Veracruz Hacha
A hacha is a thin, wide stone carving shaped like an axe head but with a deliberately blunt edge, produced in huge numbers by the Classic Veracruz culture of the Gulf lowlands between about 300 and 900 CE. Hachas take the form of human heads, often in profile, and animal faces, carved in fine andesite or basalt with great realism, and the finest examples come from sites such as El Tajin and the Remojadas region. Scholars read them not as working tools but as ballgame emblems, displayed with the great stone yokes and palmas worn by players in the Mesoamerican ballgame; the head-shaped hachas ar