“Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan Changing Perspectives on a Recurring Problem in Mesoamerican Archaeology and Art History” 9780884023234, 9780884023722, 2011017155

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T WIN TOLL ANS Chichén Itzá, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World

JEFF K ARL KOWALSKI & CYNTHIA KRISTAN-GRAHAM Editors

Dumbarton Oaks Research Libr ary and Collection | Washington, D.C.

© 2011 Dumbarton Oaks Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America 17 16 15 14 13 12 11

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Twin Tollans : Chichén Itzá, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican world / Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia Kristan-Graham, editors. — revised ed. p. cm. Includes index. Based on papers presented at the two-day colloquium “Rethinking Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan,” held at Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C., on February 19–20, 2000. ISBN 978-0-88402-323-4 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-88402-372-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Chichen Itza site (Mexico)—Congresses. 2. Tula site (Tula de Allende, Mexico)—Congresses. 3. Indians of Mexico—Antiquities—Congresses. 4. Indian architecture—Mexico—Congresses. 5. Excavations (Archaeology)—Mexico—Congresses. 6. Mexico—Antiquities—Congresses. I. Kowalski, Jeff Karl. II. Kristan-Graham, Cynthia. F1435.1.C5T95 2011 972'.01—dc23 2011017155

Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan Changing Perspectives on a Recurring Problem in Mesoamerican Archaeology and Art History C y n t h i a K r i s ta n - G r a h a m

J ef f K a r l Kowa l s k i

Reading Chichén Itzá, Tula, and the Toltecs1 Like the doubled feathered serpent columns that adorn the entrances to their principal temples (Figures 1–2), the two sites of Chichén Itzá and Tula have been considered to represent “twin cities,” paired political capitals that share so many aspects of architectural plan, sculptural repertory, and iconographic motifs that they represent a unique case of cultural contact and artistic convergence in ancient Mesoamerica (Jones 1995). Along with such effigy serpent columns, other important visual parallels between these two sites include galleries and halls whose roofs were supported by rows of columns or pillars; pillars bearing images of soldiers wearing related butterfly pectorals and “pillbox” helmets and carrying atlatl spearthrowers; reclining chacmool sculptures (Figure 3); small atlanteans and standard-bearers; and relief sculptures featuring “jaguar-serpent-bird” (or “Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli”) icons and images of predatory animals and raptorial birds holding human hearts. That these two centers share an important ensemble of traits has generally been recognized, but how to interpret the significance of this fact has been a perennial and often hotly contested problem.

These interpretations have moved through several critical phases. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the similarities between the two sites were noticed and ascribed to the spread of a near-mythical Toltec civilization. Then, during the first half of the twentieth century, more careful archaeological investigations at the two sites documented parallels in building plan, sculptural forms, and iconographic motifs. Scholars endeavored to explain them by correlating central Mexican and Yucatec Maya historical sources so that the departure of the priest-ruler Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl from Tula would coincide with the arrival of K’uk’ulkan at Chichén Itzá, which was considered to have coincided with a Tula Toltec conquest of Yucatan. Finally, during the second half of the twentieth century—with the rise of processual and post-processual archaeology, more critical appraisal of historical sources, and more detailed archaeological investigations— the similarities between Tula and Chichén Itzá were increasingly explained as the result of contact and collaboration between their rulers and those of other Epiclassic and Early Postclassic Mesoamerican sites and regions, involving efforts to establish political legitimacy and long-distance networks of commercial exchange and elite 1

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figure 1 Feathered serpent columns, Temple of the Warriors, Chichén Itzá. Photograph by Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

figure 2 Feathered serpent column drums and atlantean sculptures, Pyramid B, Tula. Photograph by Mark Miller Graham.

prestige in the wake of Teotihuacan’s demise and the collapse of the Classic Maya cities of the southern lowlands (Figure 4). The Chichén Itzá–Tula paradigm that took shape at the end of the nineteenth century was rooted as much in ethnohistory as in archaeology and art history. While also directing the reader to Susan Gillespie’s wide-ranging and theoretically sophisticated discussion about these issues and the intellectual problems that the Tula and Chichén Itzá question has engendered, we will briefly examine how the Chichén Itzá–Tula paradigm has been framed over time, in tandem with diverse strategies of reading and interpretation.

The close similarities between Chichén Itzá and Tula, Hidalgo, were first pointed out and commented on in detail by the explorer and archaeologist Désiré Charnay (1885, 1887). Writing about the distinctive appearance of the feathered serpent doorway columns of the Castillo at Chichén Itzá (Figures 5–6), he noted that: “These shafts are almost an exact reproduction of a Toltec column we unearthed at Tula . . . The two columns are found three hundred leagues from each other, separated by an interval of several centuries; but if, as we firmly believe, the Tula column is Toltec, the other must be so too, for it could not be the result of mere accident” (Charnay 1887:341–343).

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figure 3 Reclining chacmool sculpture in front of the feathered serpent columns in the portal of the Temple of the Warriors, Chichén Itzá. Photograph by Jeff Kowalski.

Charnay’s recognition of the parallels between Chichén Itzá and Tula, and his identification of such shared features as “Toltec,” along with the presumption that the forms at Chichén Itzá are reproductions of prototypes at Tula, has had a profound and continuing impact on Mesoamerican studies. Archaeological knowledge of both Tula and Chichén Itzá continued to grow throughout the later nineteenth and the earlier twentieth centuries, and during that time several scholars (e.g., Batres 1906; Spinden 1975 [1913]:205–208; see Gillespie, this volume) added details consistent with the idea that a special relationship existed between Chichén Itzá and Tula and that the distinctive traits they shared were evidence of their Toltec cultural identity. Charnay’s recognition of some important basic similarities between the two sites is difficult to deny. Michael E. Smith, in his summary

overview, correctly notes the “eye of the beholder” nature of this problem, pointing out that for some Tula and Chichén Itzá “are practically mirror images of one another” (McCafferty, this volume), whereas for others their site plans are quite different (Cobos, this volume; Lincoln 1986). As we hope this volume makes clear, there are significant differences between the two sites, but they also share quite specific building forms, sculptural images, and politico-religious symbolism. In some cases, as, for example, in the parallels in plan, general sculptural program, and specific iconographic references shared by the Temple of the Warriors at Chichén Itzá and Pyramid B at Tula (see Figures 9–10 in Kowalski, this volume, and Figures 3 and 6 in Kristan-Graham, this volume), there are no clear counterparts of such closely comparable buildings at any other sites occupying the some eight-hundred-mile distance separating the two Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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figure 4 Map of Mesoamerica, showing the location of the principal sites referred to in this volume (after Kowalski 1999:4).

capitals (although possible parallels and models occur at sites such as Alta Vista and La Quemada to the northwest of Tula; see Kristan-Graham, this volume). Although he perceptively noted the real correspondences between the two sites, Charnay’s interpretation was overly simplistic. Charnay shared with other late nineteenth-century scholars an interest in explaining the rise of “civilization” as a process in which superior knowledge and technical advances were perfected by particular peoples or racial stocks, who then disseminated them to other regions, primarily through diffusionistic mechanisms such as large-scale migrations or conquests (see Gillespie, this volume, and Smith, this volume, for further discussion). Thus Charnay adopted a positivistic attitude that relied on ethnohistoric sources (as well as artifacts) to present a straightforward account of prehistoric events in 4

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which the rise of centers of high culture throughout Mexico and Central America was explained by attributing them to the impact of migrations of the Toltecs following the fall of Tula. This interpretation focused more on the impact of the Toltecs as a super-“race” than on the accounts of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl. Although most of Charnay’s interpretations of Mesoamerican prehistory, particularly his “conviction that Toltec civilization was the fountainhead of all the high cultures of Mexico and Central America” (Jones 1995:7, 27–31), have long since been abandoned, his claims that the resemblances between the architecture and art of Tula and Chichén Itzá indicate that the two cities had a special relationship with one another, reflecting their common identity as expressions of a “Toltec” civilization, have exerted a continuing power in Mesoamerican archaeology (see Tozzer 1957:188).

figure 5 The Castillo (Structure 2D5), a radially symmetrical pyramid-temple located at the conceptual center of the North Terrace at Chichén Itzá. View from the northeast; photograph taken prior to the INAH restoration of the 1980s. Photograph by Jeff Kowalski.

