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The art of ancient West Mexico comprises three distinct styles, named from the present-day Mexican states of Colima, Nayarit and Jalisco.

Ancient West Mexicans used a unique shaft-chamber tomb, an underground series of rooms reached by a narrow, vertical opening, or shaft.

The dead were surrounded by offerings of food and objects to aid them in the afterlife, including lively earthenware sculptures of people, animals and plants.

Earthenware masks without eyeholes may have been placed over faces of the dead.