Unseen Art: Making, Vision, and Power in Ancient Mesoamerica 9781477325971

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UNSEEN ART

Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long Series in Latin American and Latino Art and Culture

UNSEEN ART

MAKING, VISION, AN D POWER IN ANCIENT MESOAMERICA

CLAUDIA BRITTENHAM

UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS   AUSTIN

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund of CAA.

Copyright © 2023 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in China First edition, 2023 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 utpress.utexas.edu/rp-form

∞ The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Brittenham, Claudia, author. Title: Unseen art : making, vision, and power in ancient Mesoamerica / Claudia Brittenham. Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022002167 ISBN 978-1-4773-2596-4 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-4773-2597-1 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Indians—Antiquities. | Indians— Antiquities—Religious aspects. | Olmec art. | Maya art. | Aztec sculpture. | Religious articles—Central America. | Religious articles—Mexico. | Ceremonial objects— Central America. | Ceremonial objects—Mexico. | Olmecs—Rites and ceremonies. | Mayas—Rites and ceremonies. | Aztecs—Rites and ceremonies. Classification: LCC E61 .B855 2023 | DDC 970.01—dc23/ eng/20220126 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022002167 doi:10.7560/325964

For C and L, with love

CONTENTS





L I ST O F TA B L E S A N D I L LUST RAT I O NS ix

AC KN OW L E D G M E N TS xiii



INT R OD UC TI O N Seeing and Knowing

1

C HA PTE R 1 Making: Building Community at La Venta

17

C HA PTE R 2 Vision: Seeing Maya Lintels

47

C HA PTE R 3 Power: Carving the Undersides of Aztec Sculpture

89



CONC LUS I O N The Language of Zuyua

127

N OT E S 130 B I B L I O G RA P H Y 149 I N D E X 163

LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

TA BLE S

Figure 0.10. Lord 12 Wind, Codex Nuttall 10

Table 1.1. Massive offerings at La Venta 38

Figure 0.11. Chahk, Temple of the Night Sun, El Zotz 11

Table 2.1. Maya lintels 52

Figure 0.12. Diagram of Tomb 158, Monte Alban 11

I L LUST R AT IO N S

Figure 0.1. Coatlicue 2 Figure 0.2. Calendar Stone on the wall of the cathedral, Mexico City 3 Figure 0.3. Agostino Aglio, “Exhibition of Antient [sic] Mexico at the Egyptian-Hall Piccadilly” 4 Figure 0.4. Fiberglass cast of the image of Tlaltecuhtli carved on the underside of the Coatlicue 5 Figure 0.5. Francisco Agüera Bustamente, engraving of the Coatlicue 6

Figure 0.13. Map of Mesoamerica 13 Figure 1.1. Mosaic from Massive Offering 4 on display at the Parque Museo La Venta, Villahermosa 18 Figure 1.2. Mosaic from Massive Offering 1 on display at the Museo Regional de Antropología Carlos Pellicer Cámara, Villahermosa 19 Figure 1.3. Massive Offering 1 in situ during the 1955 excavations at La Venta 19 Figure 1.4. Plan of La Venta 20 Figure 1.5. Plan of Complex A, La Venta 21

Figure 0.6. Substructures underneath Copan Structure 16 7

Figure 1.6. Reconstruction of the Ceremonial Court at La Venta during Phase II 22

Figure 0.7. Offering 4, La Venta 8

Figure 1.7. Cross section, Southwest Platform, showing Massive Offering 1, La Venta 23

Figure 0.8. Tunnel under the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan 8 Figure 0.9. Priest viewing the night sky, Codex Mendoza 9

Figure 1.8. Layers of stone, Massive Offering 1, La Venta 23 Figure 1.9. View of mosaic, Massive Offering 1, La Venta 24

 ix

Figure 1.10. Cross section of Southeast Platform, showing Massive Offering 4, La Venta 26

Figure 2.2. Trying to photograph a Maya lintel in situ 49

Figure 1.11. Mosaic pavement, Massive Offering 4, La Venta 26

Figure 2.4. Map of the Maya area 50

Figure 1.12. Offering 1943-E, La Venta 26 Figure 1.13. Rectified drawings of mosaics from Massive Offerings 1 and 4, La Venta 27 Figure 1.14. Adobe bricks and facing stones, Southwest Platform, La Venta 29 Figure 1.15. Stela 3, La Venta 31 Figure 1.16. Reconstruction of the “flying Olmec” on jade pectoral, La Venta 31

Figure 2.3. Lintel 14, Structure 20, Yaxchilan 49 Figure 2.5. Maps showing distribution of lintels 51 Figure 2.6. Lintel 3, Temple IV, Tikal 54 Figure 2.7. Painted lintel, Structure C-1, Playa del Carmen 55 Figure 2.8. “Monster mouth” doorway, Structure II, Chicanna 55 Figure 2.9. Entryway, Initial Series Building, Xcalumkin 55

Figure 1.17. Mosaic pavement, Massive Offering 1, La Venta 32

Figure 2.10. Similarities between Maya lintel and stela compositions: Lintel 1, El Zotz, and Stela 1, Itsimte-Sacluc 56

Figure 1.18. Incised celts, La Venta 33

Figure 2.11. Plan of Structure 23, Yaxchilan 57

Figure 1.19. Altar 2, Loma del Zapote-Potrero Nuevo 33

Figure 2.12. Stela 11, Yaxchilan 59

Figure 1.20. Monuments 25/26 and 27, La Venta 33

Figure 2.13. Upper portion, Stela 4, Yaxchilan 60

Figure 1.21. Three-dimensional visualization of the celt shown in figure 1.18c 34

Figure 2.14. Lintel program, Structure 1, El Chicozapote 61

Figure 1.22. Offering 1942-C, La Venta 34

Figure 2.15. Kimbell Panel 62

Figure 1.23. Three-dimensional visualization of the mosaic from Massive Offering 1, La Venta 35

Figure 2.16. Room 1, Structure 1, Bonampak 63

Figure 1.24. Stela 5, Izapa 36 Figure 1.25. Petroglyph 1, Chalcatzingo 36 Figure 1.26. Cross section, Massive Offering 3, La Venta 40 Figure 1.27. Serpentine pavement, Massive Offering 3, La Venta 40 Figure 1.28. Reconstruction of Complex A during Phase IV, La Venta 41 Figure 1.29. Cross section, Massive Offering 2, La Venta 42 Figure 1.30. Serpentine pavement, Massive Offering 2, La Venta 42 Figure 1.31. Basalt tomb, Mound A-2, La Venta 43 Figure 1.32. Pavement 2, La Venta 44 Figure 1.33. Pyramid C, La Venta 45 Figure 2.1. Lintels and stelae on display in the Museo Nacional de Antropología 48

x • LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTR ATIONS

Figure 2.17. Position of royal women and royal youths, Structure 1, Bonampak 64 Figure 2.18. Royal youths, north wall, Room 1, Structure 1, Bonampak 65 Figure 2.19. Lintel 3 in situ, Structure 33, Yaxchilan 65 Figure 2.20. Lintel 2, Temple II, Tikal 66 Figure 2.21. Lintel 53, Structure 54, Yaxchilan 67 Figure 2.22. Lintel 4, Monjas compound, Chichen Itza 68 Figure 2.23. Lintel 5, Site R 69 Figure 2.24. Lintel 1, Halakal 69 Figure 2.25. Divinatory almanac showing the making of god images, Madrid Codex 70 Figure 2.26. Maya stelae wrapped during ceremonies: carved peccary skull, Copan; Madrid Codex 71 Figure 2.27. Water Trough Lintel, Chichen Itza 73 Figure 2.28. Lintels 1, 2, and 3 above their respective doorways, Structure 1, Bonampak 74

Figure 2.29. Maya cylinder vessel and rollout photograph, showing how gazes encourage rotation of the vessel 76 Figure 2.30. Maya cylinder vessel and rollout photograph, showing subtly contrasting scenes 77

Figure 3.14. Stone block with dates on top and underside, Castillo de Teayo, Veracruz 102 Figure 3.15. Stone cactus with name glyph of Tenoch on underside 103 Figure 3.16. Ahuitzotl sculpture 104

Figure 2.31. Room 1, Structure 1, Bonampak 78

Figure 3.17. Stone box with Ahuitzotl name glyph 105

Figure 2.32. Lintel 3, La Pasadita 80

Figure 3.18. Hackmack Box 106

Figure 2.33. Plan of Structure 22, Yaxchilan 81

Figure 3.19. Coiled Xiuhcoatl 107

Figure 2.34. Detail of Lintel 19, Structure 22, Yaxchilan 81

Figure 3.20. Skeletal bundles, Teotihuacan and Mexica 108

Figure 2.35. Lintel 25, Structure 23, Yaxchilan 82

Figure 3.21. Huehueteotls, Teotihuacan and Mexica 109

Figure 2.36. Lintel 8, Structure 1, Yaxchilan 83

Figure 3.22. Coiled serpents, Teotihuacan and Mexica 110

Figure 2.37. Maya stelae: Stela 51, Calakmul; Stela 18, Yaxchilan; Stela 6, Piedras Negras 84 Figure 2.38. Reconstruction of acropolis, Piedras Negras 85 Figure 2.39. Twin Pyramid Group Q, Tikal 87 Figure 3.1. Coatlicue and Calendar Stone on display in the Museo Nacional de Antropología 90 Figure 3.2. Coatlicue seen from the rear 90 Figure 3.3. Diagram of the Templo Mayor in its final stage 91 Figure 3.4. Other remnants of the Coatlicue series 92 Figure 3.5. Coiled serpent 93 Figure 3.6. Stone toad 94 Figure 3.7. Coyolxauhqui head 95 Figure 3.8. Round altar with Tlaltecuhtli on the underside 96 Figure 3.9. Eagle cuauhxicalli 98 Figure 3.10. Fragmentary eagle cuauhxicalli with seated figure on underside 99 Figure 3.11. Map showing the findspots of sculptures near the Templo Mayor 100 Figure 3.12. Sculpture with plain base 101 Figure 3.13. Coiled serpent in nonimperial style 102

Figure 3.23. Jaguar vessels, Teotihuacan and Mexica 111 Figure 3.24. Chacmool, Tula 112 Figure 3.25. Chacmool outside Stage II Tlaloc Temple, Templo Mayor 113 Figure 3.26. Chacmool with aquatic scene on underside 113 Figure 3.27. Offering 126, Templo Mayor 115 Figure 3.28. Chacmool with sawfish and aquatic scene on underside 116 Figure 3.29. Chacmool with Tlaloc-Tlaltecuhtli and aquatic scene on underside 117 Figure 3.30. Hints of the carved underside on the coiled serpent illustrated in figure 3.5 119 Figure 3.31. Feathered serpent with Tlaltecuhtli on the underside 120 Figure 3.32. Priests making offerings to the sacred bundle of Huitzilopochtli, Florentine Codex 122 Figure 3.33. Sacred bundles of Tenochtitlan from Inquisition testimony 123 Figure 3.34. Portrait of Tizoc on the Tizoc Stone 124 Figure 4.1. The official who has failed the examination, Chilam Balam of Chumayel 129

LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS •  xi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

S

o many colleagues have contributed generously to this project over the years. From the outset, Mary Miller and Stephen Houston have consistently offered sage counsel; Diana Magaloni did so, too, as she welcomed me into her home in Mexico City during several research trips. Kris Driggers scouted objects and was a wonderful interlocutor; Barbara Mundy offered a few key observations with her customary generosity and grace. Jaś Elsner, Megan Sullivan, Andrew Hamilton, Sarah Newman, Tamara Golan, and Lisa Trever all read drafts of the book, and the final result is much stronger for their comments; Lisa Regan at TextFormations also offered invaluable editorial advice. I benefited greatly from conversations with Ana Díaz, whose untimely death was a great loss to us all. I am deeply grateful to Mary Weismantel and Laurel Bestock, who most generously shared their thinking on similar questions in the Andes and in ancient Egypt, respectively; I encourage you to seek out their work. A Global Ancient Art symposium at the University of Chicago with Richard Neer, Jaś Elsner, and Wu Hung provided an important moment in shaping my ideas early in the project. I feel extraordinarily fortunate in my colleagues, who have been unfailingly supportive, and whose brilliant work has so often informed this study. I wish to thank

(in alphabetical order) Cliff Ando, Bebe Baird, Persis Berlekamp, Anna Blume, Elizabeth Boone, Dain Borges, David Bowles, Allison Caplan, James Chandler, Mary Clarke, Nandi Cohen-Aponte, Arlene Colman, Patch Crowley, Savannah Esquivel, Seth Estrin, Denise Fallena, Diana Fane, Andrew Finegold, Jamie Forde, Chelsea Foxwell, Cécile Fromont, Edgar García, William Gassaway, Susan Gillespie, Jorge Gómez-Tejada, John Henderson, Lulu Henderson, Ellen Hoobler, Zac Hruby, Kerry Hull, Aaron Hyman, Matthew Jesse Jackson, Jennifer Josten, Rex Koontz, Jeff Kowalski, Aden Kumler, Khristin Landry, WeiCheng Lin, Leonardo López Luján, Lois Martin, Simon Martin, Kathryn McClymond, Christine Mehring, Virginia Miller, Halle O’Neal, Megan O’Neil, Catalina Ospina, Joel Palka, Verity Platt, Chris Pool, Andrei Pop, Alanna Radlo-Dzur, Matthew Robb, Felipe Rojas, Kristine Ronan, Franco Rossi, Sara Ryu, Anna Seastrand, Bob Sharf, Rebecca Stone, Mark Van Stone, Erik Velásquez, Perry Wong, and Bernie Zirnheld. I’m sure I’ve forgotten to include many others, but please know how much I appreciated your conversation and enthusiasm. Museum curators, including Joanne Pillsbury and James Doyle at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Maria Gaida at the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin, Alexander Brust at

  xiii

the Museum der Kulturen Basel, Richard Townsend at the Art Institute of Chicago, Matthew Robb, then at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Victoria Lyall at the Denver Art Museum, and Bryan Just at the Princeton University Art Museum, among many others, facilitated my unorthodox requests to look at the hard-to-see parts of sculptures, and I am extraordinarily grateful to them and their staffs for their aid. I also thank Alan Resetar at the Field Museum for answering some strange questions about rattlesnakes. Securing image permissions in the middle of a global pandemic is an experience that I hope none of us ever have to repeat. I am profoundly grateful to Amanda Chacón, Dale Mertes, and at the University of Chicago Visual Resources Center, Bridget Madden and Allie Scholten, for the tireless support they provided during the final stages of the project. Ricardo Alvarado Tapia risked the pandemic to take a few last pictures at the Museo Nacional de Antropología; Ángel González López kindly furnished images and his splendid drawings to fill in the gaps. I am also in awe of the artistry, talent, and, again, generosity of colleagues who contributed illustrations to this book, including Arlene Colman, James Doyle, Barbara Fash, Susan Gillespie, Lulu Henderson, Matthew Looper, Leonardo López Luján, Megan O’Neil, Kaylee Spencer, and Javier Urcid. Omar Alcover and Dale Mertes made glorious maps and visualizations. Throughout this long project, I have been extraordinarily fortunate in my graduate and undergraduate research assistants: Kris Driggers, David Recksieck, Teddy Watler, Magda Glotzer, Ann Chandler Tune, Zhengying Tian, and Amanda Chacón all contributed great talent and enthusiasm. Ana Cecilia Espinoza at Editorial Raíces; Ricardo Alvarado Tapia and Gerardo Vázquez at the Archivo Fotográfico Manuel Toussaint, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; and Vicente Martínez Escobar at the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia made heroic efforts to supply images under trying conditions. All reproduction of images of Mexican national patrimony, including archaeological and historical monuments as well as the zones of these monuments, is governed by the Ley Federal sobre Monumentos Arqueológicos, Artísticos e Históricos, and required permission from the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

xiv  • ACKN OWLEDGMENTS

At the University of Texas Press, Kerry Webb, Christina Vargas, Andrew Hnatow, Ana Calle, Lynne Ferguson, Nancy Warrington, Linda Ronan, Joel Pinckney, Meghann Ney, Derek George, Diane Mankedick, and the rest of the team took excellent care of the book. Susan Zucker designed the glorious cover, Peter Brigaitis and Marie S. Nuchols of IndexingPros wrote the index, and Amyrose McCue Gill at TextFormations cast a careful and reassuring eye over the entire text. I especially thank Cecelia Klein and Carolyn Tate, reviewers for the Press, for their incisive comments. The book is much better for their thoughtful reviews. Research and writing of this book were supported by a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Michigan Society of Fellows, University of Michigan; an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation/ ACLS Recent Doctoral Recipient Fellowship; a fellowship at the Franke Institute for the Humanities at the University of Chicago; and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship FEL-257427-18. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities. I am grateful to colleagues in all of these programs for their thoughtful comments on my work. Portions of this work have been presented at the University of Chicago, the Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAMChicago, Cornell University, University of Edinburgh, Elon College, Northern Illinois University, College Art Association, and the Midwest Mesoamericanist meetings. I thank audiences in all of these venues for their questions and interest. An earlier version of portions of chapter 2 was published as “Architecture, Vision, and Ritual: Seeing Maya Lintels at Yaxchilan Structure 23,” in Art Bulletin 101, no. 3 (2019): 8–36, and an earlier version of chapter 3 was published as “What Lies Beneath: Carving on the Underside of Aztec Sculpture,” in Conditions of Visibility, edited by Richard Neer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 43–73. Finally, my great love and appreciation to Clark Evans, who patiently read every page of this book several more times than he might have preferred to, and to our child, who reminded me that there was a world beyond it. I am so grateful to have you both in my life.

UNSEEN ART

I N T RODUCTION

SEEING AND KNOWING

O

n August 13, 1790, workmen repaving the Zócalo, or principal plaza of Mexico City, found a monumental stone sculpture. Eight feet tall, it represents a headless female body (figure 0.1). Two serpents rise from the severed neck like streams of arterial blood, their profile heads joining together to form a monstrous semblance of a frontal face. A necklace of human hands and hearts, with a skull at its center, covers the figure’s sagging breasts, and her feet are figured as eagle claws. She wears a skirt made of intertwined rattlesnakes, which has given the sculpture the modern name Coatlicue, or “SnakesHer-Skirt” in Nahuatl, the language spoken by the Aztecs in the Valley of Mexico during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries CE, when this work was made. We do not know what the work was originally called.1 The discovery of the Coatlicue in 1790 heralded a new era in the study of Mexican antiquity. While Aztec sculptures that had surfaced earlier during the colonial period had been summarily destroyed, the Coatlicue was not broken up, and instead became available as an object of scholarly investigation. The same treatment was extended to other monumental Aztec sculptures encountered during the Zócalo renovations, including the Calendar Stone and the Tizoc Stone; the Calendar Stone was for decades mounted

on the side of the Catedral Metropolitana (figure 0.2).2 The Coatlicue had a more checkered fate: she was briefly displayed outside the Palacio Nacional, but authorities soon decided to move the sculpture to the walled courtyard of the Real y Pontificia Universidad de México. Even there, the statue proved problematic. People left offerings of candles and flowers at her feet, and the clerics in charge of the university began to fear that the sight of this ancient sculpture would lead to a resurgence of idolatry and the corruption of impressionable students.3 So the statue was reburied. The Coatlicue came in and out of view over the course of the nineteenth century. The sculpture was disinterred in 1803, when the German antiquarian Alexander von Humboldt passed through Mexico City, then reburied again, only to be excavated for a third time in 1823, when William Bullock came in search of Mexican antiquities to display in London.4 A cast of the sculpture was included in Bullock’s exhibitions Ancient Mexico and Ancient and Modern Mexico in the Egyptian Hall in Picadilly (figure 0.3), but the statue itself was buried yet again, to be exhumed for a fourth and final time sometime in the 1840s.5 As we will see, this history of burial, exhumation, and reburial, as well as the way this sculpture was remembered even

 1

Figure 0.1. Coatlicue, Mexica/Aztec, ca. 1480–1519 CE. Andesite, 2.52 m tall. Museo Nacional de Antropología,

Mexico City, inv. 10-0001153. Photo Andreas Wolochow / Shutterstock.com. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Figure 0.2. Calendar Stone (Mexica/Aztec, created ca. 1502–1519 CE) on the wall of the cathedral, Mexico City, before 1886. New York State

Archives. Education Dept. Division of Visual Instruction. Instructional lantern slides. Series A3045-78, No. 3105. Secretaría de Cultura-INAHMEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Figure 0.3. Agostino Aglio, “Exhibition of Antient [sic] Mexico at the Egyptian-Hall Piccadilly,” from William Bullock, A Description of the

Unique Exhibition, Called Ancient Mexico, 1824. The cast of the Coatlicue is on the right, and the cast of the Calendar Stone is at the center. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library.

when hidden, unwittingly echoes central themes about the ancient visibility of Mesoamerican sculpture. Even in its original context, not all of the Coatlicue was easy to see. In 1792, the Mexican polymath Antonio de León y Gama published a detailed study of both this monument and the Calendar Stone.6 In it, he noted a most unusual feature of the Coatlicue: it is carved not only on its visible surfaces but also on the underside, which features a low-relief crouching figure that scholars today identify as an image of Tlaltecuhtli, the earth deity (figure 0.4). The artists lavished great care on this figure, carving it in a flat and linear style markedly unlike the three-dimensional and highly textured surfaces above. But how could anyone have seen the carved underside in its original context? León y Gama proposed that the eight-foot-tall, two-ton sculpture was originally displayed perched on two columns, which rested at the points marked A and B on his drawing, so that its underside could be seen unimpeded as people walked underneath the sculpture (figure 0.5).7 León y Gama’s reconstruction seems highly implausible, but it demonstrates a telling resistance to the simplest interpretation: that the dense carving on the underside of the sculpture was made to be concealed from view.

4 • UNSEEN A RT

Mesoamerican art history abounds with provocative examples of restricted or occluded viewing, and even outright concealment of images. For over three thousand years, from the earliest moments of Olmec civilization, around 1500 BCE, to the Aztec empire at the time of the Spanish invasion in 1519 CE, people in the region of modern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras made visually complex things that were difficult to see. Of course, unseen art is not only a Mesoamerican phenomenon. From the labyrinthine tunnels surrounding the Lanzón at Chavín de Huántar, Peru; to paintings in the darkest reaches of Buddhist caves in Dunhuang, China; to the Column of Trajan spiraling out of sight in the Forum of Trajan in Rome, there have always been many ways in which images might be “absconded” from view.8 The examples considered in this book challenge common assumptions that all visually elaborated things were made to be seen, an idea we often take for granted in the era of the museum. We are so accustomed to seeing objects carefully spaced, framed, and lighted in museums or photographs, so used to looking closely at works of art— indeed, so used to construing visually elaborated things from different times and places as “art”—that it is easy to

forget how different these viewing conditions are from the many contexts in which ancient works were made and used. But of course, the modern category of art reached its form alongside the colonial institutions made to collect and display it.9 In this book, I use works of Mesoamerican sculpture (also a fraught term) that were particularly difficult to see in their original contexts to consider the distance between ancient and modern ideas about art, emphasizing seeing as an embodied, durational, and always political activity. I argue that the study of unseen art has important implications both for understanding the exercise of power in ancient Mesoamerica and for shaping the practice of art history in the present moment.

Unseen art challenges us to move beyond visibility as the sole paradigm for the reception and understanding of ancient art. The meaning of an artwork might inhere as much in the process of making and dedication as in later acts of viewing, shedding important light on the ideology of artistic creation.10 When enlivened through ritual, images could be understood as vital and social beings— entities capable of seeing and being seen—for whom visual appeal was only one aspect of a broader efficacy.11 Moreover, images have never circulated through sight alone: words and memories about images exerted their own power in the past, just as they do today.12 Images might even have drawn power from restricted visibility, while in

Figure 0.4. Fiberglass cast of the image of Tlaltecuhtli, the Earth Lord, carved on the underside of the Coatlicue, illustrated in figure 0.1.

Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City. Photo by the author. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

SEEING AND K NOWING • 5

turn, concealed images and esoteric knowledge were used to maintain power and social difference. Time, audience, and access all shaped the experience of a work of art in ancient Mesoamerica. All objects were necessarily visible to their makers as they were being created, and the privilege of seeing a work take shape over time might have been invested with particular meaning. But it is important to remember that the privileged sight in that exceptional moment may not always have been the sole province of artists. A patron, or agents of the patron, as well as ritual specialists and support staff, could also have witnessed or participated in bringing an image into being. Makers sometimes worked in ritual seclusion, a topic further explored in chapter 2, but at other moments, the whole community participated in or at least witnessed the act of artistic creation, as I discuss

in chapter 1. After their moments of making, objects took diverse trajectories. Different works of art became difficult to see at different moments in their life cycles, with distinct implications for the ontology of images. An image that was made from the outset to be concealed, such as the carving on the underside of an Aztec sculpture, differs significantly from a painted vessel for chocolate, used and admired in a courtly context before being deposited in a tomb . . . and this in turn differs significantly from a morphologically similar object made specifically for burial. Many of the most common ways to remove objects from visual circulation—burial in a tomb, inclusion in a dedicatory cache or other ritual deposit—could involve either newly made objects or goods that had already had an extended period of use and visibility. Indeed, the two modes might be combined in a single

Figure 0.5. Francisco Agüera Bustamante, engraving of the Coatlicue, from Antonio de León y Gama, Descripción histórica y cronológica de

las dos piedras . . . , 1832 edition. The points marked “A” and “B” on the drawing are where León y Gama proposed that pillars were placed to make the carving on the underside of the Coatlicue visible. Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library.

6 • UNSEEN A RT

Figure 0.6. Substructures underneath Structure 16, Copan, Maya, demonstrating the encasing of the founder’s tomb in successively grander

temples between the fifth and eighth centuries CE. Illustration by Christopher Klein for National Geographic.

assemblage. Thus, it is important to attend to the entire life cycle or “cultural biography” of an object and the multiple transformations in accessibility it might undergo.13 Some things alternated between moments of visibility and concealment: displayed briefly, but crucially, at a funeral ceremony before being sealed within a tomb, for example, or stored in darkness between moments of exposure in procession or performance. For many objects, viewing was situational: the pages of a book, usually stored folded but brought out to be read privately or displayed and performed publicly at certain intervals; a box decorated both inside and out, such that some imagery was always visible but in ways that depended on context and audience.14 In addition to these examples of situational visibility, still other images hovered at the edge of a gradient of diminishing visibility, like an image placed on a steep and distant rock face, possible to see, perhaps, if only one’s gaze were powerful enough. Other images were

located in caves or other difficult-to-reach but spiritually potent places.15 Things initially intended for public viewing might later be concealed or even destroyed. At the Maya city of Copan, Honduras, successively more elaborate temples encased the tomb of the dynastic founder, obstructing visual access but keeping the memory of the initial structure alive from the fifth to the eighth century CE (figure 0.6).16 Other images ended up hidden after complex histories of reuse and recycling, such as the battered fragments of Tikal Stela 31, enshrined inside a funerary temple that was in turn concealed by later construction.17 At Monte Alban in Oaxaca, massive stone slabs featuring politically charged images and texts were placed carving-side-down when they were incorporated into the walls of the South Platform, with caches buried underneath the concealed carvings.18 Some images were accorded reverential treatment even as they went out of view: murals at the city of

SEEING AND K NOWING • 7

Figure 0.7. Offering 4, La Venta, Olmec, Phase III, ca. 600 BCE.

In this excavation photo, it is clear that the greenstone figurines remained embedded in a white sand lens, which was part of the earlier fill. The scar of the hole dug to view the figurines a century later is clearly visible, as are the chunks of broken floor in the refilled space above the figurines’ heads. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Heizer_079. Secretaría de CulturaINAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Figure 0.8. Tunnel under the Feathered Serpent Pyramid,

Teotihuacan, ca. 100–250 CE. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia / Proyecto Tlalocan / S. Gómez. Secretaría de CulturaINAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

8 • UNSEEN A RT

Cacaxtla—and even paint fragments, removed from the wall—were buried beneath a layer of finely sifted earth as they were covered by new construction.19 Other objects were taken out of circulation by destruction: precious jades, some perhaps removed from royal tombs hundreds of kilometers away, were thrown into the Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza, heated so that they would shatter upon contact with the water.20 Some objects were even made to be destroyed, such as the Aztec amaranth sculptures that were crafted, displayed, and then ritually killed during the month of Tepeilhuitl.21 What was concealed might be remembered. Offering 4 from the Olmec center of La Venta, ca. 600 BCE, offers particularly compelling evidence of the power of memory. It consists of a small diorama of precious greenstone figures arranged in a scene of dramatic confrontation. This tableau was set up in the earth and buried with colored sands, and then, over a century later, reaccessed through a precisely placed excavation, viewed or interacted with, and promptly reburied (figure 0.7).22 Because context permitted archaeologists to document this history so precisely, La Venta Offering 4 provides crucial evidence for the ways that unseen art could be remembered throughout Mesoamerican history. Yet it was not the only example of the persistent power of things unseen. Objects placed in the tunnel underneath the Feathered Serpent Pyramid at Teotihuacan created the experience of a chthonic landscape of creation for the few who could enter. The tunnel was sealed off and then reentered three times between its construction and its final closure ca. 250 CE; at least two centuries later, it was reentered yet again via a small shaft (figure 0.8).23 In yet another act of remembering, fragments of broken sculptures, hidden within the walls of a Maya temple at Piedras Negras, were echoed in later works commissioned to decorate the walls of that structure.24 In sum, objects in Mesoamerica frequently moved in and out of view. At different moments in their life cycles, works exemplified a wide gamut of ways that objects might become difficult to see. Laurel Bestock helpfully offers burial, concealment, destruction, omission, inaccessibility, darkness, and periodic visibility as a typology in the context of ancient Egyptian art.25 But what is most important are the particular valences attached to these acts. In Mesoamerica, restricted visibility—and the practices of ritual secrecy that enforced it—could increase the power and prestige of hidden images: Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas, writing in the 1550s, observed that Maya people

in Guatemala put their images in dark and obscure caves “to show them more reverence.”26 A central premise of this book is that how and why works became difficult to see has much to do with how their creators and audiences understood the nature of vision. In other words, questions of visibility are inextricable from theories of visuality in the time and place in which they were created.27 There is no universal answer to the problem of unseen art, not in the least because it is not a homogeneous practice but instead a constellation of local emergences.28

In fact, all works exist on a continuum from absolutely visible to absolutely inaccessible, and they may shift along that continuum at different moments in their life cycles. The fullest explanations will depend on contextual understandings of vision and the nature of artistic creation, historically specific dynamics of power, and particular structures of religious practice. What makes the Mesoamerican case particularly crucial for art history in this moment is how it highlights the connections among vision, power, and inequality, providing critical perspectives on the modern project of looking.

Figure 0.9. “Head priest who is at night looking at the stars in the sky to see the time for services and duties,” Codex Mendoza, folio 63r,

Nahua, ca. 1545 CE. The text above the starry night sky reads “this painting with eyes signifies night.” Photo Bodleian Libraries MS. Arch. Selden. A. 1, fol. 63r.

SEEING AND K NOWING • 9

Figure 0.10. Lord 12 Wind, a Mixtec noble whose elaborated

eyes show the power of his elite sight, facing Lady 3 Flint, Codex Nuttall obverse, page 21, Mixtec, ca. 1500 CE. British Museum Am1902,0308.1 © Trustees of the British Museum.

Many Mesoamericans believed that sight was extromissive, that is, that sight was accomplished through forces leaving the viewer’s eyes.29 An image of extromissive vision is found in the early colonial-period Codex Mendoza, where a priest is shown watching the night sky to properly time ritual observances (figure 0.9).30 Directly in front of his face hovers an eye, represented by two concentric half circles and a red cone; this projecting eye is angled up toward the night sky, shown as a dark orb studded with conventionalized rounded eyes representing the shining stars. A thin line of dots connects the priest’s eye to his body, emphasizing the nature of vision as an embodied act. Yet vision is not solely a human capacity: the convention for showing the night sky suggests that the stars might be capable of returning the priest’s gaze.31 Mesoamerican theories of extromissive vision imply that sight is intensely personal: what one is capable of seeing depends on the power of one’s own projective sight.32 As a result, Mesoamerican seeing might be vastly unequal: a king or a shaman, for example, might have powers of sight unlike those of ordinary people.33 Indeed, Byron Hamann argues that the elaborate eyes of nobles in the Mixtec codices indicate precisely such superior powers of discernment (figure 0.10).34 Elite sight was understood as exceptionally powerful, agentive, and perceptive.35 More importantly, seeing not only allowed visual delight but was also a crucial

10 • UNSEEN ART

way of acquiring knowledge: as Evon Vogt observes in an ethnography of the modern Maya community of Zinacantan, “Seeing is more than a metaphor for vision; it is knowing, insight in general.”36 Aided by prosthetics such as books, mirrors, and ritual staffs, sight could be directed toward intangible things: the future, the past, the will of the gods.37 Supernatural or divine beings were endowed with exceptional vision in Mesoamerican cosmologies. As Stephen Houston and Karl Taube observe, the distinctive shapes of gods’ eyes in Maya iconography—square, reflective eyes associated with solar deities and spiral eyes associated with nocturnal and watery gods (figure 0.11)—hint at different capacities of perception and understanding, surpassing all human ability.38 Some Mesoamerican works of art even explicitly addressed nonliving, nonhuman audiences. For example, the carving on the underside of the lintel of Tomb 158 at Monte Alban was positioned so that it could be viewed best by the body of the ancestor lying within the tomb, while the carved outer edge of the lintel was oriented toward a living human viewer, descending the stairs to reenter the tomb and venerate the ancestors within (figure 0.12).39 Similarly, it has been proposed that carvings on the undersides of Aztec sculptures might have been intended for deities with powerful sight, a topic I discuss further in chapter 3. If unseen art could address divine audiences, it also allowed humans to claim godlike powers of sight. Yet what is also important is the way these works shape and are shaped by human audiences: even divine aesthetic preferences are dictated by human patrons. The gulf between human and divine sight is made most clear in a K’iche’ Mayan text called the Popol Vuh. When humans were first created, their sight was like that of the gods:

Perfect was their sight, and perfect was their knowledge of everything beneath the sky. If they gazed about them, looking intently, they beheld that which was in the sky and that which was upon the earth. Instantly, they were able to behold everything. They did not have to walk to see all that existed beneath the sky. They merely saw it from wherever they were. Thus their knowledge became full. Their vision passed beyond the trees and the rocks, beyond the lakes and the seas, beyond the mountains and the valleys.40

Image of the storm god Chahk with spiral eyes, Temple of the Night Sun, El Diablo complex, El Zotz, Maya, late fourth century CE. Brown University El Zotz Archaeological Project, image generated by CAST, University of Arkansas.

(RIGHT) Figure 0.11.

(BELOW) Figure 0.12. Diagram of Tomb 158, Monte Alban, Zapotec, ca. 700 CE, showing how the lintel addresses both living and ancestral audiences. Drawing by Elbis Domínguez, courtesy of Elbis Domínguez and Javier Urcid.

This potent vision, and the knowledge that came with it, threatened the gods who had created humanity; because of their powerful sight, the first humans were too much like their creators. So the gods blurred their sight, “like breath upon the face of a mirror,” so that “they could only see nearby; things were clear to them only where they were. Thus their knowledge was lost.”41 With this act, humans entered their present, limited condition of seeing and knowing. The Popol Vuh is, of course, a colonial document. Composed by Indigenous K’iche’ elders in the mid-1550s, likely based both on oral tradition and perhaps on preconquest

books that integrated both images and hieroglyphic texts, the Popol Vuh is known to us only through a copy made by a Dominican friar in 1702 that was included in a compilation of documents intended to aid in the eradication of Indigenous religion.42 But it is precisely the liminal position of this document, poised between Indigenous and colonial worlds, that lets us so clearly understand the differences from—and parallels with—settler colonial ways of conceptualizing and deploying vision. The links between elite power and penetrating vision that the Popol Vuh describes are not exactly identical to those of the Spanish occupiers,

SEEING AND K NOWING • 11

but they resonate with the roles of surveillance in the colonial project, from the forced resettlement of Mesoamerican communities into reducciones where they might be more easily converted to the panoptic view of the plantation overseer.43 But other aspects of the Popol Vuh’s account, such as the initial equivalence of divine and human sight, the dialogical nature of creation, and the dangers of being able to see too fully, offer different ways of interrogating the relationships between art and visuality. The chapters of this book focus on works that were from the outset intended to be difficult or impossible for humans to see after the moment of their making: Olmec buried offerings, Maya lintels, and carvings on the undersides of Aztec sculptures. Each chapter begins with the modern museum display of a particular object, stressing the distance between our present encounter with these works and the original conditions under which the works were experienced. Throughout the book, I demonstrate how these extreme and unusual examples of restricted visibility can also enrich our understanding of more public image-making throughout Mesoamerica. Separated by hundreds of years and vast geographic distances, there are no direct causal connections among the examples explored in this book’s chapters, although all draw on shared understandings of powerful vision as a particularly elite and divine power. Each chapter examines a different place and moment in Mesoamerican history, as well as a different kind of political organization (figure 0.13). The first episode takes place at La Venta, an Olmec center along the Gulf Coast that thrived between 900 and 400 BCE. With a population numbering in the thousands, La Venta was one of the earliest instances of a Mesoamerican urban tradition that would endure for centuries, a place where the political institutions that would shape Mesoamerica were still being actively negotiated. 44 The second episode occurs nearly a millennium later, between 400 and 900 CE, in the Maya region to the south and east, where art was a tool of social power in a vastly different political landscape. Competing city-states with populations ranging from 10,000 to 70,000, each ruled by a divine king, jostled for territory and influence.45 The final example occurs five hundred years later still. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, a gridded city of over 100,000 in the middle of a lake in the Valley of Mexico, was the center of a vast empire, extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. While the empire’s control of its territory often depended on negotiations with local

12 • UNSEEN ART

rulers rather than direct occupation of conquered lands, the Aztec state still represented a consolidation of power and a level of political control never before experienced in Mesoamerica, especially in the last few decades before the Spanish invasion of 1519.46 Unseen art emerges as a key to revealing political and social dynamics in each of these three disparate settings. Each chapter also relies on different bodies of evidence. Archaeological evidence is our primary way of knowing about Olmec culture. By the time of the Maya city-states, texts on stone stelae, lintels, and painted clay vessels supplement archaeological evidence to give us an idea of emic political and religious concerns. Sixteenth-century Spanish and Indigenous accounts of Maya and Aztec life at the time of the invasion and beyond give us a kind of rich detail not possible for earlier societies, albeit one refracted through the lens of colonial violence. But in each case, the works themselves provide the most concrete and eloquent evidence for their own conditions of making and viewing, amply demonstrating the rewards of close attention to materiality, context, and interaction. The examples considered in this book demonstrate how rhetorics of seeing, knowing, and elite power were used time and again throughout Mesoamerican history in ways specific to local political circumstances. While revealing deep Mesoamerican continuities, these three case studies also trace a gradual evolution in the uses of secrecy and concealment, from a communal practice that fostered social memory and collective identification at Olmec La Venta, to a tool of power and differentiation in the Aztec state nearly two thousand years later. Collectively, then, the three case studies examine how the creation and display of artworks participated in the transformation of Mesoamerican society. Chapter 1 explores the process of making as an act meaningful in its own right. Builders at the Olmec site of La Venta (ca. 900–400 BCE) constructed giant greenstone configurations, termed “massive offerings,” which were swiftly covered by other constructions, layered between strata of colored clays brought from distant places. Multiple potential audiences, human and supernatural, might have witnessed or participated in the process of assemblage. Seeing was durational and accretive: each viewer constructed their own mental vision of the work as the labor progressed day by day. The earliest massive offering mosaics can be interpreted as ritual diagrams whose burial augmented their relationship to maize symbolism.

Figure 0.13. Map of Mesoamerica, showing principal sites mentioned in the text. Map by Omar Alcover Firpi.

These works were not made to be seen but to be hidden rapidly after their moment of making, their power deriving from their invisibility. And yet they persisted in memory: similar configurations were created in different episodes over centuries of rebuilding, each recapitulating some elements of the earliest endeavor and leaving others behind. Together, the buried massive offerings of La Venta also document how the meaning of the act of concealment changed over time. What began as a communal gesture came in later phases to be associated with increasing inequality at the site, gradually becoming subsidiary to more visible expressions of power aboveground. Chapter 2 explores the nature of seeing through the challenges of viewing Maya lintels. Placed above the heads of viewers in passageways where it would be difficult to linger, these intricate carvings were not definitively concealed. Yet in their original contexts, lintels were

extraordinarily difficult to see, examples of a particularly challenging gradient of vision. From the carved stone lintels of Yaxchilan, which spanned the exterior doorways of many seventh- and eighth-century palaces, to the wooden lintels in the inner rooms of temples atop towering pyramids at Tikal, this practice endured among the Maya for generations, even surviving the collapse of the lowland Maya city-states to continue at ninth-century Chichen Itza. Frequently carved with low-relief scenes and long, dense texts—sometimes written in a reversed “mirror writing” that is hard to read under the best of circumstances—Maya lintels seem to thwart the gaze invited by their intricate carving. Yet by doing so, they allow privileged viewers with prior knowledge of the carvings to assert exceptionally powerful sight. At the same time, people passing through the doorway were themselves subject to the gazes of the figures represented on the lintels. Moreover, the dense

SEEING AND K NOWING • 13

iconography of Maya lintels helps us recognize the significant impediments to viewing even the most public works of Mesoamerican art, which demanded time, physical access, and the privileged knowledge required to transform perception into conception. As a result, the dominant mode of engagement with these works may have been a brief glance rather than intensive and engaged viewing. I conclude by suggesting that many works of Maya art, from lintels to the most public stelae, might be understood as the by-products of the rituals of their own dedication, which converted stone into efficacious social actors, regardless of any later acts of viewing. Chapter 3 considers the radical invisibility of carvings on the undersides of certain Aztec sculptures, like the Coatlicue, which were inaccessible when these monumental works were displayed. While this practice might be shocking to us because of a paradigm of museum display predicated on unimpeded visual access, it is also unusual in comparative context. Many traditions worldwide decorate the backs of sculptures, but few attend to the hidden undersides.47 Even in Mesoamerica, there is no other evidence of such a coherent tradition. While carvings might end up concealed in a number of ways after a long period of visibility (recall the Tikal or Monte Alban examples mentioned above), only for the Aztecs—or perhaps more specifically for the Mexica of Tenochtitlan— is there evidence for a systematic and intentional practice, where the top and bottom of the sculpture were conceived together, an integral whole moving seamlessly between the realms of the visible and invisible. I consider the relationship between vision and occlusion in these works, exploring how the carving on the underside of an Aztec sculpture belongs, logically and conceptually, on the bottom, where its concealment simultaneously makes programmatic sense and amplifies the symbolic power of the entire work for those in the know. Many of the most striking examples of the tradition were produced for the imperial court at the heart of the empire, reinforcing hierarchies of power and knowledge while modeling the dynamics of concealment and revelation that were central to Aztec rulership and religion. These three examples allow us to explore ways of seeing unlike the rapt and informed attention that scholars often assume to be normative. Chapter 1 examines durational seeing, the ways that the understanding of the totality of a work can only develop over time, realized differently in each viewer’s mind. At La Venta, it was the

14 • UNSEEN ART

successive burial of different layers of a massive offering that produced this effect, but it applies equally well to any instance when the whole work cannot be seen at once, as well as to the complexities of performance. Chapter 2 emphasizes looking as an embodied process, one that might be imperfect or incomplete, thwarted by bodily discomfort, uneven lighting, and other factors of access. I examine how these experiences of imperfect seeing intersected with Mesoamerican rhetorics of keen sight as an elite and godlike power. Rather than assuming that all ancient viewers exercised a careful and focused gaze, we should also account for the experience of a distracted glance, one that garners overall impressions but may not capture every detail that we so lavishly explore in stylistic or iconographic studies. Finally, chapter 3 explores the challenges of informed looking, measuring the distance between mere perception of the visual features of a work and a complete understanding of its intended meaning, an especially important concern when meanings are recondite, allusive, and polysemic. In sum, ancient images were not always “billboards” communicating their messages to an attentive and receptive audience; much of the visual nuance underlying many modern iconographical or stylistic arguments would have been unseeable by much of the public, much of the time. Together, these three modes of seeing—durational, embodied, and informed—offer a fuller account of a viewer’s experience of any visually compelling thing. They reveal that the kind of close looking upon which modern analysis depends is only one way of seeing, an especially privileged and anachronistic one. An expanded model of viewing—or, perhaps better, experience—enriches the understanding of all kinds of works of art. Neither a sculpture in the round nor a work of architecture in any tradition can be seen all at once: both exist in the world but also in the mind of the beholder, who must move, seaming together disparate parts and disparate visions, to create a mental image of a cohesive totality. Our bodies inevitably have somatic and empathic responses to scale as well as to other aspects of any work.48 And although the spaces where we encounter art are often deliberately stripped of distracting sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, it is through embodied sensation that we encode memories.49 Crucially, the qualities of this embodied experience are dictated by the preparation and prior knowledge that a viewer brings, and works of art can be intended to confound and obfuscate as much as to reveal. In looking closely, assisted by institutions and

technologies utterly foreign to the moment of a work’s creation, we must be attentive to whose kind of looking we are replicating and, equally, whose kinds of looking we exclude. This is, in some ways, a paradoxical book. It lavishly illustrates examples of unseen art, using modes of representation inconceivable at the time the works were created. What’s more, each chapter will in some moments turn on questions of iconography, performing precisely the kind of informed, specialized close looking that this book may seem to argue against. Yet this is not a call to discard art history’s fundamental tools but instead to demonstrate their broader potentials. Close looking, combined with considerations of materiality, visual access, and visuality, provides a fuller account of the visually complex objects that are among the most powerful kinds of evidence we have available to understand the ancient past. There is value to practicing iconography in an expanded field that also addresses questions of time, access, and audience, taking into account the physical practicalities of seeing as an embodied experience, considering how visual access would vary at different moments in time, and seeking ways to re-create less privileged modes of seeing. At the same time, it is also important to bear in mind the distance between the modern category of art and the ancient Mesoamerican understanding of the work they were undertaking. That work involved not just making beautiful things but creating and ensouling active, agentive, and powerful beings with their own will and desires.50 Failure to recognize these potentials perpetuates colonial thinking.

Unseen art offers a call to reexamine our own privilege as modern viewers and the ways that it has come into being. Insofar as our modern close looking has certain parallels with the vision of the artist, this demands a close engagement with materiality, facture, and embodiment. Yet the closest approximations of our own ways of seeing might lie with elite patrons whose privileged access allowed them to mobilize knowledge to reinforce their own power, demanding contemplation of how even the far more imperfect knowledge of these same works reinforces elite power today. Studies of ancient art are often focused on the most intricate, durable, and eloquent objects, which risks placing us in closest identification with ancient elites. Moreover, unseen art forces scholars, especially art historians, to confront an uneasy truth: the works available and amenable to visual analysis were not always as central in their own moment as they are in present scholarship. These problems are particularly acute with works of ancient art, which we often know through serendipitous archaeological discoveries and colonial violence. In our modern hunger to see and know all, we have removed purposeful impediments to looking that were once an integral part of many ancient works. In the process, we have obscured vital information about how these works functioned as political objects—and as powerful beings in their own right. Through close attention to making, vision, and power, unseen art allows us a broader view of ancient Mesoamerica.

SEEING AND K NOWING  • 15

CHA P TER 1

MAKING Building Community at La Venta

H

alf open-air sculpture museum and half zoo, the Parque Museo La Venta in Villahermosa, Mexico, stages a fantasy of a junglelike wilderness. After passing through the zoo, which hosts caged jaguars, monkeys, and crocodiles, the visitor follows a winding path past more than thirty works from the Olmec city of La Venta, each framed by tropical vegetation. Amid the imposing stone stelae, thrones, and colossal heads, another monument is easy to overlook: a configuration of greenish stones placed on a concrete slab (figure 1.1). The path curves around the mosaic, beginning slightly above it and ending slightly below, yet the forms are difficult to understand from any of these angles. Across town, at the Museo Regional de Antropología Carlos Pellicer Cámara, a nearly identical mosaic is displayed on the floor of one of the galleries; here, the configuration can be viewed from an upper balcony and from a catwalk crossing diagonally above (figure 1.2). In their original context at La Venta, these mosaics were only briefly visible before being buried and rendered inaccessible to human eyes (figure 1.3). Each mosaic was placed into a deep pit on top of many layers of greenstone blocks, and then, within days, covered by colored clays and topped with an adobe brick platform. This action was

part of a much larger process of rebuilding and remaking La Venta that took place around 700 BCE. The modern displays capture elements of the ancient experience of the mosaic—the fragmented view from the ground and the possibility of surveillance from above—but they cannot replicate the complexity of the original ritual deposits. Indeed, all modern visualizations, whether photographs, drawings, cross sections, or animations, are radically different from the way the deposit was experienced as it was being made. They erase what were in the moment the most significant aspects of the project: its gradual accumulation, day after day, as the result of communal labor, and its ultimate burial. Burial was an extravagant and powerful gesture, extravagant not just in rendering great wealth inaccessible but also in committing so much labor to an effort that left so little visible trace. Each configuration was briefly visible at the moment of its deposition, an act of making that likely involved many members of the community. The very fleeting nature of that moment of visibility might have concentrated its power, rendering looking urgent and remembering imperative. The burial of these configurations meant that they were inaccessible to human eyes, and so we have to search for other ways that they might have signified:

17

Figure 1.1. Mosaic from Massive Offering 4 on display at the Parque Museo La Venta, Villahermosa. Photo by the author, 2019. Secretaría de

Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

through the process of making and the ritual activation of their contents, through an address to supernatural audiences, through the memory of their construction. Indeed, collective memory of these hidden offerings may have helped shape community—and, eventually, the growth of inequality—at La Venta. L A V ENTA

Located on a salt dome rising above a vast alluvial plain, La Venta was one of Mesoamerica’s first great cities. The area around La Venta was settled by around 1400 BCE, but the city did not begin its dramatic growth until ca. 900 BCE. Conforming to the contours of the salt dome, the site has a strong north-south extension, with most platforms oriented 8 degrees west of north, suggesting some degree of planning and coordination (figure 1.4). Residences and workshops surrounded the ceremonial core of the city, and other members of the community lived on raised levees above the rich soil of the plain, subsisting on fishing and the farming of maize and other plants. At the highest point of the city was a great pyramid, the tallest in Mesoamerica at the time, rising over 30 meters above the ground by its

18 • UNSEEN ART

final phase (see figure 1.33). To the south lay a series of plazas and platforms that once supported elite palaces, the spaces adorned with stelae, colossal heads, thrones, and other forms of monumental sculpture.1 To the north lay Complex A, flanked by long parallel platforms; at its northern limit, Complex A was bounded by a stepped pyramid and an enclosure termed the Ceremonial Court (figure 1.5). Excavations were concentrated in Complex A, and especially in the Ceremonial Court, which was revealed to be an intense focus of ritual activity and remaking. During the five centuries of La Venta’s apogee, between 900 and 400 BCE, the Ceremonial Court was remade at least four times. Roughly one hundred years separated each phase of rebuilding from the next. Each major phase of construction was marked by different forms, materials, and colors, tracing an evolution in the site’s architecture as well as deep continuities from one phase to the next.2 Olmec people placed all kinds of durable things into the ground in the Ceremonial Court. Rich accumulations of jade, serpentine, cinnabar, and other precious materials were placed in the earth in purposeful arrangements,

Figure 1.2. Mosaic from Massive Offering 1 on display at the Museo Regional de Antropología Carlos Pellicer Cámara, Villahermosa. Photo by

the author, 2019. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Figure 1.3. Massive Offering 1 in situ during the 1955 excavations at La Venta, Olmec, ca. 900–400 BCE. National Anthropological Archives,

Smithsonian Institution, Heizer_179. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Figure 1.4. Plan of La Venta, Olmec, ca. 900–400 BCE. Drawing by the New World Archaeological Foundation, based on a

map by the Proyecto Arqueológico La Venta, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico. Courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation.

Figure 1.5. Plan of Complex A, La Venta, Olmec, ca. 900–400 BCE, showing the history of excavation and the location

of major finds. After Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 1959, fig. 4. Courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation, with modifications by Amanda Chacón.