Charnay’s characterization of the Toltecs as an omnipresent people in Mesoamerica and his unilineal model of a highland Mexico-to-Maya movement of people and cultural traits was both too general and too myopic to explain the complex social processes that developed in the Epiclassic and Terminal Classic periods. Yet Charnay did contribute a new vision of Mesoamerica, because “for the first time the Maya and the Mexica of central Mexico are seen as a unity, and their joint territories as a super-zone” (Bernal 1980:127). Charnay’s campaign to extol the exemplary virtues of the Toltecs prompted a critical response from Daniel Garrison Brinton (1887) in the now famous essay “Were the Toltecs an Historic Nationality?” Brinton does not mention Charnay by name, and he was certainly aware that the notion of a Toltec foundational culture was common in other accounts of pre-Hispanic American history (e.g., Valentini 1883). Nevertheless, Charnay

was the popular author of the day on Tula and the Toltecs, while Brinton’s works were read primarily by scholars. The fact that Brinton’s essay appeared shortly after Charnay’s books were published indicates that there could scarcely be another writer whom Brinton was so vehemently criticizing. Brinton characterized the Toltecs as a branch of the Nahua people whom the Aztecs elevated to “superhuman” status in order to legitimate their own claim to rulership in central Mexico (although he is probably guilty of overstatement when he argues that the Toltecs were simply invented as noble ancestors). Although Brinton was given to hyperbole and factual errors, he did make some lasting contributions to the discourse on the Toltecs. He made a convincing case that we know the Toltecs from written sources more than from archaeology. Brinton observed that the Toltecs are credited with so many feats and cultural advancements that they seem more mythic than real. Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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figure 6 Feathered serpent columns in the northern entrance to the Castillo temple. Photograph by Jeff Kowalski.

Overall, Brinton demonstrated that, above anything else, the Toltecs are a textual phenomenon (Kristan-Graham 1996). From his close reading of the ethnohistorical literature, Eduard Seler followed Brinton in asserting that Quetzalcoatl and Tollan, and by extension the Toltecs, were fabrications of myth and that the mythic Tollan was not to be identified with Tula, which he called the historical Tollan (see Gillespie, this volume, for a more detailed discussion of Seler’s ideas). As the twentieth century began, there were two divergent positions on the “Toltec question.” One held that the Toltecs were responsible for 6

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most Classic- and Postclassic-period large centers and impressive works of art and architecture in Mesoamerica, while the other held that the Toltecs were not even a real people. Brinton’s essay seems to have, at first, been little read and cited, yet his ideas about the power of the text and the Toltecs being primarily characters from the pages of ethnohistory are more in line with modern theories of the text and of reading (see the “Mapping Tollan” section below, and the chapters by Gillespie and Smith, this volume). After Charnay and Brinton, the work of Paul Kirchhoff (1955), Wigberto Jiménez Moreno (1941),

Nigel Davies (1977), and others belied the tension inherent in dealing with sources that are ostensibly about the same historic events but which contain contradictory details of character, plot, and location. Scholars dealt with such challenges in a number of ways, from opting to use the sources that seem to be the most reliable (Kirchhoff and Jiménez Moreno), to fitting (or forcing) the sources into a more or less unified narrative (Jiménez Moreno), to explaining discrepancies as the result of “mistakes” or regional or cultural biases (Davies). As we know, the ethnohistoric record is rife with allusions to Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl and Tollan that may or may not refer to Tula, Hidalgo. Differing reading strategies are always in play, from literal to symbolic to private understandings (see Manguel 1996 for an analysis of the various modes of reading and interpretation in the West). Are we to read ethnohistorical documents as “real history” that tell us “what really happened”? Or are the sources to be understood as vessels of allegorical language and cultural attitudes? Even H. B. Nicholson (1979), who quite literally wrote the book about the books that describe Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl and Tollan, has stated that the ethnohistoric literature may well contain a kernel of truth, but that it is not always easy or possible to identify what that kernel might be. It is Nicholson’s (1957, 2001) painstaking analysis of the ethnohistoric literature, revealing minor to significant differences among plot lines and characters, that suggests the Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl and Tollan sagas are not reliable guides to understanding preHispanic events. There is a growing trend to read ethnohistory as a compilation of poetic statements about the mythic and lived past that were created within the contours of the post-contact, colonial, and even modern moments, seasoned with varying degrees of cultural subjectivity. Ethnohistory and ethnography are now more properly viewed as part of a broad network of cultural codes, literary genres, and allegorical language that intersects with social and political concerns (Clifford and Marcus 1986). Clifford Geertz (1988:144–145) has observed that “all ethnographic descriptions are homemade . . .

they are the describer’s descriptions, not those of the described.” Surely the same is true of ethnohistory. The century after the conquest in which the Spaniards collected and wrote the primary ethnohistoric sources was an era of acculturation, defined by the Counter Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition. Consequently, the sources embody the radical changes that the indigenous cultures were subjected to as well as European attitudes of a changing world. This does not negate the importance or use of the data, but it does indicate that ethnohistory is best viewed as documents that mediate the observed and the observer, the vanquished and the victor. Such an approach views ethnohistoric documents as part of a literary tradition that may ultimately tell us more about literary genres, symbols, and rhetorical uses of language than about “real history.” In our own time, the discipline of history itself has become introspective to the point where the idea of an empirical sort of history that is knowable and retrievable has come into question. Indeed, Benjamin Keen (1971), Jacques Lafaye (1976), David Carrasco (1982), Jorge Klor de Alva et al. (1988), Susan Gillespie (1989), and Enrique Florescano (1994) have shown that both reading ethnohistory and using ethnohistory to construct a vision of the past are complex, ongoing processes wherein concerns of colonialism and Mexican nationalism in part temper how the pre-Hispanic past is read and rewritten. These approaches intersect with the ideas of the critic Edward Said (1994:17), who has observed of the highly charged political nature of reading and writing cultural history that “more important than the past itself . . . is its bearing upon cultural attitudes in the present.” Moreover, Carrasco and Gillespie demonstrate that the Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl of Tollan tales, as we know them today, are contact period and later in date and cannot be used as reliable guides to pre-Hispanic ideas about Tollan. However we choose to use the ethnohistoric literature, our readings are open to uses and abuses. A case in point is the oft-cited Toltec or central Mexican conquest of Chichén Itzá, clear references to which neither Ralph Roys (1966) nor Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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Marvin Cohodas (1978a) could find in the Maya literature. It would seem that readings and interpretations of the sources, and not the sources themselves, are responsible for the so-called Toltec conquest of Chichén Itzá. Once established in the literature, however, the erroneous assertions that the sources record—e.g., Tula conquered Chichén Itzá (or vice versa)—have taken on a life of their own. One alternative to repeating the mantra that “the Toltecs conquered Chichén Itzá” is to approach both sites without a priori assumptions that are grounded in ethnohistory. Michael E. Smith, in his summary review chapter, cautions that an uncritical use of ethnohistorical sources has tended to confuse rather than clarify our understanding of the Tula–Chichén Itzá–Tollan question. He argues that conquest- and colonial-period historical sources do not contain dependable accounts of the historical events in the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic periods, since the activities described for these much earlier times belong more to the “realm of myth than history.” Smith observes that pre-Hispanic “histories” and the post-conquest accounts that are based on them did not strive to create an objective and chronologically consistent record of historical events, but rather served to “legitimize polities, peoples, and dynasties, and to glorify the accomplishments of kings and ancestors.” Smith provides a critical assessment of two slightly different approaches to the use of such sources. One recognizes that such sources contain discrepancies and nonhistorical, mythic elements, but through careful historiographic analysis attempts to detect true historical aspects pertaining to the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic periods (Davies 1977; Nicholson 2001, 2002; Prem 1999), while the other argues that the sources contain historical data relevant to the Late Postclassic period, but that the people and events described for the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic periods fall so far from the period when such accounts were committed to writing that they must be considered primarily mythical rather than historical (Gillespie, this volume; see also Gillespie 1991; Olivier 2003; Smith 1984, 1992, 2003:31–32). 8

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Similar issues are addressed by Susan Gillespie. She points out that the increasing doubts about the historical veracity of the native traditions have resulted in changing attitudes toward the Toltec story and the presumed Toltec empire. She observes that as the Tula–Chichén Itzá relationship is understood more accurately, these two centers will lose their luster as stars on the Mesoamerican stage, and the epochs we are considering will seem more like an ensemble piece. In this process, Quetzalcoatl and the Tollan drama may not seem as important, except as potent and enduring symbols manipulated in concert with Mesoamerican foundations. Citing the work of Raymond Fogelson (1974, 1989), Marshall Sahlins (1985), and other scholars, Gillespie argues that the traditional approach to ethnohistory—that is, of mining native historical accounts to extricate truth from fiction and to build a dependable framework of “historical fact”—must be replaced by a type of “ethnoethnohistory” that “insists on taking seriously native theories of history as embedded in cosmology, in narratives, in rituals and ceremonies, and more generally in native philosophies and worldviews.” Gillespie does not think that ethnohistorical sources regarding the Toltecs, Tula, Chichén Itzá, and the Quetzalcoatl myth are without value, but argues that we must adopt a more self-aware approach to interpreting them. They can no longer be viewed as a compendium of underlying “historical” truth overlaid by or intertwined with a mythic component. Rather, she argues, they must be “recognized as something much more encompassing and thus more useful, namely, evidence for ‘distinctive modes of historical production . . . different historicities’ (Sahlins 1985:x).” Nevertheless, these mythic components are what gave these stories their value and efficacy as active sources of political legitimacy and “official dynastic history” in ancient Mesoamerica. They represent a long-lived Mesoamerican strategy in which political leaders fused their administrative role with their powerful priestly identities. As such, the stories of Quetzalcoatl represent a sacralized explanation and justification for the rise of

new regional elites and new centers of power during the Epiclassic period, a process that reached its culmination in the foundation and expansion of Tula and Chichén Itzá, cities that appear to have emerged during the Epiclassic/Terminal Classic periods and then consolidated their power to become the most important political capitals and twin poles of an extensive pan- and even extraMesoamerican trade network.

