Two-headed female figurine,

1400–1100 BCE

Although not the first places where ceramics were produced in Mesoamerica, villages in the central basin of Mexico, now encompassed by Mexico City, the adjacent valley of Morelos to the south, and the region around the modern town of Las Bocas, Puebla, are among the areas most renowned for their ancient ceramic vessels and figurines. Local workers and amateur pothunters were the first, in the early twentieth century, to encounter the remains of these villages. The objects they looted from the sites and sold on the art market became prized by a small number of art collectors in Mexico and the United States. Later, archaeologists excavated sites in the area, contributing crucial information about the original burial context for these works.