Figure 1.6. Reconstruction of the Ceremonial Court during the deposition of Massive Offerings 1 and 4, La Venta, Olmec, Phase II,

ca. 700 BCE. Rendering by Susan D. Gillespie and Michael Volk, courtesy of Susan D. Gillespie.

sometimes in staggering quantities, as in the case of the deposits whose greenstone mosaics are now on display in Villahermosa. In addition to those giant configurations of stone and clay, known as massive offerings, people placed smaller groupings of greenstone celts, hematite mirrors, and other valuable things, as well as human burials that included jewelry and other grave goods. These deposits came into being through different processes: Some objects were positioned in fill during building or rebuilding, an integral part of the periodic renewal of the site; others were intrusive, placed in pits dug into previous constructions. Some groups of objects were deposited in conjunction or in coordination with others, especially in the case of the massive offerings that are the focus of this chapter.3 By comparing the acts of labor involved in each of the massive offerings at the site—and the more visible labor of constructing La Venta’s pyramid—I argue that the increased visibility of labor at La Venta corresponded to an increase in inequality among the city’s residents PA I RE D DE P OS ITS : MASS IV E O FFE RI NG S 1 A N D 4, P H ASE I I

The stone configurations that are now in Villahermosa were originally part of one of the earliest and largest coordinated ritual gestures in Mesoamerica. What we now term Massive Offerings 1 and 4 were deposited during the construction

22 • UNSEEN ART

of the Southwest and Southeast Platforms that formed the southern border of the Ceremonial Court (figure 1.6). This labor, made to be concealed, initiated a major renovation of the Ceremonial Court, transforming it from a scattering of platforms delimited by low clay embankments into a much more formally planned walled enclosure with bilaterally symmetrical platforms inside it.4 The sheer scale of the work, involving thousands of tons of polished stones, colored earths, and clays—all swiftly covered—is staggering to contemplate. Moreover, while elaborate tombs or burials associated with the dead are a familiar gesture worldwide, there is no evidence that these early La Venta massive offerings were funerary in nature.5 Nor was the space in which they were placed an elite palace.6 Rather than commemorating a particular individual, the labor seems to have been directed toward the entire community that was involved in its making. To create the ritual deposit we now call Massive Offering 1, workers at La Venta began by excavating a large rectangular pit, 15 meters north–south, 19 meters east–west, and 7.5 meters deep—about the dimensions of an unusually deep modern swimming pool (figure 1.7).7 Inside this pit, they placed twenty-eight layers of roughly shaped serpentine, schist, and gneiss blocks, embedded in colored clays, filling over half the pit (figure 1.8). The blocks were largest in the lowest layers, averaging 70–100 pounds (30–45 kg)

North-south profile through Southwest Platform, showing Massive Offering 1 as well as later construction (indicated with italicized text), La Venta, Olmec, ca. 900–400 BCE. Illustration by Dale Mertes, after a rendering based on Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 1959, fig. 26; first published in Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 2010, fig. 36. Courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation.

(ABOVE) Figure 1.7.

(RIGHT) Figure 1.8.  Layers

of stone, Massive Offering 1, La Venta, Olmec, Phase II, ca. 700 BCE. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Heizer_1199. Secretaría de CulturaINAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

each, and gradually grew smaller and more widely spaced with each successive layer. The materials in which the stones were embedded were also carefully selected for color and other properties: the color of the clay gradually shifted from gray to blue to olive in the uppermost layers. Archaeologists estimate the total amount of stone involved in Massive Offering 1 at somewhere near 1,000 tons. The mosaic now in the Museo Regional de Antropología was then laid on top of these layered stones. Made of polished serpentine blocks, it was far smaller than the layers of greenstone beneath it, only 6.3 meters north–south

MAKING • 23

Figure 1.9. View of mosaic, Massive Offering 1, La Venta, Olmec, Phase II, ca. 700 BCE. Notice the colored clays in the voids of the mosaic

and the remains of the olive clay envelope surrounding the mosaic, visible in the excavation profile and marked with an arrow. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Heizer_096. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

by 4.7 meters east–west. The mosaic was roughly square in outline, with a cleft in the northern edge and four diamond-shaped appendages on the southern side extending beyond the confines of the square. The horizontal void within the mosaic was filled with cinnamon-colored sand, and the other voids within the mosaic as well as the spaces within the diamond-shaped appendages were filled with yellow clay (figure 1.9; see also figure 1.17). The mosaic configuration was not visible for long. The mosaic stones were laid into a layer of thick yellowolive clay; the same clay enveloped the mosaic, as if the stones had been placed and covered before the clay had a chance to dry—a matter of days, at most. In short order, the entire assemblage was covered with almost two meters of mottled pink clay fill. Six celts were found placed into this fill.8 On top was built a platform of yellow adobe bricks set in red clay, rising at least 2.25 meters above the plaza floor (see figure 1.14). The platform remained visible throughout

24 • UNSEEN ART

most of La Venta’s history, marking and simultaneously concealing the things buried beneath.9 How to understand this staggering gesture remains challenging. “Massive offering” is a modern category, a term coined by Philip Drucker and his colleagues to describe this unusual phenomenon when they encountered it during their 1955 excavations at La Venta.10 But the boundaries of the massive offering have always been difficult to define: Is it only the mosaic and the greenstone beneath it, or does it also include the colored clays and adobe platform above? Or is the gesture even larger, encompassing the very similar configuration found underneath the Southeast Platform (see figure 1.6)—or perhaps even the entire rebuilding of the Ceremonial Court? Massive Offering 4, underneath the Southeast Platform, was notably similar to Massive Offering 1, which lay underneath the Southwest Platform. But they were not entirely identical. In particular, while the upper parts of

each configuration—adobe platform, pink mottled fill, and serpentine mosaic—closely resembled one another, what lay beneath was not so uniform. Most importantly, the presence of multiple layers of greenstone within Massive Offering 4 has never been verified, as the archaeologist Waldo Wedel and his crew were able to excavate less than a meter into the serpentine rubble underneath the mosaic configuration in 1943 (figure 1.10).11 The east mosaic itself differed significantly from its counterpart in terms of color and presentation, even though the alignment of stones was very similar (figure 1.11). There was apparently a bed of yellow clay beneath the mosaic, but there is no evidence that such clay enveloped the mosaic as on its counterpart to the west; instead, there are references to a layer of black bitumen underneath, and in some cases, above, the stones of the mosaic in Massive Offering 4. The coloration within the voids also differed, although excavators offer conflicting accounts of how they appeared: according to Wedel, the diamond-shaped appendages were placed over “a compact fill of greenishgray clay mottled and streaked with purplish-red,” whereas the archaeologist Matthew Stirling describes blue clay within the voids.12 In either case, it is clear that the coloration was not identical to its counterpart in Massive Offering 1. The objects placed in the mottled pink fill above the mosaic were also different: a cruciform arrangement of twenty celts, a hematite mirror, and the remains of a charred wooden plaque (figure 1.12).13 How are these two massive offerings related? They were excavated by different teams over a decade apart, and there is no clear stratigraphic evidence confirming that the two were made simultaneously.14 However, the close resemblance between them suggests that each was undertaken in reference to the other (figure 1.13). Susan Gillespie proposes that competing lineages were responsible for the construction of the two massive offerings, while John Clark and Arlene Colman suggest that the two were the result of a more centrally coordinated process, the differences between them part of an overarching plan.15 One challenge is that the variations between the two are subtle and not obviously contrastive. We might also consider the possibility that the two deposits were undertaken within a few years of each other, but not simultaneously, the divergences between them the result of lapses in memory or record-keeping in the time between the two events. In any case, the adobe platforms above the two deposits were very similar, concealing

some of the differences in form, materials, and coloration that lay beneath. “Offering” is a fraught and amorphous term. The very idea of an offering implies a recipient, presumably a supernatural one, but we simply do not know enough about Olmec religion to suggest who or what that recipient might be, or even if this is a fair characterization of the logic lying behind these diverse deposits. For the excavators, the category of an offering was based on considerations of visibility, as is clear in their discussion of the stones of Massive Offering 1: “Since they were not left exposed to view . . . we are forced to conclude that the rough stone layers, and the mosaic as well, formed an offering and were of a religious rather than functional or ornamental significance.”16 The categories available in this statement—functional, ornamental, or religious—are presented as mutually exclusive options, with religion or ritual the catch-all explanation remaining once other possibilities are eliminated. But of course, something can be functional, ornamental, and religious all at once: think of an elaborately decorated incense burner, for example, or a particularly dazzling priest’s robe. These are three different axes of categorization rather than a fully realized typology. Other possibilities have been suggested. The deposits of precious greenstone might have served as giant storehouses of wealth.17 They might have been enlivening and ensouling, like the far smaller dedicatory caches found in many later Mesoamerican buildings.18 Perhaps they were even symbolic acts of world renewal.19 Rather than using the category of offering, it may be helpful to ask what it is that the massive offerings do. Severin Fowles advances the term “doings,” used by modern Pueblo communities in the American Southwest, as an alternative to the rigid separation of religion and ritual from other kinds of human activity.20 Doings are “practices characterized by a heightened awareness of the interconnectedness between things,”21 that is, symbolically informed action, on any scale. In this sense, grinding corn can be just as much of a doing as a sacred dance; ritual is not a separate category from other forms of living. This focus on meaningful action resonates with modern Mesoamerican accounts, closer in space if still distant in time from the Olmec of La Venta. As John Monaghan puts it, “Based on the idioms people use to name and describe ceremonies, we see that instead of officiating at a rite, practicing a ritual, or performing a ceremony, officiants are ‘feeding’ or ‘straightening’ or ‘sweeping.’ Among the

MAKING • 25

Figure 1.10. Cross section of Southeast Platform and Massive Offering 4, La Venta, Olmec, Phase II, ca. 700 BCE. Not that Wedel and his

team did not excavate underneath the mosaic pavement. From Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 1952, fig. 19.

Figure 1.11. Mosaic pavement, Massive Offering 4, La Venta,

Figure 1.12. Offering 1943-E, placed above the mosaic pavement

Olmec, Phase II, ca. 700 BCE. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Heizer_105. Secretaría de Cultura-INAHMEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

of Massive Offering 4, La Venta, Olmec, Phase II, ca. 700 BCE. After Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 1952, 55, plate 8; first published in Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 2010, fig. 81, courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation.

Figure 1.13. Rectified drawings of mosaics from Massive Offerings 1 and 4, La Venta, Olmec, Phase II, ca. 700 BCE. Drawings based on Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 1952, fig. 20 (left) and Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 1959, fig. 29 (right); first published in Clark and Colman, “Structure of the Mesoamerican Universe,” 2012, fig. 1.3. Courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation, with colors added by the author.

Mixe, rituals are simply called ‘work.’”22 The same is true in contemporary Maya communities, where, as William Hanks writes, “Even the term ‘work’ applies equally well to what the shaman is doing in performing, what the farmer is doing in burning, and what a woman does in cleaning the household.”23 Work is simultaneously practical and symbolic. Within this universe of work, doings focus attention on interconnection. As Fowles writes, “Doings are simultaneously social, economic, political, cosmological, technological, and so on. They are not, in other words, a separate species of Pueblo behavior. But they are distinguished from other practices by the extent to which they mark and make explicit the mutual entanglement of people, things, and the cosmos.”24 Similarly, writing both about premodern Aztec priests and about modern Nahua, Otomí, and Tepehua practitioners, James Maffie writes, “Ritual specialists

temporarily single out and abstract from the sacred whole various manageable segments for ritual attention. In both cases, there is no essential metaphysical distinction between ritual object and totality.”25 (See further discussion in chapter 3.) Rather than merely propitiating preexisting divine forces, doings constantly remake the world. Guided by these theories, there is no reason to think that Olmec people would necessarily have viewed the deposits we now call massive offerings as separable from the other work of reconstruction and renewal that transformed the shape of the Ceremonial Court at this moment.26 The same kinds of adobe bricks that topped the massive offerings were also used to create a low wall around the entire space of the Ceremonial Court.27 Both buried massive offerings and visible platforms were part of making a new order. Perhaps the most important consequence of the massive offerings, however broadly defined, was that many

MAKING • 27

of the people of La Venta worked together to bring them into being. In emphasizing the communal process of making the massive offering—and the entire remodeling of the Ceremonial Court—it is important to stress that we have little evidence of how egalitarian or hierarchical, how voluntary or coercive, the labor might have been. As Fowles reminds us, “Pueblo doings articulate and institutionalize particular, cosmic configurations—this is how they act upon the state of affairs. Little surprise that they have been seedbeds of debate, contestation, and factionalism no less than they have been sources of group solidarity.”28 While both the quantity of labor and the wide visual access to the massive offerings as they came into being suggest some degree of communal investment in the process, we should not assume that that involvement was equal, although it does appear more egalitarian than later such processes at La Venta or elsewhere in Mesoamerica.

Labor and Community Coordinating the labor necessary to produce these doings required tremendous organization and advance planning, a raw exercise of social power. The massive offerings of La Venta demanded the sweat of many; conceivably, nearly every family in the community might have contributed in some way to the effort. Massive Offering 1 and Massive Offering 4 each seem to have been executed during a single dry season, which in the La Venta region runs for about one hundred days from February to May. As the archaeologists remarked, the steeply dug pits would have washed out during torrential rains, and yet no signs of water damage are visible within either deposit.29 The swift burial of the massive offerings thus refocuses attention on the precious materials and massive quantities of labor required to assemble the works. Quantifying that labor is challenging, but it may well have drawn in much of the community. Robert Heizer, one of the lead excavators at La Venta, estimates that a team of one hundred men, working for eighty days, could have dug and placed Massive Offering 1.30 Massive Offering 4 would have doubled the amount of labor required if both configurations were assembled in parallel during the same period. Yet this significantly understates the number of people who would have been involved in the project, as Gillespie has eloquently observed.31 Digging the holes and placing the serpentine blocks and clay within them was only part of the labor represented by each massive offering. Procuring and preparing the serpentine blocks would have required

28 • UNSEEN ART

additional advance work. Over a thousand tons of serpentine are buried in Massive Offering 1, and possibly an equal amount underlies Massive Offering 4 (see note 11). The nearest sources of serpentine are on the Pacific slope of the Sierra Madre Oriental, the mountain range running through the center of Mexico, over 180 kilometers—much of it vertical—from the alluvial plain on which La Venta is situated (see figure 0.13).32 The sheer presence of so much stone is a monument to the transport and preparation of a scarce and foreign resource. David Grove estimates that the serpentine blocks in Massive Offering 1 represent twenty thousand human round trips to the mountains, assuming that each person would carry a load of approximately 100 pounds (45 kg) at a time.33 Given that individual blocks on the lowest layers of the massive offering each weighed 70–100 pounds (35–45 kg), each stone block on these lowest levels may have represented a single human journey. Carrying, roughly shaping, and polishing these blocks must have required tremendous labor, even before they were grouped and deposited in the ground. Preparations for the doing may have begun years in advance of its placement, especially if those twenty thousand trips involved some of the same people who later placed and buried the stones in the earth. There is a problem of scale between the amount of stone amassed and the population of La Venta, which cannot have exceeded 10,000 or 20,000 people in this period and may have been far smaller.34 Three possibilities suggest themselves: that the estimate of La Venta’s population is too low; that the stone was accumulated over a long period of time; or that people from outside La Venta also contributed to the effort. Whatever the case, there is likely a difference in timescale between the accumulation of greenstone, which would have taken months or years, and its relatively swift placement within the earth. The question of how the serpentine would have been stored before its deposition is also of interest: having seen the heaps of stone accumulate, perhaps for years, their rapid disappearance into the ground would have been all the more memorable.35 Yet even this does not exhaust the calculus of labor. Procuring the colored clays for inclusion in the pit required additional labor and an exquisite knowledge of the surrounding geography. The contrasting colors of clays and sands may have been selected for visual effect, their colors potentially imbued with symbolic properties, but perhaps

it was not only the color of the materials but also the places from which they were taken that made them so precious. Just as the journey to the mountains to acquire serpentine may have taken on the character of a pilgrimage, so, too, the effort to procure these other special materials sent people from La Venta traveling through the surrounding landscape and incorporating it into their center, in ways that had great symbolic resonance. Still other kinds of work were involved as well. Disposing of the soil excavated from the pits posed another challenge. The removal of material and the disposition of the material removed could have been as important—and perhaps even more visible—than the things deposited. Clark and Colman suggest that the clay excavated from the pit into which the serpentine blocks were deposited might have been used to make the adobes that were then visible above ground.36 But the bright colors of the adobe and mortar might suggest the use of other notable materials, brought from significant places (figure 1.14). If this is the case, still another team may have been making adobe bricks while the burial proceeded, increasing yet again the required number of workers. There is also the labor of the women who fed all these workers and supplied them with water. Planning for this massive provisioning must have been like planning for a series of feasts, day after day, and may have been similarly productive of social cohesion and distinctive social capital.37 Even with these other kinds of work added in, the labor needed to deposit the massive offerings was within the possibilities of La Venta’s population but would have involved many of its able-bodied people. One might imagine every family in the community contributing labor to the project, or at least knowing someone who was involved. After years of planning and preparation, during the several months’ span during which each massive offering was made, Complex A must have been crawling with activity: full of people involved in procuring materials, digging the pit, placing stones, making meals, carrying water, carting fill, making adobe bricks, singing, praying, overseeing the work. With so many people involved in the creation of the massive offerings, stories about them would have continued to be retold long after the final stones were buried. Even relative to the amount of construction required for the other rebuilding tasks of this renovation of the Ceremonial Court, the work to be concealed engaged substantial resources. The pressure of completing this work during a single dry season meant that other tasks more basic to

Figure 1.14. Adobe bricks and facing stones atop Massive Offering

1, Southwest Platform, La Venta, Olmec, Phase II, ca. 700 BCE. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Heizer_1258. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

sustenance would have been affected. At La Venta, the peak dry season runs from February to May, and this is precisely the time during which preparations are made for the next year’s principal maize crop: farmers cut and clear the fields in January and February, burn the fields in March, and plant during April and May, just before the first rains come.38 So it is possible to understand the massive offering as a sacrifice, an urgent one, for which other things were forgone or given short shrift—but perhaps also as a kind of planting, yielding results on a longer timescale than the annual agricultural cycle. The timing during the dry season creates an analogy between the deposit of greenstone and the planting of seeds into the earth. As Megan O’Neil has observed in the context of concealed Maya sculpture, the agricultural metaphor of unseen germination, of transformation and growth happening beneath the surface of the earth, was tremendously powerful in ancient Mesoamerica, where the life cycle of maize was never far from anyone’s mind.39

Making, Seeing, and Knowing The mosaics were only visible during the moment of their making. Beneath the shell of the finished adobe platforms, the rest of the deposits were radically and incontrovertibly unseeable. Moreover, in the moment of making, the experience of the work was time-based, changing each day as new materials were added, covering those that had already

MAKING • 29

been placed. As each successive layer covered the previous one, what people could see was the process of making; the final product itself was never visible in its entirety. Moreover, because so much of the community was involved in making the massive offerings, the makers and viewers of this work were largely coterminous. Although visitors might have witnessed some key moments in the process, those who were present through the entire doing must have had strong ties to the community or developed such ties through the shared duration of making and witnessing. During the process of making, the only widely available visualization was a mental one, in which each individual constructed their own model of the successive layers based on their embodied memories of creating and viewing. This emphasis on process returns us to Fowles’s notion of doings as symbolically informed action, in which the meaning resided in the act of making itself and not in subsequent acts of viewing. By placing so much emphasis on consumption of finished goods, capitalism has undoubtedly distorted our understanding of the meaning and value of making.40 Sight was not separable from the embodied experience of being in the place at the time when the work was being made and participating in the labor of its creation. The sight of these ritual deposits was as ephemeral as the doings that created them. Yet sight was, briefly, essential to the massive offering. The efficacy of the entire configuration, but especially the central mosaic, could only be assessed by visual inspection during its making. This moment of looking authorizes us to attempt an iconographic analysis, but one that fully takes into account the challenges of visual access and the polysemic language of ritual and doings. Moreover, iconography cannot be separated from materials: the choices of materials and their placement in three dimensions equally constitute aspects of the symbolism and meaning. At the level of the mosaic itself, the image is hard to comprehend; it is far easier to understand from above. Placing the configuration in a pit, rather than flat on the ground, created viewing angles from which the entire pattern might be apprehended, even if that vantage existed only briefly before the mosaic was covered. An even higher vantage point might have allowed a still greater view of the mosaic, and especially of the juxtaposition of the paired mosaics, separated by over 15 meters (see figure 1.6). Yet even assuming that both deposits were under construction at the same time, it remains uncertain

30 • UNSEEN ART

where such a vantage might have been attained so early in La Venta’s architectural history. It is not clear that any of the surrounding platforms were simultaneously close enough and tall enough to offer a view of both pits at once.41 Excavators apparently built a tower to take their photos of Massive Offering 1 during the 1955 excavation season (see figure 1.3). It is not impossible that similar scaffolding was made in Olmec times to direct or view the work, but the audience granted this privileged view would have been quite limited, in contrast to the much larger group of people who might have viewed the daily developments from the edge of each pit. Perhaps the preferred position for viewing was even higher, that of a deity or ancestor hovering above the site. Other works at La Venta characterize the supernatural gaze as something that looks down from above. For example, on La Venta Stela 3, small figures with supernatural facial features hover in the air above the confrontation between two nearly life-sized standing figures with elaborate headdresses who occupy the bulk of the stone slab (figure 1.15). Supernatural figures also look down on the scenes on Stela 2 and Stela 5. In addition, the recycled pectoral used to form two of the celts in Offering 4 (see the introduction) would originally have depicted a figure floating parallel to the ground and wearing an elaborate headdress, one of several instances of what is nicknamed the “flying Olmec” motif (figure 1.16).42 Worn in its original configuration as a pectoral, this figure would have been positioned at chest height, again enacting a kind of surveying vantage, even as the incised figure faces forward. If supernatural beings were the ultimate audience for these mosaic figures, their powerful vision might have been untroubled by the layers of earth eventually placed above the configurations.43 Yet if vantage was the prerogative of gods and ancestors, for a brief moment, as it was being assembled, the mosaic pavements of Massive Offerings 1 and 4 offered living humans the same kind of privileged sight. Still, simply seeing the mosaics may not have been sufficient to understand them. As Carolyn Tate puts it, the iconography “is definitely not dependent on what one sees but on what one knows, or rather, how one conceptualizes relationships based on that knowledge.”44 In other words, the mosaics demanded both perception and conception, seeing and understanding.45 We have no way of knowing how widely distributed the visual literacy necessary to interpret this configuration was at La Venta. Perhaps the meaning was immediately available to everyone who

looked, but it is equally possible that only a few had full control of the symbolism involved. Many viewers might have had a partial understanding, which granted a generalized sense of the purpose of the mosaic without appreciating its finest nuances. The same might be said of the entire massive offering: perhaps not everyone involved necessarily had an equally rich understanding of the goals of their labor. Interpreting the mosaics may have required specialized iconographic knowledge then, just as it does now. The mosaics have alternately been described as representing a jaguar mask, a stylized map of La Venta, a celt incised with the world tree, a body of water with the Olmec Dragon floating upon it, the skirt of the mother earth, or a fringed shield.46 The range of interpretations suggests something about the way the mosaic operates: it is not intensely mimetic, unlike the deeply naturalistic colossal heads or figural stelae at La Venta. Instead, it uses a richly polysemic symbolic language. It is more akin to a diagram than a picture, but even this underrepresents the relationship, for if it is a model, it is not separable from the world it is modeling.47 How to see the symbolism of the mosaic is complex. Stone and earth mutually define each other, but not always in the same way (figure 1.17). At times, it seems as if the serpentine blocks exist as a frame to showcase the colored earths and clays within them, delimiting the entire configuration from the earth surrounding it. Figuration emerges out of the voids where no serpentine blocks lie: the earth is the figure, and the serpentine blocks are the ground.

Figure 1.15. Stela 3, La Venta, Olmec, ca. 900–400 BCE. Basalt,

2.51 × 2 × .9 m. Parque Museo La Venta, Villahermosa. Photo by the author. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Figure 1.16. Reconstruction of the “flying Olmec” on the jade pectoral recarved to make celts 3 and 4 from Offering 4, La Venta, Olmec, made

before Phase III, ca. 600 BCE. (Offering 4 is illustrated in figure 0.7.) First published in Colman and Clark, “La Venta Offering 4,” 2016, fig. 2.9. Courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation.

MAKING • 31

Figure 1.17. Mosaic pavement in situ, Massive Offering 1, La Venta, Olmec, Phase II, ca. 700 BCE. National Anthropological Archives,

Smithsonian Institution, Heizer_099. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

But the relationship is not stable. The thin outline of stones in the long horizontal void or the thicker vertical line of stones in the center of the configuration reverse the relationship, stones now standing as figure against the earthen ground. In other words, serpentine defines the limits of the figure and also the forms within it. Several parts of the image may participate in multiple relationships at once. The mosaics contain within them many familiar symbols from Olmec iconography, combined in novel ways. The overall enclosure with the cleft at the top resembles the Olmec convention for representing maize.48 At La Venta, this figure with the central cleft seems to refer both to a single germinating kernel of maize and to the entire ear of corn in its husk (see figures 1.18a, b); the central cleft also occurs on the heads of supernatural beings such as the Maize God. This makes it clear that, in one interpretation, the cleft at the north is the upper edge of the diagram, contrary to what Drucker and Heizer believed when they saw a jaguar mask in the configuration. That the later Pavement 2 (see figure 1.32) is also

32 • UNSEEN ART

oriented with the cleft to the north likewise suggests that this is salient. Within the cleft enclosure, the mosaic contains a quincunx, another figure frequently repeated at La Venta: a symbol of the five directions, in which the center is represented as a vertical bar (figure 1.18).49 Above this image of the five directions lies a shape resembling a downwardfacing E. Similar figures occur elsewhere in the Olmec corpus, for example on Loma del Zapote-Potrero Nuevo Altar 2, where it appears as a kind of skyband that is supported by dwarves (figure 1.19).50 The downward-facing E is a motif consistently associated with the upper part of images, perhaps a simplification of the more elaborate skyband seen in other contexts. At La Venta, it also appears in the headdresses of the supernaturals on Monument 25/26 and Monument 27, directly above a five-celt headband, which Karl Taube has argued is another way of representing the five directions (figure 1.20).51 Within the massive offering mosaic, the placement of this figure within the cleft enclosure suggests the deeply recursive structure of Olmec art.

a

b

c

(ABOVE) Figure 1.18.  Incised

celts with maize and quincunx, La Venta, Olmec, 900–400 BCE; (a–b) from Offering 1942-C; (c) from Offering 2. Drawings by Amanda Chacón, after Drucker, La Venta, 1952, fig. 47 (a–b), and Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 1959, fig. 35 (c).

(ABOVE RIGHT) Figure 1.19.  Altar 2, Loma del Zapote-Potrero Nuevo. The dwarves appear to be holding up a skyband, figured with forms like the downward-facing E in the La Venta mosaics. Courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation. (RIGHT) Figure 1.20.  Downward-facing

E in deity headdress, La Venta, Olmec, ca. 900–400 BCE. (a) Monument 25/26 and (b) Monument 27. Courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation.

a

If the cleft enclosure represents maize (or the space in the earth from which maize grows), this image pictures not just the five directions but also the sky above them, within its confines. The appendages at the bottom might suggest roots or vegetal growth.52 Microcosm and macrocosm at once, the mosaic represents both the endless potentiality stored within a single kernel of maize and the structure of the entire universe. The mosaic configuration is placed flat against the earth, but it invites three-dimensional visualization. As Kent Reilly and Carolyn Tate have both argued, many Olmec images can be projected into three dimensions so that they are understood as perpendicular, rather than parallel, to the

b

surfaces on which they are created.53 In this way, the very simplest of diagrams, the quincunx, could be read not as a flat configuration on the surface on which it is represented, but rather with the central vertical bar rising upward, like a world tree linking heavens, earth, and underworld (figure 1.21). Support for this kind of visualization is provided by Olmec celt caches at La Venta and elsewhere, where many celts are laid flat against the ground but others are planted in the earth, perpendicular to the rest of the array, often in significant positions near the center of cruciform arrangements (figure 1.22). Based on these parallels, it is possible to imagine the massive offering mosaic projected into three

MAKING • 33

(ABOVE) Figure 1.21.  Three-dimensional

visualization of the celt shown in figure 1.18c. Illustration by Dale Mertes.

(LEFT) Figure 1.22.  Offering

1942-C, Mound A-2, La Venta, Olmec, Phase IV, ca. 500 BCE. The placement of two celts perpendicular to others in this cruciform cache provides a model for visualizing the massive offering mosaics. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

dimensions (figure 1.23). The inverted E would hover over the quincunx below it, as if it were the sky above the fivedirectional cosmogram. The quincunx itself could be envisioned with the rectangular bar at the center standing upright, surrounded by the stepped crenellations at the four intercardinal directions, also rising from the surface. These forms recall figures in the basal registers of several stelae made in the centuries after La Venta’s occupation (figure 1.24), suggesting a relationship with the earth; alternatively, Taube has suggested that a simpler

34 • UNSEEN ART

crenellated form consisting of two square projections, which is nicknamed the double merlon, is the Olmec symbol for green, in which case these forms could also be read as particularly elaborate vegetation rising from all four directions.54 In the mosaic, these crenellated forms are defined by reciprocal earth-filled voids that have a distinctive shape: an inverted E with long and tapering outer ends, a shape slightly reminiscent of the rain clouds on Chalcatzingo Monument 1 (figure 1.25).55 If these parallels are correct, the configuration stages

Figure 1.23. Three-dimensional visualization of the mosaic from Massive Offering 1, La Venta. Illustration by Dale Mertes.

a number of dazzling inversions: earth becomes sky and rain, hovering above the serpentine blocks placed on top of it, while serpentine becomes earth and vegetation, coating the world’s surface with precious stone. The forms are complementary, mutually constituted through touch. The vertical bar and four stepped motifs rise up from the surface, representing the five directions, while the voids, hovering above, might symbolize rain falling from the sky. Of course, because the massive offering was a threedimensional configuration, it would have been possible to

make these kinds of spatial relationships explicit, burying symbols of sky above the rest of the arrangement or incorporating a vertically oriented allusion to the world tree, as in other Middle Formative caches (see figure 1.22).56 That the authors of the La Venta massive offering avoided this choice highlights the symbolic potential of collapsing space and representation into a figure of compressed potential. This image holds within it all the possibilities for germination, just like a single kernel of corn. Its planting in the earth was entirely appropriate to its iconography.57

MAKING • 35

Figure 1.24. Stela 5, Izapa, ca. 300 BCE–250 CE. Note the stepped

Figure 1.25. Petroglyph 1, Chalcatzingo, ca. 700–500 BCE. Note

forms in the triangles in the basal band. Courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation.

the form of the rain clouds. Drawing by David C. Grove, courtesy of David C. Grove.

But this is just one part of the doing, and it cannot be separated from what surrounds it. If the mosaic compresses a diagram—or perhaps better, a paradigm—of the entire universe into a single plane, the larger ritual action also contains several other representations of cosmic order within it.58 What was laid out on a single plane in the mosaic is reiterated in three dimensions in the entire configuration, where the totality of layers of greenstone, mosaic, colored clays, and adobe may also envision a stratified universe that models underworld, earth’s surface, and sky.59 At a smaller scale, the cruciform configuration of celts placed into the colored clays above the Southeast Platform mosaic also referenced the five directions, here emphasizing the cardinal, rather than the intercardinal, points; at the center was a wooden object, painted with red pigment. The paired mounds enacted yet another kind of vision of a totality, here as a conjugation of a dual pair. Multivalent and recursive gestures animated the entire process. If these massive offerings—or doings—and their component parts are understood not as images but as instantiations of world order, it is equally possible that seeing no longer mattered once the configuration was correctly

positioned. What mattered instead was the process of ordering the components. Doing so, with the proper attendant behavior, establishes a paradigm for other parts of the world to follow, in ways that resonate with Fowles’s description of Pueblo doings, thousands of years later: “Pueblo doings deal in what we might call ‘material connections’ rather than signs, traditionally conceived. Theirs is a sensuous semiotics, a way of bringing places into being as situated networks of people and things. Doings neither represent nor mediate; they make.”60 Guided by this analogy, we can see that the fact of the existence of the work and the performative process of making may have mattered more than eventual disposition. The sources of the materials and the ways they were brought together both symbolized and literally enacted the joining together of disparate places. Rather than a representation, requiring an audience, they were a re-creation, which simply required makers. The configurations were vitalized by the ephemeral actions of their makers; they continued to exert powerful influence even though concealed. In Tate’s words, they “created a substrate of numinous presence that sanctified and vivified La Venta’s surface.”61

36 • UNSEEN ART

That they could have been verified—although they were not—mattered less than the way they lived on in the memory of all the participants.

The Art of Concealment How is a buried offering, hidden underground, unlike a sculpture or pyramid displayed on the earth’s surface? Obviously, it has only limited visibility at the time of its making, in contrast to the perpetual visibility of a public monument. The audience of the buried thing is limited in number but also constrained by time and place. Only those people who were in that place at that moment would have full knowledge of the work, though stories and rumors might have circulated more widely. In this way, an unseen monument may serve to produce social cohesion among the group who were able to witness or participate in its creation.62 In the case of Massive Offerings 1 and 4, that group might have included the entire population of La Venta, the shared labor and knowledge of the hidden doing defining a still-nascent order and setting the community apart from those who did not know what lay concealed. Because of the months-long timescale of the creation of the entire doing, it is unlikely that too many outsiders stayed for the entire duration, although some might have come to witness particularly heightened moments in its making or brought raw material for eventual inclusion. The whole unfolding experience, though, likely included the entire community. If the conception and direction of the work were unequal, making still bound together its practitioners and their descendants through shared memory of a collective feat of labor. Although written or pictorial records might have been kept, they paled in magnitude and impact compared to the partial and conflicting embodied memories of the numerous individuals involved in the process of making.63 SUBS E Q UE N T MASS I V E O F F E RIN G S

No attempt was ever made to reenter Massive Offering 1 or Massive Offering 4, but the Ceremonial Court was rebuilt two more times after the renovation that accompanied their deposition. Each of these new renovations was accompanied by another accumulation of greenstone in a deep pit. The later massive offerings at La Venta each recapitulated some elements of Massive Offerings 1 and 4 while transforming, discarding, or adding others. Part of what allowed change to happen was that precedent did not remain visible. With the massive offerings buried,

words about them—and about the doings that had generated them—were the primary way these works were known. Conflicting, divergent, or inaccurate accounts of the massive offerings and other buried objects might have spread simultaneously. At the same time, the variable forms reflect the necessary mutability of doings, which are composed to respond both to the weight of tradition and to the specific circumstances of their moment of execution. Significantly, these later doings were less complex in their layering and lacked the kinds of figural or diagrammatic mosaics of the Phase II gestures (table 1.1). They offered fewer rewards of accretive seeing and collectively engaged less and less of La Venta’s population while simultaneously shifting the emphasis from communal to individual wealth. In short, later doings at La Venta supported the development of inequality at the city.

The Memory of Labor: Massive Offering 3, Phase III A century later, Massive Offering 3 had the same basic elements as the previous doings: a large pit, serpentine pavements, and colored clays.64 But it has been stripped of all nuance, the scale of the gesture amplified beyond feasibility of completion within a single dry season. Massive Offering 3 required a grandiose mobilization of labor. Indeed, it seems as if collective labor was what was most powerfully remembered about the earlier doings. Some of the more material-intensive and esoteric elements of the first massive offerings—the mosaic, the shifting colors of clay, the staggering quantities of greenstone—were not repeated. Massive Offering 3 initiated yet another rebuilding of the Ceremonial Court, which raised the plaza floor level and refurbished all the surrounding buildings. Placed in the center of the Ceremonial Court, Massive Offering 3 was the largest but also the shallowest of the massive offerings (figure 1.26). It was a single, rather than a paired deposit: dug on the central longitudinal axis of the site, it inaugurated a shift from bilateral symmetry to a new focus on the centerline.65 This large, shallow pit represented an increase in volume— and a corresponding increase in the labor of excavation— from the previous episode. Displacing over 60,000 cubic feet (1,700 m3) of earth, archaeologists claimed that it exceeded the scale of the combined excavations of Massive Offerings 1 and 4. But far less serpentine was involved in this massive offering: a mere 50 tons, as opposed to the nearly 1,000 tons of Massive Offering 1 alone (see table 1.1).66

MAKING • 37

Table 1.1. Massive offerings at La Venta

MASSIVE OFFERING

LOCATION

PHASE

CONTAINS

DIMENSIONS OF PIT

VOLUME OF PIT

TONS OF STONE

REFERENCES

Pavement 1 (M.O. 4)

Southeast Platform

II

mosaic, stone rubble underneath, excavations only went 60 cm down

unknown

unknown

unknown

Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 49–59; Drucker and Heizer, “Commentary,” 47–48, 54–55; Heizer, “New Observations on La Venta,” 10; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 152–157

15 m N–S × 19 m E–W at top, narrowing to 13 × 9.5 m at bottom 7.5 m deep

645 m3 (but see note 66 for the possibility of 1,500 m3)

1,000

Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 78–108; Drucker and Heizer, “Commentary,” 47–48, 54–55; Heizer, “New Observations on La Venta,” 10; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 141–152

23.5 × 23.5 m 3.9 m deep

1,700–2,000 m3

50 (but see note 66 for the possibility of 300–500 tons)

Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 39–41, 58–59, 130–133; Heizer, “New Observations on La Venta,” 10; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 157–165

15 m N–S × 6 m E–W 4.95 m deep

425 m3

25

Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 42–43, 46–50, 128–129; Heizer, “New Observations on La Venta,” 10; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 190–211

above: cruciform celt cache (Offering 1943-E), pink clay fill and adobe platform M.O. 1

Southwest Platform

II

mosaic, 28 layers of stone blocks in colored clays underneath above: 6 celts (Offering 1942-E), pink clay fill, and adobe platform

M.O. 3

Center of Ceremonial Court

III

6 layers of serpentine blocks in green clay, surrounded by trench with more serpentine blocks; center of pit open for at least some rain Above: cruciform celt cache (Offering 10), also Offerings 8, 12, 13, 1943-C, 1943-D

M.O. 2

Mound A-2

IV

single layer of polished serpentine blocks on red clay, jade beads underneath at least two blocks, walls of pit painted Above: cruciform celt cache (Offering 1942-C), also Offerings 9, 11, as well as burials (Offerings 1942-A, 1942-B, 1942-D, 1943-F)

MASSIVE OFFERING

LOCATION

PHASE

CONTAINS

DIMENSIONS OF PIT

VOLUME OF PIT

TONS OF STONE

REFERENCES

Pavement 2 (M.O. 5)

South of Mound A-3

IV?

mosaic only

mosaic 4.8 × 4.35 m located 50 cm below drift sand, 1.8 m below 1940 ground level

not present

< 10

Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 74–75; Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 117–118; Drucker and Heizer, “Commentary,” 55–56; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 223–225

a sixth?

100 m north IV?

stone pavement only

on surface

not present

unknown

Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 233; Grove, Discovering the Olmecs, 63

of Complex A

Moreover, the elaborate diagrams of the prior massive offerings were not repeated. Instead, six layers of polished serpentine blocks were placed in the bottom of the pit and laid in green clay, forming a pavement 19 meters by 20 meters in area (figure 1.27). The largest blocks were concentrated on the lower and upper levels, with blocks in the intervening layers successively smaller; a gap between the third and fourth layers divided the stones into two groupings. More serpentine blocks were placed haphazardly in a trench dug around the perimeter of the serpentine pavement.67 Perhaps because of a mismatch between available labor and ambition, the pit dug for Massive Offering 3 was not entirely filled in before the rains began, unlike the other massive offerings, and a narrow ditch down the center of the pit remained exposed to the elements before being refilled.68 While the amount of greenstone placed in the earth diminished, a greater number of smaller objects were added above the six-layer pavement. As the pit was being refilled, a cruciform arrangement of thirty-eight serpentine and jade celts was placed on a prepared bed of red clay above the northern end of the serpentine pavement, recalling the cruciform celt arrangement above Massive Offering 4.69 After the episode of rain, people placed still more things—groupings of celts, pigments, and other materials—as the remainder of the pit was filled in.70 (Offering 4, discussed in the introduction, was one of these small deposits placed above the massive offering.) It is hard to

generalize about these smaller deposits, which are quite diverse in scale, placement, and materials. They seem less coordinated than the combination of colored clays, greenstone pavement, and cruciform cache that is repeated in this and other massive offerings. These smaller gestures would necessarily have had smaller audiences; perhaps they represent the doings of individuals, lineages, or other corporate groups, rather than the volition of the community as a whole.71

The Growth of Inequality: Massive Offering 2, Phase IV After another lapse of approximately a century, Massive Offering 2 was the least visible, the least expansive, and the least inclusive of these doings. It accompanied the final rebuilding of Complex A, ca. 500 BCE.72 The pit for the serpentine pavement was excavated into the low stepped pyramid that formed the northern border of Complex A, one of the most significant spaces of the entire compound (figure 1.28).73 In contrast to previous deposits, the pit for Massive Offering 2 was rectangular rather than square, perhaps to allow it to fit within the confines of the stepped pyramid. Its placement inside this tall mound might have restricted access, making the excavation less of a public matter than its predecessors. Furthermore, the smaller scale of the massive offering, relative to La Venta’s growing population, meant that this doing need not have involved as much of the community as previous ones.

MAKING • 39

Figure 1.26. North-south profile through Massive Offering 3, La Venta, Olmec, Phase III, ca. 600 BCE. After Drucker, Heizer, and Squier,

Excavations at La Venta, 1959, figs. 9 and 10, with adjustment of the vertical scale to match the horizontal scale; first published in Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 2010, fig. 41. Courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation.

Figure 1.27. Serpentine pavement, Massive Offering 3, La Venta,

Olmec, Phase III, ca. 600 BCE. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Heizer_1166. Secretaría de CulturaINAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

40 • UNSEEN ART

Massive Offering 2 was the smallest of the massive offerings, containing the least amount of serpentine; wealth was instead concentrated in the elaborate human burials placed in conjunction with the deposit. The pit was only 15 meters north–south by 6 meters east–west, and 4.95 meters deep, displacing just 15,000 cubic feet of soil (425 m3; figure 1.29; see table 1.1).74 A single layer of shaped serpentine blocks was arranged like a pavement at the bottom of the pit, on top of a layer of “blood red clayey sand,” and covered with a layer of olive and brown clay (figure 1.30).75 Although the pavement was not completely excavated and the mass of the serpentine was not calculated, this single layer clearly involved far less stone than any of the previous massive offerings: my very rough estimate of the amount of serpentine involved in the pavement is approximately 25 tons.76 Further, only the upper surfaces of the serpentine blocks were worked, while the other surfaces were left rough, a reduction of preparatory labor that prioritized visible surfaces, in contrast with previous practice.77 In addition, the walls of the pit were smoothly plastered with yellow clay and ornamented with broad horizontal bands of color, 40 cm wide, alternating purplish-red, the unpainted yellow of the clay, and black.78 In the place of massive quantities of serpentine, other kinds of wealth were emphasized in Massive Offering 2. When Heizer and colleagues returned to La Venta in 1967, they discovered seven small jade beads under two of the serpentine blocks in the pavement; others may have been placed elsewhere, since the pavement was not completely excavated.79 The smaller offerings above the pavement were richer as well: the familiar cruciform arrangement

in this case consisted of thirty-seven celts, all made out of precious jade (see figure 1.22).80 Additional deposits were added to the east and west of the centerline, each consisting of nine celts and approximately one thousand jade beads.81 For the first time, lavish human burials were associated with a serpentine pavement. As a result, while Massive Offering 2 may still have involved the labor of much of the community, the doing was now especially associated with the individuals interred in or near it. The burials were notably different from one another. A stone sarcophagus containing the remains of a single body was placed directly over the midpoint of the refilled pit.82 Another body wearing jade adornments was placed into a hole dug into the fill of the massive offering pit, thirty-five jade celts were distributed over the body, and the entire arrangement was covered with eleven large basalt columns.83 Further, an elaborate tomb, also made of basalt columns, was positioned so that its southern half lay over the refilled pit for the massive offering (figure 1.31). Either two or three secondary human burials were found inside this tomb, along with some of the richest grave goods found anywhere at La Venta.84 Still another potential burial lay within the red clay cap between the basalt tomb and the pile of basalt columns. It consisted of a scatter of artifacts on a red clay bed: a pair of jade earspools, thirty-four jade beads, a

headless serpentine figurine, a mano, and a metate fragment. This burial was considerably less elaborate than the other burials in Mound A-2, and Colman suggests that it might be either a sacrificial victim or a burial disturbed by excavation and reburied.85 Collectively, these burials shifted the meaning of the massive offering. What had begun as an inclusive gesture became a tool of inequality. This deposit of wealth was more tightly associated with some individuals in the community than with others; the knowledge about it was no longer so uniformly accessible. Long-standing dynamics of visibility and concealment changed dramatically in this final phase of construction at La Venta. The entire Ceremonial Court was covered with a cap of red clay, as much as 5 meters deep, concealing and unifying the structures that had come before; a line of natural basalt columns delimited the edges of the court, screening the activities within it from sight.86 Like the placement of Massive Offering 2 within a pyramid, these changes diminished the overall accessibility of activities within the Ceremonial Court.

New Visibility: Pavement 2, Phase IV At the same time, other things that had once been hidden became visible. Just to the south of the Ceremonial Court, another mosaic pavement was placed on the surface of the earth (figure 1.32).87 The pavement appears to be a

Figure 1.28. Reconstruction of Complex A during the creation of Massive Offering 2, La Venta, Olmec, Phase IV, ca. 500 BCE. The massive

offering was placed inside Mound A-2, the stepped pyramid in the foreground of this image. Rendering by Susan D. Gillespie and Michael Volk, courtesy of Susan D. Gillespie.

MAKING • 41

Figure 1.29. North-south profile through Massive Offering 2, La Venta, Olmec, Phase IV, ca. 500 BCE. After Drucker, Heizer, and Squier,

Excavations at La Venta, fig. 127, with adjustment of the vertical scale to match the horizontal scale; first published in Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 2010, fig. 47. Courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation.

Figure 1.30. Serpentine pavement, Massive Offering 2, La Venta,

Olmec, Phase IV, ca. 500 BCE. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Heizer_1111. Secretaría de CulturaINAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

42 • UNSEEN ART

simplified form of the same figure created by the mosaics of Massive Offerings 1 and 4, generations earlier in Phase II, but instead of being concealed, it was left visible on the surface. There were no layers of serpentine blocks beneath it. Further, like the stones of the Phase IV Massive Offering 2, the stones of Pavement 2 were only worked on the visible surface and left rough on the undersides. Lying just outside the walled enclosure of the Ceremonial Court, this pavement was exposed to a larger audience than any of its predecessors. The notable continuities between the earliest massive offering mosaics and Pavement 2, separated by approximately two centuries, again suggest some kind of perishable record-keeping at La Venta. But, like the buried massive offerings, Pavement 2 is not an exact copy of the earlier configurations. It does have significant points of similarity with the buried Phase II mosaics, including the north–south alignment with the cleft to the north, the horizontally oriented void within the upper part of the figure, and the four crenellated voids beneath it, suggesting that these are the most salient features of the configuration. But it lacks some of the fuller complexity of the earlier mosaics, including the colored clays, the pendant forms at the south side of the configuration, and the central vertical element. There are many possible explanations for these differences, from intentional adjustments to make this configuration appropriate for its more public placement and unburied state, to a loss of knowledge on the part of the ritual specialists who transmitted the memory of the earlier doings. Like its Phase II predecessors, the configuration

Figure 1.31. Basalt tomb with sarcophagus in background, Mound A-2, La Venta, Olmec, Phase IV, ca. 500 BCE. National Anthropological

Archives, Smithsonian Institution, Heizer_1159. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

possessed a power and symbolism that might not have been fully understood by all who saw it. It is also possible that there was yet another late pavement to the north of the site, again lying exposed on the surface of the earth in a more public space than the ceremonial enclosure.88 Thus, in Phase IV, while certain kinds of things became more difficult to see at La Venta, previously esoteric imagery was made more public. Dynamics of visibility and concealment shifted along with changes in the concentration of wealth during La Venta’s final years. THE P OW E R O F T H E V I S I B LE

Staggering though the massive offerings are, it is important to emphasize that they pale in scale compared to other construction projects at La Venta, especially during the later phases. The largest of the massive offerings displaced at most 77,000 cubic feet of earth (2,000 m3); La Venta’s Pyramid C-1, by its final stage, comprised at least 3.5 million cubic feet (99,000 m3; figure 1.33).89 Elsewhere

in Mesoamerica during this period, giant earthworks recently revealed by LiDAR mapping required more labor still. The massive platforms that Takeshi Inomata and colleagues are beginning to document at Ceibal, Aguada Fénix, and other Middle Formative Maya cities had yet another effect on community, not crystallizing power like a pyramid, yet also not containing hidden riches on the scale of the La Venta massive offerings.90 Other kinds of labor involved in the massive offerings, such as the transport and working of the serpentine blocks, would have added to the calculus of effort. Still, especially as the amount of serpentine declined in later massive offerings and the pyramid grew larger, massive offerings ceased to be the primary way that people of La Venta came together for communal labor. Over time at La Venta, there was an erosion in the power of the unseen, replaced by more and more visible markers of power and inequality. Both the pyramid and the massive offerings required communal labor. Indeed, that shared labor may have

MAKING • 43

had the power to shape community, as Patricia Plunket and Gabriela Uruñuela have argued was the case in the construction of the Great Pyramid of Cholula, centuries later.91 But pyramid and buried deposit differed in significant ways. Because a massive offering was no longer visible after its deposition, other processes were required to sustain its memory. As Jillian Mollenhauer puts it, “The invisible presence works as a powerful mnemonic device because the threat of forgetting is stronger and the practices of remembering to counter that threat must be that much more potent.”92 This strong but unverified belief in the buried massive offerings contrasted with the visual confirmation that the pyramid provided for the evidence of its own making. More importantly, though, the sight of the pyramid was available to insiders and outsiders alike at La Venta, perhaps even the first hint of the site to be visible from a distance. Its tremendous mass was an unquestionable demonstration of the power to mobilize labor and a claim of privileged relationship to the landscape, especially if the pyramid sought in some way to represent or become

a

a mountain.93 Although members of the community who had labored in the pyramid’s creation had a different kind of knowledge of the pyramid than visitors who merely saw the final construction, both groups were affected by the pyramid’s visible mass. This differs significantly from the way in which a buried massive offering defined boundaries between those who knew and those who did not. The pyramid stratified seeing. Unlike the equalizing views of the earlier massive offerings, which could be accessed by anyone at the edge of the large pits, albeit briefly, the view from the top of the pyramid is not the same as the view from the bottom. The pyramid made permanent a difference in sight, separating those who would be allowed to experience godlike vantage and those who would merely witness that experience of seeing from below. Thus, in contrast to the communal thrust of the massive offerings, La Venta’s pyramid literally reshaped hierarchy within the community. Unlike a buried offering, the pyramid provided possibilities for accretive growth. While much of the pyramid’s

b

Figure 1.32. Pavement 2, La Venta, Olmec, Phase IV, ca. 500 BCE. (a) Photo National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution;

(b) drawing first published in Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 2010, fig. 144, courtesy of the New World Archaeological Foundation. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

44 • UNSEEN ART

Figure 1.33. Pyramid C, La Venta, Olmec, ca. 900–400 BCE. Photo © Kenneth Garrett. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction

authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

history remains unclear, it is not a single-phase construction: Drucker and Heizer, and later Rebecca González Lauck, found compelling evidence for at least one, if not more, amplifications of the construction.94 Like many later Mesoamerican pyramids, it might have begun small, and grown only through successive generations of labor. Conversely, with each remaking of the Ceremonial Court, the people of La Venta consistently chose to undertake a new massive offering rather than to amplify an existing one. The building of the pyramid and the creation of a buried deposit thus show different ways of relating the past and the future. In digging down to place massive offerings, burials, and smaller deposits, the residents of La Venta must have frequently come into contact with their own buried history. But if so, any act of burial became a gesture that simultaneously looked back to the past and forward to the future, imagining the possibility of its own later rediscovery. The offerings themselves may also be future directed, doings created with the hope of

assuring positive outcomes. They were made in keeping with past precedent and in anticipation of memories to come. Likewise, successive renovations of the pyramid both connected residents to their ancestors’ labor and laid the foundations for future generations’ work. At La Venta, past, present, and future were inextricably linked through the community’s labor, even as that labor cemented inequality within it. Even more than labor, it was memory that brought La Venta together. That memory was not just of things but of processes. It was not the static configurations of stones that we call Massive Offering 1 or Massive Offering 4 that blazed in Olmec memory, but rather the days- or monthslong spans over which these assemblages were brought into being, made meaningful by people singing, praying, burning aromatic copal resin, offering blood. It is in these ephemeral actions that true power resided. Despite their early date, the massive offerings of La Venta illustrate themes that will continue to be of

MAKING • 45

importance throughout Mesoamerican history. As in later examples, there is a central emphasis on making and dedication, processes that created an active doing that might no longer require human vision to continue to operate once it was set in motion. At the same time, there is a strong possibility that the work addressed supernatural audiences untroubled by obstacles of burial; for human viewers, the

46 • UNSEEN ART

embodied experience of being present for the activation of the work continued to be remembered and talked about long after the work itself became hard to see. Finally, at La Venta, we also see the beginnings of another theme that will continue throughout Mesoamerican history: the power of the unseen to drive inequality, to create social difference between those who can see and those who may not.

