Art 4 Unit I Review, Part I

1.00 Mesoamerica encompasses all of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. This culture area is typified by subsistance based on maize, beans, and squash; the practice of a ritual ballgame and human sacrifice; the building of ceremonial centers with pyramids; a hieroglyphic or pictographic writing system; the making of codices; the worship of a jaguar and a feathered serpent deity; a 260 day ritual calendar and a 365 day solar calendar; careful recording of astronomical observations.

2.00 Cuicuilco was an important Preclassic site in the Valley of Mexico possessing an early round temple platform. Archaeological findings of ceramic effigies of the Old Fire God, as well as the proximity of Xitle volcano have suggested that the temple here may have been dedicated to this god's worship. The site was abandoned before the rise of Teotihuacan to the north.

3.00 Chupicuaro was a typical Preclassic village community on the Michoacan-Guanajuato border. Small, solid figurines in the pastilliaje technique(press and punch technique), with broad shoulders, coffee bean eyes, and detailed hair are typical. As the majority of these figurines are female, it is believed they served fertility or regenerative functions.

4.00 Tlatilco is the most important of the Preclassic village sites located in the Valley of Mexico. Small huts once edged Lake Texcoco here; the people subsisted on maize, beans, squash, and the fish and fowl provided by the lacustrine environment. The "Pretty Lady" clay figures are of the usual Preclassic solid, pastilliaje form. They differ from Chupicuaro figures in having a recessed eye with a punched hole for the pupil and in having narrower shoulders and more flaring hips. Tlatilco is an especially interesting site because some of its artifacts show evidence of a foreign presence, the Olmec. The Olmec were the dominant culture of the Preclassic period and were centered in the Gulf Coast area. They seem to have established numerous ties with "gateway communities" (communities on important trade routes), in order to control the movement of exotic materials like obsidian, white kaolin clay,and precious green stones.

5.00 This baby figure from Tlatilco is a white-slipped, hollow ceramic of "olmecoid" style. It may refer to shamanism, as the shaman is capable of becoming like the newborn or like the dead during his transformations. Sometimes such baby figures as this display jaguar attributes or are shown as dualistic 1/2 baby-1/2 skeletal images.

6.00 La Venta was one of the four major Olmec sites located in the Gulf Coast region. It flourished during the Preclassic period as a major ceremonial center and as a focus of artistic endeavors of the Olmec. The key temple pyramid of La Venta, a conical form over 100' high that seems to be an imitation of a volcanic cone. Worship of the interior of the earth, which evidently had jaguar associations, appears to dominate Olmec religion. Several buried offerings, including the jaguar mosaic (slide 6) were made specifically to be placed in carefully constructed pits. This mosaic, along with an offering of celts and figures was carefully buried under layers of colored clays.

7.00 A series of greenstone celts (ceremonial hand axes) and small figurines was found in another buried offering at the site of La Venta. These objects were arranged as though in some kind of scene, with the celts possibly representing the large basalt columns that appear as "fence posts" in the actual site of La Venta. Distinctively Olmec in their dowturned mouths and deformed heads, the figurines demonstrate the refined technical skills of this group's jade carvers.

8.00 Three major types of colossal sculptures characterize Olmec sites; La Venta possesses examples of all three. The first is the colossal head, a large scale human image with decorated headgear. Current thought is that these sculptures are portraits of Olmec priest-kings, with the distinctive symbols on the headdresses signifying the individuals' names. The largest of the colossal heads weighs more than 25 tons and is of basalt, a type of stone that had to be brought from the Tuxtla Mountains.

9.00 The stela, or upright stone slab, is the second type of colossal image found at La Venta. Some of these sculptures reach heights of 15 feet or more. Most often, a central elite figure with elaborate headdress dominates the compostion, as in Stela 1 (the Stela of the King) from La Venta. The smaller floating figures which surround the main image may be chaneques (small mythological figures that cause rain to fall), deceased ancestors, or deities.

10.00 The third Olmec monumental sculpture type found at La Venta is the "altar," a horizontally oriented piece that actually seems to have served as a throne rather than as a ritual tabletop! This work is Altar IV; it shows an Olmec priest-king seated in a jaguar-shaped cave mouth, as though indicating the affiliation of the rulership with this great animal. It may also reflect the shamanic origins of elite power, for the priest-kings (like shamans) were intermediaries for their people with the spirit world and could journey to the upper sphere and to the lower sphere. The cave mouth is traditionally viewed as the entrance to the underworld.

11.00 The "Wrestler," one of the great masterpieces of Olmec art, is more likely a representation of a ballgame player. An actual rubber ball dated to 1000 B.C. was found recently at an Olmec site and it's long been thought that one of the main structures at La Venta was a ballcourt. This figure's naturalism and torsion are remarkable in the corpus of Pre-Columbian art; most early Mexican cultures preferred a stiff, frontal approach to the human figure.

12.00 After the decline of the Olmec civilization on the Gulf Coast, the next culture to rise in the area was Tajin. Tajin is not only the name of the culture, but simultaneously labels the primary site of this people (El Tajin) and their main god (a rain-lightning god). The site of El Tajin is imaged in this plan. Though only partially excavated, it was a grandiose city with palaces, a market area, several ball courts, and spectacularly ornate temple pyramids.

13.00 The most important temple pyramid of El Tajin is the Pyramid of the Niches. The niches, which number 365, allude to the number of days in the solar year. Some speculate they may have originally held images of various deities, though no evidence for that has been discovered. As in the majority of the structures at the site, the architecture here is a blending of Teotihuacan ideas (specifically the talud-tablero technique) with Maya ideas (the ceilings over the niches are of concrete).

