The lively ceramic traditions of ancient West Mexico are well-known: bold, painted warriors, women, and animals, including the famous Colima dogs; small painted house models and village scenes in which humans feast, play ball, and dance. Much of this work was created in the era between 200 B.C. and 300 A.D., the Late Formative phase of Mesoamerican cultural history. Although visually familiar, this work has never been well understood. It has seldom been studied on its own terms, but seen merely as a pale country cousin to the larger-scale visual traditions of the Maya, Aztec, and other Mesoamerican “high cultures.” Until the publication of Ancient West Mexico in 1998, scholars and curators of Pre-Columbian art have had to rely principally on the landmark catalogue, Sculpture of Ancient West Mexico, published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1970 (expanded and updated in 1989), in order to understand the enigmatic funerary ceramics of this region. The Los Angeles County publication focused on just one major collection of the ceramics of the states of Nayarit, Jalisco, and Colima. In contrast, the recent catalogue, written to accompany a major exhibition that premiered at the Art Institute of Chicago and traveled to...