CHA P TER 2

VISION Seeing Maya Lintels

I

n the Sala Maya of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, an array of oblong stones lines the wall (figure 2.1). Intricately carved with images of Maya kings, queens, and courtiers, the objects appear similar at first glance. But in fact two very different genres of monument are displayed side by side. On the left are two lintels, which would have spanned the doorways of elite palaces. The figures would have been positioned horizontally, not vertically, perpendicular to the viewer who would pass underneath the carving when entering the building. On the right are three stelae, which would have been placed in the plazas of Maya cities such as Calakmul and Yaxchilan, oriented much as they are in the museum today. The present display highlights how both lintels and stelae drew from the same playbook of royal representation; they were likely carved by the same workshops of artists for a similar set of patrons. But their original contexts produced significantly different experiences of viewing, which are elided by the ways that they are displayed in the museum today. In fact, neither class of object was made for the kind of looking that museums encourage. There really is no good way to look at the underside of a Maya lintel when it is poised over a doorway (figure 2.2).

It exists in a liminal space where stopping to look closely is discouraged—if not rendered impossible—by the architecture. The lintel is either not far above the head of an average Maya viewer or several meters above, depending on the site; to look carefully at the lintel, you must stand in the doorway, obstructing both light and passage. Craning your neck, the view is partial, distorted, and uncomfortable. Tempting though it is to throw aside decorum and lie flat on your back on the threshold to see the lintel as a whole, this, too, is unsatisfactory: it places you at least a body length away from the carving, too far away to read some of the less prominent texts or to appreciate the subtle details of the scene. If you could sit on a bench or throne inside the room whose doorway the lintel spans, you might sometimes be in a position to see a carved lintel, but that view would be oblique and distant. Morning or afternoon light at certain times of year might have illuminated particular lintels, making their figures more visible, but at other times, lintels would have been cast in shadow or overwhelmed by the contrast with the bright sunlight outside (figure 2.3). Thus, while not absolutely unseen, like the Olmec buried offerings discussed in the previous chapter, Maya lintels were made to be seen imperfectly.

  47

Figure 2.1. Lintels and stelae on display in the Sala Maya, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City. From left to right: Yaxchilan Lintel

55, Yaxchilan Lintel 43, Calakmul Stela 51, Yaxchilan Stela 18, and Yaxchilan Stela 9. Photo by Ricardo Alvarado Tapia, 2021. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

In their original architectural contexts, Maya lintels did not permit the kind of sustained, careful, and iconographically focused viewing that they have so often received in modern times and that their intricate detail seems to reward. Instead, their viewing was often oblique, casual, and incomplete. For this reason, they pose an important challenge for art history. While close looking might have been possible in the workshop while the lintels were coming into being, once they were in place, they could never have been seen so closely again. Their imperfect visibility played into Mesoamerican theories of vision as an elite power; they were created to respond as much to the demands of the casual glance as to those of the more careful gaze. Yet the frequency of dedication statements on lintels may also suggest that looking was not the point at all, that making and dedicating the carving mattered far more than any subsequent act of viewing. What’s more, I argue, the same may have been true for even more public genres of sculpture, like the stela.

48 • UNSEEN ART

A LINTE L CE NS U S

The Classic Mayan term for a lintel, pakab tuunil or pakbu tuun, literally signifies “face-down stone,” an unmistakable reference to the traditional but confounding placement of carving on the underside of the lintel.1 Just over 160 carved and painted lintels survive today, created between the fifth and fifteenth centuries CE at more than thirty cities in the Maya lowlands (figures 2.4 and 2.5a). They ornamented a variety of different kinds of buildings, from residential palaces to temples atop pyramids. It is hard to know how widespread the practice of decorating lintels originally was, since wood—surely the most common material for this architectural support—is so vulnerable to decay, and even now-blank stones might once have been painted. Lintels were often pulled down or destroyed to cause buildings to collapse, an act of termination that could have had reverential or purely destructive aims, but one that undoubtedly affects the present sample.2 The predominant trend is for carving on the underside of lintels, occasionally supplemented by carving on the outer edge as well (figure 2.5b).

The majority of the extant Maya lintels are carved on their undersides; some are carved on both underside and outer edge, others are carved on the outer edge alone, and three surviving lintels are carved on the underside as well as the inner and outer edges (table 2.1). Far more remaining lintels show no signs of decoration. The overall impression is of a variety of local solutions to the challenge of marking the doorway space rather than a single, unified tradition. Surviving carved lintels are concentrated in five distinct regions: the Usumacinta River area, the central Peten heartland, the Puuc hills, the site of Chichen Itza and its dependencies, and the Caribbean coast. There seem to be some regional patterns: the carvings on the undersides of lintels are typically oriented parallel to the outer walls of the structure in most of the Maya region (e.g., figure 2.19), but at Chichen Itza and neighboring sites, they are rotated ninety degrees to be parallel to the doorjambs (figure 2.5c; see also figures 2.7, 2.22, 2.24, and 2.28).3 Surviving lintels from the Peten sites of Tikal, El Zotz, and Dzibanche are carved out of multiple planks of wood, while in the Usumacinta region, carved lintels are exclusively made of monolithic slabs of stone, and along

the Caribbean coast, stone lintels were painted rather than carved (figure 2.5d). Different materials imposed different constraints of form and placement. Wooden lintels at Tikal and elsewhere were typically placed above interior doorways, with the outermost wooden lintel, which would be exposed to the elements, frequently left unornamented.4 The long planks of wood could span wide and deep apertures (Figure 2.6; see also figures 2.10 and 2.20), but cultivating the great sapodilla or chicozapote (Manilkara zapote) trees whose trunks composed these lintels required careful forest management.5 In the Usumacinta region, stone lintels almost exclusively ornamented exterior doorways that were made shorter and narrower by the constraints of the stone slab (see figures 2.2 and 2.3). The Yucatan Peninsula displays a combination of both traditions, with lintels spanning both inner and outer doorways; both stone and wooden lintels were found at Chichen Itza, with reports of additional wooden lintels at the Puuc sites of Uxmal and Kabah.6 Traces of multicolored paint survive on quite a few carved stone lintels, often with notable episodes of repainting (see figures 2.15, 2.28, and 2.32).7 Carved wooden lintels

(LEFT) Figure 2.2. Trying to photograph a Maya lintel in situ, Structure 22, Yaxchilan. Photo by C. Mehrl Bennett. Secretaría de CulturaINAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. (ABOVE) Figure 2.3. Lintel 14 in situ, Structure 20, Yaxchilan. The inner portion of a lintel is always shadowed by the architecture to a greater or lesser extent. Photo by Linda Schele, © David Schele, courtesy Ancient Americas at LACMA (ancientamericas.org). Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

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Figure 2.4. Map of the Maya area. Sites with surviving lintels are marked with triangles; relevant Maya sites without surviving lintels are

indicated by circles. Map by Omar Alcover Firpi.

a

b

c

d

Figure 2.5. Maps showing regional distribution of Maya lintels (a) by period; (b) by location of decoration (on edge, underside, or both); (c)

by orientation of decoration (direct, meaning parallel to door jambs; or oblique, meaning parallel to exterior walls); and (d) by materials (stone, wood, or painted stucco over stone). Uncolored areas indicate missing data. Maps by Omar Alcover Firpi.

Table 2.1. Maya lintels with known provenance, organized by region, site, number, materials, and location of carving

SITE

LINTELS

STONE

WOOD

EDGE

UNDERSIDE

BOTH

ALL 3

CITATIONS

Bonampak

4

4

4

Arellano Hernández, “Diálogo con los abuelos”

El Chicozapote

4

4

4

Maler, Researches, 2:101–104; Scherer and Golden, Revisiting Maler’s Usumacinta, 72

La Pasadita

4

4

4

Golden, “La Pasadita”

Laxtunich/ El Túnel

4

4

4

Houston, A Maya Universe in Stone

Retalteco/ Tecolote

1

1

1

Houston, A Maya Universe in Stone, 50–52; Houston et al., “A Yaxchilan-Style Lintel”

Site R

5

5

5

Kerr, “The Site R Panels”

Yaxchilan

59

59

Usumacinta

7

48

4

Graham and von Euw, Yaxchilan; Graham, Yaxchilan (1979); Graham, Yaxchilan (1982); Tate, Yaxchilan

Peten Dzibanche

3

3

3

Harrison, “Lintels of Tzibanche”

El Zotz

1

1

1

Houston, “The Epigraphy of El Zotz”

Tikal

7

7

7

Coe and Shook, The Carved Wooden Lintels of Tikal

2

Benavides Castillo, Edzná, 195–198

1

Pollock, The Puuc, 551, 554

Puuc Edzna

2

2

Halal

3

3

Huntichmul

1

1

Ichmac

3

3

Itzimte

1

1

Kabah

1

Kanki/ Cacabbeec

1

1

Oxkintok

16

15

2

1 3

Pollock, The Puuc, 479 1

1

1

4

Pollock, The Puuc, 346

9

Euw, Itzimte Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, 1:249–252

1

Pollock, The Puuc, 532

3

García Campillo and Lacadena García-Gallo, “Nota sobre cuatro dinteles glíficos,” 159– 171; Plank, “Monumental Maya Dwellings,” 184–227; Pollock, The Puuc, 304, 311–312

SITE

LINTELS

STONE

WOOD

EDGE

Sayil

4

4

1

Sisila

1

1

1

Uxmal

1

Xcalumkin

7

7

4

Xchochkax

3

3

3

Xculoc

3

3

Chichen Itza

23

20

Halakal

1

1

Ikil

2

2

Yula

2

2

Playa del Carmen

1

1

Las Pistolas

1

1

Totals

167

151

16

32

99

32

4

90%

10%

19%

60%

19%

2%

1

UNDERSIDE

BOTH

ALL 3

3

CITATIONS

Pollock, The Puuc, 115, 123 Pollock, The Puuc, 484

1

2

Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, 2:432–433; Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, 1:102–103 2

Pollock, The Puuc, 445–449 Pollock, The Puuc, 393 3

Pollock, The Puuc, 380–381

1

Grube, Lacadena García-Gallo, and Martin, “Chichen Itza and Ek Balam,” 31–79

Central Yucatan 3

5

2

14

1

Grube, Lacadena García-Gallo, and Martin, “Chichen Itza and Ek Balam,” 43–44

2

Biró, “The Inscriptions on Two Lintels of Ikil” 2

Grube, Lacadena García-Gallo, and Martin, “Chichen Itza and Ek Balam,” 47–50, 66–67; Love, “The Hieroglyphic Lintels of Yulá”

Caribbean Coast

Percentages

1

Lombardo de Ruiz, La pintura mural maya en Quintana Roo, 113–114; K. Mayer, “Una pintura mural maya”

1

Lombardo de Ruiz, La pintura mural maya en Quintana Roo, 112–113

typically only preserve traces of red paint, suggesting that they might once have been painted a uniform color (see figures 2.6 and 2.10). The stone lintels along the Caribbean coast were restuccoed and repainted multiple times. It is quite possible that there was once an extensive carved wooden lintel tradition throughout the Maya region, of which only a few examples survive. Likewise, the Postclassic period painted lintels from Playa del Carmen and

Las Pistolas suggest that many more lintels may once have been painted (figure 2.7).8 Still, it seems possible that decorating lintels may have been a practice undertaken by artists and patrons at some constellations of Maya cities but not at others. For example, in the Usumacinta region, carved stone lintels predominate at Yaxchilan and its allied sites, but none have been found at the rival city of Piedras Negras or its dependencies, mere kilometers away, where

VI SION • 53

Figure 2.6. Lintel 3, Temple IV, Tikal, Maya, 746 CE. Zapote wood and red pigment, 176 × 205 × 5 cm. © IVb 52.01, Museum der Kulturen,

Basel. Coll. Carl Gustav Bernoulli. Photo by Omar Lemke, 2020.

sculptural panels were a preferred format.9 Nor do carved stone lintels appear to have been used at western Maya cities like Palenque or Tonina, where sculptural preservation is otherwise quite excellent. Carved lintels were only one of several ways that the entrances into buildings were marked as distinctive spaces. Maya buildings were sometimes conceived as animate entities or even living mountains, a metaphor literalized in structures where the doorway is rendered as a giant fanged maw. The earliest example of the metaphor is found at Structure 22 at Copan, Honduras, dedicated in 715 CE; it is also repeated on the stucco façade of a tomb on the Ek

54 • UNSEEN ART

Balam acropolis and on Rio Bec and Chenes-region structures of the ninth and tenth centuries CE (figure 2.8).10 The doorway is still called the mouth of the building in many Mayan languages today.11 In the Puuc region during the eighth to tenth centuries CE, carved lintels were often part of larger doorway assemblages, including carved columns, jambs, and door frames, demarcating the porous boundaries of the structure (figure 2.9). The earliest-known stone lintels—from the Yucatan city of Oxkintok and from Yaxchilan in the Usumacinta River region—appear to date to the fifth century CE and are purely textual (see figures 2.33 and 2.34). All were

Figure 2.7. Painted lintel from Structure C-1, Playa del Carmen, Maya, ca. 1200–1500 CE. Photo by Karl Herbert Mayer. Secretaría de Cultura-

INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Figure 2.9. Carved lintels as part of a complex entryway, Initial

Figure 2.8. “Monster mouth” doorway, Structure II, Chicanna, Maya,

ca. 800–1000 CE. Photo by the author. Secretaría de CulturaINAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Series Building, Xcalumkin, Maya, ca. 743 CE. First published in Pollock, The Puuc, 1980, fig. 707. Gift of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1958, © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 58-34-20/28525. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

a

b Figure 2.10. Similarities between Maya lintel

and stela compositions. (a–b) Lintel 1, El Zotz, 550–650 CE. Wood, 180 × 74 cm. Museo Nacional de Arqueología e Etnología, Guatemala City, Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, Dirección General del Patrimonio Cultural y Nacional. Photo Archivo Digital MUNAE; drawing copyright © 2000 John Montgomery, courtesy Ancient Americas at LACMA (ancientamericas.org). (c) Stela 1, Itsimte-Sacluc, sixth–eighth century CE. Limestone, 125 × 75 × 60 cm. Photo by Teobert Maler. Gift of Ian Graham, 2004. Courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 2004.15.13.3603.

c

reset in later buildings, showing a continuing reverence but obscuring questions about chronology and original context.12 In later centuries, the majority of lintels combined text and image in a variety of different programs. Most images on lintels were of kings and nobles, although on the Yucatan Peninsula, images of deities sometimes ornamented the edges or undersides of lintels.13 Many of the scenes on lintels closely paralleled the themes of more public monuments, modified only to fit the squat proportions of the stone lintel or to take advantage of the wealth of detail it was possible to carve in wood. In particular, images of rulers holding insignia of power, sometimes while towering over kneeling captives, seem to be clear adaptations of more public genres (figure 2.10). These scenes, as well as images of the ruler dancing, sometimes in the company of an heir or dependent lord, would also have recalled performances that took place in view of many spectators (see figures 2.6 and 2.23).14 But other more intimate or populous scenes of courtly life have less precedent in more public media and seem particularly suited to their difficult-to-see architectural context. Lintels can also be related to a larger Maya tradition of marking the dedication or ownership of buildings.

Recording the act of making or building remained of great importance well into the sixteenth century, after the Spanish invasion, when Diego de Landa reported practices of inscription and dedication during the festival of Oc Na (literally, “Entering the House”): “and in this festival . . . they renewed their idols of clay and their braziers . . . and, if it was necessary, they rebuilt the house, or renovated it, and they placed on the wall the memorial of these things, written in their characters.”15 In addition to carved lintels, Classic Maya people painted commemorative texts on the outside of buildings and carved them in other locations, such as below the eaves.16 Some of the earliest surviving lintels at Oxkintok seem to bear fragments of dedicatory statements, while many of the ninth-century lintel texts at Chichen Itza refer more specifically to the dedication of the doorway, the lintel, the carving of the lintel, the words upon the lintel, or even the carving of the words (see figure 2.22).17 Some lintel programs may have anticipated their own ceremonies of dedication, which may have parallels in modern Maya practice. As I have argued elsewhere, the lintels of Yaxchilan Structure 23 are particularly focused on rituals of consecration, highlighting at least six different acts of

Figure 2.11. Plan of Structure 23, Yaxchilan, Maya, ca. 723–726 CE, showing the relationship of lintel edge and underside texts as well as a proposed itinerary through the building. Diagram by Theodore Watler, after Roberto García Moll, “Shield Jaguar and Structure 23 at Yaxchilan,” 2004, fig. 95; drawings by Ian Graham, © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, PM 2004.15.6.5.21—23, 2004.15.6.5.26, 2004.15.6.5.28, 2004.15.6.7.3 — 4. For a photo of the underside of Lintel 25, see figure 2.35.

VI SION • 57

dedication spanning a period of three years.18 Together, the lintels lead the viewer through an elaborate circuit, passing in and out of the building’s doors, in ways that recall modern Maya house-dedication ceremonies (figure 2.11; see also figure 2.35). For example, among the modern Zinacantan Maya, the ch’ul kantela or “holy candle” ceremony is performed after a house is built but before it is occupied.19 A h’ilol, or shaman (literally, “seer”), leads the family in processions, prayers, offerings, and the sharing of a ritual meal. The ch’ul kantela ceremony compensates the Earth Lords for the materials taken from their domain to build the house and gives the building its animate soul. Offerings of music, flowers, incense, candles, chicken broth, and blood feed the house’s walls, roof, and four corner posts; the family moves in procession through the house and the surrounding landscape, asking for the favor of ancestral deities in establishing the new dwelling. Writing about these ceremonies in ways that echo Fowles’s language of doings (see chapter 1), John Monaghan observes, “It is clear that in making these offerings the house is considered a living thing,” concluding that it is best to describe the offering as “a meal, fed to the house . . . a necessary step in its construction and maintenance. Just as no one would expect a horse or cow to thrive without being fed, so no one could expect a house to last without being properly maintained.”20 What is crucial about the ch’ul kantela ceremony, and, by analogy, Classic Maya dedication ceremonies like the och k’ahk’, or fire-entering ritual, is that it moves in and out of the house, circling it but also moving through each door and room of the structure. If the performative ambition of any lintel program were ever to have been realized, surely it would have been at the moment of such a ceremony, when lintel texts might have been read aloud, accompanied by other orations. Viewing in this moment would have been embodied, in motion, and multisensory, accompanied by prayers, music, incense, feasting, and ritual bloodletting. Yet even in this moment, the lintels would have been hard to see. LO OKI N G UP, LO O K I N G DOW N

Lintels slow the passage through the liminal space of the Maya doorway, an unusually deep entrance because of the need for thick walls to support the heavy vaulted roof and roof comb. Whether decorated with text, image, or a combination of both, a lintel causes the viewer to pause and look up to take notice of its carvings. Lintels are designed in anticipation of this brief and uncomfortable glance. In

58 • UNSEEN ART

Maya pictorial convention, the highest-status figure is typically positioned at the highest point in the composition, such that all other figures must gaze up at him (for that highest-status figure is almost always male).21 Looking up at the lintel might thus be construed as an acknowledgment of lower status, putting the viewer in their place before they even enter the structure. What is even more powerful is the reciprocal gaze of the figures pictured on the lintel. Maya people often conceived of images as vital and agentive beings; it is likely that power could also be attributed to carved eyes.22 When you see the lintel, the lintel also sees you. The figures on the lintels, in addition to occupying the privileged position in a hierarchical relationship, might also be understood as actively engaging with the things that fall into their field of view. The power of this visual field is exemplified by the Classic Mayan term ichnal. Always possessed (the form is yichnal or perhaps yichonal, meaning “his visual field”), the term refers not only to events that happen within the sight of the highest-status person mentioned in a text but also within that person’s political and social control.23 When an event happens in the ichnal of another king, for example, we know that the ruler doing the viewing is the overlord of the celebrant. Gods, too, are recorded as surveying the events within their ichnal on Maya stelae.24 The hierarchies of vision that animate lintels also implicated other media. A particularly thorough expression occurs on Stela 11 from Yaxchilan, where the ruler Bird Jaguar IV (r. 752–768) stands above three bound captives (figure 2.12). As he glances down at them, they fall into his ichnal, which is rendered even more extraordinary by the spiral-eyed deity mask shown in cutaway fashion in front of his face.25 The captives’ act of looking up cements their submission. The entire scene is surveyed from above by Bird Jaguar’s deceased parents: King Shield Jaguar III and his royal wife, Lady Ik’ Skull. Separated from the principal scene by a band of text, they are cast in the role of honored and deified ancestors. On the other side of the stela, and in other stelae at the city, the overlooking figures are placed within rounded cartouches: the king’s father in a sun cartouche as if he were a divinized solar being and the king’s mother in a moon cartouche as if she were an aspect of the moon goddess (figure 2.13).26 As these deified figures look down upon their son’s triumphs, they are positioned at the pinnacle of an interlocking hierarchy of gazes. The idea of royal ancestors surveying the proceedings below also accounts for several lintel programs.

a

b

Figure 2.12. Stela 11, temple side, Yaxchilan, Maya, 752 CE. Limestone, 400 × 115 × 27 cm. (a) Photo by Teobert Maler, courtesy of the

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 2011.1.405.46; (b) drawing copyright © 2000 John Montgomery, courtesy Ancient Americas at LACMA (ancientamericas.org). Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Figure 2.13. Upper portion of Stela 4, temple side, Yaxchilan, Maya, 775 CE. Limestone, 136 cm wide. Note the ruler’s parents in sun and

moon cartouches surveying the scene and the deity heads that look down out of the stars hanging off the skyband below them. Photo by Teobert Maler, courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, 2004.29.6580. Secretaría de CulturaINAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

At El Chicozapote, near Yaxchilan, for example, Lintels 1 and 2 feature male and female figures in sun and moon cartouches respectively, likely the progenitors of the courtiers depicted on the other two lintels of Structure 1 (figure 2.14).27 In this case, lintels seem to demarcate two different spaces: a smaller room dedicated to the ancestors and a larger room for the politics of the living. The idea that an ancestor, like the gods, might observe events from above could also animate the wooden lintels of Temple I at Tikal. Spanning the interior doorways of a three-room temple atop a massive funerary pyramid, these lintels

60 • UNSEEN ART

represent the deceased ruler Jasaw Chan K’awiil in the position of an honored ancestor, hovering above the living worshippers who would have stood below.28 Living kings carved on lintels would also gaze downward, capturing everyone who entered the building within their ichnal (figure 2.15). These images have much in common with contemporary conventions for picturing kings on stelae, and indeed, the height of a towering stela would likewise allow the king represented on it to gaze down onto his subjects.29 Even in multifigure compositions on lintels and stelae, the king’s eyes are always

Figure 2.14. Lintel program at Structure 1, El Chicozapote, Maya, seventh–eighth century CE. Drawings copyright © 2000

John Montgomery, courtesy Ancient Americas at LACMA (ancientamericas.org); diagram by the author.

Figure 2.15. Kimbell Panel, likely from Laxtunich, a Yaxchilan dependency, Maya, 783 CE. Shield Jaguar IV, the Yaxchilan ruler, is the highest

figure in the composition; everyone within the scene falls within his gaze. The mirror image text on the throne would have been especially difficult to read in situ. Limestone and pigments, 115.3 × 88.9 cm. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, AP 1971.07.

higher than those of other figures, so that they fall into his ichnal within the scene. But if to enter into another person’s ichnal was in some way to become subject to their power, to be seen implied a particular kind of vulnerability. The tensions are especially evident in the murals of Structure 1 at Bonampak, dedicated in 791 CE (figure 2.16). Lower-ranking members of the court were frequently painted in the most visible locations in the murals, while images of the royal family were placed in the most protected spaces of the structure, high up on the walls, where they could survey the spectacle unfolding before them while simultaneously being protected from sight (figure 2.17). On the north wall of Room 2, for example, the image of King Yajaw Chan Muwaan disappears into the shadowy upper vaults as he is granted the honorific placement at the highest point on the wall; the eye is drawn instead to the exposed flesh of the captive sprawling at his feet, whose absolute visibility indexes his powerlessness.30 These dynamics of visibility and vulnerability complicate the position of the three gorgeously costumed royal heirs who dominate the walls of all three rooms of Structure 1.31 The painted princes might seem to be the subject of the murals, but perhaps they are instead the delectable object, destined to delight the gazes of living and painted spectators alike, all of whom fall into the ichnal of the royal family at the highest point of each room.32 In Room 1, the princes are depicted performing on the south wall, the first thing a viewer sees upon entering the room. But when a person sits on the bench that occupies most of Room 1, placing their back against the dancing youths on the south wall, they are witness to an intimate scene of dressing on the north wall above the doorway, showing the youths preparing for the performance represented on the south (figure 2.18). On the south wall, the royal youths are more visible, but also more vulnerable, as their current state of preservation attests: they were later the targets of the most vicious iconoclasm in the entire mural. Issues of seeing and power also informed lintel programs. Where it is possible to reconstruct, the highestranking person in a scene is typically placed on the inner part of the lintel underside, facing outward so that their gaze meets that of a person approaching the structure (figure 2.19). This is also a sheltered position, shadowed by the deep walls of the building and less exposed to outside weather. It means that the highest-ranking person is

Figure 2.16. Room 1, Structure 1, Bonampak, Maya, ca. 791 CE,

looking east, illuminated by artificial light. Photo © Enrico Ferorelli, courtesy of Martha Saxton. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

often hardest to see. The position is at once exalted and obscured, wide-seeing and protected from sight. This tension between seeing and being seen had particularly gendered connotations for the ancient Maya. Images of royal women are more common on lintels than on public sculpture at cities like Yaxchilan and Tikal, perhaps conforming to gendered ideas of decorum, although women do occasionally occur on stelae and other public monuments at these and other cities. On a lintel from Tikal Temple II, for example, the queen Ix Lachan Unen Mo’ is shown wearing elaborate textiles, her splayed feet indicating that she was the principal figure on the now fragmentary lintel, as James Doyle and Stephen Houston’s recent investigations have demonstrated (figure 2.20).33

VI SION • 63

Figure 2.17. Position of royal women and royal youths, Structure 1, Bonampak, Maya, ca. 791 CE. Visualization of Structure 1 by Christopher

Klein for National Geographic; reconstruction paintings by Heather Hurst and Leonard Ashby © Bonampak Documentation Project; diagram by the author.

At Yaxchilan, nearly half of the figural lintels feature royal women, frequently shown accompanying the king and holding a sacred bundle (figure 2.21). Such bundles are sometimes labeled ikatz, a term that David Stuart has translated as “cargo or burden”; the word also occurs on several pieces of jade.34 These ikatz bundles frequently appear in scenes of accession; one possibility is that they contained particular objects of jade regalia that the king might wear when assuming this highest office. Another possibility is that they contained god images or paraphernalia related to a god, much as Aztec sacred bundles did, centuries later (see chapter 3). The way that the k’awiil scepter held by the king touches the bundle on Yaxchilan Lintel 53 seems particularly suggestive of a relationship between deity and bundle. Images of these concealed sacred objects were represented primarily on inaccessible lintels, where the textile wrappings of the bundles concealed

64 • UNSEEN ART

their contents in ways that paralleled how the lintels on which these scenes are presented were also sheltered from view. Some of the most extensive lintel programs at Yaxchilan might even have been commissioned and dedicated by women. Yaxchilan Structure 23, which features some of the most famous of all Maya lintels, was likely commissioned by Ix K’abal Xook, wife of King Shield Jaguar III; a number of texts on the lintels name her (sometimes in the guise of a supernatural) as the owner of the building (see figures 2.11 and 2.35).35 Likewise, at Chichen Itza, lintels record the patronage of elite women who are not usually acknowledged more publicly at the site, often including genealogical statements about female descent (figure 2.22).36 In the doorways of buildings to which access was limited by social and physical factors, these images were shielded from the vulnerability of being subject to the public gaze.

Figure 2.18. Royal youths dressing on the north wall of Room 1, Structure 1, Bonampak, Maya, ca. 791 CE. Digital stitch by Mindy Lu, based

on photos by Justin Kerr, © Bonampak Documentation Project. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Figure 2.19. Lintel 3 in situ, Structure 33, Yaxchilan, Maya, ca. 768 CE. King Bird Jaguar IV is the shadowed inner figure. Photo by the author.

Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Queen Ix Lachan Unen Mo’, beam from Lintel 2, Temple II, Tikal, Maya, ca. 682–734 CE. Zapote wood, 2.11 m tall. American Museum of Natural History 30.0/ 2955. (a) Photo courtesy of the Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History; (b) drawing modified by James Doyle after a drawing by William R. Coe in Jones and Satterthwaite, The Monuments and Inscriptions of Tikal, 1982, fig. 71, courtesy of the Penn Museum.

(LEFT) Figure 2.20.

Lintel 53, Structure 54, Yaxchilan, Maya, 780 CE. Limestone, 162 × 93 × 22.5 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-0080366. Photo by the author. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

(OPPOSITE) Figure 2.21.

a

b

Figure 2.22. Lintel 4 from the second story of the Monjas compound, Chichen Itza, Maya, 880 CE. The text on the lintel records its own

dedication. Photo by the author. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

The restricted nature of audiences for a carved lintel seems also to have been a consideration, albeit one with different motivations, for scenes of kings and their subordinate nobles, who enjoyed an increasingly restive relationship in the last centuries of the Classic period. Rulers in the Usumacinta region practiced a kind of artistic diplomacy in which they dispatched artists from their own courts to make monuments at the courts of their allies and subsidiaries.37 Yaxchilan kings, especially Bird Jaguar IV, were frequently depicted dancing with their own nobles at Yaxchilan or with the local lords at subsidiary sites, often on a nearly equal footing (figure 2.23). Yet the semipublic nature of these lintels meant that they did their diplomatic work of cementing alliances between Yaxchilan and its vassals without ceding too much visual authority in public. Over a century later, at Chichen Itza, some of the same considerations likely applied. The underside of Halakal Lintel 1 shows lords from Chichen Itza, Ek Balam, and Halakal (figure 2.24); the

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Chichen Itza ruler K’ak’upakal K’awiil is mentioned on lintels from the subsidiary site of Yula.38 Indeed, the endurance of the lintel format at Chichen Itza and its dependencies must have resulted at least in part from the semiprivate nature of the lintel, which allowed this tradition to be preserved while other, more public markers of royal power, such as the stela, were nearly completely abandoned. In materializing the challenges of vision, the Maya lintel instantiates claims about power. Poised at the edge of a darkened interior to which the eyes must adjust, the lintel reasserts hierarchies of vision and knowledge just at a moment when the participant is experiencing the limitations of human sight.39 The viewer, positioned as a supplicant relative to the carving above, can never perfectly see the lintel in situ. But if imperfect seeing is equated with imperfect knowing, then perfect knowledge might imply a kind of powerful, godlike sight. Here we can imagine the social advantages of a patron or artist who had full access

to the lintel in the workshop before it was installed in its oblique and poorly lit architectural setting.40 Laying claim to such privileged knowledge by being able to decipher a particularly obscure image or lintel text would allow a select few to demonstrate their superior capacities for perception.

Figure 2.23. Yaxchilan King Bird Jaguar IV dancing with a subordinate

lord, Lintel 5, Site R, Maya, 766 CE. Drawing by Matthew Looper.

TH E VIE W IN TH E WO RKS H O P

It is generally necessary that a work of art be visible at least to its creator during the process of making. Most lintels were likely carved in a workshop before being installed in doorways, as there was no way to carve the underside of a lintel once it was in place. Stelae might have been roughed out in the quarry and then finished in situ.41 Yet even in this context, one might imagine building a temporary shelter surrounding the stela while it was being created. Such a shelter would have protected the nascent work from sight, although the making still would have been audible. The very concealment might have signaled the importance of the work taking place, much as ritual seclusion did for artists at the time of the Spanish invasion. Undertaking the making of a work of art could be a dangerous and spiritually charged act, requiring fasting, abstinence, and isolation. Fray Diego de Landa describes elaborate procedures for sixteenth-century Maya sculptors making god images during the month of Mol. While these small, portable images for personal devotion were markedly different in scale and form from the stelae and lintels made during the Classic period, centuries earlier, it

Figure 2.24. Underside of Lintel 1, Halakal, Maya, ca. 870 CE. Limestone. The outer edge of the lintel (corresponding to the top of this photo)

is also carved. Gran Museo del Mundo Maya, Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. Photo gift of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1958, © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 58-34-20/31310. Secretaría de Cultura-INAHMEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

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is possible to imagine that the processes of seclusion and ritual preparation necessary to produce these images had parallels in the making of the earlier monuments as well.

One of the things that these poor people held to be the most difficult and arduous was to make idols of wood, which they called making gods; and therefore they had a particular time indicated for this, and that was the month of Mol, or another, if the priest told them it would do. Those who wanted to make them first consulted with the priest, and taking his counsel, went to the artisan, and they say that the artisans always made excuses because they were afraid that they or one of their household would die or be struck with a deathly illness. If they accepted, the chacs, who were also chosen for this, and the priest and the artisan began fasting. While they were fasting, the one whose idols they were went or sent to the forest for the wood, which was always cedar. When the wood arrived, they made a thatch hut, enclosed, where they put the wood and an urn in which to put the idols and they put them covered there as they were making them; they put out incense to burn to four demons called Acantunes, which they put in the four parts of the world. They put out that with which to cut themselves or to let blood from the ears and the tools for working the black gods, and with these preparations, the chacs, the priest, and the artisan shut themselves up in the hut and began their work on the gods, frequently cutting their ears and anointing those demons with the blood and burning incense for them, and they continued in this way until they

were finished, feeding them and giving them what was necessary. And they could not have relations with their wives, not even in thought, nor could anyone come to that place where they were.42 As Landa’s account demonstrates, there were restrictions on seeing a god image even during its process of making: not only was viewing limited to people with the appropriate ritual preparation, but the image itself was stored in a covered urn between moments of working (figure 2.25). Even after the work was completed, visibility was still limited: “they placed the new images in a little hamper, wrapped up in a cloth, and handed them over to their owner, and he received them with great devotion.”43 This description of wrapping and unwrapping sacred images recalls the ways in which a Maya stela might be wrapped or unwrapped during dedication ceremonies. An image of a bound stela on a peccary skull from Copan shows a lattice of bindings that interrupts the overall coherence of the stela but still allow its stony substance to be glimpsed (figure 2.26a); a millennium later, a page in the Madrid Codex shows a similar binding (figure 2.26b).44 From the scattered representations, it is difficult to know if stelae were bound only on special occasions or if they were habitually wrapped to contain their spiritual potency and only occasionally unveiled. This act of wrapping or binding was deeply resonant for the ancient Maya, recalling the wrapping and unwrapping of sacred bundles, the enveloping of an ancestor’s body in layers of cloth, and also the tying on of the royal headband that was the central part of a king’s accession ceremony.45 Thus, the moment of making might involve many people. Landa’s text enumerates the range of actors involved in the making of a god image: the artist or artists; the patron who

Figure 2.25. Divinatory almanac showing the making of god images, stored in urns between moments of crafting, Madrid Codex, pages

99–100, Maya, ca. 1200–1500 CE. Museo de América, Madrid. Photo by Joaquín Otero Úbeda.

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b Figure 2.26. Maya stelae wrapped during ceremonies. (a) On a

carved peccary skull from Copan, recording a stone-binding in 376 CE, drawing by Barbara Fash. (b) Madrid Codex, page 101, ca. 1200–1500 CE. Museo de América, Madrid. Photo by Joaquín Otero Úbeda.

commissioned the work; agents appointed by the patron to procure materials; a priest and other ritual specialists who assisted in the process; and those who prepared and provided food, water, and other material support to the project, enabling the carver to leave behind other responsibilities to work in ritual seclusion. All these people might have experienced the process of seeing the work come into being, a process that the ancient Maya might have understood quite differently than we do today. As Stephen Houston notes, there is something special about carving wood or stone in ancient Maya thought: unlike additive processes of weaving cloth or modeling clay, these subtractive processes had the potential to create animate subjects, as if removing material released a being already within.46 Such distinctions may also have corresponded to gendered divisions in craft production. Although we cannot see the process unfold the way that artists, patrons, and others in the workshop might, the kind of close looking we do now in some ways resembles the privileged looking at that moment of creation.47

a

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TI M E A N D MOV E ME N T

After leaving the workshop and being set into a building, the carving on the underside of a lintel could never be seen so easily again, not even during the dedication and ensoulment ceremonies where the objects were celebrated. In place, lintels were an integral part of an architectural experience. They were most frequently the recipients of a kind of embodied looking: looking that was awkward, inconvenient, incomplete, and distracted, frequently accompanied by movement, music, prayers, recitations, incense, sweat, and feasting.48 As part of a unified architectural program, lintels guided and structured engagements with the building they adorned, an example of what Wei-Cheng Lin has termed “performative architecture.”49 These entailments made it difficult for ancient people to perform the kind of close visual analysis that modern scholars do today, now that so many lintels have been photographed, drawn, and removed from their architectural contexts to be displayed on museum walls. Some lintels explicitly recognized the kinds of movement and engagement that they would receive, as when a figure on the underside of the lintel gazes out to meet the eyes of someone approaching the building. The composition of two or more confronted figures, so common on lintels in the Yaxchilan region, means that a participant meets the gaze of one of the carved figures when entering and of another while exiting through the same doorway (see figure 2.19). When the viewer becomes subject to the gaze of the king or other royal actor on a lintel, they accede to royal authority. Yet even in instances when images of captives are represented on lintels, hierarchy remains: captives are never alone but are always pictured being dominated by a ruler or lord, unlike on stairs, where the performative tread on the captive is part of the power of the sculptural installation.50 On a lintel, one might typically meet the king’s eyes while entering a building and the captives’ while exiting, although the captives’ eyes are often angled to avoid direct encounter, either downcast or gazing upward at their captor, fully absorbed within the diegetic scene (see figures 2.28 and 2.36). The Water Trough Lintel from Chichen Itza (named for the unglamorous location where it was found) takes this question of entry and exit one step further (figure 2.27). The lintel underside is carved so that it can be read in two different directions by people moving through the doorway it once spanned. The outer text, apparently a relatively standard dedicatory inscription, is oriented in one direction,

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while the central image and its associated text are rotated 180° from its frame. Inner and outer texts are distinguished by scale and constitute two separate phrases.51 There is no one vantage point from which the entire lintel can be comprehended: it must be experienced over time, and the viewer’s body must move to complete the experience. This late example makes explicit a paradigm of embodied and durational viewing established centuries earlier. The majority of carved lintels were not isolated objects but parts of larger decorative programs, including multiple lintels as well as other kinds of decoration. One of the best-preserved programs is that of Bonampak Structure 1, where three carved lintels, one above the doorway into each room, were part of a multimedia program that was unified by themes of warfare and kingship (figure 2.28).52 Stucco sculptures of enthroned rulers and scenes of capture decorated the exterior, along with a now almost totally effaced painted text encircling the building. The murals of the interior walls showcased complex negotiations among the court as its members engaged in dance, war, and sacrifice (see figures 2.16–2.18). The lintels display the same themes of warfare and rulership stressed in the murals and in the exterior stuccos but are otherwise fairly independent from the rest of the decorative program; they are more closely related to one another than to any figure in the paintings or stuccoes, which are rendered at different scales than the carved lintels. Once in place, no two lintels could be seen at once: viewers would have had to hold the other lintel images in memory as they proceeded from doorway to doorway, while that spatial progression itself imparted a sense of the passage of time between one image and the next. A scene of capture is carved on the underside of the lintel over the doorway to each of the three rooms. The distinctions among the three lintel scenes are subtly drawn, requiring precisely the kind of close and comparative scrutiny that the placement of the lintels prevents. At first glance, the three scenes seem remarkably similar: each depicts an elaborately costumed ruler grasping the hair of a collapsing captive. This was a familiar theme in Maya art, one frequently represented in other media, from public stelae to painted vessels for chocolate used at private feasts; it is also a scenario repeated again and again within the battle mural that lines the walls of the central Room 2 of the structure.53 Such familiarity would have allowed a viewer to identify the theme of the lintel carving in spite of the oblique and difficult angle of view.

a

Figure 2.27. Water Trough Lintel, Chichen Itza, Maya, ninth century

CE. (a) Photo by Karl Herbert Mayer; (b) drawing by Kaylee R. Spencer, after a drawing by Daniel Graña-Behrens. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

How to relate the three scenes is not immediately clear. If proceeding from left to right, from Room 1 to Room 3 (as one would do after approaching the building from the principal staircase of the acropolis), the lintels appear to depict the unfolding collapse of a single captive being speared by a victorious warrior, as if the time elapsing as a viewer moved from room to room were elapsing in the images on the lintels as well.54 Yet this impression of narrative unity disintegrates upon closer examination, as the scenes differ in many elements of costume, from the elaborate headdresses of the captors to the meager accoutrements of their victims. The literate few able to read the texts on the lintels would learn that these are the victories of three distinct actors over a span of nearly forty years. The lintels represent Yajaw Chan Muwaan, the king of Bonampak, taking a captive in January 787 above the leftmost door; above the central doorway, King Bird Jaguar IV of Yaxchilan,

b

Bonampak’s overlord, taking a captive four days prior; and above the entry to Room 3, Aj Sak Teles, the father of Yajaw Chan Muwaan, capturing his prisoner nearly four decades earlier, in July of 748. The texts are terse, listing solely the date, the act of capture, and the titles of royal warrior and captive; short as they are, they would still have been uncomfortable to read in the cramped space of the doorway and difficult to make out under the thick encrustations of paint. Further, the dates are presented in

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Figure 2.28. Lintels 1, 2, and 3 above their respective doorways at Structure 1, Bonampak, Maya, ca. 791 CE. Reconstruction painting by

Agustín Villagra Caleti, Fondo Agustín Villagra Caleti, Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, photo by Cecilia Gutiérrez, 1998; photos of lintels by Hans Ritter, 1963, courtesy of the Bonampak Documentation Project. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

an abbreviated Calendar Round format, which might have been challenging to resolve into absolute time. Because a Calendar Round date is a combination of day and month positions that repeats every fifty-two years, these dates are comparable to statements that the captures occurred on January 9, January 5, and July 13, with no years stated. Perhaps these dates were famous enough that a contemporary viewer could recognize them immediately, especially with the name of the protagonist as a cue, but even for the limited and elite group of contemporary viewers, immediate recognition may have been elusive. Differences that are hard to parse even with the lintels so readily arrayed as they are in the illustrations of this book would have been remarkably difficult to grasp in situ. Nor is this the only lintel program that trades on such subtle contrasts: lintel programs at Yaxchilan frequently feature scenes of similar format, varying only by protagonist; the textual lintels of the Monjas compound at Chichen Itza also present very similar information, differing only in the names of the deities and patrons commemorated on each lintel.55 Still, the appeal of this side-by-side view raises the possibility that the lintels might have been displayed together before being installed in the structure, much as the carvings of the Parthenon frieze were made available for inspection before their final placement.56 Furthermore, the plans for the lintels surely existed in preliminary drawings before being carved in stone; by comparing the undersides of the lintels in this way, we may share the vision of the artist and patrons who had access to these images. But in place, such subtle contrasts demanded much of the viewer, requiring that they hold in mind the details of each lintel in order to bring the full program into meaning. This was not a program that could be perceived in a single moment—like a painting framed on a wall—but rather one that unfolded over time, the bodily movement of the viewer and the mental image that they constructed the only way that the entirety could be experienced. The same is true of the murals inside the three rooms of the building, which cover nearly every available surface, from the bench riser to the vault capstone. Continuous scenes wrap around the walls, enveloping the viewer standing in the room. The viewer cannot see all four walls at once, and the motion as one turns within the space seams together disparate vignettes: dance and preparation, battle and its aftermath.57 Time is an inseparable element of Maya art, across all of its varied media.

Interactive formats characterize many genres of Maya art. Painted vases were made to be held and rotated in the hands and lifted to the lips to consume the liquid within. Gestures and gazes within the painted scenes connect the figures, ensuring that the user keeps turning the vessel, as does the dedicatory text around the rim (figure 2.29).58 In some cases, narrative unfolds as the vessel turns in the hands: what the figures on the vase cannot see, the viewer cannot either, until they turn the vessel. In other cases, similar but subtly contrasted scenes occupy opposite sides of the vessel, demanding the same mental effort of comparison and contemplation as the three subtly different Bonampak lintels (figure 2.30). (The technology of the rollout photograph, as pioneered by Justin Kerr, satisfies a modern desire for totalizing vision at the cost of unfolding experience.) Rather than fixing the viewer so that optical effects can unfold, Maya art invites the viewer to become a participant; it is only with interaction that the eye can do its work.59 There is no evidence of anything like the framed canvas painting or the hanging scroll, no discrete format for the display of painting meant purely for passive contemplation. Even the most canvas-like of Maya works, small sculptured panels, reward an in-and-out movement, granting, through depth of relief, different insights to those far away and those who have the right to approach the image closely.60 Formats that demand embodied engagement predominated. One paradigmatic example is the distinctive format of screenfold books, which allowed pages to be turned sequentially or accessed in a nonlinear order, like a bound book, but also permitted multiple pages to be unfolded at once, like a handscroll. The human body, spreading the pages, again dictated the scale and format of the composition, and primary modes of access were never far from human touch. Few works of Maya art can be viewed passively from a single standpoint. Even the most public of sculptural formats demanded interactive engagement: as Megan O’Neil has argued, stelae and altars at Piedras Negras were made to be circumambulated, text and images on all sides cueing a counterclockwise movement that has much in common with contemporary Maya ritual practice.61 Yet even here, total understanding is sometimes thwarted: on Piedras Negras Stelae 2, 7, and 32, the text continues over the top of the tall stela, inaccessible to human eyes.62 Even beyond Piedras Negras, stelae carved on two, three, or even four sides could never be fully apprehended without movement

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b Figure 2.29. Maya cylinder vessel, (a) side view

and (b) rollout photograph, showing how gazes encourage rotation of the vessel, Dos Pilas or Motul de San José, ca. 740–800 CE. Clay, 18.1 × 13 cm. Los Angeles County Museum of Art M2010.115.12, purchased with funds provided by Camilla Chandler Frost. Photos © Museum Associates/LACMA Conservation, by Yosi Pozeilov.

a

Figure 2.30. Maya cylinder vessel, (a) side view and (b) rollout

photograph, showing subtle contrasts in the attire of the two dancing Maize Gods, who could not both have been seen at once. Made in Naranjo, ca. 693–730 CE; excavated at Buenavista del Cayo. Clay, 29.7 × 12.3 cm. Department of Archaeology, Belize, cat. no. 27/189-9. Photos by Justin Kerr, K4464, Justin Kerr Maya Vase Archive, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.

b

a

Room 1, Structure 1, Bonampak, Maya, ca. 791 CE, looking west, lit by natural morning light. Photo by Diana Magaloni Kerpel, 1986, courtesy of the Bonampak Documentation Project. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

(OPPOSITE) Figure 2.31.

on the part of the viewer, who would construct a mental image as the experience of seeing unfolded in time.63 Maya art, both sculpted and painted, proposes a model of viewing that is time based and somatically engaged. It was made to be experienced, not merely to be seen. This focus on experience, of which viewing is only a part, helps resolve some of the tensions about the challenging visibility of much Mesoamerican art. The entire Bonampak mural program is quite difficult to see because of the darkness of the enclosed rooms, and there is no evidence that anyone ever brought a torch into the rooms to help see the paintings more clearly (figure 2.31).64 Bonampak Structure 1 was not an art gallery, where the paintings were closely scrutinized, but rather a political space, where business was transacted, diplomacy enacted, and the hierarchies of the court negotiated, all while sitting surrounded by the press of bodies on the walls. Scaled to a body seated on the bench, the painted figures were a shadowy presence seeming all the more real for not being perfectly visible. But even among the limited set of elite viewers for this program, many would have failed to see. They would have glanced, misunderstood, or not even bothered to look in the first place. For other viewers, the lintels and paintings would have grown commonplace with repeated entry and exit, fading into the background. THE GLANCE AND T H E GAZE

Most theorization of vision has focused on the gaze, an intense and purposeful form of looking that often reifies existing power structures. But at Bonampak, viewing conditions for lintels and murals alike thwarted this kind of rapt looking, perhaps in part because of the power attributed to seeing as a form of knowing and controlling in Maya thought (see introduction). These works encourage us instead to consider the properties of the glance—of looking that is quick, inattentive, and necessarily incomplete.65 As Paul Veyne puts it, there is an urgent need for “a sociology of art in which the art work, far from conveying an iconography and an ideology, is a décor that we do not even look at, that we can hardly see and that is however very important.”66

At Bonampak, what the eye sees first is, quite simply, opulence: an overwhelming surfeit of ornament on every available surface. This overall impression superseded the particular intricacies of the program, as Beat Brenk has argued was also the case in many Byzantine churches.67 Indeed, the dazzling effect depended precisely on a wealth of ornament so extensive that it exceeded the capacity for vision to absorb it all at once. Images at the edge of a gradient of vision, details that one strains to see or distinguish, are key components of this effect. In the context of Maya understandings of powerful vision as an especially elite or divine capacity, such visual gradients also serve to reinforce hierarchy. Carved lintels and other kinds of difficult-to-see ornament also point to the magnificence of the patron. There is a particular extravagance to carving a lintel while knowing full well that the resulting effort would be hard to see. Some viewers might not even know to look up and would pass underneath, unaware. Ornamenting even these unlikely surfaces highlights the wealth, power, and piety of the patron. To go to the expense of carving a lintel, rather than simply and cheaply painting it, is greater extravagance still. Maya lintels were painted in ways that supported rapid and casual looking. Color aided overall perception but did not highlight every carved feature. A lintel from the Yaxchilan dependency of La Pasadita, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, preserves vivid traces of its original coloration (figure 2.32).68 Here, color picks out bodies and jade jewels against a solid red ground, increasing overall legibility but at the same time occluding many of the finer details of the carving. The glyphs, for example, are covered with thick red pigment, which may have impeded their reading; the finely described textile patterns are similarly painted in monochrome, regardless of details. Such boldly contrasting blocks of color made the principal features of the scene more visible but at the same time obscured many of the most elaborate elements of the carving and may have compromised the readability of the texts. Many lintel programs likewise seem to reward the casual glance more than they do a careful scrutiny. For example, historical lintels later placed above doorways at Yaxchilan Structure 22 signified more through their materiality than through their texts. As Megan O’Neil has discussed, lintels from two different early structures were reset into this building, dedicated in 752 under the patronage of ruler Bird Jaguar IV (figure 2.33).69 Two lintels, incised with low-relief texts, can be dated on paleographic evidence to

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Figure 2.32. Lintel 3, La Pasadita, Maya, ca. 770 CE. Limestone and pigments, 88.9 × 87.6 × 7 cm. Metropolitan Museum of Art 1979.206.1047. The Michael C. Rockefeller Memorial Collection, Bequest of Nelson A. Rockefeller, 1979.

the mid-fifth century; another two lintels with high-relief glyphs in a distinctively early style likely date to the midsixth century. Some elements may have been especially salient: two of the lintels mention earlier rulers who shared the same name as the present king, in both cases as part of longer genealogical recitations. The incised texts of the earlier program would have been especially difficult

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to read when in place, even with red pigment rubbed in the incisions to make them more legible (figure 2.34). Yet careful reading could not have been the goal, for both of the early textual programs are only partial. The lintels continue statements made on lintels now lost; other missing lintels would have carried the stories to completion. They make for fragmentary and unsatisfactory reading,

Figure 2.33. Plan of Structure 22, Yaxchilan, Maya, dedicated 752 CE, deploying reset fifth- and sixth-century CE lintels. Diagram by

Megan O’Neil, with building plan after García Moll, La arquitectura de Yaxchilán, 2003, p. 171. Yaxchilan Lintels 18 and 20, drawing by Ian Graham (1977); Lintels 21 and 22, drawing by Eric von Euw (1977); Lintel 19, drawing by Ian Graham (1982), © President and Fellows of Harvard College, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, PM 2004.15.6.5.17, 2004.15.6.5.18, 2004.15.6.5.19, 2004.15.6.5.20, 2004.15.6.7.2.

especially as they are deployed symmetrically and chiastically in the building, so that each pair of lintels is separated from one another. Once the lintels were set in place, close looking became nearly impossible, but the visibly early styles of the reset lintels were noticeable even in a rapid viewing at an oblique angle. As O’Neil puts it, “Even someone who could not read the texts may have been able to discern differences among these objects, both because of their diverse carving techniques and because of their arrangement in the building.”70 The materiality and the physical presence of these ancient stones carried meaning well beyond their epigraphic content—and unlike the nuances of the texts, these other properties could be taken in with a glance. Yaxchilan Structure 12 also featured reset Early Classic lintels, as did structures of the Grupo Ah Canul at Oxkintok; in these cases, too, the lintels carried meaning even when their texts were fragmented and difficult to see.71 To be clear, artists occasionally took measures to ensure that lintels could be seen well. The lintels of Yaxchilan

Figure 2.34. Low-relief text with red pigment rubbed into the

incised lines (the white is a later calcification of the limestone). Detail of Lintel 19, Structure 22, Yaxchilan, Maya; lintel dates to fifth century CE. Photo by the author. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

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Figure 2.35. Lady Ix K’abal Xook summoning a vision, Lintel 25, Structure 23, Yaxchilan, Maya, 723–726 CE. Limestone and

pigments, 121 × 85 × 13 cm. British Museum Am1923, Maud.5. Photo by Justin Kerr, Kerr Portfolio K2888, Justin Kerr Maya Vase Archive, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.