Mapping Tollan There are an overwhelming number of references to Tollan in the literature, and this has also confounded our understanding of Tula. Given the edenic symbolism of Tollan, and the fact that many Mesoamerican place names contain Tollan or the prefixes tol- or tul- as honorifics, should Tollan be considered a “real place” that can be located in the Mesoamerican landscape? An examination of the linguistic and symbolic referents of Tollan helps us to understand the situation. Tollan and its cognates are linked etymologically and associated with reeds. Tula, Tollan, and the Maya Tulán are place names derived from the Nahuatl words tullin or tollin, related to the modern word tule, and translated as a generic “place of reeds,” “place of bulrushes” (Molina 1977:148), or “place of cattails” (Simeón 1977). In compound names, tullin, tollin, and tollan qualify locations as a “place of reeds,” as in Tollan Chollolan, the full name of Cholula, Puebla. A Nahuatl couplet identified the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan as Tollan Tenochtitlan, or Tenochtitlan “among the reeds, among the rushes” (Sahagún 1975:185). In addition, the roots “tul” and “tol” are used as prefixes in place names to connote a “reed-place,” as in Tulancingo, a place name found in the states of Hidalgo, Oaxaca, and Veracruz. Reed-places are scattered across maps of ancient and modern Mesoamerica. In pre-Hispanic Mixtec manuscripts from Oaxaca and in colonial maps and pictorial codices from central Mexico, a glyph of spiky reeds or cattails either formed the place name Tollan or was incorporated into a compound place

name. In his encyclopedic study of the Toltecs, Nigel Davies (1977:27) insists that tollans were important precisely because they were places where reeds grew, providing the reed mats on which Mesoamerica rulers sat as a sign of their high office. Connections with ancestral beginnings and political power have enabled “Tollan” to become an honorific name for places where lords were invested with the titles and insignia of political and royal offices (Tedlock 1997:295n151). Mesoamerican royal protocol sometimes required that a new lord or ruler go to Tollan and have his nose pierced in an investiture ceremony. Since this tradition was followed in Oaxaca and the Maya Highlands, there could have been a chain of Tollans associated with political investiture. In this regard, William Ringle (2004:190–191) has recently cited the nose-piercing scene in the relief sculptures of the North Temple of the Great Ballcourt at Chichén Itzá as part of a set of accession rituals associated with a regional version of the Quetzalcoatl cult, thus identifying Chichén Itzá as one such Tollan. Tollan and its cognates also have poetic and metaphoric references. An indigenous central Mexican parallelism uses tule to describe a multitude, since people congregate together in the way that reeds grow closely together (Davies 1977:27– 28). In Gabriel Rojás’s “Descripción de Cholula” (in Davies 1977:27), Tullam Cholollan (the traditional name of Cholula in which Tulam is a variant of Tollan) is characterized as both a metropolis and as a reed-place; at one time, in fact, reeds grew close to the Great Pyramid of Cholula. This double referent of reed-place and metropolis also is applicable to Tula, which in pre-Hispanic and colonial times had reeds in the El Salitre Swamp. Even today, the Otomí speakers living near the modern town of Tula call the place Mahmemi, “congregation of people” (Davies 1977:28). Reed-places also appear in Mixtec manuscripts. The Codex Bodley illustrates a tule plant in a scene of intermarriage and elite visitors. The location has been variously identified as Tollan, Cholula, or Tula (see McCafferty, this volume, for an extended discussion). Another figurative reading of Tollan is found in the Cantares mexicanos, a collection of Nahuatl Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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songs and poems. In one song, a reed serves as a metaphor for a warrior, so that Tollan can mean “among the reeds” or “a battlefield,” equating a field of soldiers with a field of reeds. In this sense, the Aztec site of Tollan Chalco could mean “Chalco among the Warriors” (Bierhorst 1985:363). But this may not have been a constant referent, since one song that laments the fall of Tollan describes the city as the home of Quetzalcoatl and the Toltecs rather than as a battlefield (Bierhorst 1985:218–221, 447–448). In the twentieth century, the search for Tollan began in earnest. Jiménez Moreno (1941) proposed, on the basis of his analysis of the ethnohistoric record, that Tula in Hidalgo was the Tollan of myth, home of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl and the Toltecs. (Jiménez Moreno’s methodology has since been criticized, but many still agree with his original hypothesis.) Acosta (1940), who began excavating Tula, concurred with this position, but others did not. Some dissenters thought that Tollan could be located, but more probably was at Teotihuacan (Chadwick 1971; Sejourné 1954; Vaillant 1941). Although the idea of Tollan and reed-places has usually been associated with the Toltecs and the Epiclassic-Postclassic periods, the idea of Tollan may well have existed earlier. David Stuart (2000:501–506) has identified a Maya glyph of a cattail reed (puh in Maya) that may refer to Teotihuacan. This glyph is found in Classic-period carved inscriptions at Tikal and Copan. Since the associated texts refer to the arrival of outsiders or foreigners and are embellished with Teotihuacanstyle motifs, Stuart reasons that the glyph may refer to Teotihuacan and may record the arrival and presence of Teotihuacanos in royal Maya dynasties. His work provides the first glyphic indication that Teotihuacan may have been considered a reed-place, and, along with the wellknown Teotihuacanoid symbols in Classic Maya art, is another indication of the strong allure that Teotihuacan had for the Maya world. It is probable that other reed-places may have existed earlier than Teotihuacan. Some scholars have looked to the Preclassic Olmec as the progenitors of civilized life in Mesoamerica, and they 10

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think that Mesoamerican peoples may have done the same. There is little internal evidence that the Olmec conceived of their homeland as a reedplace, yet the Olmec heartland in the Gulf Coast of Tabasco and Veracruz, with the Tuxtla Mountains and rich riverine environs, is a natural model for the reed-places (Schele and Mathews 1998:40). It may be that some basic concerns with ancestry and political authority were widespread enough to generate a blanket of reed-places or Tollans across the Mesoamerican landscape from the Preclassic period onward, with multiple geographic places associated with ancestral beginnings and political legitimacy (Boone 2000:376–377; Schele and Mathews 1998:38–39). While all of the linguistic and figurative referents cited above may apply to many reed-places, Davies (1977:41) reminds us that Tula in Hidalgo is the one major center for which Tollan was the only toponym or the main place name. Hence, Tula in Hidalgo was known as a both a Tula and a Tollan, and it is this distinction that makes the study of Tula so complicated and the navigation of the ethnohistoric sources so tricky. A related term and concept—“Toltec”—also has been the victim of elastic terminology. In the nineteenth century, when the Valley of Mexico chronology was being developed, “Toltec” was a label for all of the pre-Aztec inhabitants of ancient Mexico. Since many scholars identified Teotihuacan as Tollan, the Toltecs were thought to have built Teotihuacan. In the early twentieth century, Manuel Gamio (1922) dated Teotihuacan between the Formative and Aztec periods, and on the basis of its monumental scale and wellpreserved art thought that Teotihuacan was Tollan. This position was altered at the first mesa redonda of the Sociedad Mexicana de Antropología. Acosta (1940) presented a tentative ceramic chronology that placed Tula between Teotihuacan and the Aztecs; this was the first scientific evidence that Teotihuacan should be separated from Tula chronologically, and it indicated that Tollan could be linked with one site or the other, but not with both. The Toltecs were still believed to have been a powerful nation, but their

