Societies traversing the path to socio-political centralisation and complexity, transitioning through developmental stages variously called Neolithic, Formative, or Preclassic, commonly display representations of the human body. These may be monumental sculptures in public contexts, or miniaturised figurines for domestic use. Julia Guernsey is interested in the social significance of these materialisations and in broader discourses of ‘image theory’. She argues that, in Preclassic Mesoamerica (Mexico, Guatemala and parts of Honduras and El Salvador; c. 2000 BC–AD 250), the emphasis on 3D human figuration was a matter of “visualizing authority” (p. 3) and a crucial element of discourses on power. Power was “indelibly anchored to the human form [and] its representation”, which was “appropriated nearly exclusively to serve the needs of early Mesoamerican states” and their elites (p. 3). In exploring these themes, Guernsey draws heavily on her fieldwork in southern Mesoamerica, along the Pacific slopes and coast of Chiapas (Mexico) and Guatemala.
Guernsey begins her journey with monumental stone sculpture in the Early Preclassic period (c. 2000–1000 BC). Examples along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico include the famous colossal basalt heads and other sculptures of the Olmec Culture; Pacific coastal sculpture is less common and less familiar. A key concept in analysing these representations is “intervisuality” (p. 27): the multiple interactions among objects and their contexts, along with viewers and their engagement and memories.
She then moves to Early and Middle Preclassic figurines of clay. These are small, hand-modelled (not mould-made), anthropomorphic representations—similar to those found in their thousands at Neolithic/Formative sites around the world. Chapter 3 reviews the occurrence, variability, intervisuality and history of study of these figurines throughout Mesoamerica, particularly on the Pacific slopes. Of major interest are variations in traits of the face and head (i.e. eyes, mouth) and costuming (i.e. earplugs, headdresses), which offer clues to their meanings and functions, but no clear answers.
Chapter 4, amply illustrated, focuses on the more than 5000 handmade figurines from the site of La Blanca, in the western piedmont of Guatemala. Their ‘sensory capacity’ (i.e. eyes/vision, mouths/vocalisation and ears/hearing) is highlighted, with less attention paid to their costuming. Figurines occurred in “greater densities” in “elite” households (p. 85), but how Middle Preclassic elites are defined is unclear. Highly variable in appearance, anthropomorphic figurines were “meditations on the very nature of being human” (p. 86). Unfortunately, because the author's focus is on humans, zoomorphic figurines—and thus human-animal interactions—are barely mentioned.
Most of the La Blanca figurines were recovered not as intact specimens, but rather, as fragments—a common condition of these objects wherever they are discovered. Guernsey addresses the complexities of figurine fragmentation in Chapter 5, deeply contextualising the issue in terms of both figurine and human dismemberment, decapitation, partibility, embodiment and enchainment in later Mesoamerican cultures. These practices are evident not only in artistic expression, but also in codices and creation myths, one of which features a crocodilian beast that was slain and dismembered by the gods, its body forming land out of the primordial waters.
Figuration in Late Preclassic Mesoamerica (c. 300 BC–AD 250) has “no single story line” (p. 114). Socio-political contexts changed with the emergence of centralised leadership (i.e. strong chiefs, kings) and social stratification. Over time, the long tradition of modelling (and fragmenting) of figurines declined, and monumental stone sculpture transitioned to narrative scenes glorifying the images and actions of kings and deities, which dominated the succeeding Classic period. Social identities changed, as did their expression, and the nature of power shifted. Accordingly, there was a new emphasis on ‘high’ art and culture: its creation and the knowledge behind it was a matter of elite privilege and was an expression of a ‘moral order’.
The overall theme throughout Human figuration is that “production of the human form at a monumental scale … became, by the Late Preclassic … an elite prerogative … Stone became a vital medium through which social hierarchy was communicated and sustained” (p. 15). I have only two mildly negative comments on Human figuration: the 38 pages of notes were not indexed and the photographs illustrating the artworks are mostly of poor quality (poor in both contrast and focus). With an enormous bibliography of just under 950 sources, however, Guernsey's volume provides a welcome summary of the entangled transformations in both Mesoamerican socio-political life and the role of representations of humans in stone and clay during the long Preclassic period. It will be an outstanding and thought-provoking reference work for scholars for years to come.