Figure 2.36. Lintel 8, Structure 1, Yaxchilan, Maya, 756 CE. The carving on this lintel is only .3 cm deep. Limestone, carved area 87 × 78 cm.

Photo by Teobert Maler, courtesy of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, 2004.24.2118. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Structure 23, for example, are carved in unusually high relief, with gently curving surfaces that increase the visibility of the entire lintel (figure 2.35). As I have argued elsewhere, the Structure 23 lintels thematize difficulties of seeing, at the same time as they structure an intricate processional movement in and out of the doorways of the structure (see figure 2.11).72 But not all lintels were created with such care. Over the course of the eighth century, lintels at Yaxchilan came to be carved in lower and lower relief, at the same time as their casts of actors and claims of authority grew increasingly complex (figure 2.36). Many of the later lintels at Yaxchilan are frankly puzzling as lintels. Their flat surfaces, low relief, and rotated picture planes

make no concessions to the standing viewer; their execution is sometimes almost sloppy.73 Their subjects are increasingly repetitive and formulaic, expecting a passive, confirmatory glance rather than active engagement. The carved stone lintel became an increasingly pro forma gesture, conceptually obligatory for certain kinds of buildings but not expected to be a site of active, engaged looking. S E E ING STE LAE

Much of the same logic of the glance, I would argue, animates the most characteristic of Maya genres: the stela. A tall standing stone, roughly human in its proportions, a stela is often carved with the image of a king, and with

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proper ritual activation might become an embodiment of the person represented on it (figure 2.37).74 An inscription usually records the identity of the person depicted on the stela; mentions some key events, such as births, accessions, and military victories; and concludes with the dedication of the monument itself, which often took place on a significant date, such as the close of a calendrical cycle. Stelae could accumulate quickly at powerful sites, as a ruler might commission one as often as every five years, joining his portrait to the portraits of his predecessors. Stelae were among the most prominent of Maya monuments, frequently placed on great public plazas, where they would be seen by multitudes of viewers, not all of them necessarily literate in glyphs or attuned to the subtleties of Maya iconography.75 Rather than parsing nuanced differences, many may have just seen an example of a familiar genre. For such viewers, each stela was, simply, the body of the king, his personhood distributed and multiplied in all the statues. For viewers with slightly

a

b

more leisure or training, differences in style—or simply the weather-worn surfaces of certain stones—would indicate that some stones were not the present king but one of his predecessors, and so an accumulation of stelae could also become a demonstration of dynasty, a claim of the enduring nature of royal power. On some occasions, processions, sacrifices, and performances would reanimate the plaza and its stelae, providing historical context even for those unable to read the inscriptions themselves. In their aggregate, stelae symbolize royal power, continuity, and lineage; they show that time has been kept, rituals observed. The importance of the glance is most evident for stelae somewhat withheld from public access. For example, at Piedras Negras, the stelae arranged in a line on a platform in front of Structure J-4 are located up successive flights of stairs, separated from the public plaza (figure 2.38). Most viewers would never have had the right to approach to close-looking distance, let alone to circumambulate the stelae, reading their inscriptions and seeing the more

c

Figure 2.37. Maya stelae. (a) Stela 51, Calakmul, 731 CE. Limestone, 302 × 143 × 39 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv.

10-80365. Photo by the author. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. (b) Stela 18, Yaxchilan, 731 CE. Limestone, 319 × 24 × 10 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-80374. Photo by the author. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. (c) Stela 6, Piedras Negras, 687 CE. Limestone, 290 × 81 × 38 cm. Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología, Guatemala City, Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes, Dirección General del Patrimonio Cultural y Nacional. Archivo Digital MUNAE.

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Figure 2.38. The eighth-century acropolis at the Maya city of Piedras Negras; note the line of stelae in front of the pyramid at right.

Watercolor by Tatiana Proskouriakoff. University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Courtesy of the Penn Museum, image #150206.

intimate portraits of royal families on the backs of the monuments.76 From the plaza below, these works were visible only as stelae, nothing more. In some cases, their deep relief would allow people standing in the plaza to recognize a human figure but not to make out crucial details (see figure 2.37c). The placement of the stelae—and the particular elite access to them—instantiated the kind of gradient of vision that is the subject of the Popol Vuh passage, discussed in the introduction, in which the gods and the first humans had extraordinary powers to see and understand things from afar. Elites who could ascend the acropolis and examine the stelae up close could later lay claim to such powerfully penetrating sight.

Yet I would argue that the importance of the glance holds even for the public stelae of cities like Yaxchilan, Copan, Calakmul, Tikal, or Bonampak, where many stelae were arrayed on a large public plaza where they could be more closely approached. While the possibility of close looking existed, and some stelae were configured for maximum visibility, others were not. Compare the stelae from Calakmul and Yaxchilan that are presently side by side in the Museo Nacional de Antropología (see figures 2.1 and 2.37a–b). Stela 51, from Calakmul, with its single large figure and relatively high relief, is extremely legible. Placed in a line of stelae at the base of Structure 1, it was also accessible to a broad public, although its counterpart,

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Stela 89, placed atop the pyramid, was not nearly so easy for many to see. Other obstacles to visual access exist as well: although the principal texts of both Calakmul monuments are large and executed in high relief, a passage detailing the artists (or patrons) of the sculpture is lightly incised high up near the ruler’s head on each stela, where it is much harder to read. What’s more, that text is written in an interlocked mat format, presenting even further obstacles to interpretation.77 By contrast, all of Yaxchilan Stela 18 is far more difficult to see: the carving in lower relief, the stone more porous, the figures of king and captive reduced in size to make way for an extensive text. When we study stelae through line drawings, we elide these differences. The Yaxchilan stela is weathered and eroded and might originally have been painted, much as many lintels were, in ways that picked out principal forms but covered many details. But perhaps it was never exactly easy to see. Access to this stela was also limited: it was placed in front of Structure 41, on a ridge high above the Yaxchilan plaza, where only a few would have had the right to ascend; the now-effaced image on the rear of the sculpture would have been more limited still in its audiences.78 Other stelae are even more direct in their elite address. At Bonampak, Stelae 2 and 3, placed on the stairs of the acropolis, were originally installed facing upward, away from the public plaza below and toward the elite temples and palaces above.79 That Stela 2 represents royal women in the company of the king suggests again the gendered dynamics of sight and access. We often assume that a highly legible stela, displayed on the plaza, is the most typical exemplar of the genre. But treating all stelae as public proclamations ignores the difficulties associated with their viewing. Many were hard to see; many were not located in easily accessible places. For modern scholars, stelae are crucial evidence of dynastic history, religious practice, or artistic change—processes we can understand by looking closely at details of text, iconography, and style. But it is important not to forget the distance between this form of looking and the experience of ancient audiences. In their original contexts, stelae were central parts of ritual commemorating the passage of time. They typically celebrated the culmination of a period called a k’atun, corresponding to roughly twenty years, though they might also be dedicated at five- or ten-year intervals. The inscriptions on stelae often detail historical exploits, but

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the texts almost always conclude with a period ending, the ritual occasion on which the stela itself was dedicated.80 All of the narrative that we perceive as history, in other words, serves principally as a prelude to calendrical ritual. Maya texts describing period-ending ceremonies—usually found on the stelae themselves—are notably terse, typically condensing a whole panoply of ritual into a single verbal expression: “it was completed” (referring to the period of time); “it is planted in the ground,” “stood up,” or “erected” (referring to the stela). Some expressions describe “stone-binding” and “stone-seating.” Other texts refer to royal actions, including bloodletting or penance, scattering incense, and grasping the royal scepter— elements of kingly ritual that took place on these as on many other occasions. Images on period-ending stelae similarly show rulers undertaking a wide range of actions: bloodletting, offering incense, playing the ballgame, dancing, towering over cowering captives, embodying a deity, or simply standing in royal majesty. Rather than interpreting these representations as exclusive possibilities, we should probably imagine that period-ending ceremonies might contain many or all of the above as well as processions, music, prayer, offerings, and feasting that might involve the entire community. A few cues suggest that a stone—typically a stela, often paired with a low, round altar in front of it—was itself central to the period-ending ceremony, a topic that David Stuart has explored extensively. Part of the evidence is linguistic: Mayan inscriptions use the word tuun, or “stone,” where we might expect to see the word winikhaab, or “year,” suggesting the deep imbrication of stones and time in Maya thought.81 There are also the metonymic phrases just mentioned, describing the end of the k’atun by referring to the erection of a stela, the seating of the stone, and, most crucially, the expression k’altuun, which may refer to the raising, dedication, or even the literal binding of the stone stela.82 A stela was thus no mere record of the ritual that took place on a period ending but instead an integral component of the period-ending ceremony that it commemorated, perhaps even its most constitutive part. Indeed, some stelae were not even carved with text or image at all, only shaped into the characteristic form, often accompanied by a similarly undecorated altar. These stones could have been painted, but there is no evidence and, indeed, no reason to think that they were.83 The form itself may have been sufficient. This plain stela-altar combination might well have been the primordial form, with

Figure 2.39. Plain stelae in front of radial pyramid, Twin Pyramid Group Q, Tikal, Maya, 771 CE. Photo by the author.

decoration only a later adjunct. At the site of Naranjo, Barbara Arroyo has discovered a number of undecorated stelae and altars in association with radiocarbon dates that place their making between 800 and 500 BCE.84 These early stelae suggest that a form associated with timekeeping and ritual offerings might later have been co-opted for royal representation.85 At Tikal, at least, plain stelae outnumber figured ones.86 This is due in part to a kind of architectural complex called a Twin Pyramid Group, which features a number of blank stelae (figure 2.39).87 The entire compound consists of a nine-doorway building to the south, modest radial pyramids to the east and west, and a single-doorway structure to the north. A figured stela and altar were located within this northern enclosure, framed by its corbeled arch, while the plain stelae were aligned in front of the east pyramid. For most of the seventh through ninth centuries CE, one

such Twin Pyramid Group was inaugurated at Tikal every twenty years at the k’atun ending; there are nine such groups surviving, but only five of them include dated stelae.88 So not only could an undecorated stone suffice in the place of a carved one, but at Tikal (at this moment one of the richest of all Maya city-states), the stela itself— decorated or undecorated—became subsumed into a much larger commemorative complex, replicated by successive rulers across the landscape. But then perhaps not even the stela itself was necessary to the period-ending ritual: architectural texts from cities like Palenque and Pomona record k’atun-ending observances involving the seating of a stone, but no stelae have been found at these sites.89 David Stuart has suggested that perhaps unworked stones were used to commemorate the k’atuns there, a practice that might be related to the piles of stones that Diego de Landa observed outside

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of sixteenth-century Maya towns.90 It may be that even unfinished stones were equally valid when activated by ritual—but of course, without text or image, we now have no way to identify such stones in the archaeological record, unlike the stelae that commemorate their own dedications. Perhaps we might understand the stela simply as a residue of ritual, the stone remainder of a ceremony of dedication and cyclical closure that had far greater significance than any subsequent acts of viewing. The selfreferential circuit was tightly closed: the doing or ritual to be commemorated was centered on the stela that commemorates it. This differs substantially from the ancient Maya account, in which the very purpose of the work may have been to empower and enliven the enduring stone. Like the massive offerings of La Venta, then, Maya stelae and altars were important for their own existence and for the processes that brought them into being. If stelae were indeed embodiments of the kings that they represented— and of the periods of time that they commemorated—then their sheer being, independent of any viewing, might have achieved their makers’ goals.91 What both accounts have in common is how they deemphasize the importance of looking at a stela after the moment of its dedication. While the same economy of dedicatory ritual may not apply to all Maya works of art, it accounts for many important programs. Self-reflexivity is indeed quite common in Maya texts. As David Stuart writes, “Dedicatory inscriptions . . . constitute the largest body of Maya inscriptions on both monumental and portable media.”92 Records of dedication on stelae and lintels were part of a much broader ecology of Maya practice. But of course, dedication didn’t just happen: it was part of an important ritual process, one of the most important kinds of doings in the Maya world. Indeed, it may be the doing that matters here, far more than the object itself. Some great works of Maya art are

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notoriously unfinished. Reserved spaces for captions in the Bonampak murals were left unfilled; the feet were barely roughed out on an exquisitely carved panel from Palenque, now at Dumbarton Oaks.93 It was possible to go back and finish the work, but no one did—as if once past a certain point, say, the ceremony of dedication, the work’s state of completion and the satisfaction of its future viewers no longer mattered. Perhaps all viewing was secondary to acts of making and dedicating the work itself, as may also have been the case for Buddhist paintings in the darkness of the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China.94 In this way, subsequent viewing of any lintel program or stela was far less important than its sheer existence. Looking was a side effect of making, not its principal goal. A tremendous distance lies between ancient conceptions of these objects as powerful actors and our modern treatment of them as inert art. They were not made—even the most public stelae—for the kind of iconographic and connoisseurial looking that modern people perform. The line drawings we pore over to assess details of iconography or text differ greatly from the pieces of stone or wood we encounter as bodies in the world. We already understand stelae and lintels as political documents whose commission might respond to local challenges or display royal power. But the problem is precisely that we see them as documents rather than as animate beings and things in the world that take up space and demand certain responses from the people who see them. Indeed, the physical impediments to viewing could be part of the meaning, reifying theories of vision as an elite power. Moreover, like the Olmec massive offerings or the Aztec sculptures discussed in the next chapter, the very existence of these works had meaning imbued by the process of making and dedicating them.

CHA P TER 3

POWER Carving the Undersides of Aztec Sculpture

A

fter its extensive nineteenth-century peregrinations, the statue known as the Coatlicue is today displayed in the Sala Mexica of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City (figure 3.1). As mentioned in the introduction, the Coatlicue was carved on all available surfaces, from the top of the paired serpents spurting from her neck to the carving of the earth deity Tlaltecuhtli underneath her feet (see figures 0.1 and 0.5). That hidden carving is reproduced by a fiberglass cast attached to the rear of the base on which the sculpture stands (figure 3.2). Shining and plasticine, it shows the iconography of the earth deity on the underside as well as the claws of the monstrous creature above, digging into the surface. But other difficult-to-see aspects of the sculpture, like the elaborately carved top of the head, where the two serpents’ heads meet in a diamond, or the undulating carving on the base of the skirt, are not in any way represented in the museum display (see figure 0.5).1 Without the prosthesis of cast, photograph, drawing, or mirror, there is no way to display a work like the Coatlicue in its entirety. And it is far from alone among Aztec sculptures in this respect: hidden carvings populated the undersides of Aztec sculptures of all scales, from the intimate and portable to the massive and monumental.2

Knowledge of these hidden carvings reinforced imperial power during the height of what we now know as the Aztec empire, ca. 1480–1521 CE. Latecomers to the valley of Mexico, the Mexica founded their capital city of MexicoTenochtitlan ca. 1325, and it grew from humble origins as one of many competing city-states to become the dominant force in an empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific coasts.3 The heart of modern Mexico City still follows the contours of that imperial center: the Palacio Nacional stands where the palace of the last Mexica emperor once stood, and the footprint of the Templo Mayor, principal temple of Tenochtitlan, lies just one block to the east of the Catedral Metropolitana (see figure 3.11).4 The Coatlicue is not a unitary object, but one of a set of what were probably originally four sculptures placed at the edges of the upper platform of the Templo Mayor, guarding the twin temples dedicated to the rain god Tlaloc and the solar deity Huitzilopochtli (figure 3.3).5 After the latest layers of the Templo Mayor were razed during the Spanish takeover of Tenochtitlan, the sculptures were scattered: the Coatlicue was displaced over 300 meters to the south, found in front of the Palacio Nacional, while her sister, nicknamed the Yollotlicue or “Hearts-Her-Skirt,” ended up near the northeast corner of the cathedral

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Coatlicue, Coyolxauhqui head, and Calendar Stone on display in the Sala Mexica, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City. Photo by Ricardo Alvarado Tapia, 2021. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

(ABOVE) Figure 3.1.

Coatlicue seen from the rear, with cast of underside attached to the back of the base. Yollotlicue is visible in the background. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City. Photo by Ricardo Alvarado Tapia, 2021. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

(LEFT) Figure 3.2.

(see figure 3.11). Other sculptures in the set were not only moved but also broken, and the condition of the objects has done much to determine their modern fates: the Yollotlicue is displayed in the Museo Nacional just to the right of the Coatlicue (figure 3.4a; also visible in figure 3.2), while two other fragments of figures with rattlesnake skirts lie in the sculpture garden outside (figures 3.4b–c), and an even more fragmentary clawed foot is in the storeroom of the Museo del Templo Mayor.6 In their original context, not just the hidden underside and the lofty top of each massive statue were difficult to see: social as well as physical constraints limited viewing. If these statues indeed guarded the Templo Mayor in its last phase of construction, they stood on a pyramid towering nearly 30 meters above the ground. Access to the top of the pyramid, to see even the most visible elements of the sculptures, must have been extremely restricted. Indeed,

the restriction of access to certain kinds of knowledge and, even more crucially, the public display of undisclosed secrets were central to the exercise of power in MexicoTenochtitlan. The practice of concealed carving was not merely evidence of key dynamics of Aztec culture, but also a tool that actively shaped imperial power, developing simultaneously with the greatest moment of growth of the Mexica empire. W H AT LIE S B E NE ATH

Many different kinds of things were carved on the undersides of Mexica sculptures, from continuations of natural forms to far more allusive programs. The hidden carvings extend and augment the visible themes, continuing them, restating them, or posing puzzles of complementary opposition. Together, visible and hidden surfaces create a second program, richer than what is merely seen. What lies

Figure 3.3. Diagram of the Templo Mayor in its final stage, ca. 1502 CE, showing location of the Coatlicue and her sisters at the points marked

“A.” Courtesy of Leonardo López Luján, Proyecto Templo Mayor.

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Figure 3.4. Other remnants of the Coatlicue series:

a

b

(a) Yollotlicue and (b–c) fragments in the garden of the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, Mexica, ca. 1480–1519 CE. Andesite. Museo Nacional de Antropología, inv. 10-0001154, 10-0393493, and 10-0046595. Photos by the author. Secretaría de CulturaINAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

c

beneath derives its power from dialogue with what lies above—and from its own concealment. Some hidden carvings simply continue the themes of the visible surfaces. The bodies of coiled serpents made of polished granite, basalt, or andesite, for example, frequently have ventral scales elaborately detailed on the undersides. A serpent’s coils are indeed the most common theme on the underside of an Aztec sculpture; at least two such carvings were found near the Templo Mayor. On an example now in the British Museum, the rattles and then the ventral scales of the serpent spiral upward, with dots of red pigment added to the hidden coils (figure 3.5; see also figure 3.22c–d).7 Likewise, the paws of dogs and jaguars, the carapaces of insects, and the feathers of birds all continue onto the undersides of these naturalistically rendered creatures.8 Other programs incorporate symbols or texts as well as naturalistic details: a pair of stone toads found in the center of Mexico City are only minimally carved on their visible surfaces, but the padded paws of the toads’ curiously mammalian feet are extensively detailed where they are hidden underneath (figure 3.6).9 At the center of each toad’s belly is a feathered disk with four projecting circles at its edges: this is the glyph for chalchihuitl, or precious greenstone. It is not clear whether this glyph refers to the color of the toad’s body or signals some logographic or phonetic information; the same glyph is commonly used in the place-name Chalco, for example, and could even commemorate a Mexica victory over this wealthy lakeside city.10 While the serpents’ coils or the toads’ paws might suggest a desire to imitate nature in the round, the inclusion of hidden writing begins to suggest a more complicated universe of meanings. Some programs allude to key moments in Mexica myth. Underneath a large diorite head of the goddess Coyolxauhqui are carved two interlaced serpents, evoking blood, and intertwined with them, the glyphs for fire and water, atl tlachinolli, an expression in Nahuatl that meant “war” (figure 3.7). In a central episode of Mexica foundation narratives, Coyolxauhqui was defeated by her brother Huitzilopochtli, tutelary god of the Mexica; her defeat was the mythical model for all human war. The carving underneath this greenstone sculpture shows that this is not just a bust of the goddess but instead her severed head, and claims that all future war flows from this primal conflict—and will end in the same way for the enemies of the Mexica. This object itself may have been a carefully calibrated political

a

b Figure 3.5. Coiled serpent, (a) top and (b) underside, Mexica, ca.

1480–1519 CE. Granite, 36 × 53 cm. British Museum Am1849,0629.1, © Trustees of the British Museum.

insult. The head shares many attributes of the goddess Chantico, patron goddess of the city of Xochimilco, a city famous for its carvers of precious stone. Esther Pasztory, citing an unpublished thesis by Anita Bobry, suggests that it may have been an item of tribute paid by that conquered city-state for the dedication of the Mexica Templo Mayor in 1487.11 If so, the sculpture equated the defeat of Coyolxauhqui to the defeat of the goddess Chantico, who stood metonymically for the city-state of Xochimilco. In other cases, carving on the underside completed a cosmogram. The female form of Tlaltecuhtli, the earth deity, decorates the underside of a round altar, over a meter

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a

Stone toad, (a) top and (b) underside, Mexica, ca. 1480– 1519 CE. Stone, 119 × 51 × 34 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-1097. Photos by Michel Zabé, Colección Michel Zabé, Archivo Fotográfico “Manuel Toussaint,” Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Secretaría de Cultura-INAHMEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

(ABOVE & LEFT) Figure 3.6.

(OPPOSITE) Figure 3.7.

Greenstone head of

the goddess Coyolxauhqui, (a) top and (b) cast of underside with atl-tlachinolli text, Aztec, ca. 1487 CE. Diorite, 80 × 85 × 68 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-0220918. Photo of top by Ricardo Alvarado Tapia; photo of cast of underside by the author. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

b

a

b

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Figure 3.8. Round altar, (a) sides with nocturnal symbols and

a

b 96 • UNSEEN ART

(b) underside with Tlaltecuhtli, Mexica, ca. 1480–1519 CE; reused as a basin during the colonial period. Andesite, 47 × 105 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-1140. Photos by the author. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

in diameter that was hollowed out and reused as a basin during the colonial period, found near the kitchen of the Convent of San Francisco, about a kilometer from the Templo Mayor (figure 3.8).12 The upper face of the altar, now largely destroyed, retains traces of a solar disk; the sides show the starry night sky and the batlike wings of the goddess Itzpapalotl, or “Obsidian Butterfly,” unfurled so that they echo the shapes of Venus symbols. This object placed emphasis on themes of night and fearsome female deities, but the carvings also created a spatial relationship that modeled that of the world: sun and stars above, earth below.13 Two monumental offering vessels in the shapes of eagles illustrate contrasting approaches of naturalism and more complex symbolism. Both instantiate a poetic phrase: a receptacle for extracted human hearts was called a cuauhxicalli, literally an eagle gourd vessel. The term is now applied to receptacles of all forms, from skeuomorphs of baskets made out of precious diorite to a monumental jaguar with a depression in its back (see figure 3.23c), yet it seems especially appropriate for these two sculptures. One sculpture, found just a block from the Templo Mayor, 2 meters below the ground of the colonial Casa del Marqués del Apartado, presents a giant eagle, its head leaning forward, with different kinds of feathers clearly delineated on its neck and body. The feathers continue seamlessly onto the underside of the sculpture, the shorter feathers of the belly and legs contrasting with the longer pinions of wings and tail (figure 3.9).14 Another more damaged but equally monumental sculpture demonstrates a similar attentiveness to the quality of the eagle feathers but adds other features as well (figure 3.10). It was found by the Programa de Arqueología Urbana just half a block to the east of the other eagle, in front of the steps of the ancient calmecac, or school for noble boys (figure 3.11).15 The space that creates the sacrificial vessel in the middle of the eagle’s back is decorated on its lower surface with a bundle of sacrificial grass (zacatapayolli ) in flames, and the sides of the depression are covered with a frieze of snakes, scorpions, and other creatures associated with night and sorcery. On the underside of the eagle is a seated figure, the head now missing, but with enough attributes remaining that Ángel González López has been able to identify the figure as a deity associated with death and fire. The entire program thus juxtaposes the fiery solar symbolism of the eagle, a creature emulated by Aztec warriors, with a darker underside of death, flames, and sacrifice. The rear of the eagle’s tail

bears the date 7 Reed, a date associated with the emperor Ahuitzotl that could correspond either to a day in the year 1486, when the inauguration of his reign was celebrated with a massive expansion of the Templo Mayor, or to the year 1499.16 That two such different kinds of carvings might be concealed on the undersides of these two eagle vessels demonstrates the range and richness of Aztec sculptural practice. Carving all surfaces of a sculpture was not an obligatory reflex of a kind of naïve realism; it was a deliberate choice that opened a fruitful dialogue between concealment and revelation. Moreover, many Aztec sculptures are not carved on their undersides, but rather left smoothed and plain (figure 3.12). Some sculptures even incorporate a base—plain on its underside—on which the figure stands, acknowledging the artificiality of the sculpture as an object, and thus articulating a different relationship between image and world.17 These and other examples provide clear evidence that carving the undersides of sculptures was an intentional and meaningful practice for the Mexica of Tenochtitlan. All the objects just discussed were likely found in downtown Mexico City within just a few blocks of the Templo Mayor, suggesting that they might once have been part of that great temple or one of the adjacent palaces, temples, and other state-controlled buildings at the center of the Mexica capital (see figure 3.11). Indeed, nearly all the objects with a known provenance were found in this vicinity, although issues of sampling bias may distort this pattern, since the center of Mexico City has been so frequently and intensively excavated.18 Many were carved out of hard and valuable stones, including diorite, andesite, and rhyolite, which were typically the province of elite artisans. Others, frequently carved of basalt, are at monumental scale. Moreover, many of the sculptures display the characteristic style of late imperial Mexica sculpture, full of gently swelling curves and crisply defined detail, further reinforcing the impression of a state-sponsored tradition at the peak of the Aztec empire.19 Yet the tradition extended beyond the Mexica court. A number of other sculptures from the Valley of Mexico were also carved on all available surfaces. Generally rather small in scale and not always carved out of the finest stone, these examples point to a practice extending beyond elite and imperial workshops. These sculptures are usually coiled serpents or other animals (occasionally small human figures) where the carvings on the underside continue the

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a

b

c

Figure 3.9. Eagle cuauhxicalli, or offering vessel, (a) top and (b–c) underside, Mexica, ca. 1502–1519 CE. Basalt, 139 × 82 × 76 cm. Museo

del Templo Mayor, inv. 10-252747. Photo of top 144418249 © William Perry, Dreamstime.com; photo of museum label showing image of underside by the author; drawing of underside by Amanda Chacón. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

a

b

c

Figure 3.10. Fragmentary eagle cuauhxicalli, (a) top and (b–c) underside with seated figure, Mexica, ca. 1486–1499 CE. Museo del Templo

Mayor. Photos © 2008 Jorge Vertiz, all rights reserved; drawing of underside by Amanda Chacón after a drawing by Raúl Barrera, from González López, Turner, and Barrera Rodríguez, “Una deidad olvidada en el tiempo,” 2018, 74. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Figure 3.11. Map showing the findspots of sculptures with carvings on their undersides illustrated in this book, as well as the findspots of the

Tizoc Stone and the Calendar Stone, whose undersides are not carved. Most were found within a 1 km radius of the Templo Mayor, as were many other works carved on their undersides. Map by Dale Mertes. Photo of Calendar Stone 86701419 © Chon Kit Leong | Dreamstime.com; consult individual figures for additional photo credits.

themes above. There is a great diversity of quality, style, and facture among these works (figure 3.13).20 Because these objects, so frequently unprovenanced, are notoriously difficult to date, it remains hard to specify their relationship to the Mexica imperial tradition. Did the Mexica tradition emerge out of these vernacular examples, appropriating and elaborating a practice largely confined to the naturalistic continuation of serpent coils and animal paws onto the undersides of sculptures? Or, conversely, were these less prestigious objects copies of an elite Mexica practice? One piece of evidence suggesting the latter model is that Aztec clay figurines, a decidedly popular tradition, frequently have plain bases that do not continue the motifs of the upper surfaces, even though these small, handheld objects might have been easily examined from all sides. If the tradition truly originated with the Tenochca Mexica court, the formal difference in the carvings might represent not only the skill of the carvers and the materials available but also the possibility that knowledge of the unseen carvings had been transmitted by word, rather than by sight. Other unseen carvings, executed beyond the center of the Aztec empire, stray far from metropolitan canons. For example, an eagle from Tepoztlán, Morelos, about 50 kilometers south of Tenochtitlan, is carved on its underside with the glyph 4 Motion, the name of the present sun. This program would have been unthinkable in the capital, where diurnal solar imagery is never to be found on the underside of any sculpture; the quality of the carving also points to a provincial provenance.21 Another stone block from Castillo de Teayo, an Aztec outpost some 200 kilometers to the northeast of Tenochtitlan, features the day sign 1 Jaguar on the front and 7 Flint on the underside, both rendered in decidedly idiosyncratic style. The date inscribed on the block likely corresponds to the year 1512 (figure 3.14).22 These and a few other objects, far less numerous than the concentration of sculptures in Tenochtitlan, suggest that word of the practice might have spread far beyond the imperial capital where it was invented. Like the Olmec buried stones discussed in chapter 1, they point to the power of spoken descriptions of unseen art and the force these objects must have exerted over the imagination. A T ENO CH CA ME X ICA T R A DITIO N

Sculptures carved on their undersides were even used to delimit the boundaries of the city of Tenochtitlan. Felipe Solís has presented a set of at least three sculptures,

Figure 3.12. Sculpture with plain base, from an offering at the

Templo Mayor, Mexica, fifteenth century CE. Basalt. Museo del Templo Mayor. Photo by David G. Paul. Secretaría de CulturaINAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

some of them now fragmentary, that are all carved on the underside with the head and name glyph of Tenoch, the eponymous and largely mythical founder of Tenochtitlan (figure 3.15).23 The image is dense and hard to understand, but it consists of an aged human head, with a snake undulating through the earflare and a nopal cactus growing out of the head. In one case, a speech scroll emerging from the mouth may indicate Tenoch’s status as Mexica tlahtoani, or ruler, a term that literally translates as “speaker.”24 These images are carved on the undersides of stone organ cacti, skeuomorphs or permanent renditions of a kind of vegetal boundary marker still used in Mexico City today. Solís argues that these stone cacti might have marked the boundary between the cities of Tenochtitlan and Tlatelolco.25 While the sculptures with Tenoch’s name concealed on their undersides were likely made long after this king’s supposed reign, other more contemporary instances of royal names provide further evidence for the elite Mexica focus of this carving tradition. As William Barnes has argued, Aztec rulers did not represent themselves or even their names in monumental stone sculpture until the reign of Tizoc (r. 1481–1486), who pioneered the practice by

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a

b

Figure 3.13. Coiled serpent in nonimperial style, (a) top and (b) underside, Aztec, fifteenth century CE. Stone, 15.5 × 20 × 21 cm. Staatliche

Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, IV Ca 48286, collected by Eduard Seler. Photo by Claudia Obrocki.

a

b

Figure 3.14. Stone block carved with dates (a) 1 Jaguar on top and (b) 7 Flint on the underside, Castillo de Teayo, Veracruz, Aztec, likely

ca. 1512 CE. Sandstone, 13 × 35 × 25 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-1119. Photo by the author; drawing by Amanda Chacón after Solís Olguín, Escultura del Castillo de Teayo, 1981, lám. 51b. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

b

a

c

Figure 3.15. Stone cactus, (a) top and (b) name glyph of the ruler Tenoch on the underside, Mexica, ca. 1470–1519 CE. Basalt, 99 × 28 cm.

Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-0220928. Photos © 2008 Jorge Vertiz, all rights reserved; (c) drawing of glyph on underside by David C. Recksieck. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

b Figure 3.16. Ahuitzotl sculpture, (a) top and (b) cast of underside,

a

depicting himself sharing the attributes of the Mexica patron deity Huitzilopochtli on a sacrificial stone dedicated during his reign (see figure 3.34).26 Tizoc’s successor, Ahuitzotl (r. 1486–1502), eagerly adopted the practice of recording his name on stone monuments, and it is to his reign that we can attribute the first securely dated sculptures with carved undersides.27 On one monument, found in the 1790s just one block from the Templo Mayor, it is the carved underside that converts the entire sculpture into a portrait of the ruler’s name. The sculpture represents a canine seated on the circular coil of its own unnaturally long tail, which ends—on the underside— in a human hand (figure 3.16). This is no ordinary dog or coyote but an ahuitzotl, a mythical predator that lurked in Mexico-Tenochtitlan’s many waterways.28 While the word ahuitzotl literally means “water thorn,” the Mexica emperor typically chose to represent his name by picturing this mythical beast.29 The visible surface looks much like many other canine sculptures; only the hidden underside makes it obvious that it is in fact the ruler’s name represented in three dimensions, a kind of play possible due to the very pictorial nature of Aztec writing.30

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Mexica, ca. 1486–1502 CE. Andesite, 59 × 46 × 51 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-81577. Photos by Ricardo Alvarado Tapia. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

Ahuitzotl’s name also occurs on a stone box, or tepetlacalli, that articulates a complex discourse about rulership and agricultural fertility, now in the collection of the British Museum. The ruler’s name glyph appears on an inner wall, along with two images of the earth deity Tlaltecuhtli, one on the underside and one on the interior base of the box (figure 3.17).31 The outer walls of the box (only one survives completely) each showed an instance of the rain god Tlaloc inverting a jar out of which streams of water, maize, amaranth, and other plants emerge. The spatial logic of the vessel suggests that this water flows onto the hungry earth below, and the Tlaltecuhtli on the underside is shown with hair full of grassy shoots, in contrast to the scorpions, centipedes, and other creatures of ill omen that sometimes frequent her hair.32 Unfortunately, the inner Tlaltecuhtli is very damaged, making it difficult to discern programmatic contrasts within the box, but it seems as if it might be possible to make out the folded pleats of an amacuexpalli, a kind of paper ornament associated with gods of water and fertility. Like many other Aztec boxes, this stone box was once a microcosm of the quadripartite universe, representing the four directions and their associated deities,

a

b

c

d

Figure 3.17. Stone box bearing the name of the Mexica ruler Ahuitzotl, (a) outer side decorated with Tlalocs pouring out jars of bounty,

(b) the ruler’s name glyph on an inner wall, (c) Tlaltecuhtli on the inside bottom, and (d) Tlaltecuhtli on the underside, Mexica, ca. 1486–1502 CE. Andesite, 23 × 33 × 18 cm. British Museum Am1982,Q.860 © Trustees of the British Museum.

arranged in space above the earth below.33 The presence of the royal name and the sophistication of the conception make it likely that this box was an imperial commission. It is notable how the decoration of the box recapitulates other offering programs at the Templo Mayor, such as those that consist of water jars full of greenstone beads, placed on their sides as if to spill out their contents into the fill of the building.34

a

Further evidence of imperial patronage comes from a box that bears the name of Ahuitzotl’s successor, Moteuczoma Xocoyotzin, who ruled from 1502 until his untimely death as a Spanish prisoner in 1520. Made out of luxurious greenstone, the small rectangular box features an image of Tlaltecuhtli on its underside and Moteuczoma’s name on its lid, along with other significant dates and deity images on its varied surfaces; it might have held autosacrificial

b

c Figure 3.18. Hackmack Box, (a) side view and (b–c) underside, Mexica, 1503 CE. Granite, 15 × 33.5 × 21 cm. Museum am Rothenbaum

Kulturen und Künste der Welt, Hamburg, B 3767. Photos © MARKK, Paul Schimweg; drawing of underside by David C. Recksieck.

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a

b

Figure 3.19. Coiled Xiuhcoatl, (a) top and (b) underside, Mexica, 1507 CE. Quartz diorite, 43.5 × 45.4 cm. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library

and Collection PC.B.069. © Dumbarton Oaks, Pre-Columbian Collection, Washington, DC.

implements for the Mexica emperor (figure 3.18).35 Of the eight surviving objects bearing Moteuczoma’s name glyph, it is one of two to be carved on the underside.36 A final object bearing Moteuczoma’s name glyph commemorates a particularly important historical moment: the New Fire ceremony of 1507. The upper surfaces of the sculpture, carved out of diorite, feature the coiled body of a Xiuhcoatl, or fire serpent (figure 3.19).37 The carving on the underside shows not just the serpent’s coils, like so many other coiled serpents, but also, superimposed upon them, a brief inscription that begins with Moteuczoma’s name glyph. His name loosely translates as “He Who Grows Angry like a Lord,” and the name glyph shows the royal diadem and nose plug, as well as a speech scroll denoting lordly, choleric speech, all surrounding a void where the scales of the serpent have been left uncarved. Below Moteuczoma’s name glyph lies a date enclosed in a square cartouche. This date, the year 2 Reed in the Aztec calendar, corresponds to 1507, the year in which Moteuczoma celebrated the New Fire ceremony, a ritually critical binding of the years that occurred once every fifty-two years. The rope binding the reed in the date glyph further reinforces the allusion to this event. A clever variation on the innumerable coiled serpents, both plain and feathered, found throughout Tenochtitlan (see figures 3.5 and 3.22c–d), the

body of the fire serpent above is entirely appropriate to the purifying blaze of the New Fire ceremony mentioned on the underside. Perhaps this Xiuhcoatl was made to commemorate this important celebration, but if so, the sculpture spoke differently to different audiences. Historical specificity was concealed on the bottom, with only the more general or multivalent image of the fire serpent visible above. Audiences close to the dedication date of this monument would surely have remembered the spectacular New Fire ceremony of 1507 and associated the serpent with Moteuczoma, so perhaps in this case the hidden text was for posterity, directed at a future audience that might not remember. AZ TE C ARCH AIS M

The future-directed quality of the Xiuhcoatl underside raises important questions about the Mexica practice of carving on the undersides of sculptures. Many of the most notable genres of sculpture that the Mexica carved on their undersides— coiled serpents, animal vessels, and particular forms of deity sculptures—had their origins at Teotihuacan and Tula, ancient ruined cities that had thrived centuries before the Aztecs rose to power.38 Nahuatl speakers called such cities Tollans, and their inhabitants, Toltecs; toltecatl was also the Nahuatl word for an accomplished craftsperson,

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a

b

c

d

Figure 3.20. Skeletal bundles. (a) Teotihuacan, ca. 350–550 CE. Volcanic stone, 54 × 36.5 cm. Museo de la Cultura Teotihuacana, inv. 336638.

Photo by H. B. Nicholson, Henry B. Nicholson Papers (Collection 1863), Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA. (b–d) Mexica, ca. 1480–1519 CE. Stone, 75 × 49 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-89711. Photos of top and cast of underside by Ricardo Alvarado Tapia; drawing of underside by Amanda Chacón after Leopoldo Batres, Excavations in Escaleríllas Street, 1902, 53, fig. 6. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

a

b

Figure 3.21. Huehueteotl, “the old, old god.” (a) Teotihuacan,

ca. 200–550 CE. Volcanic stone, 48 × 48 cm. Courtesy of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, F.A.644.72-1. (b–c) Mexica, ca. 1486–1502 CE. Basalt, 66 × 57.3 × 56 cm. Museo del Templo Mayor, inv. 10-212978. Photo by the author; drawing of underside by Amanda Chacón after López Austin, “The Masked God of Fire,” 1987, fig. 3b. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

a term that associated the act of artistic creation with the wonders of the distant past. To be clear: it is not that Teotihuacan and Tula prototypes were carved on their undersides—they were not. And it is not that all archaizing sculptures are carved on their undersides, for indeed several other key archaizing genres are not so carved. But still, there is a persistent and suggestive association, as if carving the undersides of sculptures were a way of incorporating these ancient genres into Mexica tradition.39 Teotihuacan, the greatest power in Mesoamerica between 100 and 550 CE, was the most frequent source of inspiration. Many direct copies of Teotihuacan sculptures were carved on their undersides in ways that their ancient prototypes had not been. For example, a bust of a skeletal deity rendered in an archaizing Teotihuacan-like style, found by Leopoldo Batres in 1900 in the excavations on Calle de las Escallerías—essentially at the Templo Mayor—has an image of the earth deity Tlaltecuhtli carved

c

on its underside (figure 3.20).40 The features of the visible surface continue onto the underside of another archaizing monument, a sculpture of Huehueteotl, “the old, old god,” a deity associated with Teotihuacan, which bears the date 11 Reed, or 1503, corresponding to the beginning of Moteuczoma II’s reign. The figure’s loincloth, fanged knees, sandals, and leg ornaments are detailed on the underside of the seated sculpture (figure 3.21).41 Moreover, some of the most common Aztec genres carved on their undersides, including coiled serpents and animal-shaped offering vessels, are transformations of

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a

b

c

d

Figure 3.22. Coiled serpents. (a–b) Teotihuacan, ca. 200–550 CE. (a) Tecali, 15.4 × 12.9 cm. Museo de la Cultura Teotihuacana, inv. 10-525074.

Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. (b) Basalt, Museo de Pintura Mural “Beatriz de la Fuente,” Teotihuacan. Photos by the author. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia. (c–d) Mexica/Aztec, ca. 1480–1519 CE. Rhyolite-porphyry, 18.4 × 60.3 cm. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection PC.B.070. © Dumbarton Oaks, Pre-Columbian Collection, Washington, DC.

Teotihuacan prototypes. The handful of known Teotihuacan coiled serpents are small and unimposing; one is made of luxurious tecali, or cave onyx, but most are carved out of basalt (figure 3.22).42 Although none are, to my knowledge, carved on their undersides, they constitute a clear precedent for the Aztec sculptures and are so small and portable that such a carving might easily have been brought to Tenochtitlan to serve as a model for Aztec imitations.43 Animal-shaped offering vessels also seem to be an adaptation of a Teotihuacan genre. At Teotihuacan there are at least a few feline-shaped sculptures with central depressions that convert the body into a vessel; all are plain on their undersides (figures 3.2a–b).44 These likely served as the conceptual model for later Aztec animal-shaped offering vessels. A large Mexica jaguar cuauhxicalli (figure 3.2c), found not far from the eagle vessel illustrated in figure 3.9, bore remnants of paint on its underside. These were described by Eduard Seler, who witnessed its excavation: “Traces of color are still visible on the belly side, such as black spots on a white background; the nails are painted white with red edges at the root.”45 Further, the avian cuauhxicalli, whose carved undersides have already been discussed, are conceptually related to these objects through the frequent Aztec pairing of eagles and jaguars (see figures 3.9 and 3.10).46 Other archaizing genres refer not to Teotihuacan but to Tula, Hidalgo, a city that thrived between 900 and 1200 CE, another place from which the Aztecs claimed descent. This is undoubtedly the case for the kind of sculpture known as a chacmool, an idiosyncratic form representing a recumbent male figure holding an offering vessel on his belly. The Mexica chacmool is a clear copy of a sculptural type that appears for the first time at Tula and Chichen Itza by 900 CE (figure 3.24).47 Indeed, a series of chacmools associated with the Templo Mayor may also help clarify when and how the Mexica tradition of carving the undersides of sculptures might have developed. One appears in front of the northern of the twin temples at the Templo Mayor, dedicated to the rain god Tlaloc, a god of great antiquity in Mesoamerica. Tlaloc is a deity whom we now primarily associate with Teotihuacan, but Mexica antiquarianism may have conflated the two ancient centers.48 The sculptural prototypes at Tula, Chichen Itza, and elsewhere were never carved on their undersides. Neither was the chacmool now visible at the Templo Mayor, which dates to Stage II of construction and was completed sometime around 1390 (figure 3.25).49 Other stylistically early

a

b

c Figure 3.23. Jaguar vessels. (a–b) Teotihuacan, ca. 200–550 CE.

(a) Tecali, 33 × 16 × 21 cm. British Museum Am1926,-.22 © Trustees of the British Museum. (b) Basalt, 17 × 17.5 × 10 cm. Museo de la Cultura Teotihuacana, inv. 10-213196. Photo by the author. (c) Mexica, ca. 1480–1519 CE. Andesite, 277 × 105 × 93.5 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-0220914. Photo Leon Rafael / Shutterstock.com. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

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Figure 3.24. Chacmool, Tula, 900–1200 CE. Basalt, 85 × 120 × 14 cm.

Museo de Sitio de Tula, inv. 10-215198. Photo from Wikimedia Commons, by AlejandroLinaresGarcia—Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24456790. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

examples without such clear date or provenance are also plain beneath. However, carvings are present on the undersides of three later chacmools, all of which can be dated on the basis of style to the imperial period, 1480–1521 (figure 3.26; see also figures 3.28 and 3.29).50 This suggests that the practice was not part of a pre-existing Aztec tradition, but rather developed precisely during the period in which the Mexica city-state came to control a vast Mesoamerican empire. Many elements of the sculptural program of the Templo Mayor were remade each time the temple was expanded. A giant circular image of the defeated goddess Coyolxauhqui sprawling at the foot of the temple stair was repeated at least three times in different construction phases.51 The chacmools likely received a similar treatment: Stage I featured a carved head outside the Tlaloc temple in the position that the Stage II chacmool later occupied, making it likely that this element was reiterated in later phases as well.52 All three of the later chacmools were found within a half kilometer of the Templo Mayor (see figure 3.11); and it is quite possible that at least some of them were associated with later iterations of the Tlaloc temple.53 At the same time as these examples of archaizing sculpture were being made, architectural additions to the Templo Mayor complex also evoked Tollans of the past in increasingly insistent ways. The Red Temples, which echoed Teotihuacan architectural formats and mural painting motifs, for example, were dedicated during the Phase

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VI renovations of the Templo Mayor during the reign of Ahuitzotl; the sculpture of Huehueteotl illustrated in figures 3.21b–c was found close to the northern of these two temples.54 While claims of relationships to Toltec pasts had been present since the earliest stages of the Templo Mayor, these later works served not merely to emulate earlier forms but to transform them into something recognizably Toltec and imperial Mexica at the same time.55 Carving the undersides of the works was part of that transformation. The Mexica were avid consumers of the ruined past surrounding them. The last Mexica emperor, Moteuczoma Xocoyotzin, was said, at least by the residents of Teotihuacan, to have made pilgrimages to that ancient city every twenty days.56 Mexica lords also demanded antiquities to be deposited in the Templo Mayor during its various construction phases.57 Emiliano Melgar Tisoc’s work has demonstrated that many of these “antiquities” were in fact manufactured in Tenochtitlan to meet the demand for symbols of the past, while others may have been heirlooms, passed down within families and kept above the ground.58 Still other objects may have been exhumed for the purpose. Indeed, in the Florentine Codex, Bernardino de Sahagún and his Indigenous collaborators describe a process for locating jade that involves finding ancient buried things:

And those of experience, the advised, these look for it. . . . Wherever they can see that something like a little smoke [column] stands, that one of them is giving off vapor, this one is the precious stone. . . . And if they are not successful, if it is only barren where the little [column of] smoke stands, thus they know that the precious stone is there in the earth. Then they dig. There they see, there they find the precious stone, perhaps already well formed, perhaps already burnished. Perhaps they see something buried there either in stone, or in a stone bowl, or in a stone chest; perhaps it is filled with precious stones. This they claim there.59

The signs of jade that Sahagún describes—the vapor at dawn or a place where plants are growing green—might be precisely the signs of an ancient construction or burial, of

Figure 3.25. Chacmool outside Stage II Tlaloc Temple, Templo Mayor, Mexica, ca. 1375–1427 CE. Photo by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net).

Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

a

b

Figure 3.26. Chacmool, (a) top and (b) cast of underside with aquatic scene, Mexica, ca. 1480–1519 CE. Basalt, 65.5 × 94 × 15.5 cm. Museo

Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-1078. Photos © Marco Antonio Pacheco / Arqueología Mexicana / Raíces, all rights reserved. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

land distinguished in some way from its surroundings. But, as Allison Caplan has argued, the jades are also agentive in this account, signaling their willingness to reveal themselves and meet the eyes of both sun and discoverer by emitting vapor.60 Elsewhere, the text describes the removal of objects from the site of Tula, Hidalgo, understood to have been one of the dwelling places of the ancient Toltecs: “And Tolteca bowls, Tolteca ollas are taken from the earth. And many times Tolteca jewels—arm-bands, esteemed green stones, fine turquoise, emerald-green jade—are taken from the earth.”61 These incidents of Indigenous archaeology demonstrate that the Mexica were exquisitely aware of the Mesoamerican past, of the empires that had risen and fallen before their entry onto the scene. By casting themselves as heirs to the accomplishments of Tollans like Teotihuacan and Tula, the Mexica, who were recent arrivals in the Valley of Mexico, lent legitimacy to their swiftly growing empire. Moreover, Mesoamerican creation stories speak of multiple creations and destructions of the world, perhaps obliquely alluding to this succession of civilizations. On monuments like the Calendar Stone, the Mexica made the audacious claim that they were not only a new empire but a new sun, a new era of creation—one that would in time be destroyed, as all others before them had been. Each era was named for the day of its birth, which also signaled the means of its ultimate destruction. On the Calendar Stone, the four day names of the previous eras join in the center to create the name of the present, Mexica sun: nahui ollin, 4 Motion, an era that would eventually be destroyed by earthquake (see figure 0.2).62 When the Mexica made their frequent pilgrimages to Teotihuacan and to Tula, they might have encountered sculptures fallen and jumbled, emerging from the earth in unpredictable ways. Perhaps seeing objects come out of the earth primed Mexica artists and patrons to think about the dynamics of concealment and display, to prepare for a viewing context that would be less tightly scripted than the one for which the objects were designed, where objects might be broken, turned upside down, ignominiously exposed. They imagined, in short, the overthrow of their own order, the future when their own cities would lie in ruins. These late imperial sculptures, in other words, formed a meditation on the ephemerality of empire, and indeed of all human experience—a theme also reflected in much Aztec poetry, as in the famous lines attributed to the

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Texcocan king Nezahualcoyotl: “Is it true one really lives on the earth? / Not forever on earth, only a little while here.”63 CACH E S AND CARVING S

In elite Mexica circles, where poetry and antiquarianism thrived, the act of commissioning and dedicating an important sculpture had tremendous significance. Diego Durán’s Historia de las indias de la nueva España, an account of Mexica history completed by the Dominican friar in 1581, lavishes attention on the celebrations and sacrifices that accompanied the completion of royal commissions of sculpted stones for the Templo Mayor.64 In this account, artistic patronage almost seems to drive imperial expansion, as the need to secure captives for the dedication ceremonies of sacrificial stones offered a common pretext for military campaigns. The ceremonies for these sculptures closely resembled the celebrations that accompanied the dedication of each successive renovation of the Templo Mayor.65 Visitors from neighboring kingdoms were brought, sometimes in secret, to witness these demonstrations of Mexica might. Both kinds of dedications involved ephemeral performances of dance, feasting, tribute payment, gift giving, and human sacrifice; the temple dedications also involved buried caches of precious objects, seeded throughout the building to enliven and center it. The dedication ceremonies were widely attended festivities; they offer a way that knowledge of what was hidden—whether caches or carvings on the undersides of sculptures—might have circulated. The celebrations surrounding the installation of a sculpture could have provided an opportunity for some to glimpse the carving underneath, but even those who did not have visual access to the work being dedicated might later recall the celebrations surrounding a major dedication. Indeed, an exhortation to memory was part of the dedication of the Templo Mayor in 1487, according to Durán:

Nezahualpilli [ruler of the neighboring city-state of Texcoco] turned to King Ahuitzotl and suggested that he have a message sent to everyone in the region, that the day before the festival all the people of the cities be told to come, young and old, women and men, old people and youths, so that this solemn ceremony would be remembered forever.66

Figure 3.27. Offering 126, a cache found underneath the Tlaltecuhtli monolith at the foot of the Templo Mayor, Mexica, ca. 1486–1502 CE.