location shifted northward and forward in time to Tula (cf. Chadwick 1971; Sejourné 1954). Today there is still little consensus on the significance of “Toltec.” In the last century alone, the term was so flexible that it could describe a descendant of Teotihuacan (Coggins 1987:441), a follower of Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, an ancestor of the Aztecs, an art style at Tula, a horizon period between Teotihuacan and the Aztecs (Diehl 1993), an honorific title for ancestor and fine artisan, the central Mexican intruders who invaded Chichén Itzá (Coe 1999:165–167), the name of an art style that the alleged intruders introduced into Yucatan (Tozzer 1957), and the ancestors of the Quiche and other highland Maya groups (Carmack 1970). The association of “Toltec” with Chichén Itzá is particularly disturbing, for there is now a consensus that neither Toltecs from Tula or anywhere else in central Mexico were ever a dominant force in Yucatan (Kurjack 1988). However, there have been some attempts to differentiate mythic from historic inhabitants of Tula in Hidalgo. Fray Bernardino de Sahagún visited Tula sometime in the 1540s–1550s (Nicolau d’Olwer and Cline 1973:187); in the Historia general de las cosas de Nueva España, he makes clear distinctions between the mythic locale of tolla (or tollan) and the historic town of tulla (or tullan), which was next to archaeological ruins whose descriptions are quite similar to what is to be seen at Tula today (see “Looking at Art: Form, Content, and Cultural Identity,” below). According to Sahagún, the inhabitants of the former are called toltecas and the citizens of the latter, whom he actually met, are referred to as tultecas. Just as Sahagún distinguished between mythic and historic individuals, Eduard Seler (1960–1961:2:21– 23) and Davies (1977) attempted to distinguish the Toltecs from the historic inhabitants of Tula. The so-called Toltecs of Tollan seem to occupy a space between myth and history, and it makes sense to leave them there because we do not possess the sensibility to distinguish between ancient Mesoamerican conceptions of the past and the present. The challenging problems of Toltec and Tollan relate to the notion of identity, and two essays in this volume address the issue of identity in the Tula

region. Patricia Fournier and Victor H. Bolaños focus on Epiclassic ethnicity and material culture, while Cynthia Kristan-Graham analyzes ceremonial architecture from Tula that recalls the mythic Tollan while at the same time embodying a north and west Mexican character. In their discussion of Epiclassic chronology and social processes, Fournier and Bolaños present compelling new evidence that the Otomí— who, according to ethnohistoric sources such as Sahagún and Motolinia, lived at Tula—occupied the region from at least the Epiclassic period. One key component of Otomí culture is a lunar cult, and recent excavations of the Epiclassic site of Chapantongo north of Tula show that architectural and mortuary features mark lunar events. These and other features of Otomí material culture present a continuum with what is known of the Otomí from ethnohistory and ethnography. Moreover, DNA analysis shows a genetic link between the present-day Otomí living north of Tula and occupants of Chapantongo, along with some inhabitants of Epiclassic–Early Postclassic Tula. Fournier and Bolaños also show that features commonly assumed to be part of the Early Postclassic “Toltec” art tradition at Tula—including Coyotlatelco ceramics, colonnades, and sunken plazas—were actually present to some degree in the region in the Epiclassic period. They reject foreign invasion or migration hypotheses as too simple to explain these apparent foreign features in the region. Instead, they favor regional social interaction and the indigenous Otomí population’s absorption of ideas from Teotihuacan. While Fournier and Bolaños illustrate an intersection between archaeology and ethnohistory at Chapantongo, Kristan-Graham sees no such pattern at Tula. Like Gillespie, she contends that since contact-period central Mexican sources about Tollan and the Toltecs probably had more to do with Aztec legitimacy than with the archaeological site of Tula, they are of great value as literature but not as reliable sources for understanding Tula. Looking at Tula neither with ethnohistory as a guidebook nor from the perspective as “sister city” to Chichén Itzá, other important cultural Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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patterns become apparent. One such pattern is the sunken patio/plaza–colonnaded hall architectural unit, which has marked parallels with north and west Mexico. While Tula is no longer recognized as the archetypal Tollan, it was one of many Mesoamer ican reed-places associated with origins, and Building 3 (the Palacio Quemado) seems to have been designed as a series of Tollan-like landscapes. Its three large halls contain a central shallow sunken patio (plausibly inspired by examples in the Bajío) with surrounding colonnades, forming an abstract lake surrounded by reeds. These unique architectural vistas plausibly housed rituals regarding foundation and migration. Building 3 also is a component of another type of sunken plaza–colonnaded hall unit. It adjoins Tula’s main (sunken) plaza to form a large, public sunken plaza–colonnaded hall. Kristan-Graham observes that this architectural unit, despite having similarities with buildings from Teotihuacan and other Mesoamerican traditions, has the closest parallel regarding design and location with the main ceremonial centers of Alta Vista and La Quemada, both Epiclassic sites in Zacatecas. While the precise genealogy of this shared architectural tradition is not clear, it is apparent that the three sites share a strikingly similar public face. While the sunken plaza–colonnaded hall may not demonstrate an actual political or cultural affiliation, it does have rhetorical importance in identifying the three sites as regional loci of power and entrepôts of exchange on the northern peripheries of Mesoamerica. The work of Kristan-Graham and Fournier and Bolaños demonstrates, from differing perspectives, that what has come to be called Toltec architecture from Tula and its environs has general antecedents in regions much closer to home than Chichén Itzá, including the Otomí culture, the Bajío, and northern Mexico. Yet although the conception of the colonnaded hall or vestibule may have undergone development at Tula prior to its appearance at Chichén Itzá, not all aspects of “Toltec” iconography necessarily originated there. The concept of adorning pillars with relief figural 12

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sculptures may have a Maya precedent (discussed below and by Kowalski, this volume). Bey and Ringle note that architectural chronologies seem to indicate that some “Toltec” motifs (e.g., marching felines, chacmools, etc.) appear by the mid-ninth century at Chichén Itzá, while they have been documented only on later Tollan phase (ad 950–1150) structures at Tula. As our understanding of what constitutes the Tula populace and its art tradition becomes more fine tuned, so too must our use of the term “Toltec,” particularly as it applies to Tula. Adding to the Maya-Mexican dialog from another geographic angle, Geoffrey McCafferty weaves ethnohistory and recent archaeological data to highlight Cholula’s place within the dynamics of cultural interaction. The last decades of work in the fields of archaeology, epigraphy, and art history have shown that Teotihuacanos were a formidable presence in the Maya Lowlands, and that so-called Mexicanized Maya were likewise present in highland Mexico, especially at CacaxtlaXochitecatl, Xochicalco, and Cholula. McCafferty proposes that ethnohistoric sources may provide some insight into the specific identity of the outsiders at Cholula. McCafferty demonstrates that beginning in the Classic period, foreign features with precedents in the Maya and Gulf Coast regions appear at the Patio of the Altars near the Great Pyramid of Cholula. Examples include T forms in taludes, mat motifs in murals, and volutes carved on altars and stelae. At the nearby Patio of the Carved Skulls, Late Classic Cocoyotla ceramics are indicative of Gulf Coast interaction. He finds some supporting evidence in ethnohistoric sources that the Olmeca-Xicallanca may have been the source of foreign traits at Cholula. McCafferty suggests that this group may have come from the Laguna de Terminos in the southern Gulf Coast, the same area that was home to the Putun/Chontal Maya who are sometimes mentioned in conjunction with the Terminal Classic and Chichén Itzá (see the following section). Sources such as the Historia tolteca-chichimeca and chroniclers such as Juan de Torquemada mention that the Olmeca-Xicallanca moved through Cholula, as well as Teotihuacan,

the Mixteca Alta, and the Gulf Coast in periods that are thought to span the Classic-Postclassic eras. The Historia tolteca-chichimeca also includes an illustration of an Olmeca-Xicallanca priest’s palace, which has some similarities to the Patio of the Carved Skulls. Not to be forgotten is the fact that Cholula’s Olmeca-Xicallanca Epiclassicperiod rulers were devotees of the Quetzalcoatl cult (as were those of Cacaxtla, where feathered serpent imagery is prominent), and that Cholula was a center of a Quetzalcoatl cult in the sixteenth century.

