Seated Female Nursing Baby

Earthenware figures, like this female holding a suckling child, were common among West Mexican societies that participated in the shaft tomb tradition. Shat tombs are subterranean and each was final resting place of multiple people and objects. Due to the great number of looted shaft tombs, who the figures represent remain a mystery, however. Is this woman a specific, known individual whose likeness was copied? Does she representative the ideal female in West Mexican society? Is she a deity or a human?