195 × 90 × 80 cm. Courtesy of Leonardo López Luján, Proyecto Templo Mayor. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

As in the case of the Olmec buried massive offerings, the concealment of carvings on the undersides of Aztec sculptures or of the caches in the body of the Templo Mayor increased the pressure to remember, since memory alone provided access to these hidden things. The extravagance of the gesture only contributed to the patron’s might. But it also meant that in the absence of visual confirmation, speech and rumor provided ways of remembering—these objects circulated verbally rather than visually. In many ways, then, the carved undersides of sculptures can be compared to the caches placed in the body of the Templo Mayor and throughout the Sacred Precinct. After the crucial and often quite public moment of making and deposition, neither kind of work addressed itself to human audiences. To an even greater extent than the carvings on the undersides of sculptures, these dedicatory caches became invisible and inaccessible once sealed inside the foundations of the temple mound. Complex,

layered accumulations of works of art and products of the natural world, these offerings—or perhaps better, doings— arranged sands, shells, corals, plants, animal bodies, vessels, jewels, and sculptures made out of wood, stone, and resin in precise configurations designed to appeal to particular deities and symbolically re-create the order of the universe, much as Olmec buried configurations had done millennia before (figure 3.27).67 The sequence of the chacmools associated with the Templo Mayor helps elucidate the connections between carved undersides and caches. The chacmool in front of the Stage II Tlaloc temple at the Templo Mayor is uncarved on its underside (see figure 3.25), but it was placed directly over a cache containing greenstone beads and green obsidian blades, both precious materials evocative of water.68 Significantly, the carvings on the edges of the base seem to gesture toward what lies concealed beneath: the decoration consists of a series of concentric circles, the symbol

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a

b

c Figure 3.28. Chacmool, (a) top and (b–c) underside with sawfish

and aquatic scene, Mexica, ca. 1480–1519 CE. Basalt, 50 × 78 × 43 cm. Museo de la Escultura Mexica, Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado, Zona Arqueológica de Santa Cecilia Acatitlán, inv. 10-0067. Photo of top by Mario Yair T. S.; photo of underside from Solís Olguín, Catálogo de la escultura mexica del Museo de Santa Cecilia Acatitlán, 1976, lám. 24; drawing of underside by Ángel González López, Aztec Stone Sculpture from the Basin of Mexico Project/AZSSBMP1567. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

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for chalchihuitl, or greenstone bead, in Aztec iconography. These circles seem to have undergone multiple episodes of repainting; in the final iteration, some of them painted red or orange and others blue, a color conceptually similar to that of the greenstone beads in the cache below. The carvings on the undersides of the later Mexica chacmools continue the themes of aquatic bounty presented by this early cache. They represent water and the creatures that dwell in it, with overtones of the sacrifice hinted at by the blades in the Stage II cache. On the underside of one chacmool found just a block east of the Templo Mayor in the eighteenth century, shells, frogs, and a porcupine fish float on a ground of undulating waves, along with more unsettling objects that resemble dismembered joints spilling scrolls of blood (see figure 3.26). The underside of the now headless chacmool found half a kilometer north of the Templo Mayor is again decorated with undulating water, full of swirling eddies, fish, shells, and also what appears to be a human heart (figure 3.28). At the center of the composition lies a sawfish (Pristis perotteti ), a species frequently found in offerings at the Templo Mayor.69 This kind of fish is sometimes known as a pez cipactli, or crocodile fish, recalling the Aztec belief that the earth might also be understood as a giant cipactli or crocodile floating on the watery surface of the world. Finally, on the underside of a chacmool found half a kilometer to the south of the Templo Mayor in 1943 (figure 3.29), the sawtooth fish is replaced with a figure whose body resembles that of Tlaltecuhtli, wearing a skirt and shown in dorsal position, head falling down onto her back. A passage describing the creation of the world in the Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas helps explain the reasons for this substitution:

And later they created the skies . . . and they made the water, and in it, they created a great fish called Cipactli, which is like a caiman, and out of that fish they made the earth . . . they made of the fish Cipactli the earth, which they called Tlalteuctli; and they painted it like the god of the earth lying on a fish, because it had been made of it.70

Guided by this passage, it is possible to understand both the sawfish and the Tlaltecuhtli as images of the earth, floating on the primordial sea. But in the latter case, the god body fuses attributes of two deities: the face is not the

familiar visage of the earth deity, but rather that of Tlaloc, the rain god, with ringed eyes, cruller nose, and fanged jawless mouth. These aquatic landscapes of creation harmonize with the emphasis on rain and agriculture on the upper surfaces of the chacmools. In the two cases where the head of the reclining figure survives, it wears the masked eyes and fanged mouthpiece of Tlaloc, although the eyes are surrounded by squared goggles, which may specify a slightly different aspect of the deity from the more familiar rounded goggles. At first glance, the reclining figure and concealed underside are congruent: both state aquatic themes. But the sculpture may also stage an opposition between rain, which was the domain of Tlaloc, and seas and lakes, which were governed by other deities, among them Chalchiuhtlicue.71 Of course, the two are also interrelated: water cycles from sky to sea and back again, as the Aztecs well understood. On two of the chacmools, the edge of the sculpture is carved with maize foliage and ears of maize, as if maize bursts forth from the conjunction of water with the terrestrial surface on which the sculpture rests. In the dialogue between seen and unseen, these three imperial-period examples articulate a discourse of water, sacrifice, and fertility, showing the surface of the earth floating on water, just as the city of Tenochtitlan itself lay in the middle of a lake. The carvings on the undersides of the later chacmools are thus, in their subjects and their concealment, conceptually similar to offerings. They also have much in common with the broader category of doings, discussed in chapter 1. The things pictured on the undersides of these sculptures, especially the pez cipactli and the porcupine fish, are also precisely the kinds of aquatic creatures that were frequently found in caches at the Templo Mayor, especially in later phases. None of the later chacmools were found in situ, so it is impossible to know if the carving on the underside replaced the need to place actual objects underneath it, or if they, too, were placed above caches, multiplying the bounty. In either case, the very excess of the underside carving, in its labor-intensiveness and iconographic density, seems almost like a kind of offering in and of itself. Further, the practice of carving the undersides of sculptures likely developed after 1480, following a dramatic expansion of the practices of caching at the Templo Mayor, as if yet one more way of concentrating wealth and effort into this exceptional structure. But what do Mesoamerican offerings do? To whom

a

b

c Figure 3.29. Chacmool, (a) top and (b–c) cast of underside with

Tlaloc-Tlaltecuhtli and aquatic scene, Mexica, ca. 1480–1519 CE. Stone, 74 × 108 × 45 cm. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, inv. 10-10941. Photos of sculpture and cast of underside © Marco Antonio Pacheco / Arqueología Mexicana / Raíces, all rights reserved; drawing by Ángel González López, AZSSBMP1566. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

are they addressed? Are the buried caches at the Templo Mayor and the carvings on the undersides of sculptures gifts to the gods, removed from ordinary circulation to transfer them to an immaterial realm? James Maffie’s account of Aztec monism suggests that this may be the wrong way of understanding these gestures.72 According

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to Maffie, in Aztec metaphysics, all of the universe is made of a single substance, what the Aztecs called teotl. This word is sometimes translated as “god” or “deity,” but it has also been suggested that it is more like mana, or sacred energy. But even this falls short, Maffie argues, of appreciating the fundamental monism of Aztec metaphysics: everything is made of teotl. Teotl manifests in myriad ways. A consequence of Aztec nonhierarchical monism is that religion is pantheistic rather than polytheistic: there are infinite unfoldings of teotl into different god forms, rather than a pantheon of stable divine entities who exist outside of the human world. The absence of such an anthropomorphized pantheon makes it difficult to conceive of a fixed audience for offerings. As John Monaghan puts it, “If the manifestations of the sacred are potentially infinite, then the prayers and rituals that address these manifestations will themselves be similarly fluid and variable.”73 Nonhierarchical monism has another consequence: in addition to addressing teotl, offerings themselves manifest teotl. Not simply gifts to the gods, who will return favors in exchange, the offerings themselves order and present the way the universe ought to be, much like the Puebloan doings analyzed by Severin Fowles and discussed in chapter 1.74 In the case of the carved undersides, what this means is this: there is no stable being named Tlaltecuhtli who is placated by the sight (or perhaps touch) of their image on the underside of a sculpture, placed against the ground. Instead, the image of Tlaltecuhtli makes the power of the earth present where it is represented—sometimes in a male body, sometimes in a female body, sometimes with a monstrous head, sometimes with attributes of the rain god. The image of Tlaltecuhtli literally grounds the image, indicating that earth force is an inseparable part of the subject being represented. In other words, carvings on the undersides of Aztec sculptures are there because of the symbolic work that they do, and that work can proceed unmediated by a divine audience. Indeed, the divine audience is co-created along with the work that addresses it. ESOT ER I C SE E IN G

Carvings on the underside of Aztec sculpture are inseparable from what lies above them. But what is so intriguing about the Aztec works is that the converse is not true. The visible surfaces of the object are complete in and of themselves, meaningful and satisfying, leaving no clue to an uninitiated viewer that something is hidden underneath—and offering sometimes only the subtlest of hints

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for the viewer in the know. The archaizing origins of so many genres of sculpture carved on the underside likewise point to a kind of courtly erudition. In this context, it is significant that some hidden carvings, even when absolutely and irrevocably concealed, give subtle hints to their existence. This is most obvious in the group of coiled serpents, which are numerically the most common kind of sculpture with carving on the underside. The coiled serpent in figure 3.5, which can stand in for one of any number of ophidians in collections around the world, features a smooth visible surface and a segmented and plated underside, but in fact these plated segments begin to announce themselves just at the juncture with the surface upon which the sculpture rests, where a series of dentate forms suggest the ventral scales below (figure 3.30). These kinds of hints prove to be fairly accurate indicators of hidden carving below, and conversely, where such hints are absent, the surface underneath is usually plain.75 In some cases, the cues to a hidden carving can be seen from some distance away, but seeing these details frequently requires close proximity to the object and a particular angle of vision, one low to the surface on which the sculpture is displayed: one must abase oneself to see these clues. These works thus support informed seeing in very particular ways. At the same time as the visible program seems complete for the uninitiated and distant viewer, for those who know to look and have the access to do so, subtle hints seem to provide a visual confirmation of what lies hidden and unseen. Thus, these cues to invisibility create a way that knowledge of something hidden might seem to be verifiable; they might allow oral transmission of the unseen to have more weight as well. These examples remind us that one of the greatest delights of secrecy is revelation: that a secret cannot, in fact, exist without the possibility of disclosure. They also remind us, as Sissela Bok and Karma Lochrie emphasize, that secrets invariably create distinction between those who know and those who do not.76 The added twist here is that clues to the secret are hidden in plain sight—but they can be verified only if one already knows that there is something there to verify. When the hidden program continues what is represented on the visible surface, those few centimeters at the edge offer a subtle hint to what lies concealed below, yet for other kinds of underside carvings, no such visual clues exist. Texts or images of deities—what it might be tempting to term symbolic rather than naturalistic

representations—do not announce their own presence in the same way as the coils of a serpent or the paws of a jaguar. On the bottom of a small offering vessel or a stone box, the image of Tlaltecuhtli stays fiercely confined to the bottom plane (see figures 3.17 and 3.18), as do the elaborate glyphs on the underside of the head of the defeated goddess Coyolxauhqui (see figure 3.7). Indeed, the glyphs on the organ cacti with the name of Tenoch on their undersides are even surrounded by a raised border, definitively sealing off even the possibility of a glimpse at the edge (see figure 3.15). While continuations of the surface decoration exist at all levels of production, these more elaborate and allusive programs are most common in elite Tenochca Mexica products. Here is yet another layer of secrecy, one that cannot be verified by scrutinizing the visible surfaces. When the two modes of continuation and symbolic representation collide, they are given different treatments. Text is superimposed upon serpent’s coils on the underside of the fire serpent in the Dumbarton Oaks collection (see figure 3.19). When Tlaltecuhtli appears carved on the underside of a feathered serpent, the deity is always shown on top of the coils of the serpent, as if these two modes of representation coexist in a distinct, yet consistent, spatial relationship (figure 3.31). Here, secrets are layered one upon another. The edges of the ventral scales are visible around the perimeter of the sculpture, but the image of the earth deity remains utterly concealed on the underside. One can imagine several different kinds of viewers for this kind of object. Some people might have passed by the work without even registering its presence or attending closely to its details (see chapter 2 for further discussion of such inattentive audiences). Others might not even suspect that the underside is carved, for the visible program seems complete and satisfying. Still others might imagine that the underside might be carved with the serpent’s coils and can verify that assumption at the margins of the sculpture. Seeing the edges of the coils peeking out from underneath might offer such viewers the sense that there are no more mysteries to be revealed. Finally, there are those who know—or simply believe—that there is an image of Tlaltecuhtli superimposed on those serpent’s coils, even though that knowledge cannot be verified without overturning the sculpture, which might well be too heavy to move or perhaps located in a place where such improper action would be swiftly rebuked. Receiving this final kind of knowledge secondhand requires an act of belief, an act of faith that cannot be verified with the eyes alone.77

Figure 3.30. Hints of the carved underside at the edge of the coiled

serpent illustrated in figure 3.5. Photo by the author.

But the appeal of recondite or esoteric knowledge does not end there. Images of Tlaltecuhtli in their different aspects on the undersides of sculpture are often particularly elaborate—far more so than the representations of this deity in painted books—and they can be extraordinarily difficult to read, so richly detailed that the very iconographic density constitutes another barrier to understanding.78 Further, interpreting the relationship between the top and bottom of a sculpture might require a profound knowledge of myth and history, the ability to resolve a puzzle posed by the juxtaposition of disparate concepts. The feathered serpent sculpture in figure 3.31 stages a confrontation between two of the most important deities of the Aztec pantheon: Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, god of wind, rain, and rulership, bringer of culture and patron of the arts, and Tlaltecuhtli, the ravening, incoherent, hungry earth. And yet, the two are oriented so that they connect with each other, their flint tongues nearly touching at the border of the sculpture. Together, the two may form a diagram of the world, with the body of the feathered serpent superimposed on the earth deity below, its blue-green quetzal feather plumes like the foliage of maize plants growing out of the land. But this composition may also allude to a particular moment in Aztec creation narratives when the gods Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca transformed themselves into serpents and penetrated the body of Tlaltecuhtli, tearing the deity apart to form the earth and the sky.79 The composition is a frequent one, repeated on at least a dozen (and likely more) Aztec sculptures.80 Likewise, when we return to the underside of the

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Figure 3.31. Feathered serpent, (a) top and (b–c) Tlaltecuhtli on the

underside. Note how the deity’s body is superimposed on the coils of the serpent. Mexica/Aztec, ca. 1480–1519. Volcanic stone, 28 × 47 cm. © IVb 1359, Museum der Kulturen Basel, Col. Lukas Vischer. Photos by Peter Horner, 1985; drawing of underside by Amanda Chacón after a drawing by Lucia Henderson.

a

b

Coatlicue, with which the chapter began, we again see these two modes of representation coexisting: the creature’s claws continuing onto the underside, digging into the earth below and intersecting the carving of the earth deity, who is confined to the lower surface (see figure 0.4). Again, this juxtaposition of seen and unseen elements articulates a number of powerful binaries: the visible surface is a celestial deity; the hidden one, an earth god. The female body on the visible surface is mutilated; the male body on the underside is living and whole. Maffie uses the Nahuatl word inamic- (his/her/its equal or pair) as an analytical term to denote such complementary, mutually constituting oppositions, and argues that they are one of the fundamental structuring principles of Aztec cosmology.81 Male~female, living~dead, and top~underside are such inamic pairs. Even

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c

if we can no longer reconstruct the full poetic impact of this juxtaposition, we can imagine the weight of tradition and creativity that informed it. But inamic pairs were not the only way that Aztecs thought about duality. In addition to these mutually constituting oppositions, sometimes a dual pair might constitute something quite different than the sum of its parts. Nahuatl speech was full of difrasismos, or “diphrastic kennings,” paired couplets that together represented complex concepts in elegant and poetical ways.82 Indeed, poetry was termed in xochitl in cuicatl, “the flower, the song.” In tlilli in tlapalli, “the red, the black” was a frequent expression for “writing” or “knowledge”; and a city-state was an altepetl, a contraction of in atl in tepetl, “the water, the mountain.” The Nahuatl expression for warfare was in atl in tlachinolli,

“the water, the fire.” That expression, represented glyphically, lies underneath the severed head of the goddess Coyolxauhqui, whose defeat by her brother Huitzilopochtli was the archetypal scene of warfare (see figure 3.7). Likewise, the Templo Mayor—the principal sanctuary of the Aztec empire—was a twin temple, its north side dedicated to the rain god Tlaloc and its south side, to the solar god Huitzilopochtli. The north and south sides were not merely opposed but also complementary, together encapsulating whole and completed periods: a day, a year, an agricultural cycle.83 What is important about Aztec binary oppositions is that they can resolve into coherent wholes, greater than and often distinct from the sum of their parts. They exemplify a Mesoamerican poetic and philosophical tradition, a way of thinking through metaphors of opposition and reconciliation. A sculpture carved on both top and bottom was like a difrasismo in that its oppositions had to be resolved to achieve its true meaning. Visibility~concealment was only one of numerous binaries manipulated in the process. Possessed with the knowledge of the whole program, the initiated viewer would grasp its cohesive meaning as well as the distinctive parts that constituted it, just as the reader of an atl-tlachinolli glyph would know it signified “warfare,” perhaps even before identifying the graphemes for water and fire that composed it. In these royal and courtly examples, we see the power of the secret to produce and maintain difference. A secret is only a secret if someone—but not everyone—knows it; it is perhaps even more powerful if rumor and speculation abound, but the truth, like the carving on the underside of a sculpture set in place, cannot easily be verified.84 These works highlight the ways that art might circulate outside the realm of the visual: spoken or whispered about, perhaps exaggerated or misreported in the heat of conversation. Indeed, the visual details, particularly in the case of the rather illegibly carved Tenoch heads underneath the organ cacti (see figure 3.15), might well have mattered less than the sheer existence of the conceit. In other cases, though, the underside was richly detailed, perhaps even more elaborate than the visible surface. It represented considerable artistic labor—and the wealth to command it—destined to be concealed. Like a dedicatory cache, it moved wealth from the realm of the visible to that of the unseen, while simultaneously demonstrating the piety and wealth of the patron who could perform such a grandiose gesture. But unlike the caches, which

disappeared into the body of a structure, what mattered about the sculptures was that this material and rhetorical wealth was hidden in plain sight. The gods—and elites who knew of the unseen carvings, and thus might assert godlike sight—had access to a reality that others could not know existed. PU B LIC S E CRE CY IN PRACTICE

Yet for all their ideological power, Mexica sculptures carved on their undersides may always have been auxiliary to other forms of practice. The Coatlicue and her sisters, whose monstrous femininity seems to embody every feverish fantasy of what an idol should look like, were most likely not themselves direct recipients of worship; instead, they guarded the corners of the Templo Mayor platform (see figures 0.1, 3.3, and 3.4). The cuauhxicalli were offering vessels, containers for storing the hearts extracted in sacrificial ritual (see figures 3.9, 3.10, and 3.23c); the chacmools were another kind of sacrificial implement and receptacle, parallel to the techcatl or sacrificial stone on the Huitzilopochtli side of the Templo Mayor (see figures 3.25, 3.26, 3.28, and 3.29). Although the function of the other sculptures is harder to know, we have no clear evidence that they had any more central importance than the examples just cited. They were not the main objects of worship. Nonetheless, their dynamics of concealment and revelation simultaneously reinforced and offered a kind of commentary on the structures of power in the Aztec capital. These sculptures surrounding the Templo Mayor presaged the crescendos of ritual at its summit. Human god-embodiers, or ixiptla, moved through the city, wearing the attributes that assembled particular configurations of teotl, before ascending to the temple summit to be sacrificed—or to perform the ritual killing.85 Human sacrifice on the platform outside the twin temples was a public spectacle, raised high above the plaza so that many might see, but the true mysteries were concealed within the temples behind, where only the authorized few might pass. Shrouded in darkness, coated in sacrificial blood, the cult images were difficult to see, the experience of them embodied and multisensory, replete with sensory excess of smell and texture, evoking affects such as awe, terror, or disgust.86 But even they were not the true heart of power. Rather, it was the tlaquimilloli, or sacred bundle, whose ritual wrapping and unwrapping was the central drama of Aztec religion (figure 3.32 is one colonial visualization).87

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As one sixteenth-century friar described it, these bundles were “the principal idol, which they held in great reverence, and they did not hold in as much [reverence] those staffs or the figures of stone or sticks that they made.”88 These bundles are never pictured in preconquest Central Mexican sources, and much of what we know about them (as about so many of Tenochtitlan’s other public secrets) comes from the Inquisition trials of the 1530s and other

colonial records (figure 3.33).89 Although the inquisitors initially assumed that these wrapped bundles contained carved images of the deities, it is not clear that this was the case. God bundles might have contained the bones or other body relics of deified ancestors; they might have also contained what we might term “contact relics,” particularly the clothes that the god was supposed to have worn while on earth. Annabeth Headrick and Rex Koontz have emphasized the bundles’ formal relationship to the mummy bundles in which Mesoamericans wrapped the bodies of their dead; this is also how the bodies of the Mexica kings were treated before their cremation.90 As emerged in the Inquisition trial, these bundles were the one thing that Mexica religious leaders tried to save during the conflagration of the invasion. They were secretly removed from Tenochtitlan in 1520 as Hernán Cortés and the other Spanish conquistadores tightened their grip on the city and began destroying idols. The bundles were concealed in a cave for several years after the fall of Tenochtitlan in 1521, and then removed to another location in 1526; the Inquisition never succeeded in discovering the whereabouts of the bundles in 1539. From their places of concealment, they continued to be worshipped in the tumultuous years after the conquest, receiving offerings of incense, tortillas, and ashes.91 No one called to testify in 1539 had ever seen any of the bundles opened. An Indigenous man named Mateo, under torture by the Inquisition, testified that “his father had a wrapped idol that he worshipped, very heavy, which was never unwrapped, but only worshipped, and that no one who was not very important unwrapped it, for the reverence that they had for it, and because they said that whoever unwrapped it would die.”92 In this account, the conjoined forces of sight and touch threatened a dangerous release of energies that only a person of great spiritual prowess might withstand. Filled with objects imbued with sacred energy, the tlaquimilloli was the most secret— and perhaps the most sacred—manifestation of a deity. The stone sculptures that we now study and admire had nowhere near the same generative power. TH E BO DY O F TH E K ING

Figure 3.32. Priests making offerings of incense, fire, and blood

to the sacred bundle of Huitzilopochtli as part of the accession ceremonies of a new ruler. Florentine Codex, Book 8, Chapter 18, folio 46v, 1575–1577. Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ms. Med. Palat. 219, f. 296v. Courtesy of the Ministero della Cultura. Further reproduction by any means is prohibited.

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Tenochtitlan was a city of secrets, though the concealment of those secrets was often performed quite publicly, much as the placement of the sacred bundles within temple sanctuaries was surely well known within the city. When ambassadors from enemy states were invited to temple

Figure 3.33. Sacred bundles of Tenochtitlan from a document in Inquisition testimony, 1539. From left to right, the bundles are

labeled Huitzilopochtli, Cihuacoatl, Telpochtli, Titlauque Tezcatlipoca, and Tepehua. Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City, MAPILU/210100/5139. Manuscrito tradicional indígena “Ídolos del templo de Huitzilopochtli,” en expediente sobre idolatría (4848).

dedication or coronation ceremonies, they arrived under the cover of darkness and viewed the proceedings from a position of concealment. Yet drums announced the arrival of visitors even as their identities were obscured.93 As with the carvings on the undersides of sculptures, rumors must have spread far more widely than certain knowledge that could be verified by sight. It was forbidden to look directly at the Mexica emperor. Within the palace, as the conquistador Bernal Díaz recounts, attendants and petitioners “had to enter with their eyes lowered to the ground, and not to look up in his face . . . on taking their leave they did not turn their backs, but kept their faces towards him with their eyes to the ground, and they did not turn their backs until they left the room.”94 Mundane activities of the divine king, such as eating, were also sheltered from view: “As soon as he began to eat they placed before him a sort of wooden screen painted over with gold, so that no one should watch him eating.”95 These restrictions on seeing reinforced the Mexica ruler’s divine kingship in ways that resonate with traditions in so many other places around the world. Restrictions on looking at divine rulers served to augment their mystique, setting them apart from ordinary mortals, and the bodily constraints that such practice implied offered countless opportunities to reinforce social hierarchies.96

The emperor was enjoined to present himself in public as rarely as possible, but when he did leave the palace, even more stringent restrictions were in place.97 The Florentine Codex catalogs the prohibitions: “When the ruler went forth .  .  . none might cross in front of him; none might come forth before him; none might look up at him; none might come face to face with him.”98 An eyewitness account by Hernán Cortés demonstrates how this prohibition was enacted:

All the chiefs who entered his house went barefoot, and those he called before him came with their heads bowed and their bodies in a humble posture, and when they spoke to him they did not look him in the face; this was because they held him in great respect and reverence. . . . When Mutezuma left the palace, which was not often, all those who went with him and those whom he met in the streets turned away their faces so that in no manner should they look on him; and all the others prostrated themselves until he had passed. One of those chiefs always walked before him carrying three long thin rods, which I think was done so that all should know he was coming.99

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Figure 3.34. Portrait of Tizoc embodying his patron deity Huitzilopochtli on the Tizoc Stone, Mexica, 1481–1486 CE. Museo Nacional de

Antropología, Mexico City. Photo by Ricardo Alvarado Tapia. Secretaría de Cultura-INAH-MEX. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia.

The sound of the thin rods and the wave of averted gazes signaled the passage of the emperor. Dressed in luxurious textiles and dazzling featherwork, the Mexica emperor’s body attracted the eye and yet demanded of his subjects the decorum to refrain from looking. As Élodie Dupey García puts it, elite Mexica subjects “existed in a precarious balance because the prerogatives they enjoyed constantly put their will and virtue to the test.”100 The prohibition against gazing directly at the king also may have responded to particularly Mesoamerican ideas about the vulnerability of being seen, like the Maya examples discussed in chapter 2.101 Certainly moments of temptation or resistance must have occurred: as Barbara Mundy notes, many sixteenth-century Nahuas had no hesitation about offering descriptions of the appearance of the divine king whom they should not have seen.102 But in the normative accounts, nothing impeded the penetrative power of the Mexica tlahtoani ’s sight. It created a fierce asymmetry of knowledge and control between the ruler and his subjects.

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For over a century and a half, Mexica rulers did not present themselves in stone. Their only representations were, perhaps, in private books, and in the mind’s eye of viewers who had glimpsed the king unawares or gazed surreptitiously when such looking was prohibited. But in the latest years of Mexica rule, this practice changed. From the image of the emperor Tizoc, embodying the patron deity Huitzilopochtli on his eponymous gladiatorial stone (figure 3.34), to the monumental portrait of Moteuczoma cut into the living rock at Chapultepec, late Mexica emperors experimented with new ways of making themselves—and their names—permanently visible.103 It was at precisely the same moment that sculptors, perhaps even in the same workshops, began to systematically carve the undersides of sculptures. The impulse to make the emperor permanently visible and the impulse to create new kinds of hidden knowledge developed in the same milieu, at a time when Mexica elites were reckoning with the effects of their newfound dominance, arising both from the expansion of

the territorial reach of their Mesoamerican empire and from consolidations of power within the Valley of Mexico. Pictorial documents produced after the Spanish invasion, like the Codex Mendoza or the Tira de Tepechpan, represent the founding of Tenochtitlan as a family affair, wherein a small group of men—no more than ten of them, sometimes represented with their wives seated behind them—joined together to form a new city. Even in that moment, the founders may have stood in synecdochally for larger groupings of households, but the scale of the altepetl was conceived as personal, at least for the elites who governed it. That fiction could no longer be sustained by 1480. Portraits of the emperor and carvings on the undersides of sculptures were both ways to manage this new complexity, to create power out of open secrets and hierarchy out of knowledge. In reimagining the iconography of power, artists and intellectuals in the court of the late Mexica emperors drew

on the weight of Mesoamerican tradition. Works from the ancestral cities of Teotihuacan and Tula literally served as models for many of the genres of sculpture that came to be carved on their undersides, and new conventions for ruler portraiture also had deep Mesoamerican precedent. But other, more distant, echoes exist as well. Like the massive offerings of La Venta, created millennia earlier—works of which the Mexica almost certainly had no knowledge— these great carved stones can be characterized as doings and acts of creation that brought heightened attention to particular relationships between humans and the forces of the universe. As in the case of those earlier buried doings or the carved lintels and stelae of the Maya world, difficulties of seeing were made into pointed rhetoric via a shared substrate of ideas about vision and power. But whereas for the Olmecs, such doings brought the community together, for the Mexica, they reified difference.

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CO N CLUSION

THE LANGUAGE OF ZUYUA

“B

ring the sun, child, bear it on the palm of your hand to my plate.” The Chilam Balam of Chumayel, an eighteenth-century Yucatec Maya compilation of histories and prophetic texts, presents this as the first of a series of tests put to town officials at the end of each calendrical cycle. The riddle continues: “A lance is planted, a lofty cross, in the middle of its heart. A green jaguar is seated over the sun to drink its blood.” The answer: a fried egg, over which the sign of the cross had been made, with a green chile placed on top of it. This is the language of Zuyua. According to scattered mentions in colonial Maya texts, Zuyua was a past place, a mythical place, and quite possibly a foreign place as well, but the language of Zuyua as recorded in the Chilam Balam is a set of riddles in Yucatec Mayan.1 Many of the riddles have a similar structure: the ruler issues a request that is troubling or apparently impossible to fulfill, and the respondent, recognizing the metaphorical language, brings the required item, often something to be consumed. The exchange is couched in the language of kinship, with the ruler addressing the supplicant as mehen, or child, and in turn being called yum, which means lord or father. “Child, bring me the bone of your father whom you buried three years ago. Great is my desire to see it.” The

answer: cassava root that has been baked in a pit. Many exchanges contain troubling intimations of sexual violence: “Child, bring me a very beautiful woman with a very white countenance. I greatly desire her. I will cast down her skirt and her loose dress before me.” The answer: a turkey, to be plucked and roasted.2 The text of the Chilam Balam of Chumayel is clearly colonial. It is written in the Spanish alphabet and, in addition to the mentions of Christianity, the riddles involve horses, stirrups, chickens, and other things unknown before the Spanish invasion. The limited scope of the responses might suggest the impoverished state of Maya nobility under colonial rule. Where once Maya kings called themselves k’inich ajaw, or sun-faced lord, their much-diminished heirs could only request a fried egg as a stand-in for the sun. A demand for a large house is filled by a hat placed on the floor; a winged jaguar is merely a horse.3 But the language of Zuyua also suggests a way of seeing the numinous in the everyday, the possibility that behind every quotidian thing is another, more powerful reality. It describes a different kind of perception, limited to elites. In this way, it has something of the same hidden-in-plain-sight quality as the works of art that have been discussed within these pages. Throughout Mesoamerica, similarly recondite elite

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languages thrived at the time of the Spanish invasion. Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, spoken in the Valley of Mexico and beyond, had the difrasismos, or paired phrases, discussed in chapter 3. Some, such as the term altepetl or “water mountain” for city-state, were commonplace, so frequently deployed that their original etymology might not even have come to mind during everyday use. But others were surely less common, their import less apparent, requiring thoughtful analysis to produce meaning from juxtaposition. As a tool of a master rhetorician, some difrasismos might even have been coined on the spot; others, used only rarely and understood by a very few. Such rhetorical resources surely constituted an important part of tecpillatolli, or lordly speech, defined in Alonso de Molina’s dictionary as “courtly and elegant speech and reasoning.”4 There was also the nahuallatolli, or language of the sorcerers, a dense set of metaphors that spoke of powerful forces in richly allusive language.5 The intention might have been to include or to exclude, to celebrate shared knowledge or to reinforce social difference, but in any case, the exercise was to produce an invisible third term from available evidence; to reconstruct meaning that went beyond the surface. In the Mixteca region of Oaxaca, the language of iya provided social differentiation. It stressed radical difference between nobles and commoners, who for the Mixtecs had different places and modes of origin.6 Elites used a richly metaphorical vocabulary to refer to their own bodies, terming their teeth “knives,” their fingernails “little turquoises,” and their feet “arrows.” Elite body processes underwent a similar metaphorical refinement: for an elite child, to nurse at the breast was to “suck honey”; to urinate, “to cause dew to fall.”7 In other cases, the suffix -iya was appended to common words when they referred to elite or divine bodies or actions. This language, full of “hidden secrets” and “metaphorical ways of speaking,” was the exclusive property of elites.8 It asserted a different way of perceiving the surrounding world. Powerful eyes, ornamented with smoke, flames, or serpents, are the exclusive property of nobles in the Mixtec codices, as Byron Hamann has shown (see figure 0.10).9 Throughout Mesoamerica, elite ways of seeing and knowing were distinguished from the experience of commoners. But never forget: the language of Zuyua is about power, and thus, inextricably, about violence. The Chilam Balam of Chumayel dwells at length on the punishments that should be visited on an official who fails the examination:

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These are the words. If they are not understood by the chiefs of the towns, ill-omened is the star adorning the night. . . . Sad is the havoc in the courtyards of the nobles. Those who die are those who do not understand; those who live will understand it. . . . They shall be hung by the neck; the tips of their tongues shall be cut off; their eyes shall be torn out.10 An illustration in the manuscript shows an official pilloried after failing to answer the riddles correctly (figure 4.1); the text asserts that those who failed were killed, after a telling mutilation of the eyes and tongue that had produced false perception and false speech. Whether this ever took place is doubtful, as the text is describing an imagined state of affairs hundreds of years in the past.11 But the point remains: issues of seeing and knowing were of vital importance to Mesoamericans. Elite claims to penetrating sight and discerning knowledge were a central part of strategies to retain power. If unfettered sight and the complete knowledge that came with it were the exclusive province of the gods, the assertion that elite sight was especially powerful, capable of understanding mysterious and hidden things, served to reinforce the claim that elites were fundamentally superior to other human beings. These artworks were part of the apparatus that allowed rulers to claim the labor—and even the lives—of their subjects. The works of art we see in museums today were not abstract curiosities, divorced from all real-world function, but deeply political objects that reified power and social difference. Over the course of Mesoamerican history, the power of the unseen was harnessed in different ways. In the early years of urban development at La Venta, the vast buried offerings in Complex A created a way that the entire community could be bound together by shared labor and by the memory of that labor, persisting through speech when sight was no longer available. But over time at La Venta, even buried massive offerings became more unequal, concentrating less unmarked communal wealth and instead focusing on gestures associated with particular individuals and lineages. The weight of the unseen diminished relative to more visible expressions of power aboveground. For the Maya, a thousand years later, the privileged view of a lintel in the workshop allowed patrons to claim powerful sight, performing a kind of looking never possible once the lintel was installed in its architectural context. Instead, the living

images of kings and queens on those lintels surveyed the people who fell into their ichnal, or visual field, the rulers’ very position above the doorway rendering all viewers as supplicants. But much of this subtle nuance was unavailable to viewers, focalized at the moment of dedication but thereafter possible to overlook completely. For the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, the practice of carving the undersides of sculptures developed as the empire was expanding and its intellectuals were beginning to conceive of new relationships to civilizations past. The Mexica sculptures carved on their undersides may not have had power equal to that of the energy contained within sacred bundles or the petrifying weight of the ruler’s gaze, but in their play of concealment and revelation, in their disclosure to increasingly limited audiences, they prefigured the dynamics of concealment and display that structured the central dramas of Mexica religious and political life. Through them, we can understand just how central questions of visibility and access were to the maintenance of Mexica imperial power. For over two thousand years, the rulers of Mesoamerica mobilized unseen art to defend their prerogatives. The ways we experience ancient Mesoamerican things today reify a different kind of elite power. These objects entered museums around the world as a result of colonial violence and the subsequent power imbalances between the global north and the global south; many were removed illegally or coercively from their original contexts and smuggled out of their countries of origin.12 That museum-goers have the luxury of seeing Mesoamerican art in New York or London or Basel is the result of past injustice. Even in the context of a national or regional archaeological museum, where questions of expropriated national patrimony do not loom so large, the removal of objects from their community of origin can be deeply contested, the objects used to reinforce nationalist narratives that disenfranchise modern Indigenous populations.13 Who is geographically and economically able to visit a museum or archaeological site and who feels welcome and entitled to do so remain issues in which power dynamics are inexorably at play.

Figure 4.1. The official who has failed the examination is pilloried

and led away to be punished, Chilam Balam of Chumayel, Maya, ca. 1782. Manuscripts Division, Dept. of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library C0940, no. 4.

Even the terms under which we encounter these works— as examples of Mesoamerican “art” or “civilization”—bear with them the legacy of this colonial past. Art history has only grudgingly accommodated objects from Mesoamerica into its definition of art, a definition stacked, as Shelley Errington and Carolyn Dean observe, so that the works of the colonizers, especially canvas paintings (and sometimes sculptures) in the European tradition, invariably come out on the top of any hierarchies of value.14 But perhaps what the examples in this book can help us see instead is the impoverishment of imagination that the colonial condition renders in all of its subjects. These objects help us understand that the ideal of the painting on the wall of the museum and the fiction that we view it as disembodied minds are historically contingent phenomena. Unseen art lets us imagine new genealogies that move from ancient art to modern performance; it allows us to recognize that our capacity for engaging with visually elaborated things has always been far richer and more complex than we have allowed ourselves to imagine.

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NOTES

IN T R O D U CT I O N. S E EI NG A N D K N OW I NG

1. Coatlicue is the name of the mother of the Aztec god Huitzilopochtli, patron deity of the Mexica, but it is by no means clear that this statue represents that entity, as will be discussed further in chapter 3. For modern assessments of the Coatlicue, see especially Boone, “The ‘Coatlicues’ at the Templo Mayor,” 189–206; Klein, “A New Interpretation of the Aztec Statue called Coatlicue,” 229–250; López Luján, “La Coatlicue,” 115–229. For the discovery and early history of the Coatlicue, see also Bernal, “La historia póstuma de Coatlicue,” 31–34; Matos Moctezuma, “Tríptico del pasado,” 88–98; Schreffler, “The Making of an Aztec Goddess”; López Luján, “El ídolo sin pies ni cabeza,” 203–232. 2. Note that not all treatment of the Calendar Stone was reverential: the stone may have been damaged or used for target practice in the nineteenth century (I am grateful to Cecelia Klein for reminding me of this aspect of the Calendar Stone’s history). For further discussion, see Boone, “Templo Mayor Research,” 19–29; Solís Olguín, “La Piedra del Sol,” 42–47; López Luján, “‘El adiós y triste queja del Gran Calendario Azteca,’” 78–83; Villela, Robb, and Miller, “Introduction,” 18–20; Ryu, “Calendar, Column, Crucifix,” 20–74. On the Tizoc stone, see López Austin and López Luján, “The Posthumous History of the Tizoc Stone,” 439–460. 3. Alexander von Humboldt was the first to describe this fear of idolatry, writing in 1803: “The professors of this University, priests from the order of St. Dominic, did not want to expose this idol to the eyes of

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the Mexican youth, so they buried it in one of the corridors of the college, at about half a meter’s depth” (Vues des Cordillères, 2:157; translation by the author). William Bullock also remarked on the devotions that the Coatlicue received: “I was informed that chaplets of flowers had been placed on the figure by natives who had stolen thither, unseen, in the evening for that purpose; a proof that, notwithstanding the extreme diligence of the Spanish clergy for three hundred years, there still remains some taint of heathen superstition among the descendants of the original inhabitants. In a week the cast was finished, and the goddess again committed to her place of interment, hid from the profane gaze of the vulgar” (Six Months’ Residence, 341–342). The problem apparently reoccurred during subsequent exposures: “A thousand times, when the caretakers returned from going out, and crossed the patio to go to their rooms, they surprised Indians, some kneeling, others prostrated before the statue, holding in their hands lighted candles or other of the kinds of offerings that their elders were accustomed to present to the idols. And this fact . . . obliged them to take, as we have said, the decision to put back into the ground the statue whose sight reignited in the converted Indians their poorly extinguished passion for idolatry” (Moxó, Cartas mejicanas, 189–191; translation by the author). Eduardo Matos Moctezuma has proposed that the nature of the problem was political rather than idolatrous; see Matos Moctezuma, “Tríptico del pasado,” 96–97, also discussed in Villela, Robb, and Miller, “Introduction,” 18, 39–40n48.

4. Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, planche 29, 2:154–158; Bullock, Six Months’ Residence, 337–342. 5. Bullock, A Description of the Unique Exhibition, 30–32; Bullock, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Exhibition Entitled Ancient and Modern Mexico, 25–26. Schreffler, “The Making of an Aztec Goddess,” 12–13, 23, offers a slightly different chronology, with the statue only partly reburied after Bullock’s visit, or left unburied but placed in a dark corridor, away from the public. 6. León y Gama, Descripción histórica; the Coatlicue is discussed on 8–11, 35–47. 7. León y Gama, Descripción histórica, 36. The assertion is repeated in numerous sources, including Humboldt, Vues des Cordillères, 156–157, who calls the position a “disposition bizarre,” and Bullock, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Exhibition, 26, who refers to it as a “whimsical arrangement.” Note that the greenstone head of Coyolxauhqui, which is also carved on its underside (see figure 3.7 in this text), was formerly displayed on two plinths in the Sala de Monolitos of the Museo Nacional de Historia, as illustrated in Matos Moctezuma, “La Coyolxauhqui,” 348–349. The display does not appear to have improved the visibility of the underside. 8. Chavín de Huántar: Weismantel, “Slippery and Slow,” 605–623; “Encounters with Dragons,” 7–53. Dunhuang: Wu, “What Is Bianxiang?,” 134–135; Sharf, “Art in the Dark,” 38–65. Column of Trajan: Veyne, “Conduct without Belief,” 1–22, especially 2–5; also de Angelis, “Sublime Histories, Exceptional Viewers,” 89–114. Absconding: Hay, Wu, and Pellizzi, “Absconding,” 1.

The essays in this special issue of RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics are of great relevance to the themes of this book. 9. See especially Dean, “The Trouble with (the Term) Art,” 24–32; Errington, The Death of Authentic Primitive Art; and the essays in Karp and Lavine, Exhibiting Cultures. 10. See Inomata, “The Power and Ideology of Artistic Creation,” 321–349; Flad and Hruby, “‘Specialized’ Production,” 1–19, and the other essays in this special issue of Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association, particularly Inomata, “Knowledge and Belief in Artistic Production,” 129–141; and Costin, Making Value, Making Meaning. Carolyn Dean, in A Culture of Stone, 77–80, 115–121, stresses the importance of making. For embodied knowledge and making as process in Europe, see Smith, The Body of the Artisan; Smith, Meyers, and Cook, Ways of Making and Knowing. See also Ingold, Making. 11. López Austin, Los mitos del tlacuache, 191–194; Stuart, “Kings of Stone,” 158–165; Houston and Stuart, “The Ancient Maya Self,” 73–101; Houston, Stuart, and Taube, The Memory of Bones, 57–101. For this question beyond Mesoamerica, see Freedberg, The Power of Images; Belting, Likeness and Presence; Davis, Lives of Indian Images; Eck, Darśan; Gell, Art and Agency. 12. Elsner, “Art History as Ekphrasis,” 10–27. 13. Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” 64–91; for the related concept of an “object itinerary,” see Joyce and Gillespie, Things in Motion. 14. For the storage and display of codices, see Burgoa, Palestra Historial, 210, cited in Pohl, “The Lintel Paintings at Mitla,” 192–193; Monaghan, “Performance and the Structure of the Mixtec Codices,” 133–140; Christenson, Popol Vuh, 17. For boxes, a good starting point is López Luján and Santos, “El tepetlacalli de la colección Leof,” 14–18 and passim; stone boxes are also illustrated in figures 3.17–3.18 in this volume. 15. Stone, Images from the Underworld; Bassie-Sweet, At the Edge of the World; Prufer and Brady, Stone Houses and Earth Lords. 16. Agurcia Fasquelle and Fash, “The Evolution of Structure 10L-16,” 201–238. 17. O’Neil, “Ancient Maya Sculptures of Tikal,” 119–134. 18. Acosta, “Exploraciones arqueológicas en Monte Alban,” 12–32; Marcus, “Teotihuacán Visitors,” 175–181. Javier Urcid has made a compelling case that

all the carvings lining the walls of this platform are reused and reset from previous structures; see Urcid Serrano, Zapotec Hieroglyphic Writing, 279–408, especially figs. 5.3–5.5. 19. Brittenham, “Style and Substance,” 135–155. 20. Proskouriakoff, Jades from the Cenote of Sacrifice; Coggins and Shane, Cenote of Sacrifice, 35, 52–53, 56–57, 59–61, 66–78. Note, however, that some scholars suggest that the earlier jades were never buried; see, for example, Ringle and Bey, “The Face of the Itzas,” 330–332. 21. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 1, Chapter 21 and Appendix, 47–49, 74–75. See also Reyes Equiguas, “El huauhtli en la cultura náhuatl,” 110–121. 22. The original account of the find is in Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 59, 61, 152–161; see also Drucker and Heizer, “Gifts for the Jaguar God,” 367, 374–375. For recent assessments, see Magaloni Kerpel and Filloy Nadal, La Ofrenda 4 de La Venta; Gillespie, “Journey’s End(?),” 39–61; Colman and Clark, “La Venta Offering 4,” 124–151; Brittenham, “The Art of Assemblage at La Venta.” 23. Gómez Chávez, “The Underworld at Teotihuacan,” 48–55. 24. O’Neil, Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture, 153–170. 25. Bestock, “Seven Types of Invisibility.” 26. Las Casas, Apologética historia sumaria, 2:216. On ritual secrecy, see Olivier and Neurath, Mostrar y ocultar; Nooter, Secrecy; Museum der Kulturen, Secrecy; and, on the political implications of secrecy, Brandt, “On Secrecy and the Control of Knowledge,” 123–146. On the power of darkness, see also the essays in Gonlin and Nowell, Archaeology of the Night, and in Gonlin and Reed, Night and Darkness in Ancient Mesoamerica, especially Klein, “Under Cover of Darkness.” 27. Good starting places for the literature on visuality are Nelson, Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance; Davis, A General Theory of Visual Culture. 28. A splendid example of this is Mary Weismantel’s work on the “great stones” from the ancient Andean site of Chavín de Huántar, where she has argued that the dense and intractable surfaces of sculpture promote a kind of “slow seeing,” where the gradual achievement of understanding, promoted by a kinetic engagement with the sculpture, is a critical part of its meaning, in ways that resonate with South American theories of perspectivism described by

Eduardo Viveiros de Castro. Weismantel, “Slippery and Slow,” 605–623; “Encounters with Dragons,” 37–53. Similarly, Christina Riggs explores the particular cultural resonances of wrapping as a form of concealment, with powerful reflection on the kinds of colonial violence enacted by exposing and unwrapping ancient Egyptian funerary art, in Riggs, Unwrapping Ancient Egypt. See also the essays in the special issue of RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 55/56 (2009) edited by Hay, Wu, and Pellizzi, “Absconding,” and in Neer, Conditions of Visibility. 29. Houston and Taube, “An Archaeology of the Senses,” 281–289; Houston, Stuart, and Taube, Memory of Bones, 163–175. This contrasts with our modern scientific understanding that perception is constant and universal: every retina receives the same stimulus of light, unless deficient in a way that requires corrective lenses or surgery; see Nelson, “Descartes’s Cow and Other Domestications of the Visual,” 1–7. Or, at least, this is what we claim to believe, although surveys of college students still find that many have an implicitly extromissive model of vision; see Winer et al., “Fundamentally Misunderstanding Visual Perception,” 417–424; Guterstam et al., “Implicit Model of Other People’s Visual Attention,” 328–333. 30. Discussed in Houston and Taube, “Archaeology of the Senses,” 281–282, and in Hamann, “The Higa and the Tlachialoni,” 635-636. Note that others interpret this not as an image of extromissive vision, but as a pun highlighting the resemblance between the gleam of stars in the sky and the priest’s eye; see Berdan and Anawalt, Codex Mendoza, 3:180. Other images of projective sight, discussed in Houston and Taube, “Archaeology of the Senses,” 281–282, occur in the Codex en Cruz and the Codex Xolotl, page 9; for facsimiles, see Dibble, Codex en Cruz; Dibble, Códice Xolotl. 31. In Classical Nahuatl, the word for star, citlālin, is pluralized as if it were animate, cīcitlāltin, whereas inanimate objects in Nahuatl are not pluralized. Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl, 35. 32. Houston and Taube, “Archaeology of the Senses,” 281–289; Hamann, “‘In the Eyes of the Mixtecs,’” 79–95; Hamann, “The Higa and the Tlachialoni,” 624–649; Headrick, “Seeing Through Sahagún,” 23–40. Notably, although Classical Greek theories of extromissive vision stress the tactile nature of vision, there is no evidence that this same analogy between sight and touch was so

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forcefully made in Mesoamerica. For the Classical Greek and Roman tradition, see Bartsch, “The Philosopher as Narcissus,” 70–97; Squire, “Introductory Reflections,” 16–17; Platt and Squire, “Getting to Grips with Classical Art,” 81 and passim. 33. For an assembly of contemporary ethnographic examples, see Monaghan and Hamann, “Reading as Social Practice and Cultural Construction,” 133–137. 34. Hamann, “‘In the Eyes of the Mixtecs,’” 84–95. 35. The terms are from Houston and Taube, “Archaeology of the Senses,” 281, and Hanks, Referential Practice, 89. 36. Vogt, Tortillas for the Gods, 205, italics in original; see also Hanks, Referential Practice, 88–90. David Bowles suggests that the Nahuatl verb mati can likewise have connotations of sight or perception in addition to its core meaning of “to know” (personal communication, 2018). Note how well these metaphors linking seeing and knowing also work in English; for a bravura demonstration, see Jay, Downcast Eyes, 1–2. As a counterpoint, Tim Ingold assembles examples of languages where hearing is the predominant metaphor for understanding in his insightful essay “Stop, Look and Listen!,” 250–251. 37. For “prosthetics,” see Hamann, “‘In the Eyes of the Mixtecs,’” 81, 94–95. For the tlachialoni, an Aztec staff, see Headrick, “Seeing Through Sahagún,” 23–40; Hamann, “The Higa and the Tlachialoni,” 637–644. 38. Houston and Taube, “Archaeology of the Senses,” 283–284. 39. Urcid Serrano, “The Written Surface as a Cultural Code,” 130. 40. Christenson, Popol Vuh, 197. I am grateful to Perry Wong for working through the K’iche’ text with me (personal communication, 2021); the transcription of the K’iche’, along with Ximenez’s translation, can be found at https://library.osu.edu /projects/popolwuj/pdfs/Empiezan.pdf; this passage is on folio 33v. 41. Christenson, Popol Vuh, 200–201. 42. Christenson, Popol Vuh, 35–42; for a brilliant modern exegesis, see García, Emergency. 43. On reducción, see Hanks, Converting Words, especially 25–84; Nemser, Infrastructures of Race. On slavery and the modern surveillance state, see Mirzoeff, The Right to Look. 44. For introductions to the Olmec, see Diehl, The Olmecs; Pool, Olmec Archaeology. 45. For introductions to the Maya, see

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Coe and Houston, The Maya; Miller and O’Neil, Maya Art and Architecture; Houston and Inomata, The Classic Maya; Martin, Ancient Maya Politics. 46. For introductions to the Aztecs, see Clendinnen, Aztecs; Matos Moctezuma and Solís Olguín, Aztecs; Smith, The Aztecs; Townsend, The Aztecs. On the question of empire, see also Smith and Montiel, “The Archaeological Study of Empires,” 245–284. 47. Wu Hung recounts a Buddhist story in which an apprentice asks the master painter why he is painting the back of an icon, and the master replies, “The god will see.” But even this account does not imagine painting the undersides of the icon’s feet. Wu, “What Is Bianxiang?,” 134–135. In Mesoamerica, vessels, metates, figurines, or West Mexican tomb figures are occasionally decorated on their undersides, but the practice is rarely systematic; see Stone-Miller, Seeing with New Eyes, xxi–xxiv. 48. On scale, see Hamilton, Scale and the Incas; Roberts, Scale; Kee and Lugli, To Scale. For embodied perception, the classic place to begin is Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception. 49. Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 80–92 and passim. Nor is that sensorium limited only to the most familiar five senses: the kinesthetic sense of moving to perceive the work, the spatial orientation of one’s body to it, and even other senses are engaged alongside the smell of incense and the taste of chocolate or maize. Hamilaks, Archaeology and the Senses, 73–75; Cole, “Coming to Our Senses.” 50. For recent scholarship on images and agency in the ancient Americas, two good starting points are Harrison-Buck and Hendon, Relational Identities; and Kosiba, Janusek, and Cummins, Sacred Matter. See also Dean and Leibsohn, “Scorned Subjects,” especially 430–432. C HA PTER 1. MA KIN G: B U ILDIN G COM M U N ITY AT LA VEN TA

1. González Lauck, “Proyecto arqueológico La Venta,” 121–165; González Lauck, “The 1984 Archaeological Excavations”; González Lauck, “Acerca de pirámides,” 79–97; González Lauck, “Architectural Setting,” 129–148; Rust, “A Settlement Survey of La Venta”; Rust and Sharer, “Olmec Settlement Data from La Venta,” 102–104. 2. For Complex A, the excavation reports are Drucker, La Venta, and Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, supplemented by popular articles in