Conceptualizing Culture History at Chichén Itzá: Chronology and Process Creating a convincing cultural-historical framework that would explain the architectural, artistic, and iconographic parallels between Chichén Itzá and Tula has been a recurring project, although the contours and content of such frameworks have changed over time. In broad terms, the change has involved a gradual movement from interpreting such similarities as the result of “Toltec” expansion and aggression, with Tula the donor and Chichén the recipient, to a recognition that the relationship and resemblances between these two “sister cities” can be accounted for as the result of elite interaction, trade, and the adoption of common symbol systems and vocabularies of power, with Chichén Itzá’s rulers actively and deliberately integrating and synthesizing art forms and iconographies from various regions of Mesoamerica (including Tula), rather than simply having such innovations forced on them in the aftermath of military defeat. Beginning in 1923, Sylvanus G. Morley and his colleagues from the Carnegie Institution of Washington project made Chichén Itzá the focus of the first large-scale, systematic excavations in the Maya area. Morley’s (1946:77, 84) reconstruction of Maya history viewed the Puuc-related structures at Chichén Itzá, along with the Puuc cities of Yucatan, as pertaining to the “New Empire” founded by the remnants of the populations fleeing the destruction of the earlier “Old Empire,” which

had flourished at Classic-period cities of the southern lowlands. The “Toltec-Maya” buildings and art forms were interpreted as evidence for the eventual occupation of Chichén Itzá in the Katun 4 Ajaw (ad 968–987) by the Itzá, who were believed to have been of “central Mexican highland origin” but who had then settled in southwestern Campeche (a precursor of Thompson’s “Putun Hypothesis”). Although Morley identified a “strong architectural influence from the highlands of central Mexico (Tula in the state of Hidalgo)” at Chichén Itzá, he acknowledged that it was uncertain whether the “Itzá-Mexican reoccupation of Chichén Itzá was peaceful or whether it was effected by conquest” (Morley 1946:77, 84). In his 1956 revision of Morley’s The Ancient Maya, however, George Brainerd replaced this ambivalence by a straightforward account of a conquest of Chichén Itzá by the Tula Toltecs, led by Quetzalcoatl, the exiled king of Tula (Morley 1956:79–90). He interpreted the strong architectural and sculptural similarities between the two sites as proof that “the Toltecs conquered the native Maya, and that they brought priests who used the iconography of their religion and the paraphernalia necessary for its ritual” (Morley 1956:85). While Morley’s book (and Brainerd’s revision of it) had a powerful impact on public consciousness about Chichén Itzá, Alfred M. Tozzer exerted greater influence on concepts of Chichén Itzá’s role in northern Maya culture history among professional archaeologists. In his influential article “Maya and Toltec Figures at Chichén Itzá” (1930), he interpreted the distinctive differences in costume and insignia as evidence for two principal ethnic groups at the site: the Maya, identifiable by animal or deity effigy headdresses with longer plumage and the use of longer spears; and the Toltec, identifiable by pillbox helmets, bird or butterfly breast ornaments, and the use of atlatl and darts (an ensemble we will refer to as the “Toltec Military Outfit”). Based on the martial and sacrificial iconography involving scenes of “Toltec” defeating Maya in the murals of the Upper Temple of the Jaguars (Figure 7) and on the golden disks dredged from the Sacred Cenote (Figure 8), Tozzer viewed the Toltecs as victorious warriors Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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who had defeated the local Maya and founded their new capital at Chichén Itzá. Tozzer expanded his arguments in his magnum opus, Chichén Itzá and its Cenote of Sacrifice. According to Tozzer’s (1941, 1957) scheme, Chichén architectural chronology was divided into two principal periods (although the entire site occupation was subdivided into five chronological phases). The first of these, known as “ChichénMaya,” was associated with Puuc-like buildings (Figure 9), and was considered roughly contemporaneous with the Late Classic period in the south and with the florescence of Puuc architecture in northwest Yucatan. In addition to being termed “Chichén-Maya,” these buildings also have been referred to as Yucatec Maya (Cohodas 1978a, 1978b) and Pure Florescent (Andrews 1965). Tozzer and other scholars, such as J. Eric Thompson (1945), George Brainerd (1958), and E. Wyllys Andrews IV (1965), interpreted such Chichén-Maya buildings as evidence for an earlier, purely Maya occupation at the site. Since such architecture resembled buildings associated with Florescent or Cehpech complex ceramics (e.g., slatewares, redwares, etc.) in the Puuc region, it was assumed that closely related slatewares and redwares at Chichén Itzá defined a local variant of the Cehpech ceramic complex dating to ca. ad 750–987 (Brainerd 1958) or ca. ad 800–1000 (Smith 1971). Tozzer contrasted Chichén-Maya structures with those constructed in a “Toltec-Maya” style, or what others have identified as Chichén-Toltec (Cohodas 1978a, 1978b) or Modified Florescent style (Andrews 1965) (see Figures 1, 5, 6). Wren and Schmidt (1991:202) note that these “are frequently structures with one or two chambers set on steep pyramids. The interior spaces are often divided by rows of columns linked by wooden lintels supporting corbeled arches. The surfaces are decorated by motifs found at Tula including columns carved as serpents and atlantean figures, low-relief carvings on columns and daises, images of skeletal figures, jaguars and eagles, and chac mool figures” (see the list of traits at the beginning of this chapter). Although Maya hieroglyphic texts were associated with a few Toltec-Maya buildings and/or 14

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sculptures (e.g., the Osario [High Priest’s Grave], Thompson and Thompson 1938:59; the Caracol, Ruppert 1935; and Structure 3E1, Proskouriakoff 1970), the general absence of such inscriptions on the major Toltec-Maya structures, such as the Castillo, the Temple of the Warriors, and the Great Ballcourt (located on the Great Terrace in the northern sector of the site), led to the notion that the predominantly Chichén-Maya–style buildings in the southern portion of the site (“Old Chichén”) were spatially separate from, and chronologically prior to, the Toltec-Maya edifices in the north, which were generally presumed to date to the Early Postclassic period (i.e., ca. ad 950 or after). Tozzer’s formulations had an immense impact on the interpretation of Chichén archaeology and culture history. By positing the existence of two distinctive, conflicting ethnic groups at the site, and by assuming that the Chichén-Maya and Toltec-Maya buildings and artworks at the site were both spatially discrete and chronologically sequent, he marshaled evidence for an episode of cultural and aesthetic disjunction so profound that many felt it could only be accounted for by the wholesale importation and forced adoption of new forms as the result of the conquest of local Maya by foreign intruders from Tula. Ethnohistorical sources were considered to provide strong support for this interpretation. Because an individual named K’uk’ulkan (“Quetzal Snake” or “Feathered Serpent”) is said to have arrived and governed at Chichén Itzá approximately contemporaneously with the group(s) known as the Itzá (Tozzer 1941:22–23n124), and because the name K’uk’ulkan corresponds to the name of the central Mexican culture hero and apotheosized ruler of Tula, Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl, several scholars interpreted the story of K’uk’ulkan’s arrival in northern Yucatan and his “establishment” of the city of Chichén Itzá as a more or less straightforward and dependable historical account of the arrival of a foreign Tula “Toltec” king at Chichén Itzá (Coe 1966:118–128; Jiménez Moreno 1941; Morley 1956:79–90). Furthermore, since many of the architectural traits, sculptural forms, and iconographic motifs

a

b

figure 7 a) Mural painting from the southwest wall of the inner chamber of the Upper Temple of the Jaguars, Chichén Itzá, adjacent to a doorway with sculptured jambs and a carved wooden lintel with paired figures associated with the sun disk and the feathered serpent (Coggins and Shane 1984:figs. 205–206); and b) drawing of the upper panel of the mural painting from the southwest wall of the inner chamber of the Upper Temple of the Jaguars, Chichén Itzá (Tozzer 1957:fig. 60).

Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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figure 8 Gold Disk F from the Sacred Cenote (after Lothrop 1952:fig. 34).

that Chichén Itzá shared with Tula did not seem to have clear precedents in the Classic Maya tradition, their appearance at Chichén Itzá as a coherent complex of features was viewed as convincing evidence that Tula was the active donor of such forms and symbols, while Chichén Itzá was the passive recipient. In light of the emphasis on warrior images and iconography (e.g., fifteen-foothigh telamon sculptures on Pyramid B; “warrior order” animal patrons such as eagles, jaguars, and coyotes; and sacrificial images) discovered at Tula as a result of the INAH archaeological excavation and reconstruction carried out by Acosta from the 1940s through the 1960s, the most commonly held view was that Toltec warriors from central Mexico, led by Quetzalcoatl, arrived in Yucatan, attacked and defeated the local Maya already inhabiting the Chichén-Maya–phase structures at Chichén Itzá, and then compelled local Maya masons, sculptors, and artists to recreate versions of Tula’s architecture and art (albeit with some local modifications and stylistic differences). E. Wyllys Andrews V and Jeremy Sabloff (1986:434) note that the Toltec conquest model was premised on a regional 16

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reconstruction of culture history holding that the Puuc or Puuc-related architectural style, both in the Puuc hills and on the northern plains, dates to the Late and Terminal Classic period (ca. ad 750– 900/950) and that Toltec-influenced architecture at Chichén Itzá dates to the Early Postclassic period (after ad 900/950), without any substantial overlap in time. The Toltec conquest model has had a longlasting impact on the interpretation of northern Maya archaeology and culture history (Lincoln 1990:xxxiv), and prior to the 1970s it was the most widely accepted reconstruction of events in northern Yucatan and the dominant hypothesis to account for the similarities between Tula and Chichén Itzá (Andrews and Sabloff 1986:434). But it has never been accepted by all scholars, and its underlying assumptions have been challenged periodically. During the 1940s and 1950s, scholars such as Tatiana Proskouriakoff (1950, 1951), Samuel Lothrop (1952), and Robert Rands (1954) pointed out weak links in the argument. Proskouriakoff noted that some of the sculptural formats, stylistic qualities, and iconographic themes and elements

figure 9 The Temple of the Three Lintels, a Puuc-related Chichén-Maya structure at Chichén Itzá (after Ruppert 1952:fig. 149a).

