Because It Was Plentiful and is Easy to Carve
Basalt statue of the maize deity Chicomecoatl from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
One of the most significant partner statues for the Chicomecoatl at the Museum of the American Indian is the Chicomecoatl on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She too is a basalt structure of slightly smaller dimensions but she too is an androgynous figure symmetrically proffering two ears of corn in each of her hands while wearing a very elaborate headdress. As Richard Townsend notes, "in Mesoamerica the techniques and skills of stone technology reached their fullest flowering" [1]. Basalt was the most commonly used material for stone carving, and the act of stone carving was extremely common and popular among Aztec artists. Both the Chicomecoatl from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the one from the National Museum of the American Indian are porous stone, with a rough, grainy texture. Sahagún provides a brief description in Book 11 of the Florentine Codex and describes the stone as "Metlatetl: Stones from which metates are made." The word is a compound of metl meaning maguey, and tetlmeaning stone. Sahagún goes on to describe the stone as "black, dark … hard, very hard … it is solid, round, wide; asperous, scabrous, unpleasing, blemished. It is [material] which can be fashioned well, worked pecked, smoothed, abraded, sculpted"; its ease of use explains why many statues and figures found from the Aztec period are also carved from basalt. It was plentiful in the Mexica empire, and if it was easy to carve its ubiquity can be understood as a result of its functionality. That this figure is made out of porous stone underscores the cycle of renewal of life that Chicomecoatl embodies - this figure is literally from the earth (as volcanic stone) and she offers mankind the life of sustenance through agriculture.
Basalt, like obsidian is a type of volcanic rock. However, basalt is extremely porous whereas obsidian is very smooth and shiny (hence its usage as a reflective surface). In Pliny's workNatural History he describes basalt as being named as such by the Eygptians, "a stone which in color and hardness resembles iron" [2]. This type of inconspicuous stone was used frequently by the Aztecs, as stated, and its unassuming nature creates the ability for the artist to make the sculpture the focal point of the piece; this is in contrast to obsidian, which was almost never marred because its texture was what was significant.
We are lucky that the particular statue of Chicomecoatl at the NMAI still has pigment on her, given how many other sculptures from that era appear to be just basalt. The red pigment that features so prominently on this figure is significant to her iconography for many reasons. A significant portion of Book 11 in the Florentine Codex is devoted to the understanding of Aztec making and usage of colors. Immediately, "the first color mentioned in the Nahua treatise is the red obtained from the cochineal insect" [3]. To be the first color described signifies how truly important the color is. Its name in Nahuatl comes from the word for prickly pear; the prickly pear is central to the origin story and mythic history of the city of Tenochtitlan. The word, nocheztli, is also derived from the word for blood. As was discussed in the iconography section, the red of the pigment already evokes images of blood that would have been poured over the figure. That nocheztli also means "prickly pear blood" and was a pigment that specifically resembled blood reinforces her iconographic status as a deity associated with sacrifice and renewal of life. As Magaloni states, the colors that were used for pigment were not chosen for their specific shades; instead, it was their status as organic material and how they were found in nature that was important for the artists [4]. Although it is not clear which specific pigment was used to shade the figure, the red pigment most commonly used for painting at the time was most likely from cochineal and was definitely an organic substance.
Unfortunately, there is no way to tell which pigment shades this specific figure. It is unclear whether or not the Aztecs developed a way to bind cochineal pigments to stone. Cinnabar was sometimes used as a pigment, but it is unclear whether or not that was used here.
[1]:Townsend, Richard F. The Aztecs . London: Thames & Hudson, 2000. Page 182.
[2]: Pliny.Natural History. Loeb Classical Library. Page 45.
[3]:Magaloni Kerpel, Diana. The Colors of the New World: Artists, Materials, and the Creation of the Florentine codex . Los Angeles, L.A.: Getty Research Institute, 2014. Page 21.
[4]: ibid, pg 35.
Source: https://aztecart2017.ace.fordham.edu/exhibits/show/chicomecoatl-sculpture/materials-of-work
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