National Geographic magazine, including M. W. Stirling, “Great Stone Faces,” 309– 334; M. W. Stirling, “La Venta’s Green Stone Tigers,” 321–332; M. W. Stirling and M. Stirling, “Finding Jewels of Jade,” 635–661. An extensive critique of the excavations was published by Coe and Stuckenrath, “A Review,” 1–44, and the excavators’ responses offer additional clarification and information; see Heizer, “Some Interim Remarks,” 45–50, and Drucker and Heizer, “Commentary,” 37–69. There are also the results of brief excavations in 1967 and 1968, including Heizer, Drucker, and Graham, “Investigations at La Venta,” 1–33; Heizer, Graham, and Napton, “The 1968 Excavations at La Venta,” 127–154; and Heizer, “New Observations on La Venta,” 9–40. Recently, there has been a resurgence of attention to Complex A. Susan Gillespie’s meticulous reconstruction of Complex A’s plan from field notes has begun to yield exciting results, which will be frequently cited below, especially Gillespie, “History in Practice,” 109–136; Gillespie, “Architectural History”; Gillespie, “Archaeological Drawings as Re-presentations,” 3–36; Gillespie and Volk, “3d Model,” 72–81. Arlene Colman’s tremendously helpful master’s thesis and subsequent publications reevaluate the La Venta offerings; see Colman, “Construction of Complex A”; Clark and Colman, “Structure of the Mesoamerican Universe,” 15–59; “Olmec Things and Identity,” 14–37. New interpretations are also proposed in Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture. To date, buried offerings have only been found in Complex A, with the exception of a cache of jade beads found in front of Altar 4; see M. W. Stirling, “Great Stone Faces,” 325; Drucker, La Venta, 166. However, no other part of the site has been subject to the kind of intensive excavations carried out in Complex A. Providing precision about La Venta’s chronology is challenging, in part because of a flattening of the calibration curve in these centuries that makes radiocarbon dating imprecise. The difficulties are summarized in Pool, Olmec Archaeology, 158–160. In particular, the century-long duration of each construction phase at La Venta is an arbitrary assignment; Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 127. As Robert Heizer later recalled, “Thus by treating as a literal fact the calculated floruit of the La Venta site as 800–400 B.C., and dividing this 400-year span by the number of building periods (four), a

nice round number of 100 years per phase was secured, and from this flowed rather too easily the suggestion of calendricallyderived periodic renovations”; see Heizer, “Some Interim Remarks,” 49–51. Still, for lack of a better option, this approximate chronology is retained here. 3. Colman develops the useful concept of a “ritual event” to describe these coordinated actions; see Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 117–121 and passim. 4. Gillespie, “Architectural History,” 6, 12–15; Gillespie and Volk, “3d Model,” 79–81; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 57–81. 5. The question of whether human burials might be distinguished from other kinds of offerings has been controversial from the outset, because bones do not preserve well in La Venta’s acidic soil. Initially, based on the absence of bones, Drucker and colleagues argued that certain deposits were “pseudo-burials,” assembling jewelry and offerings without a body; see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 162, 169. Note that during the initial field season, Waldo Wedel had less doubt about the nature of the burials; see Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 64, 71. Colman has recently demonstrated that human burials represent a clear and distinctive subset of offerings rather than a continuum with other depositional practice; see Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 117–127; Clark and Colman, “Olmec Things and Identity,” 16–18 and passim. Other scholars who have analyzed the burials as burials include Reilly, “Mountains of Creation,” 29–32, and Follensbee,“The Child and the Childlike,” 266­­–269, who argues that a number of the individuals buried were children. On the category of offerings, see also Coe and Stuckenrath, “A Review,” 20–32, and the response in Drucker and Heizer, “Commentary,” 54–65. 6. Palaces likely lay to the south of the pyramid, in Complex B, Complex D, and/or the Stirling Acropolis; see González Lauck, “The 1984 Archaeological Excavations,” 46–82. 7. The description in this paragraph is based on data presented in Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 90–108. Color descriptions are from 95–97, the estimate of the amount of stone involved is on 97, the coloration and dimensions of the mosaic pavement are on 93–95, and its swift covering is on 93, 102. 8. Now termed Offering 1942-E, the

celts were disturbed by the digging of the trench through the Southwest Platform. Drucker describes how the two groupings of celts “were enveloped in masses of very hard dark olive-brown clay which contained impressions of straw or grasses” (La Venta, 31). A headless and battered figurine of a kneeling person made out of basalt was also found in the fill above the mosaic; see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 93, 211–212. 9. The buried stones may have been remembered in later episodes. Later during Phase II, the southwest adobe platform was faced with basalt blocks that cut into it, some of them concealing polished green serpentine blocks behind them; see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 88–89. Even later, during Phase IV, both platforms were enlarged and then cut into so as to place basalt columns around a more restricted upper enclosure. Whether by coincidence or not, this basalt enclosure corresponded loosely to the dimensions of the central mosaic below; see Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 49–55; Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 15, 78–85. Some of the facing blocks from the earlier phase may have been reset into the red clay cap and immediately covered. The uncertainty about the height of the adobe platforms is because they might have been cut down in later times; see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 90–92; Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 51–55. 10. “The characteristics of these massive offerings, on the basis of our limited sampling, seemed to be that large deep pits were dug to receive them, and the offerings themselves consist of a very great quantity of stone” (Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 128). Referring to Massive Offering 1, Drucker and colleagues continue, “The entire lower part of the structure, that is, the layers of rough stone embedded in the olive-green and blue clays, and the mosaic mask as well, were considered to be an offering” (128). 11. Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 49–59. Beneath the mosaic pavement in Massive Offering 4, Wedel encountered “a compact stone rubble consisting of irregular fragments of serpentine and other rock held together with more clay.” This proved impossible to excavate completely: “This rubble underlay the entire pavement, extending beyond it in all directions to and beyond the edge of our excavations. The stone fragments were so thoroughly

compacted and interlocked as to be almost impossible to remove; and we finally gave up our attempts to get through the mass when, 60 cm. below its surface, we found ourselves still in the rubble” (Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 56). It is often assumed that layers of serpentine blocks lay under the mosaic of Massive Offering 4, just as they did in Massive Offering 1, but it is important to recall that this was not proven to be the case. Indeed, Wedel seems to be describing something rather different than the twenty-eight layers of serpentine under Massive Offering 1, although it is difficult to be certain. 12. The mosaic in Massive Offering 4 was unfortunately never photographed in color. Wedel describes it as follows: “All of these blocks had apparently been laid in a thin layer of asphalt or pitch, which occurred under and between them. Underlying the asphalt was an exceedingly tough brownishyellow clay. . . . When the appendages were cleared, it was found that the large asphalt-encrusted slabs were bordered by about 5 cm of the tough yellow clay. Within the triangular and diamond-shaped areas thus delimited, there was a compact fill of greenish-gray clay mottled and streaked with purplish red, the whole forming a very striking color pattern when freshly exposed or otherwise dampened. The large slabs were encrusted with asphalt to a thickness of as much as 2 to 4 mm; they were the only stones which, as a group, gave any evidence of having once been asphalt-coated on their upper visible surface. . . . The blocks of green serpentine, set in asphalt on a yellow clay bed, with a purplish-red veined background for the appendages along the south, presented a most striking picture— particularly so, when the entire surface was cleaned with water and the colors came out in all their richness” (Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 56–59). Matthew W. Stirling, writing in National Geographic, offers a slightly different account: “La Venta’s tilers had created a pleasing color combination. They laid green serpentine paving blocks in a border of yellow clay, and they tamped blue clay in the jaguar’s eyes, mouth, and nose,” that is, the voids in the mosaic (“La Venta’s Green Stone Tigers,” 322). Perhaps these accounts might be reconciled if we assume that the asphalt described by Wedel as underlying the mosaics had a bluish tint— or appeared blue because of the yellow clay surrounding it. However, Drucker interprets Wedel’s “bitumen” as a manganese oxidation and not a deliberate element of

NOTES TO PAGES 22–25 • 133

the configuration; see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 93. The two accounts are discussed in Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 148–149, 153– 155; for Olmec color symbolism, see Clark and Colman, “Structure of the Mesoamerican Universe,” 28–40, but note that the diagram in their fig. 1.3 combines Wedel’s and Stirling’s descriptions. I have reproduced my best understanding of Wedel’s description in figure 1.13 in this text, and it offers at least some possible resolution to this conflict: observe how the gray hue underlying the mosaic does appear blue when it is surrounded by fields of yellow. 13. Offering 1943-E; Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 55–56, plate 8. 14. Perhaps the best way to summarize the difficulties in coordinating the different excavation reports is to mention that the 1942–1943 excavations record their findings in meters, while the 1955 excavations use feet as a unit of measure, as pointed out by Coe and Stuckenrath, “A Review,” 4. 15. Gillespie, “History in Practice,” 127– 129, 132–136; Gillespie, “Archaeological Drawings,” 28–29; Clark and Colman, “Structure of the Mesoamerican Universe,” 29–44. See also Drucker and Heizer, “Commentary,” 52–56. 16. Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 102. 17. Taube, Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks, 19; Drucker and Heizer, “Gifts for the Jaguar God,” 370. Drucker and colleagues frequently interpret serpentine as a lesser substitute for more precious jade; see, for example, Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 102, 132, 133. While jade and serpentine figurines and celts are found together in ways that suggest that the materials might be substitutable, it also seems important to investigate what serpentine might have meant in its own right. One starting point is Jaime-Riverón, “Olmec Greenstone,” 123–133. 18. Ensouling, by analogy with later Maya caches; Stuart, “‘The Fire Enters His House,’” 393–396. See also the essays in Mock, The Sowing and the Dawning. 19. Gillespie, “History in Practice,” 125; see also Christenson, Burden of the Ancients. 20. Fowles, An Archaeology of Doings, 101–111 and passim. On this topic, see also Nongbri, Before Religion. Of course, “ritual” still remains a useful term, with an expansive and helpful bibliography, for which one starting point is Bell, Ritual

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Theory, Ritual Practice. 21. Fowles, An Archaeology of Doings, 103. 22. Monaghan, “Theology and History,” 32. 23. Hanks, Referential Practice, 364; see also Newman, “Rubbish, Reuse, and Ritual,” 813–814; Clarke, “Producing Stone and State,” 13–19. 24. Fowles, An Archaeology of Doings, 104. 25. Maffie, Aztec Philosophy, 113. Carolyn Tate also compares the mosaic pavements to ritual altars created by modern Mixe shamans; see Tate, “Patrons of Shamanic Power,” 169–188; Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, 180–196. 26. On that work, see Gillespie, “Architectural History,” 6, 12–15; Gillespie and Volk, “3d Model,” 79–81; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 57–81. 27. Gillespie and Volk, “3d Model,” 9. 28. Fowles, An Archaeology of Doings, 106. 29. Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 104. 30. Evans, with content supervision by Heizer, The Excavations at La Venta, film, 30 mins. The estimate is at 26:20 on the version available at the Internet Archive at https:// archive.org/details/excavationsatlaventa. On energetics assessments elsewhere in the Mesoamerican world, and on our tendency to overestimate the amount of labor involved in ancient construction, see also Abrams, How the Maya Built Their World; Webster and Kirker, “Too Many Maya, Too Few Buildings,” 363–387; Webster, “The Uses and Abuses of the Ancient Maya,” 14–16. 31. Gillespie, “History in Practice,” 126–127. 32. Filloy Nadal et al., “Las materias primas,” 121–123. 33. Grove, Discovering the Olmecs, 62. If a similar serpentine deposit is included in Massive Offering 4, it would double the estimate. Ross Hassig assumes a load of 50 pounds or 23 kg/person based on ethnographic evidence, which would double the work again; see Hassig, Trade, Tribute, and Transportation, 32, citing Borah and Cook, Price Trends of Some Basic Commodities, 12. For another set of calculations, see Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, 144. There were, of course, no beasts of burden besides humans in Mesoamerica. 34. Carolyn Tate gives an estimate of 2,000 for the population of La Venta and its surrounding territories in Reconsidering

Olmec Visual Culture, 144, citing González Lauck, “La antigua ciudad olmeca,” although I have not been able to find a precise population estimate in the cited text. This number is almost certainly too low, based on a comparison with the more thorough population estimates produced for San Lorenzo, which range from 8,000 to 18,000 for the site core, with nearly a comparable number living in the surrounding area. Symonds, Cyphers Guillén, and Lunagómez, Asentamiento prehispánico en San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, discussed in Pool, Olmec Archaeology, 136– 137. But even if La Venta had a population of 10,000 or more, the amount of labor relative to the city’s population would still have been notable. 35. I am grateful to John Henderson for pointing this out (personal communication, 2019). 36. Clark and Colman, “Structure of the Mesoamerican Universe,” 39. However, the excavators, who were far better positioned to see color, did not suggest this possibility, remarking instead on the bright yellow color of the adobe bricks. Wedel describes the adobe on the Southeast Platform in this way: “Most [of the adobe bricks] were olive-gray to greenish and yellowish in color, and they had been set in a reddish clay; when freshly exposed, they formed a rather striking pattern of colors” (“Structural Investigations,” 55). Drucker and colleagues also remarked on the color: “The combination of colors, the yellowish bricks which contrast strongly with the red clay of the mortar, would seem to be quite striking and decorative, perhaps too much so to have been covered up. We must caution, however, that this latter line of evidence is not to be relied on too heavily at the site of La Venta” (Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 91). 37. On Mesoamerican feasting and women’s labor, see S. Coe, America’s First Cuisines; Joyce and Henderson, “From Feasting to Cuisine,” 642–653; LeCount, “Like Water for Chocolate,” 935–953. On feasting generally, a good starting point is Dietler and Hayden, Feasts. 38. Drucker, La Venta, 8; West, Psuty, and Thom, The Tabasco Lowlands, 146–148; VanDerwarker, Farming, Hunting, and Fishing, 34–35. The climate permits at least two crops of maize a year in this region. 39. O’Neil, “Ancient Maya Sculptures of Tikal,” 119–120. Carolyn Tate suggests that gestation, another process of unseen growth, was also a significant metaphor at

La Venta; see Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, 10–15, 43–45, and passim. 40. Mary Weismantel, personal communication, 2017. 41. Of the candidates for viewing, the South-Central Platform is well placed but too low to offer a view of both pits simultaneously; Mounds A-2 and A-3 are too low and too distant; it is unclear how much, if anything, of the pyramid was built by Phase II, but even at its full height, it would still be too far away to offer a successful angle of viewing. 42. For the recycling of the celts in Offering 4, see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 156–158, 161; Cervantes, “Dos elementos de uso ritual,” 43–44; Jaime-Riverón, “Las hachas de jadeíta de la Ofrenda 4,” 55–88; Gillespie, “Journey’s End(?),” 46, 57–58; Colman and Clark, “La Venta Offering 4,” 132–135, 139, 142. For other examples of the “flying Olmec” motif, see Taube, “Lightning Celts and Corn Fetishes,” 306–308. Carolyn Tate interprets the “flying Olmec” motif as an image of shamanic transformation; see Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, 194. 43. See Gillespie, “History in Practice,” 125, for further discussion of nonhuman audiences for the mosaics. 44. Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, 197. 45. The terms are from James, Principles of Psychology. I am grateful to Andrew Hamilton for suggesting them (personal communication, 2014). Richard Neer terms this kind of seeing without understanding “practical invisibility,” in Neer, “The Invisible Acropolis,” 24–28. 46. Jaguar mask: M. W. Stirling, “La Venta’s Green Stone Tigers,” 321–323; Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 56; Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 93–94; map: Benson, An Olmec Figure at Dumbarton Oaks, 26–29; celt: Taube, Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks, 19; water and Olmec Dragon: Reilly, “Enclosed Ritual Spaces,” 132–134; skirt of the female earth: Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, 188–191; shield: M. Miller, The Art of Mesoamerica, 25. 47. See also Clark and Colman, “Structure of the Mesoamerican Universe,” 23–26. Many of the authors cited in the previous footnote recognized elements of the cosmogram that are described here. 48. Taube, “The Olmec Maize God,” 39–81. In this analysis, I give priority to objects excavated at La Venta because they are closest in time and space to the mosaics,

and I try to avoid the use of unprovenanced works because of questions about their legitimacy; see Kelker and Bruhns, Faking Ancient Mesoamerica. 49. Benson, An Olmec Figure at Dumbarton Oaks, 26–29; Joralemon, A Study of Olmec Iconography, 33; Taube, Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks, 12–13, 76–77. 50. Taube, “Rainmakers,” 91–94; Taube, Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks, 112. This inverted E also occurs as a freestanding glyph on the Cascajal block, and the dividing line within the form seems to be salient; Rodríguez Martínez et al., “Oldest Writing in the New World,” fig. 4, glyphs 19 and 35. Taube interprets the inverse of this form, the two squarish projections at its lower edge, as a symbol for green; see Taube, “The Olmec Double Merlon Motif.” 51. For the discovery of Monuments 25/26 and 27, see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 20, 126, 204–208; González Lauck, “Proyecto arqueológico La Venta,” 145; González Lauck, “Architectural Setting,” 135–138. For the celt headband as the five directions, see Taube, “The Olmec Maize God,” 42–50; Taube, Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks, 114–116. These stelae also display the recursive potential of Olmec art. Taube has argued that the being represented on these stelae is the Maize God; recalling the associations between celts and maize and the five directions, the deity is wearing their own embodiments in their headdress; see Taube, “The Olmec Maize God,” 50, 75. (I am using the singular “they” to indicate the gender plurality of maize and maize deities.) Further, the stelae themselves take the form of celts, as James Porter has argued, introducing yet another element of recursion into the images; see Porter, “Celtiform Stelae,” 65–72. Taube interprets both stelae and celts as images of maize fetishes; see Taube, “Lightning Celts and Corn Fetishes,” 307–311. 52. The tassels are in some ways the most enigmatic features of the mosaics, with the fewest parallels in Olmec art. Sometimes they have been interpreted as vegetation, either sprouting maize or aquatic waterlilies, citing the waterlilies on the side of the La Venta sarcophagus (Monument 6) as a parallel; see, for example, Reilly, “Mountains of Creation,” 28. Carolyn Tate compares their diamond-shaped form to the jadebeaded skirt of the “Great Goddess” statue at Teotihuacan centuries later; see Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture,

188–190; Tate, “Holy Mother Earth and Her Flowery Skirt,” 281–318. But if these forms do represent vegetation, then they should be growing from the top of the image rather than the bottom. Perhaps multivalence was the point: the configuration could be read from either direction, emphasizing generative potential or vegetative growth, depending on one’s perspective. Alternatively, the tassels might simply signify roots, grounding the maize-like figure. 53. Reilly, “Cosmos and Rulership,” 30–35; Reilly, “Art, Ritual, and Rulership in the Olmec World,” 32–33, 38–39; see also Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, 187–188, 197. This convention of interpreting figures as perpendicular to the ground on which they are represented has applications to later Mesoamerican art as well, from Teotihuacan painting to the murals of Structure A at Cacaxtla to pages 75–76 of the Madrid Codex, which also places emphasis on a central world tree and the intercardinal directions as it maps the 260-day divinatory calendar through space and patron deities. For Cacaxtla and Teotihuacan, see Brittenham, The Murals of Cacaxtla, 187–189; for the Madrid Codex, see Reilly, “Art, Ritual, and Rulership in the Olmec World,” 32–33; Paxton, The Cosmos of the Yucatec Maya, 31–61. 54. On Pavement 2 (see figure 1.32), each crenellated motif is separated from the surrounding mosaic by a thin line of earth, making it clear that these are two discrete elements and not a single surface. This stepped form has parallels in the basal registers of several stelae made in the centuries after La Venta’s occupation, such as the Alvarado Stela, Izapa Stela 5, Izapa Stela 12, and Chiapa de Corzo Stela 7; see Taube, “Rainmakers,” 90. In several of these cases, the stepped motif lies on the upper and lower portions of successive triangular compartments, echoing the kinds of inversion I am proposing for the mosaics at La Venta. For alternate interpretation and further discussion of this motif, see also Arnold, “The Shark-Monster in Olmec Iconography,” 20–21; Pool, Loughlin, and Ortiz Ceballos, “Transisthmian Ties,” 426–427. For the double merlon as a symbol for green, see Taube, “Rainmakers,” 87–91; Taube, “Olmec Double Merlon.” 55. For Chalcatzingo, see Angulo Villaseñor, “The Chalcatzingo Reliefs,” 132–158. The motif also occurs, with more pointed edges, on the cleft head of a rain deity on San Lorenzo Monument 52,

NOTES TO PAG ES 30–34 • 135

illustrated in Cyphers Guillén, Escultura olmeca de San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, 112–114. The figure may also be repeated on a celt from La Venta; see figures 1.18c and 1.21 in this volume. Further examples are assembled in Joralemon, Olmec Iconography, 34. 56. Examples beyond La Venta are reviewed in Clark and Colman, “Structure of the Mesoamerican Universe,” 24–26. 57. The act of planting, too, resonates with the quincunx; Carolyn Tate mentions that maize is planted in quincunx form in the Mixe region today. Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, 56, 95, 184, 186–187. 58. I thank John Henderson for suggesting the term “paradigm” (personal communication, 2019). 59. Clark and Colman, “Structure of the Mesoamerican Universe,” 34–35. For the richness and complexity of Mesoamerican models of the universe, see Klein, “Woven Heaven, Tangled Earth,” 1–35, and more recently, Nielsen and Sellner Reunert, “Dante’s Heritage,” 399–413, as well as the essays in Díaz, Cielos e inframundos, and Díaz, Reshaping the World. Textile metaphors were among the most frequent ways of visualizing the cosmos, but even so, most models acknowledge a distinction between underworld, earth’s surface, and sky; it is this basic three-tiered model that I suggest the La Venta massive offerings evoke. 60. Fowles, An Archaeology of Doings, 255. See also Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, 177–198, for an alternate account of the symbolism of the mosaics and a comparison to modern Mixe altars. 61. Tate, Reconsidering Olmec Visual Culture, 198. 62. On Durkheim’s concept of effervescence in the context of Pueblo doings, see Fowles, An Archaeology of Doings, 142–152. 63. For Olmec writing, see Rodríguez Martínez et al., “Oldest Writing,” 1610–1614; Houston, “The Case for Olmec Writing.” Monument 13, a Phase IV sculpture from La Venta, is one of the strongest potential examples of Olmec writing to have been archaeologically excavated; see Lacadena García-Gallo, “La escritura olmeca,” 607–626. 64. Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 125; Gillespie, “Architectural History,” 12, fig. 7; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 82–96. Recall that the phase dates for La Venta are quite arbitrary; see note 2 for discussion.

136 • NOTES TO PAGES 35–39

65. Susan Gillespie’s magisterial accounts of this change in focus are found in Gillespie, “History in Practice,” 109–136, and Gillespie, “Archaeological Drawings,” 3–36. While the excavators assumed that the centerline so prominent in the latest phases of the Ceremonial Court was important from the beginning, Gillespie has demonstrated that the Ceremonial Court began as a bilaterally symmetrical enclosure, and that the emphasis on the central axis emerged only later out of this earlier bilateral focus. Her study is a valuable demonstration of the risks of teleological fallacy in the analysis of architectural remains. 66. Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 30–45, 58–63, 130–133; see also Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 82–96, 157–169. The pit, 23.5 × 23.5 meters square, was so large that it encroached on previous construction to the north, but it was only 4 meters deep, in contrast to the 7.5-meter pits of the previous phase. The initial estimate of 60,000 cubic feet (1,700 m3) is from Heizer, “Excavations at La Venta, 1955,” 104. Heizer later revised the estimate upward to 77,000 cubic feet (or 2,000 m3) and estimated that 50 tons of serpentine were found in the massive offering; see “New Observations on La Venta,” 10, and discussion in Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 82. It is not entirely clear how Heizer arrived at these numbers. My own attempts to apply the formula outlined for calculating the amount of greenstone in Massive Offering 1 in Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 97, to Massive Offering 3 yielded figures between 300 and 500 tons of stone. This is still a considerable decline from the previous phase, especially if an equal amount of greenstone lay buried within Massive Offering 4. Further, although Heizer’s estimates of the volume of earth displaced by Massive Offering 3 seem plausible, his calculation for the amount of earth displaced by the pit of Massive Offering 1 as 22,800 cubic feet (645 m3), presented in “New Observations on La Venta,” 10, does not accord with my own calculations based on the published dimensions of Massive Offering 1, which suggest that somewhere between 1,000 and 2,000 m3 of earth were displaced, most likely approximately 1,500 m3. If this is the case, neither the amount of greenstone nor the amount of human labor in Phase III equaled that of the combined massive offerings of Phase II. 67. The excavators believed that Massive

Offering 3 disturbed a previous massive offering in the center of the court, and that the serpentine blocks in the trench were part of that earlier—perhaps Phase I— massive offering; see Heizer, Excavations at La Venta, 39–40, 59, 131. However, this now seems less likely, based on Gillespie’s argument that the focus on the centerline is a later development at La Venta; see Gillespie, “Archaeological Drawings,” 11–12, 28–29. Instead, it seems more appropriate to interpret the trench of serpentine as part of the Phase III doing. As with other elements of the massive offering, it may have been the result of a conflict between ambition and realization, as if for some reason timing or other factors did not allow the stones to be placed carefully in a flat pavement. But see also Gillespie, “History in Practice,” 132. 68. The excavators remarked several times about the evidence of rain within the pit; see, for example, Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 40, 60, 61, 131. Yet the partial refilling may have been more planned than the excavators assumed, for only a central ditch remained open to the elements. Ten meters wide, 0.9 meters deep, and running the entire north-south axis of the pit, this ditch would have required time and planning to produce. The excavators suggested that the partially filled pit remained open for an entire rainy season, but John Clark suggests that one or two unseasonably early rains might have been sufficient to create the 7–15 cm of water-washed sands on the bottom of this smaller pit. Clark’s observation is cited in Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 85. If Massive Offering 3 was not substantially larger than the prior stage’s massive offerings, as the calculations in note 66 suggest, two possibilities must be considered: that fewer people were involved in the work of the Phase III massive offering, or that it was a deliberate choice to leave the trench open. 69. Offering 10; see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 40, 132, 185–186; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 160–162. 70. Offerings 1943-C, 1943-D, 2A, 8, 12, and 13; see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 40–42, 145–146, 174–176, 186–187; Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 39; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 162–165. 71. Even after the entire pit was refilled, more objects were placed above the serpentine pavement in Phases III and IV,

as if the memory of what had already been buried continued to persist. Later during Phase III, Offerings 1 and 2 were placed directly above the mosaic pavement below, perhaps recalling its location even after the ritual event was completed; even later, in Phase IV, a group of twelve serpentine celts and a stone sculpture were also placed above the buried massive offering. These were termed Offering 1943-B and Monument 13, respectively; see Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 39; Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 40–42, 133–145. The gestures seem to have been independent of one another. 72. Gillespie, “Architectural History,” 12–15; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 96–115. 73. For the importance of Mound A-2, see Gillespie and Volk, “3d Model,” 9. 74. Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 42–43, 45–50, 128–129; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 96–101, 188–223. Again, there is strong evidence that the pit was dug and refilled during a single dry season; see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 129, also 42–53. 75. Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 43. The similarity between the upper pit fill and the red clay cap argues for their near simultaneity; it also makes it difficult to date the burials associated with Massive Offering 2. 76. Based on the formula for calculating the weight of Massive Offering 1 outlined in Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 97. 77. Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 129. 78. The colored bands were only noticed when archaeologists re-excavated part of the pit in 1967, so it is not known whether they covered the walls entirely; Heizer and colleagues also suggest that the unpainted bands might originally have supported a fugitive organic pigment. Heizer, Drucker, and Graham, “Investigations at La Venta, 1967,” 10–11; Heizer, “New Observations on La Venta,” 14. 79. Heizer, Drucker, and Graham, “Investigations at La Venta, 1967,” 8. No such features were noticed during the 1955 excavations. 80. Offering 1942-C; see Drucker, La Venta, 27, figs. 9, 10b; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 197–199. 81. Offerings 9 and 11; see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 129, 176–184; Colman, “Construction of

Complex A,” 193–197. 82. The sarcophagus burial is known alternately as Tomb B, Offering 1942-B, and Burial 6; the stone sarcophagus that contained it, now lost, is labeled Monument 6. M. W. Stirling and M. Stirling, “Finding Jewels of Jade,” 638–639; Drucker, La Venta, 27, 162, 169; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 203–206. The burial contained a pair of jade earspools, two jade pendants, a string of beads, a jade perforator, and a serpentine figurine. 83. Offering 1943-F, Tomb E, or Burial 5 in Colman’s nomenclature; see Drucker, La Venta, 27; Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 63–64; Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 273; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 125, 190, 200–203. I follow Colman in describing the burial as intrusive, even though the excavators did not characterize it in this way, because, as Colman astutely notes, Wedel describes a different fill in the area surrounding the burial. The accessories for this burial consisted of a pair of large jade earspools, several jade pendants, fragments of a concave mirror, over fifty jade beads, and thirty-five jade celts, one of which is carved with a flame-eyebrowed supernatural being. 84. The basalt tomb is known as Monument 7, and the burials within it are referred to as Tomb A, Offering 1942-A, or Burial 7; see Drucker, La Venta, 23–26; M. W. Stirling and M. Stirling, “Finding Jewels of Jade,” 640–643. The two accounts differ significantly on key questions, including whether there were two or three bodies in the tomb, and whether the bodies were supine or bundled; the discrepancies are discussed in Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 206–211. Kent Reilly considers the placement of the tomb, half above Massive Offering 2 and half above the fill of the mound, to be significant, delimiting a liminal passage into the watery underworld; see Reilly, “Mountains of Creation,” 34–36. Follensbee has argued that the bodies in the tomb were likely those of children, suggesting that status could be ascribed as well as achieved by this point in La Venta’s history; see Follensbee, “The Child and the Childlike,” 266–267. 85. Offering 1942-D or Burial 8; see Drucker, La Venta, 27–28; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 211. 86. Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 65, 77–78; Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 8, 16, 25, 126. The Southeast and Southwest Platforms,

under which Massive Offerings 1 and 4 lie, were also bounded with basalt columns at this moment; Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 78–83. See also figure 2.7. 87. Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 74–75. Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 117–118, 123, 128, 299, refer to the mosaic as “Massive Offering 5,” but because it consists of only a serpentine pavement and was not placed in a pit or associated with other offerings, it seems more appropriate to retain Wedel’s nomenclature and call it Pavement 2 (Wedel’s Pavement 1 is the mosaic of Massive Offering 4). For chronology, see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 117–118, 299; Drucker and Heizer, “Commentary,” 55–56; Gillespie, “Architectural History,” fig. 4; Colman, “Construction of Complex A,” 111–112, 115, 223–225. For the stones worked only on the visible surface, see Wedel, “Structural Investigations,” 75. Pavement 2 was found beneath 1.8 meters of the drift sands that covered the entire site of La Venta after its abandonment, with a number of the blocks missing; there was no evidence that it had ever been covered by other construction. In addition to its stratigraphic position and the placement on the centerline, which is characteristic of Phases III and IV at La Venta (Gillespie, “Archaeological Drawings,” 20, 28–29), another reason to suspect a late date for Pavement 2 comes from the way the northern part of the mosaic is placed on a bed of clay and the southern part on sand, recalling the placement of the basalt tomb partway over the fill of Massive Offering 2. 88. This pavement, disturbed by the construction of an airstrip, is not well described; from the lack of description, it seems likely that it was not obviously figural; see Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 233. 89. Heizer, in “New Observations on La Venta,” 17, estimates the volume as 3.5 million cubic feet, or 99,000 cubic meters of earth; an alternate figure of 5 million cubic feet (140,000 m3) is presented in Evans, The Excavations at La Venta, at 26:55. Heizer’s estimates are based on his reconstruction of the pyramid as a fluted cone, as argued in Heizer, “New Observations on La Venta,” 14–21; Heizer and Drucker, “The La Venta Fluted Pyramid,” 52–56. Rebecca González Lauck later challenged this reconstruction, arguing instead for a stepped pyramidal form with inset corners; see González Lauck, “The 1984 Archaeological Excavations,”

NOTES TO PAG ES 39–43 • 137

51–56; González Lauck, “Proyecto arqueológico La Venta,” 142; González Lauck, “Acerca de pirámides,” 80–85. 90. Inomata et al., “Artificial Plateau Construction”; Inomata and Triadan, “Investigación de las orígenes de la civilización maya”; Inomata et al., “Monumental Architecture at Aguada Fénix,” 530–533. It is possible that this is a pan-Mesoamerican pattern, with the Early Formative Olmec city of San Lorenzo as one of its earliest exemplars; how La Venta fits in remains to be thoroughly investigated. 91. Uruñuela, Plunket, and Robles Salmerón, “Cholula,” 165–166. 92. Mollenhauer, “Sculpting the Past in Preclassic Mesoamerica,” 21, in reference to Monument 61 at San Lorenzo. On memory, forgetting, and the power of ephemeral seeing, see also Küchler, “Malangan,” 625– 637; Küchler, Malanggan; Forty and Küchler, The Art of Forgetting; Connerton, “Seven Types of Forgetting,” 59–71. 93. Heizer, “New Observations on La Venta,” 20; Schele, “The Olmec Mountain and Tree of Creation,” 108; Reilly, “Mountains of Creation,” 18. 94. Drucker, Heizer, and Squier, Excavations at La Venta, 118–121, 124, 266–267. See also González Lauck, “Acerca de pirámides,” 80–85. C H A P T E R 2 . VI S IO N: S E EI NG M AYA LINTELS

1. Plank, “Monumental Maya Dwellings,” 408–410; Velásquez García, “Architectural Terminology in Maya and Nahua Texts,” 269; Houston, Stuart, and Taube, “Seasonal Gods and Cosmic Rulers,” 142–143. I am grateful to Stephen Houston for sharing his thoughts on the term (personal communication, 2017). 2. Harrison-Buck, “Killing the ‘Kings of Stone,’” 63, 68–69, 72, 74, 78, 87–88. 3. There are only a few exceptions to this pattern: at Chichen Itza, the Temple of the Initial Series Lintel, one of the earliest texts at the site, must, from its dimensions, have been oriented obliquely, even though it was likely not found in its original location; see Grube, Lacadena García-Gallo, and Martin, “Chichen Itza and Ek Balam,” 50–52. At Bonampak, Lintel 4 is oriented parallel to the doorjambs in the northern fashion; see Arellano Hernández, “Diálogo con los abuelos,” fig. 13. A carved panel from the Usumacinta region now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art might once also have been oriented directly above its original doorway, if it was in fact

138 • NOTES TO PAGES 43–58

originally a lintel (LACMA AC1992.76.1, https://collections.lacma.org/node /172322). 4. No extant outer lintels are carved at Tikal (Temples 1, 4, and 5 have plain outer lintels in situ), but James Meierhoff makes a convincing argument that a carved outer lintel from Temple 3 was removed by Salvador Valenzuela in 1879 and has since been lost; see Meierhoff and Buechler, “Tikal’s Missing Carved Wooden Lintel.” 5. David L. Lentz and Brian Hockaday, “Tikal Timbers and Temples,” 1342–1353. 6. Wooden lintels at Chichen Itza are found in the Upper Temple of the Jaguars and at the Castillo; see Schele and Mathews, The Code of Kings, 231–232; V. E. Miller, “The Castillo-sub at Chichen Itza,” 189–190. For the Uxmal and Kabah wooden lintels, now destroyed, see Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Central America, 2:432–433; Stephens, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, 1:102–103, 249–252; and for discussion, Brittenham, “John Lloyd Stephens and the Lost Lintel of Kabah.” 7. Schele, “Color on Classic Architecture,” 35–36, 40–42; Houston et al., Veiled Brightness, 88–89; Houston, Scherer, and Taube, “A Sculptor at Work,” 76–82. 8. Lombardo de Ruiz, in La pintura mural maya, describes remains of solid-colored paint on many lintels, as well as occasional red handprints, but the only surviving evidence of more complex decorative programs comes from Playa del Carmen and Las Pistolas, discussed on 112–114; see also Mayer, “Una pintura mural maya,” 31–39. Still, these extraordinary survivals remind us how much has potentially been lost. 9. Stephen Houston suggests that Piedras Negras might once have had carved wooden lintels, now completely destroyed; see Doyle and Houston, “Confederate Curio,” 144n1. On the rivalry between Yaxchilan and Piedras Negras, see Golden et al., “Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan,” 249–274. 10. Schwerin, “The Sacred Mountain in Social Context,” 271–300; see also Gendrop, “Dragon-Mouth Entrances,” 138–150; Gendrop, Rio Bec, Chenes, and Puuc Styles; Schávelzon, “Temples, Caves, or Monsters?,” 151–162. A similar metaphor occurs on later Aztec structures like the rock-cut cave at Malinalco, where the entryway is figured into the Nahuatl glyph for oztotl, or cave, which itself represents an animate being; see Townsend, “Malinalco and the Lords of Tenochtitlan,” 124–127. 11. Barrera Vásquez, Diccionario Maya Cordemex, 101; Stuart, “‘The Fire Enters His

House,’” 395; V. Miller, “Human Imagery,” 209–214; Velásquez García, “Architectural Terminology,” 269, 287. 12. García Campillo and Lacadena García-Gallo, “Nota sobre cuatro dinteles glíficos,” 159–171; Plank, Maya Dwellings, 65–68, 72–89; O’Neil, “Object, Memory, and Materiality,” 245–269. 13. The outer edges of lintels at the Temple of the Four Lintels at Chichen Itza feature two supernatural beings characteristic of the site: a “knife-winged bird” with a human face emerging from its beak and a coiled serpent disgorging a human head. Images of these two beings are also repeated on the outer edges of the lintels of Yula Structure 1; see García Campillo, Estudio introductorio, 119–124, 136–137, 148–154; Boot, Continuity and Change, 133–134, 312–318, 335–344. The undersides of the lintels of Sayil Structure 4B1 feature K’awiil, a god of lightning, rulership, and abundance; see Pollock, The Puuc, fig. 255. K’awiil is more frequently pictured on capstones in the northern region, another highly placed and difficultto-see genre of art, on which see Staines Cicero, “Las imágenes pintadas,” 389–402. 14. Looper, To Be Like Gods, 15–44. 15. Tozzer, Landa’s Relación, 161, discussed in Stuart, “‘The Fire Enters His House,’” 374, 389. 16. Stuart, “‘The Fire Enters His House,’” 381–396. 17. Plank, Maya Dwellings, 75–79, 167–181, 214. For lintel-raising ceremonies in the Madrid Codex, pages 20b–21b, see Houston, Stuart, and Taube, “Seasonal Gods and Cosmic Rulers,” 144–146. 18. Brittenham, “Architecture, Vision, and Ritual,” especially 16–23, 35n74. Structure 23 is relatively unusual in eighthcentury Yaxchilan in recording its own dedication in its lintel texts so assiduously, but there are other instances of such selfreflexivity at the site: Lintel 10 of Structure 3 records an och k’ahk’ event, as does Lintel 56 of Structure 11, while Lintel 28 of Structure 24 records a fire-entering into Lady Xook’s tomb. Another kind of dedication ceremony, an el naah (perhaps house censing), is recorded on Lintel 21 of Structure 22 and Lintel 31 of Structure 10; see discussion in Stuart, “‘The Fire Enters His House,’” 384–392. 19. Vogt, Zinacantan, 461–465; Vogt, “Zinacanteco Dedication and Termination Rituals,” 21–27. For parallels to ancient Maya practice, see Stuart, “‘The Fire Enters His House,’” 393–396.

20. Monaghan, “Theology and History,” 30–31. 21. Houston, “Classic Maya Depictions,” 343; Houston, Scherer, and Taube, “A Sculptor at Work,” 60. 22. Stuart, “Kings of Stone,” 147–171; Houston and Stuart, “Of Gods, Glyphs and Kings,” 289–312; Houston, Stuart, and Taube, Memory of Bones, 57–81, 97–101. 23. Hanks, Referential Practice, 91–95; Houston and Taube, “Archaeology of the Senses,” 287–289; Herring, Art and Writing, 78–79; Stone and Zender, Reading Maya Art, 58–59. 24. Houston, Stuart, and Taube, Memory of Bones, 173. 25. Velásquez García, “La máscara de ‘rayos X,’” 7–36. The god on the mask has spiral eyes, indicating a particular kind of divine perception. 26. Tate, Yaxchilan, 237; ancestors also overlook the scenes on Yaxchilan stelae 1, 4, 6, 8, and 10, among others. 27. Maler, Researches, 2:101–104; Scherer and Golden, Revisiting Maler’s Usumacinta, 71–73; K. Mayer, “The Maya Lintels of El Chicozapote,” 1–4. 28. Olton, “Spaces of Transformation,” 296–299. It is not clear how widely this theory can be generalized at Tikal: no tombs have yet been found in Temples II, III, or IV, nor is there any evidence that the figures depicted on the lintel of Structure 5D-52, a palatial building in the Central Acropolis, were already dead at the time of their representation. 29. Werness-Rude and Spencer, “Imagery, Architecture, and Activity,” 66–67. 30. M. E. Miller, “The Willfulness of Art,” 20–21; Miller and Brittenham, Spectacle, 85, 112. 31. Miller and Brittenham, Spectacle, 87–92, 125–128. 32. For an alternate view that centers the princes, see Houston, The Gifted Passage, 135–155. For the gaze in Maya art, see Joyce, “A Precolumbian Gaze,” 263–283. Although Joyce argues for a paradigmatic male gaze, women are also often represented in the position of overlooking male bodies, as at Bonampak Structure 1 or Yaxchilan Structure 23. 33. Doyle and Houston, “The Woman in Wood.” The figure on the lintel from Structure 5D-52 in the Central Acropolis, now in the American Museum of Natural History (30.0/2954), has also sometimes been thought to be female, based on the column-like costume, but it is equally possible that it is King Yik’in Chan K’awiil in

especially bulky clothes, particularly since the fragmentary texts ends with a Tikal emblem glyph, as suggested by Jones and Satterthwaite, Monuments and Inscriptions, 104–105. In either case, the more informal character of this scene, with a dwarf and water birds facing the principal figure, seems appropriate to its more private palatial setting. 34. Stuart, “Jade and Chocolate,” 127–144; Miller and Martin, Courtly Art, 234. See also Stross, “Burden of Office,” 118–121. 35. For Yaxchilan Structure 23, see most recently Brittenham, “Architecture, Vision, and Ritual,” with further bibliography cited at 31n1. 36. Female names occur on Lintels 3 and 7 on the second story of the Monjas compound and at the Akab Dzib. García Campillo, Estudio introductorio, 59–85; Krochock, “Women in the Hieroglyphic Inscriptions,” 152–170; Grube, Lacadena García-Gallo, and Martin, “Chichen Itza and Ek Balam,” 54–65; Plank, Maya Dwellings, 171–181, 213–215; Boot, Continuity and Change, 324–335; Grube and Krochock, “Reading Between the Lines,” 234–237. 37. Miller and Brittenham, Spectacle, 6, 162–166; while we termed this “stela diplomacy,” in the case of Yaxchilan, “lintel diplomacy” might be an even more apt phrase. See also Houston, “Crafting Credit,” 404–422. 38. Boot, Continuity and Change, 131–134, 307–308, 312–318; Pérez de Heredia Puente and Biró, “K’ak’ Upakal K’inich K’awil,” 79–81. 39. For a productive invocation of the limits of human perception, see Didi-Huberman, Confronting Images, 11–27. 40. Neer, “The Invisible Acropolis,” 21, 23. For the artist as a liminal figure in the Maya court, see Stuart, “The Maya Artist”; Inomata, “Power and Ideology of Artistic Creation,” 321–349; Miller and Martin, Courtly Art, 121–136; Houston, “Crafting Credit,” 391–431. 41. Clarke, “Producing Stone and State,” 59–69. I am grateful to Mary Clarke for discussing these questions with me (personal communication, 2020). 42. Landa, Relación, 155–156, translation by the author; for commentary, see also Tozzer, Landa’s Relación, 159–160. For ritual seclusion in the making and renewing of modern Lacandon god pots, see Tozzer, A Comparative Study, 92, 108–147. 43. Tozzer, Landa’s Relación, 161. 44. Stuart, “Kings of Stone,” 155–157;

Herring, “Sculpture in the Maya Cities,” 114–116. The drill holes on the sides of Ixkun Stela 1 again seem to support this kind of lattice binding; see Houston, “Maya Stelae and Multi-Media.” See also Matsumoto, “Sharing Script,” 240–241. 45. Stuart, The Order of Days, 264. See also the essays in Guernsey and Reilly, Sacred Bundles. 46. Houston, The Life Within, 87–102, especially 98; also Clarke, “Producing Stone and State,” 13–19, 34–43. 47. I am grateful to Mary Weismantel for highlighting this aspect of privileged sight in the workshop (personal communication, 2019). On Maya production, see Flad and Hruby, “‘Specialized’ Production,” 1–19, and the other essays in this special issue of Archaeological Papers of the American Anthropological Association; also Clarke, “Producing Stone and State,” especially 34–43 and passim. 48. Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, especially 75–80. 49. Lin, “Performing Center,” 101–134. 50. For stairs, see M. Miller, “A Design for Meaning,” 201–208. 51. Because the lintel was not found in situ, it is impossible to know exactly how it would have been positioned in the doorway and precisely what kind of movement engagement with it would have demanded; the lintel is badly damaged, and the texts are hard to read. García Campillo, Estudio introductorio, 93–94; Grube, Lacadena García-Gallo, and Martin, “Chichen Itza and Ek Balam,” 40. The question of movement is also discussed in Werness-Rude and Spencer, “Imagery, Architecture, and Activity,” 58–59. 52. Miller and Brittenham, Spectacle, 21–39. 53. Miller and Brittenham, Spectacle, 39–43. 54. Miller and Brittenham, Spectacle, 27–33, 64–68. Here dates are presented in the Julian calendar, using the MartinSkidmore 584286 correlation described in Martin and Skidmore, “Exploring the 584286 Correlation,” 3–16. 55. At Yaxchilan, for example, close attention is required to parse the differences between Lintels 5 and 7 of Structure 1; Lintels 38 and 39 of Structure 16; Lintels 13 and 14 of Structure 20; Lintels 1, 2, and 3 of Structure 33; Lintels 41 and 43 of Structure 42; Lintels 44, 45, and 46 of Structure 44; Lintels 52 and 53 of Structure 55; see Tate, Yaxchilan, 150–151, 178, 194–195, 220–221, 250–251, 256, 262–263. For the

NOTES TO PAG ES 58–75 • 139

Monjas lintels at Chichen Itza, see García Campillo, Estudio introductorio, 59–85; Grube, Lacadena García-Gallo, and Martin, “Chichen Itza and Ek Balam,” 54–65; Plank, Maya Dwellings, 171–181, 213–215; Boot, Continuity and Change, 324–335. 56. Neer, “The Invisible Acropolis,” 21, 23, and also Osborne, “Viewing and Obscuring,” 98–104; Marconi, “The Parthenon Frieze,” 156–173. 57. Miller and Brittenham, Spectacle, 38–39, 93–94. 58. Miller and O’Neil, Maya Art and Architecture, 189–191; Just, “Seeing with Both Eyes.” 59. On viewers as participants, see also Seastrand, “Praise, Politics, and Language,” 252–253. 60. Brittenham, “Text in Context.” On this in-and-out movement in other contexts, see Hamann, “‘In the Eyes of the Mixtecs,’” 96–115; Hamann, “Object, Image, Cleverness,” 530–531 and passim; DidiHuberman, Confronting Images. 61. O’Neil, Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture, 88–102. 62. O’Neil, Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture, 103. 63. On the formats of Maya stelae, see Clancy, Sculpture in the Ancient Maya Plaza, 17–21. 64. One proposal is that white cloths positioned outside the doorways might have reflected light into the rooms, as discussed in Miller and Brittenham, Spectacle, 33. 65. Hamilakis, Archaeology and the Senses, 79–80; Casey, The World at a Glance; Bryson, Vision and Painting. 66. Veyne, “Conduct without Belief,” 2. 67. Brenk, “Visibility and (Partial) Invisibility,” 139–183. See also de Angelis, “Sublime Histories,” 89–114, for the appeal to an ideal viewer. 68. Doyle, “Sacrifice, Fealty”; Doyle, “Relief with Enthroned Ruler.” For La Pasadita more generally, see Golden, “La Pasadita Archaeological Project”; Golden, “The Politics of Warfare,” 31–48; Golden and Scherer, “Border Problems,” 1–16. 69. Proskouriakoff, “Historical Data,” 182; Mathews, La escultura de Yaxchilán, 97–100, 118; Plank, Maya Dwellings, 65–68; O’Neil, “Object, Memory, and Materiality,” 252. 70. O’Neil, “Object, Memory, and Materiality,” 252. 71. O’Neil, “Object, Memory, and Materiality,” 252–258; García Campillo and Lacadena García-Gallo, “Nota sobre cuatro dinteles,“ 159–171; Plank, Maya Dwellings, 72–89. At Oxkintok, fifth-century lintels

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were reset in the Grupo Ah Canul, where their early paleographic styles signified antiquity, even when the texts were fragmented and incomplete. One of the lintels was completely inaccessible, buried in front of the door of Structure CA-6 (Lintel 15). Three other lintels were placed in dark interior locations: Lintels 1 and 2 spanning interior doorways of Structure CA-6, and Lintel 14, unusually carved on its edge rather than its underside, reset into a bench inside Structure CA-7, where it may have been covered by a layer of stucco. 72. Brittenham, “Architecture, Vision, and Ritual,” 8–36. At the same time, the mirror writing of the text on Lintel 25 made it even more difficult to read. On mirror writing (also present on figure 2.15), see Matsumoto, “Reflection as Transformation,” 93–128. 73. On this point, see also Martin and Grube, Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens, 134; Houston, Scherer, and Taube, “A Sculptor at Work,” 52. 74. Stuart, “Kings of Stone,” 158–165; Houston and Stuart, “The Ancient Maya Self,” 73–101; Houston, Stuart, and Taube, Memory of Bones, 57–101. 75. Houston and Stuart, “On Maya Hieroglyphic Literacy,” 589–593; Houston, “Literacy among the Pre-Columbian Maya,” 27–49. 76. On this point, see also O’Neil, Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture, 28–29, 66–70, 79–81, 103. 77. Ruppert and Denison, Archaeological Reconnaissance, 111, 121, plates 50, 53; Martin, Houston, and Zender, “Sculptors and Subjects.” Today only the sides and back of Stela 89 remain in situ atop the pyramid; the face was cut off by looters in the 1960s or 1970s and is now in the Sonderausstellung, Hildesheim, Germany. 78. Tate, Yaxchilan, 244–249; on the differential address of river and temple sides of Yaxchilan stelae, see Tate, “The PeriodEnding Stelae of Yaxchilán,” 109. 79. Ruppert, Thompson, and Proskouriakoff, Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico, 13–14; Miller and Brittenham, Spectacle, 161–163. 80. Stuart, “Kings of Stone”; see also Brittenham, “Ritual in Stone.” 81. Stuart, “Kings of Stone”; Stuart, The Order of Days, 253–274; the Maya term for a stela is lakamtuun, perhaps simply “big stone,” as proposed in Stuart, “The LAKAM Logogram.” 82. David Stuart has argued that the very word k’atun derives from the act of

binding—and perhaps then revealing—the tuun or stone of the stela. Note however that k’atun is the sixteenth-century Yukatek Mayan word for the twenty-tun period, not what the Classic Maya would have called this period; their term is likely something like winikhaab, loosely translatable to “twenty years,” discussed in Stuart, “Kings of Stone,” 155; a tun consists of 360 days. What the act of k’al, so central to the k’altuun ritual, entailed remains controversial. Stuart initially proposed that the verb k’al referred to an act of binding, particularly appropriate to its occurrence on stelae, which seem to have been wrapped in cloth at the moment of their dedication; see Stuart, “Kings of Stone,” 154–158. Yet mounting evidence suggests that the verb refers to a more generalized act of dedication, or perhaps another kind of raising or elevation; see Houston, The Gifted Passage, 192n15. 83. W. R. Coe, Excavations in the Great Plaza, 3:304; Herring, “Sculpture in the Maya Cities,” 114; Stuart, “Shining Stones,” 283–286. 84. Arroyo, “The Naranjo Rescue Project,” 17–20; Pereira, “Plain but Not Simple.” 85. In fact, blank stelae are found throughout Mesoamerica. At La Venta, Monument 87 showed no traces of paint or carving. González Lauck, “Acerca de pirámides,” 89; Brittenham, “The Art of Assemblage at La Venta,” n59. A significant tradition of blank stelae also occurs along the Pacific Coast, discussed in Bove, “The People with No Name,” 77–114; and at Teotihuacan, see Robb, Teotihuacan, 285. 86. Since plain stelae are not usually catalogued or studied, and it is not always easy to tell a very eroded stela from an undecorated one, it is difficult to quantify this pattern across sites. Some city-states, like Quirigua, appear not to have had plain stelae at all. At Bonampak, however, we know that one of the four stelae found at the site was plain, and that this plain stela was prominently displayed on the plaza; see Ruppert, Thompson, and Proskouriakoff, Bonampak, Chiapas, Mexico, 15. 87. Jones, “The Twin-Pyramid Group Pattern.” On the stelae, see M. E. Miller, “Maya Art: How Art Changes.” 88. Jones, “The Twin-Pyramid Group Pattern,” 13. 89. There is only one stela at Palenque, apparently imposed upon the site while it was under the sway of Tonina, a city that was home to a robust three-dimensional stela tradition; see M. Miller, “Guerra y escultura maya,” 180–181.