classified as Toltec at Chichén Itzá are also found in the late sculptures of Puuc region sites such as Uxmal, Kabah, Halakal, Oxkintok, and Edzna, suggesting that Toltecs either were present in or had established contacts with these groups in Yucatan for some time before they dominated Chichén Itzá. Lothrop (1952) pointed out that “Mexican” and Maya motifs mingle on the golden disks dredged from the Sacred Cenote (Figure 8), while Rands (1954) observed that various important Classic Maya iconographic motifs, such as the water-lily complex, survived at Chichén Itzá and formed part of even putatively “Toltec”-period sculptural compositions, such as that in the Lower Temple of the Jaguars (see further discussion of Maya iconography in the Great Ballcourt in Kowalski, this volume). In his important essay “Chichén Itzá y Tula,” George Kubler (1961) pointed out various instances

in which so-called Toltec buildings and art forms at Chichén Itzá had Maya precedents. In addition, he noted that Chichén Itzá’s architecture and art actually were more sophisticated and cosmopolitan than Tula's, and that they demonstrated contact with a much wider range of Mesoamerican cities and regional aesthetic and iconographic traditions than that of Tula alone. As a result, he suggested that Chichén Itzá may have been the creative hearth for Toltec-Maya architecture and art, while Tula had the appearance of a “frontier garrison” town. When they were proposed, Kubler’s ideas met with little success among most archaeologists—Alberto Ruz Lhuillier (1962) wrote a rejoinder in which many of Kubler’s assertions were refuted with counter-evidence—but they have continued to challenge the orthodox explanation. Various contributors to this volume (e.g., Schmidt, Kowalski, and Bey and Ringle) present Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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evidence that reinforces the notion that Chichén Itzá’s architecture and art feature syncretistic combinations of more traditional Maya, Tula-related, and other Mesoamerican forms and motifs; Bey and Ringle, in particular, argue that many socalled Toltec motifs actually appear earlier at Chichén Itzá than at Tula. On the basis of his excavations at Bilbao, Guatemala, and his chronological placement of many examples of Cotzumalhuapan sculpture, several of which feature ballgame and sacrificial iconography reminiscent of that at Chichén Itzá, Lee Parsons (1969–1971) proposed that much of Chichén Itzá’s Toltec-Maya architecture and art was created during the late phase of a proposed Middle Classic period (ca. ad 550–700), thus predating comparable buildings and sculptures at Tula. Focusing his investigations on the Great Ballcourt at Chichén Itzá and building his argument on evidence for ballcourts predating Chichén-Maya buildings like the Monjas or the Red House, Cohodas (1978a, 1978b) likewise asserted that several of Chichén Itzá’s Toltec-Maya buildings and sculptures were of Middle Classic date (ca. ad 600–700). Esther Pasztory (1978a, 1978b), in synthetic essays on culture history and artistic trends during the Middle Classic period, expressed her acceptance of this substantially earlier dating for Chichén Itzá. Also claiming Chichén priority has been Mary Miller (1985), who argued that the distinctive Toltec-Maya sculptural form known as the chacmool represented a transformation of earlier Maya captive figures, rather than being an importation from Tula (see also Miller and Samoya 1998). Peter Schmidt, in this volume, disusses a recently recontextualized chacmool that may provide some support for this idea. As an alternative to the Toltec conquest model, J. Eric S. Thompson (1970) developed what came to be known as the “Putun Hypothesis,” proposing that the ancestors of the Late Postclassic Acalan Chontal (whom he referred to collectively as the Putun) were the principal group(s) responsible for the introduction of non-Classic and “Mexican” elements in the art and architecture of Chichén Itzá in northern Yucatan. Similar suggestions 18

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had been made previously (Scholes and Roys 1968; Thompson 1945; Tozzer 1941:20–22n123), but Thompson’s 1970 essay gave them their fullest expression. Specifically, Thompson proposed that in ad 918 a branch of the Putun, who were referred to collectively as the Itzá in Yucatan, began an invasion of northern Yucatan via the port of P’ole, lying opposite Cozumel Island. They then moved inland, conquering a number of centers (including Cetelac, identified as the site of Yaxuna; see Freidel, this volume, for evidence of Chichén Itzá’s role in the conquest of Yaxuna), and finally occuping and assuming rulership of Chichén Itzá, which became their capital and from which they maintained contacts with their kinsmen still located in southwestern Campeche. According to Thompson, the establishment of a Putun/Itzá–dominated trade network linking northern Yucatan, the Gulf Coast, and central Mexico enabled Quetzalcoatl/ K’uk’ulkan and his followers, who were fleeing from Tula, to settle at Chichén Itzá in about ad 987, when even stronger Mexican influences were introduced. He also argued that, beginning in about ad 730–750, related groups of Chontal-speaking Putun Maya penetrated various Peten sites, such as Altar de Sacrificios, Seibal, and Ucanal, where they appear in the monumental art with non-Classic Maya physiognomic features and were associated with the introduction of distinctive fine-orange ceramics and various non-Classic Maya elements, such as depictions of bird-beaked Ehécatl figures, atlatl dart-throwers, and Mexicanized glyphs. Subsequent scholarship has modified aspects of Thompson’s model, while generally accepting the notion that the Chontalpa region was occupied by a medley of Chontal-speaking and Nahuatl-speaking groups during the Terminal Classic and Early Postclassic periods, that it served as an important nexus for the exchange of goods and ideas, and that it may have served as a point of departure for the outward movement of various “Mexicanized-Maya” groups during this time (Andrews and Robles Castellanos 1985; Ball 1974; Kowalski 1989; McVicker 1985; Ochoa and Vargas 1979). Some, however, have been more critical of Thompson’s model, noting that it contains

various factual errors or misinterpretations. For example, Thompson’s proposed ad 918 date for a Putun-Itzá occupation of Chichén Itzá now seems untenable, since recognizable Itzá leaders and family names (i.e., K’ak’upakal, Kokom, etc.) appear in various inscriptions dated to about ad 860 to 890 (Grube 1994; Kelley 1982; Ringle 1990). Jürgen Kremer (1994) demonstrated that Thompson’s identification of the Itzá as the “Putun” is quite circumstantial, and recently Linda Schele and Peter Mathews (1998:ch. 6) have argued that the Itzá actually stemmed from a homeland in the Peten lakes region, the place where they returned to found their island capital of Tayasal following their abandonment of Chichén Itzá in about 1450. Further, the non-Classic influences in Seibal’s art are no longer viewed as evidence of an incursion by Gulf Coast foreigners. Inscriptions indicate that Seibal’s mid-ninth-century ruler, Wat’ul Chatel, was sent there by a ruler from Ucanal (Schele and Mathews 1998:175–196), and is not from the Gulf Coast. Nevertheless, the plethora of non-Classic iconography seen on the Seibal’s late ninth–early tenth-century monuments, and the presence of a round temple (Structure 79), indicate that Seibal maintained important trade connections, and perhaps diplomatic contacts, with the Gulf Coast and northern Yucatan, probably including Chichén Itzá (Tourtellot and González 2004 provide a recent overview). Although most scholars working with northern Maya materials have not been willing to accept as early a date for Chichén Itzá’s first significant occupation as Parsons, Cohodas, and Pasztory propose, it is now generally accepted that there was a significant chronological overlap between Chichén Itzá and other powerful northern Maya centers, such as Uxmal and the Puuc cities, and Coba in the east. Regarding this question, Bey et al. (1997:237) have noted: The interpretation of northern Maya cultural chronology has undergone dramatic changes in the last decade with increased fieldwork across the peninsula [Andrews et al. 1989; Andrews et al. 1988; Andrews and Sabloff 1986; Barrera Rubio

1988; Barrera Rubio et al. 1988; Gallareta Negrón 1989; Gallareta Negrón et al. 1989; Lincoln 1990; Ringle et al. 1991a, 1991b]. Data from projects at Isla Cerritos, Uxmal, Chichén Itzá, Ek Balam, and the Cupul survey area, and reanalysis of earlier materials, have provoked new interpretations of several persistent problems in northern Yucatecan prehistory (Andrews and Sabloff 1986:434). One of the most important problems concerns the degree of temporal overlap between Chichén Itzá and the major Late Classic sites of the peninsula (Ball 1979; Robles Castellanos 1990). Ethnohistorical sources suggested to earlier scholars that the “Toltec” occupation at Chichén Itzá began in the Early Postclassic and that it was not contemporaneous with these Late Classic sites (Roys 1962; Tozzer 1957). Recent archaeological opinion downplays a later “Toltec” occupation and posits substantial overlap with these sites (Ringle et al. 1991a, 1991b). It is no longer novel to suggest a degree of contemporaneity between occupation of Puuc sites and Toltec Chichén Itzá; researchers in Yucatan now debate only the duration and significance of the overlap. (Kurjack et al. 1991:158)