14.00 The Tajin people were ardent followers of the Mesoamerican ritual ballgame. There were several courts at the site of El Tajin, one of which bears this relief sculpture scene. The subject of the relief is the sacrifice of a ballgame player, under the watchful eyes of a skeletized death deity. Notice the yoke (belt) and palma (vertical projection from the front of the yoke) worn by the two sacrificers and the sacrificee. These elements were usual accoutrements for devotees of the game. The ballgame itself was seen as a reenactment of a battle between the forces of good and light (the Hero Twins of Maya legend) and the forces of darkness and death (the Lords of the Underworld).

15.00 At Tajin, the protective yokes and palmas worn by ballgame players were copied in stone sculptures. Such sculptures as this yoke of serpent form have been found by archaeologists in tombs. Perhaps they referred to the Hero Twins ultimate victory over the Lords of the Underworld. The idea would be that the deceased, like the Hero Twins, could rise from lower sphere and live again.

16.00 Naturalistic ceramics were among the fortes of the Tajin culture. This portrait of a young girl is as fresh and spontaneous as if it had been done but a few days ago. In reality it dates back to the Late Classic period (600-900 A.D.).

17.00 The Old Fire God is a far less prepossessing image than the previous ceramic. This deity is one of the oldest in the Mesoamerican pantheon and is typically seen (as in this picture) with a brazier or incense burner on his head. The cross form pattern on the brazier symbolizes his position at the center of the cardinal directions and the universe.

18.00 A special breed of ceramic comes from the Tajin site of Remojadas. These are the "laughing" or "smiling" figures which perhaps represent sacrificial victims whose good humor has been encouraged through pulque or hallucinogenic morning glory seeds. These figures generally wear loincloths, boxy looking caps and hold their arms up in the air.

19.00 The final culture to dominate the Gulf Coast region was that of the Postclassic Huaxtecs. The Huaxtecs were detested neighbors of the war-like Aztecs, and were eventually overcome by these more powerful Mesoamericans. The Aztec, despite their dislike of Huaxtec customs, adopted certain features of Huaxtec art. For example, the frontal pose and stance of this Huaxtec work titled "The Adolescent" heavily influenced Aztec deity sculptures.

20.00 During the time of El Tajin on the Gulf Coast, a great new the Gulf Coast, a great new civilization was rising in the Valley of Mexico area. Its name, Teotihuacan, means "the place where one becomes a god," a title given the site by the much later Aztecs. Teotihuacan was a vast Classic Period metropolis with huge public buildings such as the Pyramid of the Moon, at the north end of the Avenue of the Dead, the Pyramid of the Sun, and the Ciudadela. There were also more than 2000 apartment compounds in the city, a vast market place, a barrios occupied by non-Teotihuacanos: i.e. there were Zapotec and Gulf Coast peoples living in their own quarters.

21.00 The Pyramid of the Sun is the tallest structure at Teotihuacan. Poorly reconstructed by Leopold Batras, the temple platform originally was coated with a thick layer of stucco and painted. Its outline demonstrates the usual slope and panel (talud-tablero) technique of the city's builders. The pyramid was constructed atop a four-lobed natural cave which may have been viewed as a place of emergence connected with the Great Goddess, fertility, and the rising of the sun.

22.00 The Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl was the major temple structure within the Ciudadela, an administrative center believed to have been built ca. 200/250 A.D. by a powerful ruler of Teotihuacan. The sculpted heads ornamenting the facade are believed to refer to Quetzalcoatl (the Feathered Serpent) and a Tlaloc-like storm and rain god. Recently, large numbers of sacrificial victims have been found buried within the structure.

23.00 Some of the finest fresco paintings of the Precolumbian Americas are found on the walls of the apartment compounds in Teotihuacan. This one, in the past, was interpreted as representing what the Aztecs were later to call "Tlalocan," the paradise of the rain god. In this detail small human figures are frolicking in streams of water, some waving branches in the air in joyous gestures, others playing the ballgame or singing. Many are now saying the painting may indicate the bounty that chinampa farming brought to Teotihuacan. The section of the painting above this detail shows the Great Goddess, who is associated with jaguars, caves, mountains, fertility and the water that comes from the earth. Any way you look at it, water is definitely the emphasis! The true fresco technique is one involving the application of pigment to wet plaster; it thus creates a very permanent surface when the wall dries.

24.00 The Storm God, who is often identified with the later Tlaloc (Rain God) of the Aztecs, is commonly depicted on Teotihuacan ceramics. This vessel shows Tlaloc's usual goggle-shaped eyes and fanged mouth. He is depicted on one of the finest types of ceramics associated with the site: cloisonné.

25.00 Cloisonne pottery involves coating the vessel's surface with a lime stucco-like substance then applying colors between incised lines. This vessel, which shows a priest with a sacrificial heart on the end of a knife, is a common ceramic shape for Teotihuacan; it is known as a cylindrical, slab-footed tripod.

26.00 Stone masks have long been associated with Teotihuacan. It was thought that the majority were burial masks for the dead, but few had been found in situ (in their original archaeological context). Currently, many of these superb, stylized effigies are being interpreted as stone masks of deities that were attached to perishable bodies of wood or other materials. These images would have been the idols worshiped in compound shrines; full figure images entirely of stone would have been the prerogative of major public temples.

27.00 Although few monumental freestanding sculptures remain from the era of Teotihuacan, there are a few spectacular examples. This one, of the Great Goddess holding streams of life-giving rain, is more than 10' tall and was found in front of the Pyramid of the Moon. Her blocky appearance, treated in a series of vertical and diagonal lines, is curiously reminiscent of talud-tablero architecture.