90. Tozzer, Landa’s Relación, 110, 141, cited and discussed in Stuart, “Kings of Stone,” 150–151. 91. Houston and Stuart, “Of Gods, Glyphs and Kings”; Stuart, “Kings of Stone”; Houston, Stuart, and Taube, Memory of Bones, 57–101. Patterns of iconoclasm provide evidence for the Maya belief in the vitality of images: eyes and noses were consistently attacked, destroying the image’s ability to see or breathe; see Houston and Stuart, “The Ancient Maya Self,” 88; Houston and Taube, “Archaeology of the Senses,” 283; Just, “Modifications of Ancient Maya Sculpture,” 78; Houston, Stuart, and Taube, Memory of Bones, 100; Miller and Brittenham, Spectacle, 167; O’Neil, “Marked Faces, Displaced Bodies,” 50–52. 92. Stuart, “A Study of Maya Inscriptions,” 99–100. This is undoubtedly an artifact of preservation: most of the texts we have occur on the most durable material, such as stone, clay, and shell. If more Maya books and perishable media survived, other genres of writing would likely be represented—but the importance of commemorating the dedication of things would remain. It should be noted that other kinds of texts exist on stone, clay, and murals as well, including extremely rare instances of first- and second-person speech within narrative contexts, brief captions that identify figures within a scene, sculptors’ signatures, counts of days, and king lists. 93. Miller and Brittenham, Spectacle, 74–75; Miller and Martin, Courtly Art, 218. 94. Sharf, “Art in the Dark,” 38–65; Wu, “What Is Bianxiang?,” 134–135. C H A P T E R 3 . POWE R: CARVI NG T H E UN D E R S I D ES O F AZ T E C S CUL P T URE

1. Another cast inset into the rear panel reproduces the date 12 Reed, which is carved on the Coatlicue’s back just behind the skull at the center of her back ornament where it cannot be seen from below. 2. The practice of carving the undersides of Aztec sculpture is often acknowledged but rarely analyzed systematically. It has most commonly been addressed in exhibition catalogs, especially Nicholson and Quiñones Keber, Art of Aztec Mexico, and Alcina Franch, León-Portilla, and Matos Moctezuma, Azteca-Mexica; Pasztory, in Aztec Art, also notes a number of carved undersides. Other studies have focused on the earth deity Tlaltecuhtli, whose image frequently occurs on the undersides of sculptures (see note 78 for further

bibliography). One partial compilation of the Aztec corpus, with preliminary classification, is Alcina Franch, “La faz oculta de la cultura mexica,” 9–23. See also Read, “Sun and Earth Rulers,” 351–384; Leibsohn and Schreffler, “Seeing the Unknown, Knowing the Unseen.” 3. “Aztec” in its present usage is a nineteenth-century term, derived from Aztlan, the place of origin claimed by many people of the Nahuatl-speaking citystates in the Valley of Mexico, but in the sixteenth century, identity was much more closely tied to the altepetl, or city-state. Mexica refers to the inhabitants of MexicoTenochtitlan and of Tlatelolco, which split off from Tenochtitlan in 1337, with another bitterly fought civil war between 1469 and 1473; the terms “Tenochca” and “Tlatelolca” distinguish the inhabitants of these two city-states. 4. On the transformation from Tenochtitlan to Mexico City, see Mundy, Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan. 5. Boone, “The ‘Coatlicues’ at the Templo Mayor,” 189–206; Gurría Lacroix, “Andrés de Tapia y la Coatlicue,” 23–34; López Luján, “La Coatlicue,” 220–229; López Austin and López Luján, Monte Sagrado-Templo Mayor, 451–452, 455–462; Matos Moctezuma, “¿Estaba la Coatlicue en lo alto del Templo Mayor?,” 86–87. 6. Boone, “The ‘Coatlicues’ at the Templo Mayor,” 189–193, 201–205; López Luján, “La Coatlicue,” 220–224. Cecelia Klein suggests that the Yollotlicue may originally have been named Nochpalliicue, a name mentioned in the Leyenda de los soles; see Klein, “A New Interpretation,” 236–239, 242. For even more possible fragments of the group, see González López, “The Stone Sculpture of Tenochtitlan,” 240–242, figs. 6.105, 6.346, and 6.347. 7. The British Museum serpent, Am1849,0629.1, is discussed in Matos Moctezuma and Solís Olguín, Aztecs, cat. 81; Nicholson and Quiñones Keber, Art of Aztec Mexico, 134–135. See also Gutiérrez Solana, Las serpientes en el arte mexica, and the general comments on coiled serpent sculptures in Clendinnen, Aztecs, 228. The British Museum sculpture was possibly found in the Plazuela de Santo Domingo, four blocks to the northwest of the Templo Mayor; a very similar object in the collection of the Museo Nacional de Antropología (inv. 10-81665) was found on the corner of Calles Palma and República de Cuba, just three blocks east of the Templo Mayor; and a third, damaged serpent, also in the Museo

Nacional de Antropología (inv. 10-1122), was found in the Mayorazgo de Mota, a block to the east of the Templo Mayor. See López Luján, El capitán Guillermo Dupaix, 110–115. 8. For examples, see Nicholson and Quiñones Keber, Art of Aztec Mexico, 117–121, 129–132; López Luján and FauvetBerthelot, Aztèques, 133–137, 147, 159; González López, “Stone Sculpture,” figs. 2.9–2.11. 9. López Austin and López Luján, Monte Sagrado-Templo Mayor, láms. 8–10. At the Museo Nacional de Antropología there is another damaged toad, very similar in style (inv. 10-41743). But note that H. B. Nicholson places the origins of these objects near Tula, Hidalgo, as discussed in Nicholson and Quiñones Keber, Art of Aztec Mexico, 115–116, which also illustrates one of a pair of toads also carved on the underside with paws and chalchihuitls, but in a markedly different style, now in the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin (IV Ca 44331 and IV Ca 48275). 10. For the Chalco place glyph, see, for example, Codex Mendoza folio 41r, reproduced in Berdan and Anawalt, Codex Mendoza, 4:87. On the conflict between Tenochtitlan and Chalco, see Klein, “Rethinking Cihuacóatl,” 238–246. 11. Pasztory, Aztec Art, 152–154; Matos Moctezuma, “La Coyolxauhqui,” 351–352; on the findspot, see Mateos Higuera, “Herencia arqueológica,” 221; Seler, “Excavations,” 138–139. 12. López Luján, El capitán Guillermo Dupaix, 182–187. This is farther from the Templo Mayor than many of the other objects discussed in this section and may have come from another important building in the center of Tenochtitlan. 13. This was but one of several objects recarved in the colonial period that retains an image of Tlaltecuhtli. Several carved columns also feature Tlaltecuhtli on the underside, continuing an Aztec practice of placing images of this deity in contact with the ground; see, for example, Museo Nacional de Antropología inv. 10-46679; Matos Moctezuma, “Column Base with Earth Monster Relief,” 255; Magaloni Kerpel, “Column Base Depicting the ‘Lord of the Earth,’” 264; Ryu, “Calendar, Column, Crucifix,” 96–100, 138–142. In addition, there are at least two other recarved columns with Tlaltecuhtli on the underside. One is in the Museo Nacional de Antropología, described in Nicholson, “A Fragment of an Aztec Relief Carving,”

NOTES TO PAG ES 88–97 • 141

81–94. Another, in the Museo del Templo Mayor, appears to have a male Tlaltecuhtli on one face and a female Tlaltecuhtli on the opposite side; see González López, “Stone Sculpture,” 189, fig. 6.106. This was apparently one of a set of stone blocks carved with opposing aspects of this deity (Ángel González López, personal communication, 2021). Two other columns that once had either coiled feathered serpents or large feathered serpent heads on the top and still display serpent scales on the underside sit outside the entrance to the Museo del Templo Mayor. Sara Ryu identifies these columns with Diego Durán’s account of the reuse of sculpture from the Temple of Huitzilopochtli; see Ryu, “Calendar, Column, Crucifix,” 87–96. 14. Hernández Pons, “El águilacuauhxicalli,” 167–188; Matos Moctezuma and Solís Olguín, Aztecs, 462. A small avian cuauhxicalli in the British Museum, Am1825,1210.3, is likewise carved on the underside with feathers that continue from the visible surfaces; it is illustrated in Hernández Pons, “El águila-cuauhxicalli,” 182. González López also published a fragment of another small avian cuauhxicalli with a Tlaltecuhtli or earth deity on the underside; see González López, “Stone Sculpture,” fig. 6.109. 15. González López, Turner, and Barrera Rodríguez, “Una deidad olvidada en el tiempo,” 74; González López, “Stone Sculpture,” 236–240. 16. Emily Umberger proposes that the day 7 Reed in the year 8 Reed was the day of the dedication of Ahuitzotl’s renovation of the Templo Mayor, now termed Stage VI; the date also appears on the Dedication Stone; see Umberger, “Aztec Sculptures, Hieroglyphs, and History,” 86, 99, 102–103, 127–129. Because the date on the eagle’s tail is enclosed in a cartouche, typically a sign of year dates, it might also refer to the year 7 Reed, corresponding to 1499, the year of Ahuitzotl’s disastrous aqueduct project, on which see Mundy, Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, 64–69. 17. In general, when the sculpture incorporates an integral plinth, the underside of that base is uncarved. This is the case, for example, with the Coatlicue del Metro, which is carved on five visible surfaces but not the underside, as mentioned in Mateos Higuera, “Herencia arqueológica,” 243. The one notable exception to this rule is that late chacmools, which do have slim rectangular bases, are carved on their undersides (see discussion

142 • NOTES TO PAGES 97–100

below and figures 3.26, 3.28, and 3.29). There is also a Tlaltecuhtli on the squared base underneath a pair of clawed feet, now in the Museo del Templo Mayor, which Leonardo López Luján suggests was one of a set of precursors to the Coatlicue series; see López Luján, “La Coatlicue,” 218, 220, 224. 18. See especially Mateos Higuera, “Herencia arqueológica,” 205–273. Furthermore, not everything found near the Templo Mayor was necessarily made by Mexica craftspeople: gifts or items of tribute may also have entered into the mix, as was potentially the case with the Coyolxauhqui head illustrated in figure 3.7. I am grateful to Carolyn Tate for emphasizing this point. 19. On materials, see López Luján, Torres, and Montúfar, “Los materiales constructivos,” 141–148; López Luján and Fauvet-Berthelot, “El arte escultórico de los mexicas,” 80–94. On style, see Matos Moctezuma, “El águila, el jaguar y la serpiente,” 54–66; López Luján and De Anda Rogel, “Teotihuacan in Mexico-Tenochtitlan,” 11; González López, “Stone Sculpture,” 151–288. 20. One group of objects, carved out of a reddish basalt, features knotted rattlesnakes, configured so that the knots of the body and the rattles of the tail continue onto the underside; see, for example, Ethnologisches Museum Berlin IV Ca 3788, IV Ca 3773, IV Ca 48290, and IV Ca 48291; Metropolitan Museum of Art 00.5.32; Denver Art Museum 1989.8. Others have a circle of coils and tail around a void or plain surface at the center, for example, Ethnologisches Museum Berlin IV Ca 48288. Differences in style and approach make it likely that these were not all made in the same workshop. 21. Matos Moctezuma and Solís Olguín, El Calendario Azteca, 141. I am grateful to Kris Driggers for drawing my attention to this object (personal communication, 2017). 22. 1460 is another, less likely, possibility for the date; see Umberger, “Aztec Sculptures,” 114–115; Umberger, “Aztec Presence and Material Remains,” 171–178; Solís Olguín, Escultura del Castillo de Teayo, 97–98. Another example of a noncanonical sculpture is a coiled serpent with carved underside, Musée du Quai Branly 70.2000.11.78, collected by Guy Stresser-Pean near Papantla, a city 45 kilometers to the southeast of Castillo de Teayo. Still another coiled serpent, also not in a canonical Mexica style, with the date 1 Rabbit on its underside is in the Kislak Collection at the Library of Congress, PC 0199 or 044.00.00, 044.00.02, http://www

.loc.gov/exhibits/exploring-the-early -americas/the-heavens-and-time .html#obj3; Dunkelman, The Jay I. Kislak Collection, 66. Its provenance is unknown. Another object with a carved underside, definitely not in imperial Mexica style, is discussed in López Luján and Santos, “El tepetlacalli de la colección Leof,” 18–39. The authors interpret this carved box as perhaps having been made by a Mixtec immigrant to the Mexica capital. Only a few more-canonical objects have a non-Tenochtitlan provenance; among them is a coiled feathered serpent from the city-state of Coyoacan, later converted into a base for a cross, which is carved with a Tlaltecuhtli on its underside (National Museum of the American Indian 17/5441); see López Luján, “Reflexiones sobre el arte escultórico,” 55–60; Dean and Leibsohn, “Scorned Subjects,” 421–424. Another feathered serpent with Tlaltecuhtli on the underside is reported to have been found at Calixtlahuaca; see González López, “Stone Sculpture,” 190, fig. 6.104; yet another from Xochimilco, see González López, “Stone Sculpture,” 190, fig. 6.107, citing Nicholson, “Major Sculpture,” 115. Still another feathered serpent with a human head emerging from its jaws is also carved with scales on its underside (Field Museum 96518); Antonio Peñafiel, in Monumentos del arte mexicano antiguo, vol. 2, pls. 163–167, attributes the work to Tula, Hidalgo. Of course, practices of gifting might mean that some of these objects had a Tenochca origin. 23. Solís Olguín, “La imagen de Ténoch,” 357–375. The sculptures are also discussed in Nicholson and Quiñones Keber, Art of Aztec Mexico, 112, and in McEwan and López Luján, Moctezuma, 46–47. There are three basalt cactus sculptures, all in the Museo Nacional de Antropología: one nearly complete (inv. 10-220928); one with only the base preserved (inv. 10-46716); and a third, very damaged on both top and bottom (cat. 11-4121). In addition, there is an object made of a much harder greenstone, which Solís interprets as showing a cactus emerging from a cuauhxicalli (cat. 11-330). 24. This point is also made in the context of images of Moteuczoma in Hajovsky, On the Lips of Others, 58–78. 25. The Tenochtitlan-Tlatelolco border fell near a street still called the “Calle del Órgano,” perhaps in memory of these very sculptures; see Solís Olguín, “La imagen de Tenoch,” 369.

26. Barnes, “Icons of Empire,” 2–4, 253–258, and passim; Umberger, “Aztec Sculptures,” 7, 229–241. 27. Works that both name and represent Ahuitzotl include the Dedication Stone and the Acuecuexcatl Stone; two stone plaques from Tepoztlan picture his name alone; see Umberger, “Aztec Sculptures,” 65, 127–132, 139–141, 158–164, 231–235; Nicholson and Quiñones Keber, Art of Aztec Mexico, 53–55; Pasztory, Aztec Art, 150–151, 162–165; Matos Moctezuma and Solís Olguín, Aztecs, 450, 455; Barnes, “Icons of Empire,” 2n1, 259–333. See also note 103. 28. For the sculpture, see Mateos Higuera, “Herencia arqueológica,” 263, no. 24–139; Umberger, “Aztec Sculptures,” 65; Pasztory, Aztec Art, 234–235; López Luján, El capitán Guillermo Dupaix, 101–109. For the mythical animal, see Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 11, Chapter 4, Paragraph 2, 68–70. 29. Vela Ramírez, “Ahuítzotl,” 58–65. 30. The sculpture was apparently found during the 1790s in a property known as the Mayorazgo de Mota that lay at the intersection of the present-day Calle del Carmen and Calle Justo Sierra, just one block to the east of the Templo Mayor; see Mateos Higuera, “Herencia arqueológica,” 264, cat. 24-139; the work is also discussed in Pasztory, Aztec Art, 234–235; Escalante Betancourt, “El ahuitzotl,” 57–61; López Luján, El capitán Guillermo Dupaix, 102–109. On Nahuatl writing, see Lacadena GarcíaGallo, “New Research on the Aztec Script,” 143–161; Whittaker, Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs. 31. A box lid with a three-dimensional representation of an Ahuitzotl on the top and the date 7 Reed on the underside likely refers to Ahuitzotl’s dedication of a renovation and enlargement of the Templo Mayor in 1487 (see note 16). If this lid belonged to the British Museum box (the dimensions do not quite align), then it is possible that both were deposited in the foundations of the Templo Mayor during dedication ceremonies for the new building. Seler, “The Animal Pictures,” 199–203; Umberger, “Aztec Sculptures,” 98–99; Pasztory, Aztec Art, 164–165; McEwan and López Luján, Moctezuma, 53–55; and, most recently, with a quite speculative proposal, Baquedano and Hassig, “History and the Ahuitzotl Box,” 151–167. 32. Peterson, “Sacrificial Earth,” 117–118. 33. López Luján and Santos, “El tepetlacalli de la colección Leof,” 14–39; Matos Moctezuma and Solís Olguín, Aztecs,

145, 414. 34. López Luján, Offerings, 163–172, 294–296. López Luján’s “Complex N” consists of Templo Mayor Offerings 28, 43, 26, 25, 35, and 47; all are located on the Tlaloc side of the temple. López Luján also notes the resemblances to the painting of the North Jamb of Structure A at Cacaxtla, several hundred years earlier. See also López Luján, La Casa de las Águilas, 1:232–235. 35. Barnes, “Icons of Empire,” 334–358; Hajovsky, On the Lips of Others, 96–99; and the foundational study by Seler, “Stone Boxes,” 3:87–113. Brief and useful expositions are also found in Alcina Franch, León-Portilla, and Matos Moctezuma, Azteca-Mexica, 202–204; McEwan and López Luján, Moctezuma, 148–149; Nicholson and Quiñones Keber, Art of Aztec Mexico, 64–66; Pasztory, Aztec Art, 255–257; and Umberger, “Aztec Sculptures,” 99–105. 36. The eight objects are the Calendar Stone (see figure 0.2), the Teocalli of Sacred War, two other stone boxes, a small sculpture of Tlaloc, Moteuczoma’s monumental portrait at Chapultepec, the Hackmack Box (see figure 3.18), and the Dumbarton Oaks Xiuhcoatl (see figure 3.19). The latter two are carved on their undersides, while the stone boxes and the Teocalli also engage with issues of concealment and display, discussed especially in Hajovsky, On the Lips of Others, 79–100. 37. McEwan and López Luján, Moctezuma, 174; Umberger, “Aztec Sculptures,” 97; Evans, Ancient Mexican Art at Dumbarton Oaks, 65–67; Hajovsky, On the Lips of Others, 88–93. Two other coiled supernatural serpents are so similar that they likely came out of the same workshop: another Xiuhcoatl in the collection of the Museo Nacional de Antropología in Mexico City, and a jaguar serpent in the Ethnologisches Museum in Berlin. Nothing is carved on the underside of the Berlin sculpture (I thank Maria Gaida and her team of conservators and art handlers for verifying this with me in 2014). For illustrations, see Hajovsky, On the Lips of Others, 91–92, or Gutiérrez Solana, Las serpientes, láms. 59–60, 80–81. 38. For Mexica archaism, see Umberger, “Antiques, Revivals,” 63–105; López Luján, La recuperación mexica; Matos Moctezuma and López Luján, “Teotihuacan and Its Mexica Legacy,” 156–165; López Luján, “The Aztecs’ Search for the Past,” 22–29; López Luján, “Echoes of a Glorious Past,”

273–294; López Luján and De Anda Rogel, “Teotihuacan in Mexico-Tenochtitlan,” 1–26; Hamann, “Chronological Pollution,” 804–814. For broader Mesoamerican understandings of the distant past, see Hamann, “The Social Life of Pre-Sunrise Things,” 351–382; Hamann, “Heirlooms and Ruins,” 119–168. 39. A final, albeit less clear-cut, example of archaism associated with unseen carving comes from a set of tenoned Xiuhcoatl heads carved in the style of the Epiclassic city of Xochicalco, which flourished between 650 and 900 CE. The heads were found on the Calle República de Cuba between Palma and República de Chile, or four blocks northwest of the Templo Mayor; a smooth coiled serpent was found near the same site. The undersides of these heads are carved with the date 2 Reed, surrounded by stylized flames, with the number 8 underneath, likely a reference to the New Fire ceremony of 1507. Because the texts are carved on the undersides of tenoned heads, it is possible that they were displayed in a way that made the dates visible when they were in position. Still, the fact that these heads are carved fully in the round, on all available surfaces (excepting the tenons, which are uncarved), associates them with the other archaizing examples of unseen art discussed above. Mateos Higuera, “Herencia arqueológica,” 210; Umberger, “Aztec Sculptures,” 94–95, 219; Umberger, “Antiques, Revivals,” 90–92; González López, “Stone Sculpture,” 217–221; Urcid Serrano and López Luján, “Xochicalco en Mexico-Tenochtitlan,” 15–57, with a hypothetical reconstruction of their placement in fig. 17. 40. Two such archaizing sculptures are known. One, found by Batres in 1900 in the excavations on Calle de las Escallerías and illustrated in figure 3.20b–d, is carved on the underside with a male Tlaltecuhtli and the date 1 Rabbit; see Batres, Excavations in Escalerillas Street, 51–53. Another, found at the corner of Calle 16 de Septiembre and Isabel la Católica (a little over half a kilometer from the Templo Mayor), is carved out of a more porous stone and in a slightly different style; its underside is unknown. Seler, “Excavations at the Site of the Principal Temple in Mexico,” 151–154; Mateos Higuera, “Herencia arqueológica,” 215, 226–227; Umberger, “Antiques, Revivals,” 86–87; Pasztory, Aztec Art, 157. 41. Nicholson and Quiñones Keber, Art of Aztec Mexico, 34–35; López Austin, “The Masked God of Fire,” 257–291; Umberger,

NOTES TO PAGES 104– 109 • 143

“Antiques, Revivals,” 88–89; Robb, “The Construction of Civic Identity,” 223–227. 42. Solís Olguín, Teotihuacan, 247, 303; Robb, Teotihuacan, 327. Matthew Robb confirms that the tecali serpent illustrated in figure 3.22a is smooth on its bottom (personal communication, 2018; I am very grateful to him for checking). In addition to two examples in the Museo Nacional de Antropología (inv. 10-525074, illustrated in figure 3.22a, and inv. 10-41893), two coiled serpents are housed in the Museo de la Cultura Teotihuacana at the site and another one in the Museo de Pintura Mural “Beatriz de la Fuente” (illustrated in figure 3.22b). Several coiled serpents were also found at Tula, although it is not clear if they are contemporary with the site or Aztec in date, deposited later in homage; see Fuente, Trejo, and Gutiérrez Solana, Escultura en piedra de Tula, 220; López Luján and López Austin, “The Mexica in Tula,” 399. 43. No Teotihuacan coiled serpent has been found to date in Mexico City excavations, but the conceit is easy enough to duplicate. The Teotihuacan serpents are generally smooth-bodied, but occasionally decorated with circles, rhomboids, or date glyphs. But even if Teotihuacan artists never carved coiled feathered serpents, the Aztec sculptures of this subject could also be considered archaizing, because they picture the three-dimensional name glyph of Quetzalcoatl, or “quetzal bird-serpent,” a deity whose form is consolidated at Teotihuacan and later refracted through Tula. The Aztecs understood Quetzalcoatl to be especially associated with Tula. 44. Museo de Sitio de Teotihuacan 10-213196; British Museum Am1926,-.22; discussed in Matos Moctezuma and Solís Olguín, Aztecs, 405; Solís Olguín, Teotihuacan, 59; Robb, Teotihuacan, 254. 45. Seler, “Excavations at the Site of the Principal Temple in Mexico,” 189. I have not been able to verify whether there was also carving on the underside of this sculpture. 46. For example, Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 6, Chapter 43, 256. Similarly, the Teocalli of Sacred War features eagle and jaguar offering vessels on its balustrades (Zac Hruby, personal communication, 2020). Although it is made of clay, the open-bodied avian vessel now nicknamed “el pato loco,” excavated at the La Ventilla apartment compound at Teotihuacan, could be considered another kind of predecessor of the avian cuauhxicalli; see Robb, Teotihuacan, 384. 47. For Tula chacmools, see Fuente,

144 • NOTES TO PAGES 111–112

Trejo, and Gutiérrez Solana, Escultura en piedra de Tula, 51–59; Jiménez García, Iconografía de Tula, 69–78. For Chichen Itza chacmools, see Maldonado Cárdenas and Miller, “Documentando los Chac Mo’olo’ob de Chichén Itzá,” 79–96. 48. Even some of the earliest Aztec chacmools lack the kind of Tlaloc iconography so emphasized in the three imperial-period examples, although the associations with the Tlaloc side of the Templo Mayor begin early; see Umberger, “Antiques, Revivals,” 77–79; López Austin and López Luján, “El chacmool mexica,” 59–84; López Austin and López Luján, “Los mexicas y el chacmool,” 68–73; López Luján and López Austin, “The Mexica in Tula,” 384–422. 49. López Austin and López Luján, “El chacmool mexica,” 68–70; López Austin and López Luján, “Los mexicas y el chacmool,” 72; López Austin and López Luján, Monte Sagrado-Templo Mayor, 440–448. 50. López Austin and López Luján, “El chacmool mexica,” 66–67. 51. Matos Moctezuma, “Las seis Coyolxauhqui,” 15–30; Matos Moctezuma, “La Coyolxauhqui,” 352–357; López Austin and López Luján, Monte Sagrado-Templo Mayor, 295–300. 52. Nicknamed “El Chueco,” the Stage I chacmool head may have originally been part of a larger sculpture, but in its present context, only the head is attached to a slab of volcanic stone; it features a face twisted and distorted by palsy, a disease associated with Tlaloc; see López Austin and López Luján, “Los mexicas y el chacmool,” 73. 53. One chacmool was found in the eighteenth century at the corner of Calle del Correo Mayor and Calle Moneda, less than two blocks from the Templo Mayor (see figure 3.26); see López Luján, El capitán Guillermo Dupaix, 122–129. A second chacmool, now headless and on display in the Museo de la Escultura Mexica, Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado, Zona Arqueológica de Santa Cecilia Acatitlán (see figure 3.28), was found on Calle República de Bolivia between Arsinas and República de Argentina, a half kilometer north of the Templo Mayor. See Solís Olguín, Catálogo de la escultura, 12; Mateos Higuera, “Herencia arqueológica,” 209. A third was found in 1943 at the corner of Calles Venustiano Carranza and Pino Suárez in downtown Mexico City, just south of the Zócalo (see figure 3.29); see Mateos Higuera, “Herencia arqueológica,” 233; Nicholson and Quiñones Keber, Art of Aztec Mexico, 32–33; Pasztory, Aztec Art,

173–175. For discussion, see López Austin and López Luján, “El chacmool mexica,” 66–67; López Austin and López Luján, “Los mexicas y el chacmool,” 68–72; López Austin and López Luján, Monte Sagrado-Templo Mayor, 440–448. As for the distance of the findspots from the Templo Mayor, many objects were scattered in the iconoclastic fury of the Spanish invasion: the Coatlicue, for example, was found two blocks south of the Yollotlicue, though both were originally much closer together; see Mateos Higuera, “Herencia arqueológica,” 222–223, 228–229, 264; López Luján, “La Coatlicue,” 229. However, it is also possible that at least one of the chacmools was originally associated with another structure, as there may be more chacmools than late imperial renovations of the Templo Mayor, depending on the dating of Phase V; for a comparison of chronologies, see López Luján, Offerings, 54. There are two other late chacmools, much smaller in size. The first is a very damaged object, made out of greenstone, formerly in the collection of the ex-Conde de Peñasco and now in the Museo Nacional de Antropología (inv. 10-0046655), illustrated in López Austin and López Luján, “El chacmool mexica,” 66; Mayer, México, 362–363. The other is also of greenstone, only 17 cm long, now in the collection of the Musée Quai Branly in Paris (78.1/307). Although it is atypical in many ways, it belonged to Antonio León y Gama and was apparently found at the Mayorazgo de Mota, just one block from the Templo Mayor. The head ornaments and feet of the reclining figure are carved on the underside of the sculpture; see López Luján and FauvetBerthelot, Aztèques, 98–99; López Austin and López Luján, Monte Sagrado-Templo Mayor, 446–447. 54. Olmedo Vera, Los templos rojos; López Luján and De Anda Rogel, “Teotihuacan in Mexico-Tenochtitlan,” 10–12. 55. López Luján and De Anda Rogel, “Teotihuacan in Mexico-Tenochtitlan,” 9–11. 56. Boone, “Venerable Place of Beginnings,” 386–387, although as Boone rightly notes, this account of frequent royal visits, which is mentioned only in San Juan Teotihuacan and not in the metropolitan capital, was likely more aspirational than historical. 57. Matos Moctezuma and López Luján, “Teotihuacan and Its Mexica Legacy,” 162–164; López Luján, La recuperación mexica, 25–36, 61–76; López Luján,

Offerings, 104–106, 194. 58. Melgar Tisoc and Solís Ciriaco, “Technological Analysis,” 118–128. For an opposing view, advocating for more collecting and less local manufacture, see López Luján and De Anda Rogel, “Teotihuacan in Mexico-Tenochtitlan,” 12–20. 59. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 11, Chapter 8, 221; see also the translation in Caplan, “Locking Eyes with the Sun,” paragraph 3. 60. Caplan, “Locking Eyes with the Sun,” paragraphs 13–14, 38–52. 61. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 10, Chapter 29, 165. On these passages as descriptions of Aztec archaeology, see Proskouriakoff, Jades from the Cenote of Sacrifice, 15; Umberger, “Antiques, Revivals,” 66–67; López Luján, “The Aztecs’ Search for the Past,” 25; Caplan, “Locking Eyes with the Sun”; Rojas, “Babylonians in Sixteenth-Century Mexico,” 284–309; Rojas, “Indigenous Languages and Epistemological Diversity.” I am extremely grateful to Allison Caplan and Felipe Rojas for our discussions about these Nahuatl texts (personal communications, 2021). 62. Matos Moctezuma and Solís Olguín, El Calendario Azteca; Villela and Miller, The Aztec Calendar Stone. 63. Cantares mexicanos, folios 16v–17r; for the Nahuatl text, see Bierhorst, Cantares Mexicanos, 184–185; translation cited here from León-Portilla, in Fifteen Poets of the Aztec World, 80, with modifications by the author. For discussion, see also Brotherston, “Nezahuacóyotl’s ‘Lamentaciones,’” 393–408; Clendinnen, Aztecs, 213–224; Tomlinson, The Singing of the New World, 30–31; Lee, The Allure of Nezahualcoyotl, especially 136–189. 64. Durán, History of the Indies, Chapters XX, XXII, XXIII, XXXVI, XXXVIII, XLIII, LXVI, 169–174, 186–193, 272–277, 288–290, 328–336, 477–482. 65. Vividly described in Durán, History of the Indies, Chapters XLIII–XLIV, 328–341. 66. Durán, History of the Indies, Chapter XLIV, 338. 67. Over two hundred offerings and caches have been excavated from the seven successive construction phases of the Templo Mayor. They are studied systematically in López Luján, Offerings. See also Broda, “Templo Mayor as Ritual Space,” 61–123; Nagao, Mexica Buried Offerings; Guzmán, “Sculpting Imperialism?”; López Austin and López Luján, Monte SagradoTemplo Mayor; and López Luján, “Las

ofrendas del Templo Mayor,” 15–23. For a broader compilation of Mesoamerican dedicatory practices, see Mock, The Sowing and the Dawning. 68. Templo Mayor Offering 94 consisted of forty-one greenstone beads and fifty-two green obsidian blades. Both greenstone beads and green obsidian might symbolize water; the green obsidian also recalls the pronounced Teotihuacan preference for this unusual material; and the fifty-two blades suggest the fifty-two years of a complete Aztec calendrical cycle; see López Luján, Offerings, 312; López Austin and López Luján, “El chacmool mexica,” 68–70; López Austin and López Luján, “Los mexicas y el chacmool,” 72; López Austin and López Luján, Monte Sagrado-Templo Mayor, 440–448. 69. López Luján, Offerings, 101–103, 190–193, and passim. 70. Historia de los mexicanos por sus pinturas, in Tena, Mitos e historias de los antiguos nahuas, 29–31; translation by the author. 71. Mundy, Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, 42–45. 72. Maffie, Aztec Philosophy, 21–136. On monism, see also Monaghan, “Theology and History,” 26; López Austin, Tamoanchan, Tlalocan. The theory governing the offerings is also discussed in López Luján, Offerings, 63–115. 73. Monaghan, “Theology and History,” 32; see also López Austin, “Nota sobre la fusión y la fisión,” 75–87. 74. Fowles, An Archaeology of Doings. 75. For example, Musée du Quai Branly 71.1887.155.52, illustrated in López Luján and Fauvet-Berthelot, Aztèques, 152. 76. Bok, Secrets; Lochrie, Covert Operations; also Brandt, “On Secrecy and the Control of Knowledge,” especially 142–144. 77. On the structures of esoteric knowledge, see Halbertal, Concealment and Revelation. 78. Most scholarship so far has focused on the iconographic identification of three interrelated forms of the earth deity that frequently ornament the bottoms of sculptures both great and small, and occur more rarely on the surfaces of monuments. Notable studies include Seler, “Quauhxicalli,” 3:79–83; Seler, “Another Quauhxicalli,” 3:84–86; Nicholson, “Birth of the Smoking Mirror,” 164–170; Nicholson, “Fragment,” 81–94; Solís Olguín and González Licón, “Tlaltecuhtli, el Señor de la Tierra,” 26–30; Matos Moctezuma,

“Tlaltecuhtli, Señor de la Tierra,” 15–40; and Henderson, Producer of the Living. Cecelia Klein argues that the female human-headed form may actually represent the goddess Cihuacoatl, as a form of humiliation after the conquest of Chalco; see Klein, “Rethinking Cihuacóatl,” 237–278. But the humanheaded and monstrous-headed versions of the deity seem to substitute for one another so freely that it is difficult to understand them as different entities. 79. Jonghe, “Histoyre du Mechique,” 28–29; for discussion, see Graulich, Myths of Ancient Mexico, 49–52; Nicholson, “Fragment,” especially 83–85. See also Dean and Leibsohn, “Scorned Subjects,”, 421–424, as well as Pasztory, Aztec Art, 82, 234. 80. For a partial compilation, see González López, “Stone Sculpture,” 228– 229, figs. 6.104, 6.107, 6.136, 6.143, 6.144, 6.320, 6.321, 6.323–6.327, 6.331. 81. Maffie, Aztec Philosophy, 137–183. The word is also related to the Nahuatl words namiqui, to encounter, and namictia, to join; see Molina, Vocabulario en lengua mexicana, ff. 38v, 62v; Karttunen, An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl, 158, 159. 82. Garibay Kintana, Historia de la literatura náhuatl, 1:19; León-Portilla, Aztec Thought and Culture, 102. A number of examples are compiled in Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 6, Chapters 41 and 43, 219–253, 241–260. See also Montes de Oca, Los difrasismos en el náhuatl. For Maya parallels, see Knowlton, “Diphrastic Kennings in Mayan Hieroglyphic Literature,” 9–12, and Stuart, “On the Paired Variants of TZ’AK.” As Stuart emphasizes, while some couplets consist of oppositions (e.g., day/ night, sky/earth), others pair more closely related elements (e.g., cloud/rain, food/ water); in all cases, the goal is to illustrate a conceptual whole. See also the discussion in Tedlock, “Toward a Poetics of Polyphony and Translatability,” 178–199, and García, Emergency, 56–60 and passim. For dualism in other aspects of Aztec life, see Graulich, “Double Immolations,” 393–404; López Luján, Offerings, 222–223; Zantwijk, “Principios organizadores de los mexicas,” 187–222; Maffie, Aztec Philosophy, 137–183 and passim. 83. Graulich, “El simbolismo del Templo Mayor,” 5–28; see also the review and discussion in López Austin and López Luján, Monte Sagrado-Templo Mayor. 84. Derrida, “The Gift of Death,” 3–116. See also the discussion in Pellizzi, “Further Comments on ‘Absconding,’” 347–360.

NOTES TO PAGES 112– 121 • 145

85. On ixiptla, see Hvidtfeldt, Teotl and *Ixiptlatli; Boone, “Incarnations of the Aztec Supernatural,” 4–9; López Austin, Los mitos del tlacuache, 191–194; Clendinnen, Aztecs, 249–253; Maffie, Aztec Philosophy, 113–114, 526; Bassett, The Fate of Earthly Things, 52–88, 130–161. 86. Cortés, “The Second Letter,” 106; Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica de la nueva España, Book IV, Chapter XXI, 332–333. For a compilation of Spanish and Nahua descriptions of the Templo Mayor, see Dahlgren et al., Corazón de Cópil, 103–225. 87. Las Casas, Apologética historia sumaria, 2:216. On tlaquimilloli, see Olivier, “Les paquets sacrés,” 105–141; Bassett, “Wrapped in Cloth, Clothed in Skins,” 369–400; Bassett, The Fate of Earthly Things, 162–191. In the Codex Azcatitlan, Huitzilopochtli’s bundle is typically shown closed, but in a single scene on page 11, it is opened, revealing what looks like a hummingbird head and perhaps a bone inside; see Boone, “Incarnations of the Aztec Supernatural,” 20–26; Barlow and Graulich, Codex Azcatitlan, 2:11. See also the essays in Guernsey and Reilly, Sacred Bundles. 88. Mendieta, Historia eclesiastica indiana, Book 2, Chapter 2, 80; translation by the author, substituting bastón for the likely erroneous bastión. Mendieta cites Friar Andrés de Olmos as the source of this information. 89. On the Inquisition trials, see Don, Bonfires of Culture, especially 111–145 for tlaquimilloli; for the “public secret,” see Taussig, Defacement. 90. Headrick and Koontz, “Ancestral Burdens in Gulf Coast Cultures,” 181–182; see also Boone, “Incarnations of the Aztec Supernatural,” 26–28. 91. “Proceso del Santo Oficio contra Miguel,” in González Obregón, Procesos de indios idólatras y hechiceros, 117; see also the discussion in Hamann, “Descartes, Jesus, and Huitzilopochtli,” 133–143. 92. “Proceso del Santo Oficio contra Miguel,” in González Obregón, Procesos de indios idólatras y hechiceros, 116; translation by the author. 93. Durán, History of the Indies, Chapters XLIII, XLIV, LVII, and LVIII, 329–341, 429–436, especially 333–335, 340, 434; I am grateful to Barbara Mundy for this observation (personal communication, 2015). For the display of the secret as a crucial part of practices of secrecy, see Bok, Secrets; Lochrie, Covert Operations. 94. Díaz del Castillo, History of the

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Conquest, 166, see also 158–159. 95. Díaz del Castillo, History of the Conquest, 167. 96. In other areas of Mesoamerica, Maya and Zapotec rulers were treated with similar deference; discussed in Hamann, “‘In the Eyes of the Mixtecs,’” 93–94, citing Restall, The Maya World, 253. For divine kings elsewhere, see the essays and bibliography in Brisch, Religion and Power. 97. The first law promulgated by Moteuczoma Ilhuicamina (r. 1398–1469), according to Diego Durán, specified that “the king must never appear in public except when the occasion is extremely important and unavoidable” (History of the Indies, Chapter XXIV, 208–209). 98. Sahagún, Florentine Codex, Book 8, Chapter 10, 29; for discussion, see Hamann, “In the Eyes of the Mixtecs,” 93–94; Mundy, Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, 53; Hajovsky, On the Lips of Others, 87–89. 99. Cortés, “The Second Letter,” 112. 100. Dupey García, “The Yellow Women,” 97. 101. Hamann, “‘In the Eyes of the Mixtecs,’” 92–93, also discusses the metaphor of the ruler as a mirror or instrument of seeing. 102. Mundy, Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, 53. 103. The first surviving ruler image, complete with name glyph, is on the Stone of Tizoc (r. 1481–1486). William Barnes argues convincingly that the practice likely originates with Tizoc; see Barnes, “Icons of Empire,” especially 253–258. On the Tizoc Stone more generally, see Wicke, “Once More Around the Tizoc Stone,” 209–222; Umberger, “New Blood from an Old Stone,” 241–256. Durán attributes the first carved portrait at Chapultepec to Itzcoatl (r. 1380– 1440), at the end of his life, but lavishes attention on the portrait of Moteuczoma Ilhuicamina (r. 1440–1469), the ruler who presided over the conquests in Oaxaca and along the Gulf Coast that transformed the Mexica state into a Mesoamerican empire; see Durán, History of the Indies, Chapters XIV, XXXI, 121, 242–243; for later portraits, see Chapters III, XXXVIII, L, LXVI, 21, 290, 380–381, 481. But this does not agree with the archaeological evidence: the stone of Moteuczoma Ilhuicamina, on which the Tizoc Stone is based, does not incorporate a ruler portrait or a name glyph. The Chapultepec portraits are discussed, with a focus on the final Moteuczoma’s image, in Nicholson, “The Chapultepec Cliff Sculpture,” 379–444; Hajovsky, “Without

a Face,” 171–192; Hajovsky, On the Lips of Others, 118–132; Mundy, Death of Aztec Tenochtitlan, 70–71. CON CLU SION . THE LA N GUAGE OF ZU YUA

1. Roys, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, 89–90. Elsewhere in the Chilam Balam of Chumayel, Holtun Zuyua is associated with the ancient city of Chichen Itza, abandoned over half a millennium earlier; see Roys, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, 139, 164. The Popol Vuh, a K’iche’ Maya document, tells how the founders went to Tulan Zuiva to receive their gods before the first dawn, a place where “Seven Caves and Seven Canyons was the name of the citadel” (Christenson, Popol Vuh, 210). Zuyua is here associated with other foundational places in Central Mexican myth: Tollan, or the place of reeds, a word used to describe great cities past and present; and Chicomoztoc, or the place of the seven caves, from which people emerged in Nahuatl myth. For an alternate view, see Stross, “The Language of Zuyua,” 150–164; for a critique of Stross, see Jansen, “Las lenguas divinas del México precolonial,” 4–5. 2. Roys, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, 96–97. Similar prompts often cue entirely different responses, pointing to the arbitrariness of the riddle, the way that it cannot be solved by reason alone, on which, see Senderovich, The Riddle of the Riddle, especially 16–22. 3. Roys, The Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, 90, 97–98. 4. Molina, Vocabulario en lengua mexicana, folio 93v, translation by the author; discussed in Jansen, “Las lenguas divinas,” 6. 5. López Austin, “Términos del nahuallatolli,” 1–36; Mikulska Dąbrowska, “‘Secret Language,’” 325–363. As Mikulska observes, “The basic meaning of the root word nahual- . . . means to transform, convert, transfigure, disguise, re-clothe, mask oneself, conceal, camouflage, and finally to trick” (328). 6. King, “Mixtec Political Ideology,” 293. 7. Jansen, “Las lenguas divinas,” 10. 8. Burgoa, Geográfica descripción, 1:331, also discussed in Boone, Cycles of Time and Meaning, 4. 9. Hamann, “In the Eyes of the Mixtecs,” 84–95. 10. Roys, The Book of Chilam Bayam of Chumayel, 91–92. 11. But for the view that this is a historical

account of an event that happened at Mayapan in 1320, see Milbrath and Peraza Lope, “Revisiting Mayapan,” 4, 37. 12. Graham, “Looters Rob Graves and History,” 452–461; Kelker and Bruhns,

Faking Ancient Mesoamerica; O’Neil, Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture, 189–211; Brittenham, “John Lloyd Stephens and the Lost Lintel of Kabah.” 13. Rozental, “In the Wake of Mexican

Patrimonio,” 181–220. 14. Errington, The Death of Authentic Primitive Art; Dean, “The Trouble with (the Term) Art.”

NOTES TO PAGE 129 • 147

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INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics indicate photographs and illustrations. Acantunes (Maya deities), 70 access: and burial of works, 1, 6, 8, 14, 17–18, 28, 44–45, 114–118; and changes over life cycle, 9; and concealed sacred objects, 64, 70, 121–122, 122, 123, 146n87; and creation of La Venta offerings, 12, 14, 17, 24, 28–29, 30, 37, 40–42, 44–46; and dedicatory caches, 6–7, 25, 114–117, 121; elite access to images, 11–12, 15, 18, 22, 37, 41, 43–46, 68–69, 121, 125, 128–129; and embodied engagement with works, 13–15, 47–48, 58–60, 63–64, 68–69, 72–75, 121; and esoteric seeing, 118, 121; and glancing views, 14, 84–85, 114–115; and gradient of visibility, 7, 13, 79, 85; and life cycle of works, 6–9; and social hierarchies, 39, 41, 43, 68–69, 75, 84, 86, 91, 121–124, 129; and value of close looking, 14, 15, 71; and views from pyramid, 43–46, 85–86, 89, 91, 121 Acuecuexcatl Stone, 143n27 adobe: brick platforms at La Venta, 17, 24, 25, 27, 29, 29, 38, 133n9; and color of La Venta structures, 24, 25, 29, 29, 134n36; and cosmological significance of La Venta mosaics, 36; and labor required for La Venta massive offerings, 29 affect, 44, 121 agency, 10, 15, 58, 88, 114. See also animacy; vitality of images agriculture, 29, 35, 104, 117, 136n57. See also maize Aguada Fénix, 43 Ahuitzotl, 97, 104, 104, 105, 112, 114, 142n16, 143n27, 143n31 Aj Sak Teles, 73

alliances, 68. See also diplomacy; politics almanacs, 70, 71 altars: with carvings of Tlaltecuhtli on underside, 93–97, 96; La Venta Altar 4, 132n2; and location of Aztec sculpture finds, 100; Loma del Zapote-Potrero Nuevo Altar 2, 32, 33; modern Mixe, 134n25, 136n60; at Piedras Negras, 75; stelae paired with, 75, 86–88 altepetl (city state), 120, 125, 128, 141n3. See also Chalco; Coyoacan; Tenochtitlan; Tlatelolco; Xochimilco amacuexpalli (paper ornament), 104 amaranth, 8, 104 American Museum of Natural History, 66, 139n33 ancestors, 10, 11, 30, 45, 58, 60, 70, 122 Ancient and Modern Mexico (Bullock), 1, 130n4 Ancient Mexico (Bullock), 1, 4 andesite, 2, 92, 93, 96, 97, 104, 105 animacy, 10, 15, 54, 58, 71, 88, 131n31, 138n10. See also agency; vitality of images animal sculptures, 93, 93, 94, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 104, 107, 107, 109–111, 110, 111, 119, 120. See also cuauhxicalli; eagles; jaguars; serpents; toads aquatic scenes, 113, 116, 116–117, 117 archaeology: as evidence, 12, 15, 88; Indigenous, 112–114; and museums, 129 archaism, 107–114, 118, 143–144nn38–43 La arquitectura de Yaxchilán (García Moll), 81 Arroyo, Barbara, 87 art: as a colonial category, 4–5, 15, 88, 128– 129; as evidence, 15; and experience, 6, 8, 12, 14, 15, 17, 29, 30, 37, 44, 46, 47, 71, 72, 75, 79, 86, 121, 129; and politics, 5, 7, 12, 15, 27, 68, 79, 88, 93, 122–123,

128–129, 130n3, 131n26, 139n37 art history as a discipline, 5, 9, 14–15, 48, 129 artists, 4, 5, 6, 9, 15, 47, 53, 68–71, 75, 81, 86, 97, 108–109, 114, 125, 139n40 atl tlachinolli (warfare), 93, 95, 120–121 audiences for works of art: future, 88, 107; inattentive, 14, 79, 119; nonhuman, 10, 11, 12, 18, 30, 46, 115, 118; as participants, 37, 68, 75; privileged, 13–14, 72, 75, 84, 118–119; restricted or segmented, 30–31, 37, 39, 68, 86, 107, 119, 129; uninformed, 30–31, 75, 79, 84, 118–119; unnecessary, 36, 88, 118 Aztec culture: evidence for, 12; political organization, 12, 89, 93, 112, 122–125, 129, 141n3 (see also altepetl); religion and doings, 107, 117–118, 121–122; writing and poetry, 104, 114, 120–121 (see also glyphs: Aztec) Aztecs, usage of term, 141n3 Aztlan, 141n3 Barnes, William, 101, 146n103 basalt: and Aztec archaizing sculptural genres, 109, 110, 111, 111; Aztec cactus sculptures, 103, 142n23; Aztec offering vessels, 98, 99; Aztec serpent sculptures, 93, 142n20; Aztec works with plain bases, 100; columns at La Venta, 41, 43, 133n9, 137n84; as material of Aztec and Toltec chacmool sculptures, 112, 113, 116; as material of Aztec sculpture, 93, 97, 98, 99, 101, 103, 109, 110, 111, 113, 116; as material of Teotihuacan sculpture, 110, 111, 111; Olmec figurine, 133n8; and Olmec massive offerings of La Venta, 41, 133nn8–9, 137n84, 137nn86–87; Stela 3, La Venta, 31; tomb and burials, La Venta, 41, 43, 137n84, 137n87

 163

Batres, Leopoldo, 109 Belize, 4. See also Buenavista del Cayo Bestock, Laurel, 8 bilateral symmetry at La Venta, 22, 37, 136n65 binaries, 120–121. See also difrasismos; inamic pairs Bird Jaguar IV, 58, 68, 69, 73 bird sculptures, 93. See also eagles bitumen, 25, 133n12 blank stelae, 86–87, 87, 140nn85–86. See also stelae; undecorated stelae and altars Bobry, Anita, 93 Bok, Sissela, 118 Bonampak: acropolis, 68; gender and representation at, 63–64, 86; Lintel 4, 138n3; Lintels 1, 2, and 3, 52, 72–75, 74, 79; Stelae 2 and 3, 85, 86; Structure 1 murals, 63, 63–64, 64, 65, 72, 75, 78, 79, 88; undecorated stela at, 140n86 Bowles, David, 132n36 boxes, 7, 104–106, 105, 106, 119, 142n22, 143n31, 143n36. See also tepetlacalli British Museum, London, 10, 82, 93, 104, 105, 111, 141n7, 142n14, 143n31, 144n44 Buddhist paintings, 4, 88, 132n47 Buenavista del Cayo, 77 Bullock, William, 1, 4, 130n3, 130n7 burials, 6–7, 7, 22, 38, 40–41, 112, 133n5, 137n85, 137nn82–84. See also tombs burials of objects and offerings: celt caches, 25, 26, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40–41; and the Coatlicue, 1–4; dedicatory caches, 6–7, 25, 114–117, 121; and massive offerings of La Venta, 12, 14, 17, 24, 28–29, 37, 40–42, 44–46; Offering 4, La Venta, 8, 8, 30, 31, 39, 135n42; reburial, 1, 8; significance of concealment, 12, 14, 17, 37, 45; variety of Olmec offerings, 18–22 Bustamante, Francisco Agüera, 6 Cacaxtla, 7–8, 135n53, 143n34 caches: of celts, 25, 26, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40–41; dedicatory, 6–7, 25, 114–117, 121; at Templo Mayor, 101, 106, 114–118, 115, 142n34, 145nn67–68 cactus, 100, 101, 103, 119, 121, 142n23 Calakmul, 47, 48, 85; Stela 51, 84, 85; Stela 89, 86; Structure 1, 85 Calendar Round dates, 75 calendars: Aztec New Fire ceremony, 107; Maya Calendar Round dates, 75; Maya calendrical cycles, 84, 86–88, 127; Maya divinatory almanacs, 70, 71. See also date glyphs Calendar Stone, 1, 3, 4, 4, 90, 101, 114, 130n2, 143n36 Calle de las Escallerías, 109, 143n40 calmecac (school for noble boys), 97 capitalism, 30

