concavity below the legs.
[10] The closed eyelids were later re-carved with the addition of two irregular oval concavities in order to represent open eyes, probably in the Postclassic Period.