Perhaps the most radical version of a “total overlap” was that proposed by Charles Lincoln (1986, 1990). Pointing out that Cehpech and Sotuta ceramics cannot be separated stratigraphically at Chichén Itzá, and that both Chichén-Maya and Toltec-Maya structures are regularly combined in architectural complexes throughout basically a Maya city plan in which a system of sacbeob (“white roads” or causeways) branches out from the North Terrace (see Schmidt, this volume, and Cobos, this volume; Andrews 1975:20; Cohodas 1989:227), he argued that Chichén Itzá was a wholly Maya site, whose unique features could be explained on the basis of a local cultural evolution rather than as the result of a Tula Toltec invasion from central Mexico. He further argued that the evidence supported a “total overlap” between Chichén Itzá and the Puuc sites (Lincoln 1990:7–8). Defining the precise length and nature of the overlap continues to be a challenge. Some earlier and more recent synthetic discussions of the Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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question of the length and nature of Chichén Itzá’s occupation and the processes involved in its demise appear in Andrews and Sabloff (1986), Andrews (1990), Andrews et al. (2003), and Demarest et al. (2004). Interpretations tend to fall into two camps. One point of view sees Chichén Itzá as the capital of an expansionistic and hegemonic tribute state (what Ball [1994] called an “administrative city”) that defeated various competitors (e.g., Uxmal, Yaxuna and Coba, Izamal) militarily during the late ninth through tenth century and emerged as the virtually unchallenged political power that controlled peninsular coastal trade at least through the eleventh century (e.g., Carmean et al. 2004; Schele and Freidel 1990; Suhler et al. 2004). Several of the contributors to The Postclassic Mesoamerican World (Smith and Berdan 2003) accept the idea that Chichén Itzá coexisted with other northern Maya polities during the Terminal Classic period, but argue that it continued to be an important regional capital during the Early Postclassic period, during which time its relationship with Tula was at its most intense. This interpretation depends on acceptance of what Michael E. Smith (this volume) terms a “long chronology,” and generally places the breakup of the Chichén Itzá and Tula polities in the twelfth century. Another viewpoint considers Chichén Itzá’s regional dominance to have been more limited and its elite occupation to be largely coeval with that of polities in the Puuc region and at Ek Balam. Chichén’s major architecture and monumental art (including the principal Toltec-Maya structures on the North Terrace) were completed by the late tenth to early eleventh century and elite administration disintegrated by ad 1000–1050 (Cobos 2004; Ringle et al. 1998:189; Ringle et al. 2004). Andrews et al. (2003) summarize the evidence that places the demise of Chichén Itzá in the eleventh century, and view its fall as the last link in a chain of interrelated events and social processes that began with the collapse of elite culture in southern Maya cities by around ad 900 and culminated in the disintegration of northern Maya polities within about a 100- to 150-year period thereafter. Based on this model, which corresponds roughly to what Smith (this volume) terms a “short chronology,” they 20

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propose that the period of Chichén Itzá’s occupation represents a continuation of the Terminal Classic period rather than a wholly separate Early Postclassic period. Scholars accepting this model tend to deemphasize Chichén Itzá’s links to Tula, or suggest that various “Toltec” traits originated at Chichén Itzá prior to appearing at Tula. The differences among the interpretations of individual scholars are, of course, more varied and subtle than this dichotomous comparison suggests, but it can be used as a heuristic device for discussing issues of chronology and cultural process involved in the rise and fall of Chichén Itza and Tula, and the nature of their relationship with each other and with other Mesoamerican regions and capitals. In discussing whether Chichén Itzá represents an Epiclassic/Terminal Classic versus an Early Postclassic site, we are actually asking two questions. One of these pertains to chronology, while the other pertains to broader processual issues. The chronological question is whether Chichén Itzá flourished substantially between ad 800 and ad 1050, in which case its elite occupation would correspond roughly to that of the Terminal Classic period as defined by Robert Smith (1971), or whether it continued to thrive until the late eleventh or twelfth century, in which case its later occupation would fall within the Early Postclassic period. The broader question involves determining whether the historical circumstances and social processes that led to the rise, growth, and consolidation of Chichén Itzá’s power can be explained as a continuation of those that were involved in the southern Classic Maya region (as can those of the Puuc cities, Ek Balam, or Coba, to a greater or lesser degree), or whether there is evidence that its political organization, the nature of its involvement in long-distance trade, and the degree to which the number and type of foreign influences found in its visual culture indicate that Chichén Itzá represents a significant break with the Classic Maya cultural tradition. Related to this is the question of whether Chichén Itzá was occupied for a substantial time following the disintegration of elite authority and the cessation of monumental construction at other centers such as Uxmal and

the Puuc sites, Ek Balam, or Coba, and whether Chichén Itzá’s expansion was directly involved in the decline of other northern Maya cities. Andrews et al. (2003:153) have recently argued for the first point of view. While they note that Chichén’s political system may have differed somewhat from that of southern Classic Maya cities, and that its art style reflects more cosmopolitan contact with other regions of Mesoamerica, they nevertheless conclude that “Chichén Itzá is now correctly viewed as a Late Classic Maya capital— it can no longer be seen as representing a major break with the Classic past and the beginning of a new Postclassic era. Its demise was the product of the same processes that characterized the end of the Classic horizon . . .” This stands in contrast to the interpretations of several of the contributors to The Postclassic Mesoamerican World (Smith and Berdan 2003). In outlining their general conceptual paradigm for the study of the Mesoamerican Postclassic period, Michael E. Smith and Frances Berdan (2003) note that it involved significant social, political, economic, ideological, and artistic reorientations in response to the breakup of Classic civilizations (e.g., Teotihuacan, Monte Alban, the southern Maya city states) and that it was characterized by “two broad cycles of expansion and diversification of long-distance trade and communication that engulfed the entire area of Mesoamerica” (Smith and Berdan 2003:4). The first stage in this process took place during both the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic periods. Like many others, they see the Epiclassic period as the time from the seventh through tenth centuries (Diehl and Berlo 1989), when “most of Mesoamerica outside the Maya area—saw new patterns of connections among regions” (Diehl and Berlo 1989:4). Such connections involved the formation of new trade networks, and, to different degrees, the sharing of art forms and iconographic elements, perhaps reflecting the adoption of a common Quetzalcoatl cult by elites at the various regional centers that emerged in the wake of Teotihuacan’s decline. Although they note that Tula and Chichén Itzá emerged during the Epiclassic period, they assert