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Caplan, Allison, 114 captives, 57, 58, 62, 63, 64, 72–73, 74, 83, 84, 86, 114. See also warfare Caribbean coast, 49, 53, 53 cartouches, 58–60, 60, 107, 107, 142n16 Casa del Marqués del Apartado, 97 Castillo de Teayo, 101, 102 Catedral Metropolitana, 1, 89 cave onyx (tecali), 110, 111, 111, 144n42 cedar, 70 Ceibal, 43 celestial deities, 58–60, 60, 120. See also ancestors; deities; supernatural beings celts: in cruciform caches, 25, 26, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40–41; “flying Olmec” pectoral, 30, 31, 135n42; and iconography of La Venta offerings, 31–33; of jade and serpentine, 134n17; and maize imagery, 32–33; and massive offerings of La Venta, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 41, 133n8, 137n71, 137n83; Offering 4, La Venta, 8, 8, 30, 31, 39, 135n42; Offering 1942-C, La Venta, 33, 34, 38; Offering 1942-E, La Venta, 38, 133n822; Offering 1943-E, La Venta, 26, 38; Offering 1943-F, La Venta, 38, 137n83; and variety of Olmec offerings, 22, 24–25 Ceremonial Court, La Venta. See Complex A, La Venta ceremony. See ritual chacmools: and aquatic scenes, 113, 116, 116–117, 117; and archaizing sculptural genres, 111–112, 112; and buried caches, 115–117; El Chueco, 144n52; and location of Aztec sculpture finds, 100, 144n53; ritual purpose of Templo Mayor sculptures, 121; and Tlaloc iconography, 111–112, 113, 115, 117, 117, 144n48, 144n52; with uncarved bases, 142n17 chacs (ritual specialists), 70 Chahk, 11 Chalcatzingo: Monument 1, 34; Petroglyph 1, 36 chalchihuitl (greenstone), 93, 115–116, 141n9. See also greenstone; jade Chalchiuhtlicue, 117 Chalco, 93 Chantico, 93 Chapultepec, 124, 146n103 Chavín de Huántar, 4, 131n28 Chenes region, 54 Chicanna, Structure II, 55 Chichen Itza: Castillo, 138n6; and census of Maya lintels and stelae, 13, 49, 53; chacmools, 111; dedicatory texts at, 57, 68; and elite women patrons, 63–64; embodied engagement with sculptural works, 72, 75, 139n51; Holtun Zuyua associated with, 146n1; Monjas compound and its lintels, 68, 75, 139n36;

orientation of lintels, 138n3; restricted audiences for lintels, 64–68; Sacred Cenote, 8; Temple of the Four Lintels, 138n13; Temple of the Initial Series Lintel, 138n3; Upper Temple of the Jaguars, 138n6; Water Trough Lintel, 72, 73, 139n51; wooden lintels, 49, 138n6 chicozapote (Manilkara zapote), 49. See also El Chicozapote Chilam Balam of Chumayel, 127, 128, 129, 146n1 Cholula, Great Pyramid of, 44 Christianity, 11, 122, 127 Chuchen Itza: Temple of the Four Lintels, 138n13 ch’ul kantela (“holy candle” ceremony), 58 Cihuacoatl, 145n78 Cihuateotl, 100. See also skeletal deity Cipactli, 116. See also pez cipactli (Pristis perotteti) circumambulation, 75, 84 citlālin (star), 131n31. See also stars Clark, John, 25, 29, 136n68 clay: color of, at La Venta, 12, 17, 23–25, 28–29, 38, 40, 133n8, 133nn10–12, 137n78; figures and figurines, 57, 101, 132n47; and labor required for La Venta massive offerings, 28–29, 37–39; red clay cap at La Venta, 41, 133n8, 134n36, 137n75; and structure of La Venta massive offerings, 22–25, 24, 31, 36, 38, 40–41, 42, 137n78; vessels, 12, 57, 76, 77, 141n92, 144n46. See also adobe climate, 28, 29, 39, 134n38. See also dry season; rainfall; rainy season close looking, 14, 15, 48, 71, 81, 84, 85 Coatlicue: cast of underside, 5; Coatlicue del Metro sculpture, 142n17; and contexts of Aztec sculpture, 89–91; devotions directed to, 1, 130n3; discovery and excavation of, 1–4; drawing of all sides, 6; and esoteric knowledge, 120; hidden date carving on, 141n1; and location of Aztec sculpture finds, 89–91, 100, 144n53; at Museo Nacional de Antropología, 2, 89, 90; relationship to Huitzilopochtli, 130n1; remnants and fragments of series, 89–91, 92 (see also Yollotlicue); at Templo Mayor, 89–91, 91, 121; Tlaltecuhtli underneath, 4, 5, 6, 14, 89, 119–120 Codex Azcatitlan, 146n87 Codex Mendoza, 9, 10, 125 Codex Nuttall, 10 coiled serpents: and archaizing sculptural genres, 109–111, 110, 143n39; and carved undersides, 93, 93, 97, 100, 101, 102, 109–111, 110, 118, 119; and esoteric knowledge, 118, 119; feathered serpents, 107, 119, 120, 142n13, 142n22, 144n43; and location of Aztec sculpture finds,

100, 141n7; and noncanonical Aztec sculpture, 102, 142n22; Teotihuacan sculpture, 107, 110, 111, 144nn42–43; Xiuhcoatl, 107, 107 Colman, Arlene, 25, 29, 41, 133n5 colonialism, 11–12, 15, 127–129. See also Spanish colonialism; violence colors and pigments: and Aztec sculpture, 93, 113, 116; colored clays at La Venta, 22–25, 24, 28–29, 31, 36–42, 38, 42, 134n36, 137n38; and glyphs on Maya lintels, 79, 80, 81; on Maya stone lintels, 53, 62, 79, 80, 80, 81, 82, 138n8; on Maya wooden lintels, 49–53, 54, 56; pigments and painted objects in Olmec offerings, 36, 39 Column of Trajan, 4 commemorative texts, 57, 86, 107 communal labor, 17, 28–29, 43–44, 128 Complex A, La Venta: bilateral symmetry at, 22, 37, 136n65; Ceremonial Court, 18, 22, 24, 27–29, 37, 41, 45; comparison of massive offerings of La Venta, 22, 24, 27–28, 38; cross-section views, 23, 40, 42; description of, 18; and labor required for massive offerings, 28–29, 37–39, 128, 134n14; plan of, 21; rebuilding of, 22, 24, 27, 28–29, 37, 41, 45; recent scholarly attention to, 132n2; reconstructions of, 22, 45; significance of concealment at, 8, 29, 37, 41–42, 128; stepped pyramid at, 18. See also Massive Offerings 1 to 4 Convent of San Francisco, Mexico City, 97 Copan, 7, 7, 54, 70, 71, 85, 140n86; Structure 22, 54 Cortés, Hernán, 122, 123 cosmology and cosmic order: Aztec cosmology and metaphysics, 93, 117– 120; and cruciform celt caches, 25, 26, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40–41; and dedicatory caches, 6–7, 25, 114–117, 121; and La Venta massive offerings, 29, 32–36; and textile metaphors, 136n58. See also creation stories; deities; doings; myth Coyoacan, 142n22 Coyolxauhqui, 90, 93, 95, 100, 112, 121, 130n7, 142n18 creation stories, 10–12, 114, 116–117, 119, 146n1 crocodile fish (Pristis perotteti), 115 cruciform celt caches, 25, 26, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40–41 cuauhxicalli (offering vessels), 97, 98, 99, 100, 109–111, 119, 121, 142n14, 142n23, 144n46 cylinder vessels, Maya, 6, 12, 72, 75, 76, 77 darkness, 7, 8, 9, 47, 49, 63, 64, 79, 88, 121, 123. See also night date glyphs, Aztec, 97, 99, 101, 102, 106,

107, 107, 109, 141n16, 142n22, 143n21, 143n30, 143nn39–40, 144n43. See also glyphs; text dedication: of Aztec sculpture, 114, 123; of Aztec Templo Mayor, 93, 114, 123, 142n16, 143n31; ceremonies, 57–58, 72, 86–88, 114, 138n18, 140n82; making and, 5, 46, 48, 88; of Maya houses, 57–58, 72, 88, 138n18; of Maya stelae, 14, 70, 84, 86–88, 140n82; as moment of close looking, 57–58, 72, 129. See also dedicatory caches; dedicatory texts; doings Dedication Stone, 143n27 dedicatory caches, 6, 25, 115, 121 dedicatory texts, 48, 57, 68, 72, 75, 88, 138n18, 141n92. See also text deities, 10–12, 30, 33, 57, 58, 60, 64, 85, 89, 104, 109, 117–118, 121, 122, 128. See also cosmology and cosmic order; ixiptla; supernatural beings; teotl; specific deity names Denver Art Museum, 142n20 Descripción histórica y cronológica de las dos piedras (León y Gama), 4, 6 A Description of the Unique Exhibition, Called Ancient Mexico (Bullock), 4 diagrams and paradigms, 12, 31, 33, 36, 119 Díaz, Bernal, 123 difrasismos (diphrastic kennings), 120–121, 128, 145n82 diminishing visibility, 7. See also access; gradient of visibility; sight and vision diorite, 93, 95, 97, 107, 107 diplomacy, 68, 79, 139n37 directional images, 32–36, 37, 104–106, 135n51, 135n53. See also cruciform celt caches; quincunx divinatory almanacs, 70, 71 divine kingship, 12, 123–124, 127 divine vision, 10–12, 30, 44, 68–69, 79, 118, 121 divinity. See deities; teotl dog sculptures, 93 doings: and Aztec buried caches, 115, 117; and Aztec metaphysics, 118; and Maya house-dedication ceremonies, 58; and Maya stelae, 88; and Olmec massive offerings, 25, 27–30, 36–37, 39, 41–43, 45–46, 125 Domínguez, Elbis, 11 Dominicans, 11, 114 downward-facing E motif, 32, 33, 34, 135n50 Doyle, James, 63 Drucker, Philip, 24, 32, 45, 133n5, 133n12, 134n17 dry season, 28, 29, 37, 137n34 duality, 120. See also binaries; difrasismos; inamic pairs

Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C., 107, 110, 119, 143n36 Dunhuang, 4, 88, 132n47 Dupey García, Élodie, 124 Durán, Diego, 114, 142n13, 146n97, 146n103 durational seeing, 12, 14–15, 29–30, 37, 72–79. See also sight and vision; time and viewing Dzibanche, 49, 52 eagles, 97, 98, 99, 100, 100, 111, 142n16, 144n46. See also cuauhxicalli earth deities, 4, 58, 89, 93, 104, 109, 117, 119–120, 145n78. See also Tlaltecuhtli Earth Lords, 58 Edzna, 52 Egypt, 5, 131n28 Ek Balam, 54, 68 El Chicozapote Structure 1, 52, 60, 61 El Chueco (chacmool), 144n52 elite patrons, 15, 64, 68–71, 75, 79, 86, 97, 101, 104–107, 114–115, 119, 121, 128. See also patrons elite power: evolution of, in Mesoamerican cultures, 11–12, 18, 22, 37, 41, 43–46, 68–69, 121, 125, 128–129; and impediments to viewing, 75, 79, 85–86, 88, 119–121, 124; keen sight as godlike power, 9, 9–11, 10, 12, 14, 15, 48, 68–69, 79, 88, 119–121, 127–129. See also politics; social structure and hierarchy elite sight, 9, 9–11, 10, 12, 14, 15, 48, 68–69, 79, 88, 119–121, 127–129. See also ichnal El Zotz, 49, 52; Lintel 1, 56; Temple of the Night Sun, 11 embodied sight, 10, 13–14, 47–48, 49, 58–60, 63–64, 68–69, 72–75, 79, 81, 84, 121. See also durational seeing; sight and vision empathic responses, 14 emperor. See tlahtoani energetics assessments, 28–29, 134n30 ensoulment ceremonies, 72. See also dedication esoteric knowledge and imagery, 6, 30–31, 37, 43, 118–121 Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin, 102, 141n9, 142n20, 143n37 evidence, 8, 12, 15, 28, 44, 86, 91 experience, 6, 8, 12, 14, 15, 17, 29, 30, 37, 44, 46, 47, 71, 72, 75, 79, 86, 121, 129. See also durational seeing; embodied sight extromissive vision, 10, 131n30, 131n32 eye imagery: and elite sight, 9, 10, 10, 58, 59, 128; and extromissive vision, 10, 131n30; and Maya pictorial conventions, 58–60, 63, 68; spiral eyes, 10, 11, 58, 59,

 INDEX • 165

60; square eyes, 10, 60; and stars, 9, 10, 60, 96, 97. See also sight and vision fasting, 69, 70 Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan, 8, 8 feathered serpents, 107, 119, 120, 142n13, 142n22, 144n43 fertility, 104, 117. See also agriculture figure-ground relationships, 33–35 fire-entering ritual (och k’ahk’), 58, 138n18 fire serpents, 107, 107, 119, 143nn36–37. See also Xiuhcoatl flint, 101, 102, 119 Florentine Codex, 112, 122, 123 “flying Olmec” motif, 30, 31, 135n42 Fowles, Severin, 25, 27, 28, 30, 58, 118 funeral ceremonies, 7. See also burials; tombs gaze as form of viewing, 10, 13, 14, 30, 48, 58, 60, 63, 64, 72, 75, 79–88, 124, 129, 139n32. See also ichnal; sight and vision gender, 63, 64, 71, 86, 135n51, 139nn32–33, 141–142n13 gestation, 134n39 Gillespie, Susan, 25, 28, 136n65 glance as form of viewing, 14, 48, 58, 79–88 glyphs: Aztec, 93, 101, 104, 107, 119, 121, 138n10, 141n10, 142n16, 143n31, 146n103; Maya, 11, 79–80, 84, 139n33; Olmec, 135n50, 136n63; Teotihuacan, 144n43 gneiss, 22 god bundles. See sacred bundles; tlaquimilloli gods. See deities González Lauck, Rebecca, 45, 137n89 González López, Ángel, 97 gradient of visibility, 7, 13, 79, 85. See also access; sight and vision Gran Museo del Mundo Maya, Merida, 69 greenstone: Aztec beads, 115–116, 145n68; Aztec cactus sculpture, 142n23; Aztec chacmools, 144n53; and Aztec stone boxes, 106, 106–107, 143n36; Coyolxauhqui sculpture, 95, 130n7; and hidden carvings, 93, 115–116; and massive offerings of La Venta, 8, 8, 12, 17, 22–25, 28–29, 36–37, 39, 134n17, 136n66; and Offering 94 at the Templo Mayor, 145n68; and Olmec buried caches, 115–116. See also chalchihuitl; gneiss; jade; schist; serpentine Grove, David, 28 Guatemala, 4. See also El Zotz; Piedras Negras; Tikal Hackmack Box, 106, 106–107, 143n36 Halakal, 53, 68, 69

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Halal, 52 Hamann, Byron, 10, 128 Hanks, William, 27 Hassig, Ross, 134n33 headdresses, 30, 32, 33, 73, 135n51 Headrick, Annabeth, 122 Heizer, Robert, 28, 32, 40, 45, 132n2, 137n78, 137n89 hematite mirrors, 22, 25, 137n83 hierarchy, 44, 58, 72, 79, 125. See also elite power; power relations; social structure and hierarchy Historia de las indias de la nueva España (Durán), 114, 116 “holy candle” ceremony (ch’ul kantela), 58 Honduras, 4. See also Copan house-dedication ceremonies, 57–58. See also ch’ul kantela; dedication; och k’ahk’ Houston, Stephen, 10, 63, 71, 138n9 Huehueteotl, 100, 109, 109, 112 Huitzilopochtli: and Mexica foundation narratives, 93, 121; relationship to Coatlicue, 130n1; relationship to Coyolxauhqui, 93, 121; and representations of Aztec rulers, 104, 124, 124; and sacred bundles, 122, 123, 146n87; and Templo Mayor, 89, 121, 142n13; and Tizoc Stone, 124, 124 Humboldt, Alexander von, 1, 130n3, 130n7 Huntichmul, 52 Ichmac, 52 ichnal (field of vision), 58, 60, 63–64, 129 iconography: of chacmools, 111–112, 113, 115, 117, 117, 144n48, 144n52; of the Coatlicue, 1, 89; and esoteric knowledge, 119; of La Venta massive offerings, 30–37; as method, 14, 15, 30, 48–49, 79, 86, 88; of power, 125; of Tlaltecuhtli, 145n78; and uniformed viewers, 13–14, 30–31, 42–43, 84, 117–119 idolatry, 1, 122, 130n3 ikatz (burden), 64. See also sacred bundles Ikil, 53 Ik’ Skull, 58 imperfect seeing, 14, 47–48, 68, 79. See also embodied sight; sight and vision imperial patronage, 97, 101, 104–107 imperial power, 89, 91, 129 inamic pairs (complementary oppositions), 120–121, 145n81 Indigenous archaeology, 112–114 inequality, 9, 13, 18, 22, 37, 39–41, 43–46, 48, 58–63, 68–69, 79, 118, 123–124, 127–128 informed looking, 14, 30–31, 73–75, 79–81, 85–86, 118–121 Inomata, Takeshi, 43 Inquisition, 122 inscriptions, 57, 72, 84, 86, 88, 101, 107. See

also glyphs; text insect sculpture, 93 interactive nature of Maya art, 75. See also embodied sight; time and viewing inverted E motif, 32, 33, 34, 135n50 in xochitl in cuicatl (poetry), 120 Itsimte-Sacluc, Stela 1, 56 Itzcoatl, 146n103 Itzimte, 52 Itzpapalotl, 97 ixiptla (god embodiers), 121 Ix K’abal Xook, 64, 82, 138n18 Ix Lachan Unen Mo’, 63, 66 iya, language of, 128 Izapa, Stela 5, 36 jade: agentive, 114; beads, 38, 40, 41, 132n2, 137nn82–83; “flying Olmec” pectoral, 30, 31, 135n42; and Indigenous archaeology, 112–114; jewelry and regalia, 64, 79, 114; in massive offerings of La Venta, 39, 40–41, 132n2; and Maya sacred bundles, 64; in Olmec burials, 38, 40–41, 137nn82–83; in Olmec caches and offerings, 8, 8, 39, 40–41; removed from royal Maya tombs, 8, 131n20; and serpentine, 137n17. See also chalchihuitl; greenstone; serpentine jaguars: cuauhxicalli, 97, 111, 111; day sign, 101, 102; jaguar serpent (ocelocoatl), 143n37; paws carved underneath, 93, 119; as proposed subject of La Venta mosaics, 31, 32, 133n12; symbolism, 111, 127, 144n46 Jasaw Chan K’awiil, 60 Joyce, Rosemary, 139n32 Kabah, 49, 52, 138n6 K’ak’upakal K’awiil, 68 k’altuun ritual, 86, 140n82 Kanki/Cacabbeec, 52 k’atun (20 year period), 86–88, 140n82 K’awiil (Maya god of lightning), 138n13 k’awiil scepter, 64, 67 Kerr, Justin, 75 K’iche’ Maya, 10, 11–12 Kimbell Panel, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 62 kings. See divine kingship; tlahtoani k’inich ajaw (sun-faced lord), 127 kinship, 127 Klein, Cecelia, 130n2, 145n78 Koontz, Rex, 122 labor: and Aztec sculpture, 117, 121; and elite power, 41, 43–46, 125, 128; and Olmec community, 17, 28–29, 128; required for Olmec massive offerings, 17, 22, 28–31, 37–39, 40, 41, 128 Landa, Diego de, 57, 69–70

La Pasadita, 52; Lintel 3, 79, 80 Las Casas, Bartolomé de, 8–9 Las Pistolas, 53 La Venta: bilateral symmetry at, 22, 37, 136n65; Ceremonial Court, 18–22, 45; chronology of, 132n2; Complex A, 18–22, 21, 22, 41, 45; concealment at, 12–13, 17–18, 22, 24, 29–30, 37, 44–45; evolution of site, 18; geology of location, 18; labor requirements for Massive Offerings, 28–29; Massive Offering 1, 22–37; Massive Offering 2, 39–41; Massive Offering 3, 37–39; Massive Offering 4, 24–25, 30–37; “Massive Offering 5,” 39, 137n87 (see also La Venta: Pavement 2); Massive Offerings 1 and 4 compared, 24–25, 27, 38, 134n14; Monument 7, 137n84; Monument 25/26, 32, 33; Monument 27, 32, 33; Monument 87, 140n85; Mound A-2, 34, 38, 41, 43, 135n41; Mound A-3, 3, 135n41; Offering 1942-C, 33, 34, 38; Offering 1942-E, 133n8; Offering 1943-E, 26, 38; Offering 1943-F, 137n83; Pavement 2, 39, 41–43, 44, 135n54, 137n87; population of, 12, 28, 37, 39, 134n34; Pyramid C, 18, 22, 41, 43–45, 45, 135n41, 137n89; rebuilding at, 18, 22, 37, 39, 41, 43–46, 132n2; and scale of Mesoamerican earthworks, 43–46, 138n90; site described, 18–22, 20, 21; South-Central Platform, 135n41; Southeast Platform, 22, 22, 24, 26, 36, 38, 134n36, 137n86; Southwest Platform, 22, 23, 24, 29, 36, 38, 133n8, 134n36, 137n86; Stela 2, 30; Stela 3, 30, 31; Stela 5, 30; urbanism at, 12, 18, 20. See also Complex A, La Venta; Massive Offerings 1 to 4; mosaics and greenstone pavements Laxtunich/El Túnel, 52, 62 León y Gama, Antonio de, 4, 6, 144n53 LiDAR mapping, 43 life cycle of objects, 6–9. See also reuse, recycling, and resetting of materials limestone, 56, 59, 60, 62, 67, 69, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84 liminal spaces, 11, 47, 58, 137n84 Lin, Wei-Cheng, 72 lintels: census of Maya lintels, 48–58; color on, 49, 53, 54, 56, 62, 79, 80, 80, 81, 82, 138n8; and embodied viewing, 13–14, 47–48, 58–60, 63–64, 68–69, 72–75, 79, 81; and gender, 64; and glance, 79–83; and hierarchies of vision, 58–60, 64, 68, 72; Maya regional traditions, 49–54, 51; Mayan term for, 48; and museum display, 47, 75, 129; and nonhuman audiences, 10, 11; original contexts of, 47–48, 49, 55, 57–58, 65, 68, 72–75, 74; texts on, 54, 55, 57, 68, 72–75, 79–81, 81, 88; viewed during making, 69–71; wooden, 48, 49,

51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 138n6; Zapotec, 10, 11. See also Bonampak; Chichen Itza; El Chicozapote; El Zotz; Halakal; La Pasadita; Monte Alban; Oxkintok; Site R; Tikal; Yaxchilan Lochrie, Karma, 118 Loma del Zapote-Potrero Nuevo, Altar 2, 32, 33 London, 1. See also British Museum, London Lord 12 Wind, 10 Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 76, 138n3 Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, 109 Madrid Codex, 70, 70, 71, 135n53 Maffie, James, 27, 117–118, 120 maize: agriculture, 18, 29, 134n38, 136n57; and Aztec imagery, 104, 117, 119; and gender, 135n51; Maize God images, 32, 77, 135n51; and Olmec imagery, 12–13, 32–33, 33, 135n52 Maize God, 32, 77, 135n51 making and process, 5, 12–13, 15, 17–18, 22–24, 27, 28–30, 36, 37, 44, 46, 48, 57, 69–71, 88, 115, 131n10. See also artists; dedication; doings; workshops male gaze, 139n32. See also gaze as form of viewing mana (sacred energy), 118 Massive Offering 1, La Venta: adobe bricks, 24, 25, 27, 29, 36, 134n36; celts associated with, 24, 38, 133n8; color, 23–24, 24, 27, 28–29, 32; compared to Massive Offering 4, 24–25, 27, 38, 134n14; cross-section view, 23; drawing of mosaic, 27; excavation description, 22–25; museum display, 17, 19; remembered later, 37, 133n9; and significance of concealment, 37; in situ view of mosaic pavement, 19, 24, 32; social significance of building project, 28–29, 37, 44–45; structure and materials, 22–24, 28–29, 38, 133nn10–11; threedimensional visualization of mosaic, 35; towers to photograph excavation, 30; volume estimates, 22–23, 28–29, 38, 136n66 Massive Offering 2, La Venta: basalt tomb, 41, 43, 137n84, 137n87; burials associated with, 38, 41, 137nn82–84; celts associated with, 33, 38, 40–41; cross-section view, 42; dating difficulties, 137n75; structure and materials, 38, 39; volume estimates, 38, 40, 136n66 Massive Offering 3, La Venta: celts associated with, 38, 39; color, 40, 137n48; cross-section view, 40; and Offering, 4, 8, 8, 30, 31, 39, 135n42; and rains, 39, 136n68; in situ view of mosaic

pavement, 40; structure and materials, 37, 39; volume estimates, 37, 38, 39, 136nn66–68 Massive Offering 4, La Venta: adobe bricks, 25, 27, 36, 134n36; celts associated with, 25, 26; color, 27, 28–29, 133–134n12; compared to Massive Offering 1, 24–25, 27, 38, 134n14; cross-section view, 26; drawing of mosaic, 27; excavation description, 24–25, 133–134nn11–12; labor required for, 28, 134n33; museum display, 17, 18; and significance of concealment, 37; in situ view of mosaic pavement, 26; social significance of building project, 28–29, 37, 44–45; structure and materials, 24–25, 28–29, 38, 133nn10–11; three-dimensional visualization of mosaic, 35; volume estimates, 38, 40, 136n66 Matos Moctezuma, Eduardo, 130n3 Maya culture: evidence for, 12; importance of seeing within, 10–12; political organization, 12, 68, 87, 139n37; religion and doings, 48, 57–58, 70, 72, 84–88; writing, 10–12 (see also glyphs; Maya). See also Bonampak; Chichen Itza; Oxkintok; Piedras Negras; Tikal; Yaxchilan Mayan languages: Classic, 48, 58, 86; K’iche’, 10–11; modern 54, 10–11; Yucatec, 127, 140n82. See also glyphs: Maya Mayorazgo de Mota, 143n30, 144n53 Meierhoff, James, 138n4 Melgar Tisoc, Emiliano, 112 memory, 1, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 25, 37, 43–45, 46, 72, 107, 114–115, 128, 133n9, 136–137n71 mental images, 12, 14, 30, 72, 75, 79, 124 Mertes, Dale, 23, 34, 35, 100 Mesoamerica, map of, 13 metaphor, 10, 29, 54, 121, 127–128, 132n36, 134–135n39, 136n59, 138n10, 146n101. See also difrasismos Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 79, 80, 142n20 Mexica, usage of term, 141n3. See also Aztec culture; Tenochca Mexica Mexico, 4. See also Bonampak; Chichen Itza; La Venta; Monte Alban; Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City; Parque Museo La Venta, Villahermosa; Templo Mayor; Tenochtitlan; Yaxchilan Mexico City, 1, 89, 97, 100. See also Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City; Templo Mayor; Tenochtitlan Mexico-Tenochtitlan. See Tenochtitlan Middle Formative period, 35, 43 mirrors, 10, 11, 22, 25, 137n83, 146n101 mirror writing, 13, 62, 140n72. See also glyphs

 INDEX • 167

Mixe culture, 27 Mixteca region, 10, 128, 142n22 Mogao Caves, 4, 88 Molina, Alonso de, 128 Mollenhauer, Jillian, 44 Monaghan, John, 25, 58, 118 monism, 117–118 “monster mouth” doorway, 54, 55 Monte Alban: South Platform, 7; Tomb 158, 10, 11 moon cartouches, 58–60, 60, 61 moon goddess, 58, 60, 60, 61 mosaics and greenstone pavements: associated with celts, 8, 24, 25, 30, 31, 32, 33, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40–41, 133n8; color, 23–25, 24, 27, 28–29, 31, 36, 39, 40, 42; comparison of massive offerings of La Venta, 24–25, 27, 38, 39–43, 134n14; continuities over time, 37, 38–39, 41–42; figure-ground relationships in, 33–35; and jaguar mask, 32; and maize, 29, 32–33, 35; at Museo Regional de Antropología Carlos Pellicer Cámara, 17, 19; at Parque Museo La Venta, 17, 18; plain pavements, 37–41, 38–39, 40, 42; polysemy, 31, 32; and rebuilding of massive offerings, 37; in situ views of, 19, 24, 26, 32, 40, 42, 44; symbolism of, 31–36; three-dimensional visualizations of, 29–34, 35, 36. See also La Venta; La Venta: Pavement 2; Massive Offering 1, La Venta; Massive Offering 4, La Venta Moteuczoma Ilhuicamina, 146n103 Moteuczoma Xocoyotzin (Moteuczoma II), 106, 109, 112, 123–124, 143n36, 146n97 movement, 57, 72–75, 83, 131n28, 132n49, 139n51, 140n60. See also embodied sight; time and viewing multisensory experience. See embodied sight; senses multivalence, 14, 30, 31, 36, 107, 135n52 murals: Bonampak Structure 1, 63, 63, 64, 65, 72, 75, 78, 79, 88; Cacaxtla, 7–8, 135n53, 143n34; and dedication, 57, 88; embodied engagement with, 63–64, 72, 75, 79; and ichnal, 63–64; and imperfect viewing, 79; and Maya texts, 57, 88, 141n92; Templo Mayor Red Temples, 112; and three-dimensional visualization conventions, 33, 135n53 Museo de América, Madrid, 70, 71 Museo de la Cultura Teotihuacana, Teotihuacan, 108, 110, 111, 144n42 Museo de la Escultura Mexica, Eusebio Davalos Hurtado, Santa Cecilia Acatitlan, 116, 144n53 Museo del Templo Mayor, Mexico City, 91, 98, 99, 100, 101, 109, 141–142n13, 142n17 Museo de Pintura Mural “Beatriz de la

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Fuente,” Teotihuacan, 110, 144n42 Museo de Sitio, Tula, 112 Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City: illustrations of objects in collection, 2, 5, 67, 84, 92, 94, 95, 100, 102, 103, 104, 108, 111, 113, 117, 124; other objects in collection, 141n7, 141n9, 141n13, 142n23, 143n37, 144n42, 144n53; Sala Maya, 47, 48, 85; Sala Mexica, 89, 90, 91 Museo Nacional de Arqueología e Etnología, Guatemala City, 56, 84 Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City, Sala de Monolitos, 130n7 Museo Regional de Antropología Carlos Pellicer Cámara, Villahermosa, 17, 19 Museum am Rothenbaum Kulturen und Kunste der Welt, Hamburg, 106 Museum der Kulturen, Basel, 54, 120 museums, 4–5, 12, 14, 17, 47, 72, 89, 128, 129 myth, 10–12, 93, 94, 100, 104, 112, 114, 116–117, 119, 127, 146n1. See also creation stories nahuallatolli (language of the sorcerers), 128 Nahuatl language, 1, 93, 107, 120–121, 128, 131n31, 132n36, 138n10, 141n3, 145n81 nahui ollin (4 Motion), 114 name glyphs, Aztec, 101–107, 103, 105, 107, 124, 144n43, 146n103. See also glyphs; text Naranjo, 77, 87 National Geographic, 7, 64, 132n2, 133n12 naturalism, 31, 93, 97, 101, 118 New Fire ceremony, 107, 143n39 Nezahualcoyotl, 114 Nezahualpilli, 114 night, 9, 10, 97, 128, 145n82. See also darkness noncanonical Aztec sculpture, 97, 101, 102, 142n22 nonhierarchical monism, 117–118 Oaxaca, 7, 128, 146n103. See also Monte Alban och k’ahk’ (fire-entering ritual), 58, 138n18 Oc Na festival, 57 offerings, 25, 97, 98, 109, 111, 119, 121, 122, 144n46; Aztec, 106, 109–111, 115, 115–118; colonial and modern, 1, 58, 122; Maya, 58, 86–88; and memory, 30, 31, 36, 37, 40, 43–45, 114; Olmec, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28–29, 30, 31, 36, 37, 40, 43, 45; problems with terminology, 24, 25, 27; theories of, 25–27, 58, 117–118. See also caches; dedication; doings; Massive Offerings 1 to 4, La Venta offering vessels. See cuauhxicalli; sacrificial stones and vessels

Olmec culture: and communal labor, 17, 28–29, 43–44, 128; evidence for, 12; religion and doings, 25, 27–28; and rise of inequality, 37, 39, 41, 43–46; and social memory, 8, 12, 37–39, 44–45; writing, 135n50, 136n63. See also La Venta; San Lorenzo O’Neil, Megan, 29, 75, 79 oral tradition, 11, 37, 118 organ cactus, 100, 101, 103, 119, 121, 142n23 Otomí culture, 27 Oxkintok: Grupo Ah Canul, 81, 140n71; lintels at, 52, 54, 57, 81, 140n71; Structure CA-6, 140n71 oztotl (cave) glyph, 138n9 pakab tuunil/pakbu tuun (lintel), 48 palaces, 13, 18, 22, 47–48, 86, 89, 97, 123 Palacio Nacional, Mexico City, 1, 89 Palenque, 54, 88, 140n89 Parque Museo La Venta, Villahermosa, 17, 18, 31 Pasztory, Esther, 93 patron deities, 93, 104, 124, 130n1. See also Chantico; Huitzilopochtli patrons, 6, 10, 15, 47, 53, 64, 68–71, 75, 79, 86, 97, 101, 104–107, 114, 115, 121, 128 perception, modern understanding of, 131n28, 132n49. See also extromissive vision; sight and vision performative architecture, 72 period-ending ceremonies, 86–88. See also k’altuun ritual; k’atun perspectivism, 131n28 Peten region, 49, 52. See also El Zotz; Tikal pez cipactli (Pristis perotteti), 115, 117 photography: of Massive Offerings of La Venta, 30, 133n12; of Maya lintels in situ, 49; rollouts of Maya vessels, 75, 76, 77; as visualization strategy, 4, 17, 72, 89 Piedras Negras: acropolis, 85; circumambulation of stelae and altars, 75; reset sculptures, 8; sculptural panels at, 53–54; Stela 6, 84; stelae at, 75, 84, 84, 85; and wooden lintels, 138n9 pilgrimage, 29, 112, 114 Playa del Carmen, 53, 53, 55, 55 plazas, 1, 18, 37, 47, 84–86, 121, 140n86 Plunket, Patricia, 44 poetry, 97, 114, 120–121 politics, 5, 7, 12, 15, 27, 68, 79, 88, 93, 122–123, 128–129, 130n3, 131n26, 139n37 polysemy, 14, 30, 31, 36, 107, 135n52 Popol Vuh, 10, 11–12, 146n1 population estimates, 12, 28–29, 37, 39, 134n34 porcupine fish, 117 position of viewers, 10, 30, 47, 58, 60, 63,

68, 72, 89, 118–119, 121, 129. See also embodied sight power relations, 9, 12, 15, 28, 43–46, 57–58, 63, 64, 68, 72, 79, 84, 89, 91, 121–125, 128–129. See also elite power; social structure and hierarchy priests. See ritual specialists privileged sight, 6, 13–14, 15, 30, 44, 69, 71, 118–119, 128, 139n47. See also elite sight process. See making and process Programa de Arqueologia Urbana, 97 prosthetics, 10 proximity of viewing, 30, 47–48, 84–86, 118. See also access “pseudo-burials,” 133n5. See also burials public secrecy, 121–123, 125, 129 The Puuc (Pollock), 55 Puuc region, 49, 52, 54. See also Kabah; Oxkintok; Uxmal; Xcalumkin pyramids: and display of Maya lintels, 13, 48, 60, 85, 86, 87, 140n77; Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan, 8, 8; Great Pyramid, Cholula, 44; labor required to build, 43–44; Mound A-2, La Venta, 39, 41, 41; Pyramid C, La Venta, 18, 22, 41, 43–45, 45, 135n41, 137n89; Temple I, Tikal, 60; Twin Pyramid Group Q, Tikal, 87, 87; and views of stelae, 85, 86, 87, 140n77. See also Templo Mayor Quetzalcoatl, 119, 144n43. See also feathered serpents quincunx, 32, 33, 34, 136n57 Quirigua, 140n86 rain deities. See Chahk; Tlaloc rainfall, 39, 117, 136n68 rainy season, 28, 29, 39, 136n68 rattlesnakes, 1, 91, 92, 93, 110, 142n20 Real y Pontificia Universidad de Mexico, 1 recondite knowledge, 14, 119, 127–128 record-keeping at La Venta, 25, 42. See also memory recursivity, 32, 36, 135n51 regalia, 64, 70, 107 Reilly, Kent, 33, 137n84 relief sculpture, 4, 13, 75, 79–81, 83, 85, 86 restricted visibility, 4, 5–6, 8–9, 12, 14, 39, 64–68, 75, 84–86, 91, 114–115, 118, 123–124 Retalteco/Tecolote, 52 reuse, recycling, and resetting of materials: ancient, 7, 54, 57, 79–81, 131n18, 133n9, 140n17, 141–142n13; colonial, 96, 97, 141–142n13 rhyolite, 97, 110 riddles, 127, 128, 146n2 Riggs, Christina, 131n28 ritual: ch’ul kantela, 58; dedicatory, 14, 57–58, 84, 86–88 (see also dedication);

deposits, 6, 17, 18, 22, 30, 36 (see also dedicatory caches); diagrams, 12, 31, 33, 36; events, 133n3, 136–137n71; and Maya stelae, 84, 86–88, 140n82; modern, 25–27, 58, 75, 134n25, 139n42; New Fire, 107, 143n39; och k’ahk’, 58, 138n18; polysemic nature of, 30, 31; as a problematic term, 25–27, 118, 134n20; sacrifice, 8, 29, 41, 72, 84, 117, 121; seclusion, 5, 6, 69–70, 139n42; secrecy, 8, 91, 121–122, 131n26. See also dedication; doings ritual specialists, 6, 9, 10, 27, 42, 70–71, 122 rollout photography, 75, 76, 77 Rome, 4 royalty. See divine kingship; elite power; tlahtoani royal women, 58, 63, 63–64, 64, 66, 67, 85 royal youths, 63, 64, 65 rumor, 37, 115, 121, 123 Ryu, Sara, 142n13 sacred bundles, 64, 70, 121–122, 122, 123, 146n87. See also tlaquimilloli Sacred Cenote, Chichen Itza, 8 sacrifice, 8, 29, 41, 72, 84, 117, 121. See also sacrificial stones and vessels sacrificial stones and vessels: and Aztec archaizing sculptural genres, 109–111; and Aztec buried caches, 114–115; chacmools, 111–113, 112, 113, 115–117, 116, 117, 121, 144n48, 144n53; cuauhxicalli, 97, 98, 99, 100, 109–111, 119, 121, 142n14, 142n23; and employment of hidden carvings, 97, 98, 99, 113, 116, 116–118, 117, 121; and ritual purpose of Templo Mayor sculptures, 121; on the Teocalli of Sacred War, 144n46 Sahagún, Bernardino de, 112 Sala de Monolitos. See Museo Nacional de Historia, Mexico City, Sala de Monolitos Sala Maya. See Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City Sala Mexica. See Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City salt dome at La Venta, 18 sampling bias, 15, 97, 140n86, 141n92 San Lorenzo, 134n34, 136n55, 138n90, 138n91 sapodilla, 49 sarcophagus, 41, 43, 135n52, 137n82 sawfish (Pristis perotteti), 115 Sayil, 53, 138n13 scale, 14, 28, 36, 37, 39, 43, 69, 72, 75, 79, 89, 97 schist, 22 sculpture: amaranth, 8; archaizing, 107–114, 118, 143–144nn38–43; stone (see andesite; basalt; greenstone; jade;

limestone; tecali); wooden, 13, 25, 26, 48–49, 51–53, 53, 54, 56, 57, 60, 66, 70–71, 138n9, 139n33. See also animal sculptures; chacmools; cuauhxicalli; lintels; stelae; tepetlacalli seasons, 28, 29, 37, 39, 136n68, 137n34 secrecy, 8, 12, 91, 118, 119, 121–123, 125, 128, 129, 131n26, 146n93 Seler, Eduard, 111 senses, 14, 121, 132n49. See also sight and vision; touch serpentine: figurines, 41, 134n17, 137n82; and labor required at La Venta, 28–29, 37–39, 39–42, 43; and mosaic pavements of La Venta, 18, 19, 31–32, 39–42, 40, 42, 133n12, 137n71, 137n87; as replacement for jade, 134n17; and structure of massive offerings, 22–23, 25, 35, 38, 42, 42, 133n9, 133n11, 134n33, 136nn66–67 serpents: and archaizing sculptural genres, 109–111, 110; at Chichen Itza, 138n13; and the Coatlicue, 1, 91; and esoteric knowledge, 118–119; feathered serpents, 107, 119, 120, 142n13, 142n22, 144n43; and hidden carvings, 93, 93, 97, 100, 101, 110; and location of Aztec sculpture finds, 100, 141n7; as metaphor for blood, 1, 93; and metaphorical language, 128; and the New Fire ceremony, 107, 143n39; in non-imperial style, 101, 102, 118, 142n22; rattlesnakes, 1, 91, 92, 93, 110, 142n20; and recarved sculptures, 142n13; Teotihuacan, 109–111, 110, 144nn42–43; Xiuhcoatl, 107, 107, 119, 143nn36–37. See also coiled serpents shamans, 10, 27, 58, 134n25, 135n42 Shield Jaguar III, 58, 64 Shield Jaguar IV, 62 Sierra Madre Oriental, 28 sight and vision: durational seeing, 14–15, 29–30, 37, 72–79; elite, 9–11, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 48, 68–69, 79, 88, 119–121, 127–129; embodied engagement with works, 13–14, 47–48, 49, 58–60, 63–64, 68–69, 72–75, 79, 81, 121; extromissive vision, 10, 131n30, 131n32; glance vs. gaze, 14, 48, 58, 79–88; ichnal, 58, 60, 63–64, 129; imperfect seeing, 14, 47–48, 68; informed looking, 14, 30–31, 47–48, 68, 73–75, 79–81, 85–86, 118–121; modern theories of, 131n28, 132n49; power derived from restricted visibility, 4–6, 8–9, 12, 14, 39, 64–68, 75, 84–86, 91, 114–115, 118, 123–124; “slow seeing,” 131n28; typology of, 8; and vulnerability, 63, 64, 124. See also access; eye imagery; restricted visibility Sisila, 53 Site R, 52; Lintel 5, 69 situational viewing, 7

INDEX • 169

skeletal deity, 108, 109 skeuomorphs, 97, 101 “slow seeing,” 131n28 snakes. See serpents social structure and hierarchy: and colonial violence, 12, 15, 127, 128, 129, 131n28; and elite languages, 128; and elite or divine vision, 9–11, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, 48, 68–69, 79, 88, 119–121, 127–129; and embodied engagement with sculptural works, 13–15, 47–48, 58–60, 63–64, 68–69, 72–75, 84–85, 91, 121; and labor required for massive offerings, 28, 37, 39–41, 43–46; and Maya pictorial conventions, 58–69, 59, 62, 64; and modern Indigenous populations, 129; prohibitions against looking at Aztec rulers, 123–124; and restricted audiences for Maya lintels, 47–48, 64–68; social cohesion, 29, 37; social memory, 8, 12, 37–39, 44–45; and views from pyramids, 43–46, 85–86, 89, 91, 121. See also elite power; inequality Solís, Felipe, 101 somatic responses, 14, 79. See also embodied sight; senses Spanish colonialism, 1–4, 11–12, 127–129 speech scrolls, 101, 107 stars, 9, 10, 60, 96, 97, 128, 131nn30–31 stelae: blank or undecorated, 86–87, 87, 140nn85–86; burial of, 7; as evidence, 12, 88; iconography of, 84–86; Izapan, 34, 36; making and dedication, 48, 69, 70, 71, 86–88; Maya, 48, 56, 59, 60, 63, 68, 83–88, 84; Olmec, 17, 18, 30–32, 31, 33, 33, 36; as ritual actors, 14, 58, 84, 88; similarities with Maya lintels, 47, 48, 56, 60, 72; stela-altar pairs, 75, 86–87; and viewing conditions, 83–88. See also Bonampak; Calakmul; Itsimte-Sacluc; Izapa; La Venta; Piedras Negras; Tikal; Yaxchilan stepped motif, 34–35, 36, 135n54 Stirling, Matthew, 25, 133n12 stratified seeing, 44. See also inequality; social structure and hierarchy Stresser-Pean, Guy, 142n22 “Structural Investigations” (Wedel), 26, 27, 38–39 Stuart, David, 64, 86, 88, 140n82 stucco sculptures, 72 sun cartouches, 58, 60, 60 sun gods, 58, 60, 60, 61 supernatural beings: as audiences for unseen art, 10, 12, 18, 25, 30, 32, 46, 64; and powerful sight, 10–12, 30–31, 68. See also deities; specific deity names tassel images, 135n52 Tate, Carolyn, 30, 33, 36, 134n25, 134n34

170 • UN S EEN ART

Taube, Karl, 10, 34, 135nn50–51 tecali (cave onyx), 110, 111, 111, 144n42 tecpillatolli (lordly speech), 128 Templo Mayor: and archaizing sculptural genres, 109, 109, 111–112; caches and offerings, 101, 106, 114–118, 115, 142n34, 145nn67–68; and chacmools, 111–113, 113, 115–118, 121, 144n48, 144n53; and the Coatlicue series, 89–91, 121, 142n17; dedications of, 93, 97, 114, 142n16, 143n17; diagram of, 91; expansions and reconstructions, 97, 112, 143n31, 145n67; Huitzilopochtli Temple, 89, 121, 141–142n13; and location of Aztec sculpture finds, 89, 93, 97, 100, 104, 109, 111, 116, 141–142n13, 141n7, 141n12, 142n18, 143n30, 143nn39–40, 144n53; Offering 94, 145n68; Offering 126, 115; Red Temples, 112; ritual purpose of sculptures at, 121; Tlaloc Temple, 111, 112, 113, 115 Tenoch, 101, 103, 121 Tenochca Mexica, 101–107, 119, 141n3, 142n22 Tenochtitlan: and aquatic imagery, 117; boundaries of, 101; description of, 12, 89; destruction of, 89, 122; founding of, 125; and Inquisition trials, 122, 123; and location of Aztec sculpture finds, 97, 100, 101; population of, 12; sacred bundles of, 123; secrets in, 122–123. See also Mexica, usage of term; Templo Mayor Teocalli of Sacred War, 143n36, 144n46 Teotihuacan, 8, 8, 107–111, 108, 110, 112, 114, 125, 135n52, 135n53, 140n85, 144n46, 144n57, 144nn42–43, 145n68 teotl, 118 Tepehua culture, 27 tepetlacalli (stone boxes), 104, 105, 106, 106–107, 142n22, 143n31, 143n36 Tepoztlan, 101 text: Aztec, 93, 101, 104, 106, 107, 109, 118–119, 120, 141n1, 142n16, 142n22, 143n21, 143n30, 143nn39–40; colonial, 10–12, 57, 69–71, 87, 122, 127–129; Maya, 13, 47, 57, 58, 64, 69, 72–75, 79–81, 84, 86, 87, 88, 138n3, 138n18, 139n33, 150n71. See also glyphs textiles, 64, 79, 124, 136n59 Tezcatlipoca, 119, 123 thrones, 17, 18, 47, 62, 72 Tikal: and elite women patrons, 63–64, 139n33; Lintel 2, 66; Lintel 3, 54; and Maya lintels and stelae, 13, 49, 52, 54, 85, 87, 87; Stela 31, 7; Temple I, 60; Temple II, 63, 66; Temple IV, 54; Twin Pyramid Group Q, 87, 87; undecorated stelae at, 87, 87 time and viewing, 6, 14, 15, 29–30, 37, 47, 72–79, 118

Tira de Tepechpan, 125 Tizoc, 101, 104, 124, 124 Tizoc Stone, 1, 100, 124, 124, 146n103 tlahtoani (ruler), 89, 97, 101–107, 112, 123–124. See also Ahuitzotl; Moteuczoma Ilhuicamina; Moteuczoma Xocoyotzin (Moteuczoma II); Tizoc Tlaloc, 89, 105, 111, 112, 117, 143n36, 144n48 Tlaloc Temple, 111, 112, 113, 115 Tlaltecuhtli: and Aztec metaphysics, 118–119; and Aztec myth, 116, 119; and buried caches, 115, 117; and feathered serpent sculpture, 119, 120; featured in underside carvings, 4, 5, 89, 93, 96, 104, 105, 106, 109, 116, 117, 119, 120, 141n1, 141nn13–14, 142n17, 142n22; iconography of, 116–117, 145n78; and sculptures recarved during the colonial period, 96, 97, 141–142n13; and stone boxes, 104–106, 105, 119 tlaquimilloli (sacred bundles), 121–122, 122, 123, 146n87. See also sacred bundles Tlatelolco, 13, 101, 141n3, 142n25 toads, 93, 94, 116, 141n9 Tollan, 107, 112, 114, 146n1 toltecatl (artists), 107 Toltecs, 107, 112, 114 tomb figures, West Mexican, 132n47 tombs: Maya, 7, 7, 8, 54, 138n18, 139n28; Mesoamerican, 6–8; Olmec, 22, 41, 43, 137n84; Zapotec, 10, 11. See also burials Tonina, 54, 140n89 torture, 122 touch, 14, 35, 64, 75, 118, 131n32. See also senses tribute, 93, 114, 142n18 Tula, 107, 109, 111, 112, 114, 125, 141n10, 142n22, 144nn42–43 Tulan Zuiva, 146n1 tuun (stone), 86, 140n82 Twin Pyramid Groups, 87, 87 Umberger, Emily, 142n16 undecorated stelae and altars, 86–87, 87, 140nn85–86 Urcid, Javier, 131n18 Uruñuela, Gabriela, 44 Usumacinta River region, 49, 52, 53–54, 68, 138n3. See also Bonampak; El Chicozapote; La Pasadita; Piedras Negras Uxmal, 49, 53, 138n6 Valley of Mexico, 13, 89, 97, 114, 125, 128. See also Aztec culture; Chalco; Mexica; Nahuatl language; Tenochtitlan; Xochimilco vantage, 30, 44 vessels: Aztec, 97, 98, 99, 100, 109–111, 119, 121, 142n14, 142n23 (see also

cuauhxicalli); Maya, 6, 12, 72, 75, 76, 77 viewers, 10, 30–31, 47, 58, 60, 63, 68, 72–75, 83, 84, 89, 118–119, 121, 129. See also audiences for works of art; embodied sight; sight and vision violence, 12, 15, 127, 128, 129, 131n28. See also captives; warfare visibility. See access; gradient of visibility; restricted visibility vision. See sight and vision visuality, 9–12, 15, 30, 58–63, 118–121 vitality of images, 58–60, 63, 71, 84, 88, 129, 141n91 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 131n28 Vogt, Evon, 10 Vues des Cordilleres (Humboldt), 130n7 warfare, 72, 73, 74, 83, 93, 97, 120–121, 141n3. See also captives; violence weather conditions. See climate; rainfall; seasons Wedel, Waldo, 25, 133n5, 133n12, 134n36, 137n87 Weismantel, Mary, 131n28, 139n47 winikhaab (year), 86, 140n82 wood: Aztec objects made of, 115, 123; and census of Maya lintels, 13, 48–49, 51–53,

53, 57; lintels at Chichen Itza, 138n6; lintels at El Zotz, 56; lintels at Piedras Negras, 138n9; lintels at Tikal, 54, 60, 66, 139n33; and making process, 57, 70–71; objects at La Venta, 25, 26 workshops, 18, 47–48, 69–71, 97, 124, 128, 139n47, 142n20, 142n37 wrapping of sacred images, 64, 70–71, 71, 131n28. See also sacred bundles; tlaquimilloli writing. See glyphs; text Wu Hung, 132n47 Xcalumkin, 53, 55 Xchochkax, 53 Xculoc, 53 Xiuhcoatl, 107, 107, 119, 143nn36–37 Xochimilco, 93, 142n22 Yajaw Chan Muwaan, 63, 73, 74 Yaxchilan: ancestors at, 58, 59, 60; and diplomacy, 62, 68, 69, 73–75, 79, 138n9, 139n37; elite women patrons at, 57, 63–64, 82, 139n32; embodied engagement with sculptural works, 57–58, 72; Lintel 3, 65; Lintel 8, 83; Lintel 14, 49; Lintel 18, 81; Lintel 19, 81; Lintel

20, 81; Lintel 23, 57; Lintel 24, 57; Lintel 25, 57, 82; Lintel 26, 57; Lintel 43, 48; Lintel 53, 67; Lintel 55, 48; lintels at, 13, 47, 48, 52, 53–54, 63, 72, 75; resetting of lintels, 79–81; and restricted audience for lintels, 68; sacred bundles at, 64, 67; Stela 4, 60; Stela 9, 48; Stela 11, 58, 59; Stela 18, 48, 84, 86; stelae, 47, 48, 63, 84, 85–86, 140n78; Structure 1, 83; Structure 12, 81; Structure 20, 49; Structure 22, 49, 81; Structure 23, 57, 57, 63, 82, 83, 138n18; Structure 33, 65; Structure 41, 86; Structure 54, 67; variation in carving of lintels, 75, 79–81, 83, 139n55. See also Bird Jaguar IV; Shield Jaguar III; Shield Jaguar IV Yik’in Chan K’awiil, 139n33 Yollotlicue, 89–91, 92, 100, 141n6, 144n53 Yucatan Peninsula, 49, 52–53, 54, 57. See also Chichen Itza; Halakal; Kabah; Oxkintok; Uxmal Yula, 53, 68, 138n13 Zinacantan Maya, 10, 58 Zócalo renovations, Mexico City, 1 Zuyua, 127–128, 146n1

INDEX • 171