Death played a central role in the beliefs of the pre-Hispanic American peoples, and a whole series of complex rituals were created around it with their own paraphernalia and material culture, reflecting a great variability throughout time and in the different cultural areas.

The funerary urns illustrate the practice of secondary burials, in which the individual was cremated and his remains deposited in this type of vessel. Both the dignity and social importance of the individual were expressed in the effigy, such as the one illustrated here, a fact that highlights the idea that what the person was in life transcended the moment of his death.