This piece was made by an artist of the Middle Mississippian culture, a Native American culture in southeastern and midwestern North America from about A.D. 1000 to 1500. Middle Mississippian people grew corn, squash, beans, and several seed plants in river floodplain fields and hunted and collected wild foods. Rich food resources, increasing populations along the rivers, and interactions between neighboring groups contributed to the development of large, complex centers. With a population estimated in the tens of thousands, Cahokia was the political center of a chiefdom whose elite families lived and ruled from their mound-top residences and temples. Middle Mississippian ceramic vessels, including animal and human effigies, were often placed in graves, where they may have held food and drink to accompany the deceased into the afterlife.
Some bottles show a hunchbacked woman or man with prominent vertebrae on the back.
Others portray large-bodied women with hands placed on breasts or abdomen, perhaps representing pregnancy and fertility. Similar themes may be represented in Mississippian stone figurines, such as Cahokia-area figurines with symbols of agricultural fertility, or in figurines from Tennessee chiefly representing ancestors in mortuary temples. While reflecting its particular culture, this piece is striking for its treatment of a universal theme.