Ballgame Thin Stone Head (Hacha) (600–900): Art, History and Details

Ballgame Thin Stone Head (Hacha) (600–900) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

A tapering headdress, its base formed by a grotesque head with upturned snout, soars above a human face in this elegant thin stone head. Such heads, known as hachas, probably were used in ballgame ceremonies, though how is unclear. Equally obscure are the heads’ identities, perhaps heroic, idealized players, ballgame patrons, or characters from the game’s lore. The large area of red pigment on one side may have been sprinkled onto the head after it was buried in an offering or a tomb.

Object facts

• Title: Ballgame Thin Stone Head (Hacha)
• Date: 600–900
• Culture: Mexico, Gulf Coast, Classic Veracruz style (600-1100)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: stone, pigment
• Dimensions: Overall: 61.6 x 20 x 8.8 cm (24 1/4 x 7 7/8 x 3 7/16 in.)
• Collection: AA - Mesoamerica
• Department: Art of the Americas
• Accession number: 2001.89

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Gift of Major New Stella Sculpture, Purchases of 6th-Century Jeweled Buckle, Ancient Indian Bronze Ancient Mexican Stone Head Among CMA’s Autumn Acquisitions,” December 26, 2001, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Bergh, Susan, "Art from the Sacred Ballgame", Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland Art: The Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine. Vol. 42 no. 03, March 2002
• "Major Acquisitions 2000-2005." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 45, no. 6 (July/August 2005): 6-17.

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.