DAVID CARBALLO: Pieces like these are known as host figurines because they have other little figures inside the principal figure, the hollow figure. One in the chest, two in the legs, and one in the front piece of the chest. They're all extremely richly attired. My name’s David Carballo. I'm a professor of anthropology, archaeology, and Latin American Studies at Boston University.

JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK (NARRATOR): This intricate sculpture depicts a seated young man. His breastplate is designed to be removed, like the lid of a box. Look closely at the hollow figure: just below the neck you’ll see two delicate circles, which represent the eyes of a butterfly. The host form and butterfly imagery are typical of the great inland metropolis of Teotihuacan, one of the largest cities in the world in the first millennium.

DAVID CARBALLO: You typically see butterflies with these big goggle eyes and a proboscis coming out from between them. Butterfly imagery is associated with a flowery afterlife for those who died valiantly - warriors who died on the battlefield, but also women who died in childbirth. And, those people enjoyed a paradise afterlife, their souls were reincarnated as butterflies or birds.

JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK: How the host figures were used, and what they mean, remain unknown. The small beings inhabiting the main figure might be representations of valor or leadership—of the power of the empire based in Teotihuacan. Or they might be ancestors, or deities. Oswaldo Chinchilla, archaeologist and professor of anthropology, Yale University.

OSWALDO CHINCHILLA: The human body is conceived as a shrine of sorts, as an embodied shrine which could serve to hold the effigies and perhaps the essences of deceased ancestors or deities.

JOSÉ MARÍA YAZPIK: While the host figure is rendered in the style of Teotihuacan, it was found far from that great city.

DAVID CARBALLO: This particular one comes from the Esquintla region of the Pacific coast of Guatemala, so many hundreds of miles away, and speaks to the long relations and connections that the city had with other parts of Mesoamerica.