Ballgame Hip Protector (Yoke) (600–900): Art, History and Details

Ballgame Hip Protector (Yoke) (600–900) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

U-shaped ballgame sculptures imitate the shape of belt-like protectors, perhaps made of wood and padding, worn to shield ballplayers from injury when they returned the solid rubber ball from their hips. This fine example embodies a major theme of the ballgame: the connection between fertility and death. It is made of greenstone, a precious material that through its color symbolizes the lush burgeoning of nature after the rainy season. The imagery, however, is menacing: a monstrous head snarls from the curve, and human skulls appear on the sides.

Object facts

• Title: Ballgame Hip Protector (Yoke)
• Date: 600–900
• Culture: Mexico, Gulf Coast, Classic Veracruz style (600-1100)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: greenstone, pigment
• Dimensions: Overall: 41.5 x 37.5 x 11 cm (16 5/16 x 14 3/4 x 4 5/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 1973.213

A detail from the museum

The ballgame was a team sport played on specially constructed rectangular courts and involved striking a large solid rubber ball without using your hands.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Spinden, Ellen S. "The Place of Tajin in Totonac Archaeology." American Anthropologist, New Series, 35, no. 2 (1933)
• Palacios, Enrique Juan. Arqueología de México: culturas arcaica y tolteca (Ilustraciones novedosas, en parte procedentes de piezas de la colección del autor). México: Imprenta Mundial, 1937.
• Ekholm, Gordon. " Is American Indian Culture Asiatic?" Natural History (1950).

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.