that they also survived to thrive as the dominant powers in the Early Postclassic period. The contributors to this volume have added new evidence and fresh perspectives to this discussion, although with sometimes conflicting interpretations. Nikolai Grube and Ruth Krochock provide evidence regarding Chichén Itzá’s relationship with its neighbors, particularly the important center of Ek Balam. Ek Balam has the largest corpus of hieroglyphic inscriptions in the northern lowlands, and the fact that its rulers identify themselves as divine kings using the k’uhul ajaw title in a local emblem glyph indicates that the site was affiliated with the cultural traditions of the southern lowlands. There is a slight overlap between Ek Balam’s latest stela (Stela 1, ad 841) and the earliest date from the Temple of the Hieroglyphic Jambs (ad 832) at Chichén Itzá, but much of Ek Balam’s occupation seems to predate this time, while Chichén Itzá’s dramatic ascendancy seems to largely postdate it. Schmidt’s new excavations demonstrate that although there are some Late Preclassic and Proto-Pizarra (Proto-Slate, i.e., Late Classic) ceramics in early contexts in a few structures, there apparently was a quite small occupation at Chichén Itzá prior to ad 800–850. Although there was a limited overlap between dated monuments at Chichén Itzá and Ek Balam, Grube and Krochock note that the historical personage K’inich Jun Pik To’ok’ (formerly written as Hunpiktok), who is associated with the Ek Balam emblem glyph, is mentioned with K’ak’upakal of Chichén Itzá and the local lord of Halakal on a lintel dated to ad 870, as well as with K’ak’upakal and a Kokom lord on the Red House (Casa Colorada) lintel dated to ad 870. This suggests that Ek Balam was still an independent polity at this time, but archaeological evidence for the disintegration of its centralized political power during the late ninth century, followed by a somewhat disjunctive settlement by inhabitants occupying rather shoddily constructed structures with C-shaped ground plans (Bey et al. 1997) indicate that it succumbed as a major political power earlier than Chichén Itzá. The fact that Ek Balam is a walled center suggests that its demise could be the result of an Itzá Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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invasion, although evidence for an actual attack is lacking, and the authority of local rulers at the site may have collapsed as the Itzá cut off its access to coastal trade (see Ringle et al. 2004). Kowalski’s chapter relates to the “overlap” question by noting that the strongest evidence for iconographic exchange between Uxmal and Chichén Itzá occurs during the late ninth–early tenth-century reign of “Lord Chaak,” when a warrior with an atlatl and shield like those seen at Chichén Itzá appears on Uxmal Stela 14 and when distinctive architectural forms (i.e., the round temple, Structure 52) and architectural sculptures (i.e., the feathered serpent sculptures on the West Structure of the Nunnery Quadrangle and the Main Ballcourt) appear. Dunning and Kowalski (1994; Kowalski and Dunning 1999) have proposed that Uxmal’s ruler formed a political and military alliance with Chichén Itzá during the late ninth century in order to consolidate power as the capital of a regional state. However, this period of rapid expansion was relatively short lived, and appears to have been followed by the mid-tenth century by a disintegration of political authority, indicated by the appearance of intrusive, shoddily built C-shaped structures at the site. The causes for the collapse of centralized power at Uxmal and other Puuc centers are disputed. Some have attributed their decline to a combination of population pressure and climatic change, while others see the abrupt abandonment of architectural projects at Puuc sites as evidence for a violent overthrow of its principal cities, a military effort most likely organized by Chichén Itzá (Kowalski 2003; Reindel 1998). David Freidel’s chapter presents evidence illustrating how the rise of Itzá power affected the fortunes of the neighboring site of Yaxuna, arguing that it was conquered militarily to break the power of a competing regional state controlled by Coba. Clearly affiliated with Coba during the Late Classic period and linked to it via a sixty-two-mile-long sacbé, during the Terminal Classic period, Yaxuna apparently came into conflict with some of the Puuc polities, and groups of Puuc people occupied the site, demonstrated by the construction of Puuc-style palaces on the North Acropolis and 22

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Southeastern Acropolis. The shifting Puuc-Coba connections reflect Yaxuna’s continuing importance as a center considered an important prize in regional contests for power. Whatever the nature of these Yaxuna-Coba-Puuc connections or alliances, they do not seem to have been able to preserve Yaxuna’s independence. The remnants of fortifications found on the North Acropolis at Yaxuna and at the smaller acropolis at Xkanha make it clear that the site undertook significant efforts to defend itself against military attacks during the Terminal Classic period, while the presence of significant amounts of Sotuta ceramics in termination deposits amid the debris of various deliberately destroyed structures at the site supports the idea that it was defeated militarily by Chichén Itzá armies, after which it ceased to be an important settlement. Yaxuna is among a substantial number of Terminal Classic-period walled sites in the northern Maya region (e.g., Uxmal, Chacchob, Cuca, Aké, Ek Balam, Chunchucmil; see Ringle et al. 2004:506–511; Webster 1978). Although such walls may have served a symbolic function to demarcate civic-ceremonial cores in some cases (e.g., Uxmal, Ek Balam), they also seem to have been built for military defense during a time of intensified interregional competition and warfare. Freidel notes that murals in the Upper Temple of the Jaguars and the second story of the Monjas at Chichen Itzá depict Itzá military victories over other Yucatan walled cities, although it is not certain whether these scenes show the conquest of Yaxuna. He posits that Itzá armies used the CobaYaxuna causeway to drive the attack to Coba itself, whose defenders threw up stone barricades along the causeway as they fought holding actions. The evidence for the direct defeat of Coba by Chichén Itzá is more tenuous than that for the conquest of Yaxuna, but Freidel nevertheless presents persuasive evidence that Chichén Itzá’s rise was achieved, at least in part, through the use of conquest warfare waged to weaken and ultimately to break the power of its major competitors, permitting it to emerge as the dominant political, military, and commercial power in the northern Maya area. Returning to the question of the chronology, Schmidt’s investigations suggest that there was a

scant Late Classic occupation at Chichén Itzá, but that intensified population growth and monumental construction began only during the ninth century. The majority of the dated inscriptions at the site fall between ad 869 and ad 890, corresponding to the period of K’ak’upakal’s paramountcy, with a somewhat earlier date of ad 832 found at the Temple of the Hieroglyphic Jambs and a much later date of ad 998 associated with the Osario or High Priest’s Grave (see Grube and Krochock, this volume). Schmidt interprets the latter date as evidence that substantial monumental construction continued at Chichén Itzá until ad 1000. He accepts the late date as contemporaneous with the construction of most of the structures in the Osario Group, but views the substantial quantities of both Sotuta and later Hocaba-related ceramics, as well as the presence of a later building (Structure 3C4) on the Osario Group platform, as evidence that the architectural group remained in use after ad 1000, providing some evidence that Chichén Itzá remained an important economic and political center for a considerable time through the eleventh century. Because Cobos favors a “short chronology” for Chichén Itzá, he interprets the Osario itself as of earlier tenth-century date and its ad 998 pillar as a reset monument, while the more shoddy and “decadent” Structure 3C4 marked the final stage of occupation between ad 1000 and 1050. Cobos (this volume) interprets the evidence from the results of his recent survey and mapping work, an analysis of ceramics, and his understanding of the site’s epigraphic evidence, to propose that the architectural “center of gravity” at Chichén Itzá shifted from “Old Chichén” (with the Monjas as the dominant focus during the late ninth century) to “New Chichén” (i.e., the monumental Toltec-Maya buildings of the North Platform or Gran Nivelación) during the tenth century and somewhat thereafter. He takes issue with Lincoln’s interpretation of Chichén Itzá as a completely contemporaneous settlement, whose architectural and art styles represent a completely homogeneous and localized development, but with formal and symbolic differences that “did not originate in distinct time-horizons, but in synchronous divisions of labor and social roles.”

Cobos’s analysis of ceramics from Lincoln’s test excavations and the recent INAH Chichén project reveals changes in the percentages of types of pottery found, suggesting that it is possible to define early and late phases of the Sotuta complex corresponding to early and late phases of occupation. It is noteworthy that certain specialized ceramic types (e.g., hourglass censers and Tohil Plumbate ware) that he considers diagnostics of the late Sotuta phase at Chichén also form part of the Tollan-phase ceramic complex at Tula (Mastache et al. 2002:46–50) and are part of the artifact assemblage that define Richard Diehl’s Toltec Horizon (1993). Their appearance in the late facet of the Sotuta complex is consistent with Bey and Ringle’s observation (this volume) that later structures on the North Terrace at Chichén Itzá have the greatest correspondence in plan and iconography with those of the major Tollan phase edifices of Tula Grande. Cobos supports his ideas about the expansion of the site center on the North Terrace after ad 900 with radiocarbon dates that place the Castillo at around ad 890 and with stratigraphic evidence that indicates that the Temple of the Warriors was built sometime thereafter. His proposal that the Inner Castillo was built sometime during the principal period of inscriptional dates (i.e., ad 834–890) conforms to that of Bey and Ringle (this volume) based on their careful review of architectural stratigraphy, but cannot be verified by inscriptional dating. His placement of the Temple of the Chacmool coeval with the Inner Castillo, however, is at odds with that of Bey and Ringle (this volume). Bey and Ringle (this volume) discuss two separate but complementary categories of evidence, ceramics and architectural stratigraphy, to shed light on the nature and timing of the Tula– Chichén Itzá contact and exchange. Their analysis of ceramics indicates that the strongest contacts are associated with the Tollan complex at Tula and the Sotuta complex at Chichén Itzá. Evidence for ceramic interaction at Tula begins during the Terminal Corral–Early Tollan transition (ca. ad 850–900), “most likely before the development of the full panoply of sculptural and architectural Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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traits associated with classic Tula Grande.” Exchange apparently flowed in both directions, with some Tula wares reflecting inspiration from either Sotuta or larger Cehpech sphere models, but with comales and molcajetes at Chichén Itzá apparently inspired by highland examples, and with red-banded grater bowls at Chichén Itzá specifically linked to Macana Red-on-Brown vessels from Tula. It is noteworthy that such Tula-specific influences were restricted to Chichén Itzá in the Northern Maya Lowlands. The import tradeware, Tohil Plumbate, also appears in considerable quantity at both Tula and Chichén Itzá, primarily during the Tollan phase at Tula, and as a marker of what Cobos defines as a late facet of the Sotuta complex at Chichén. According to Bey and Ringle, the “pattern of tradewares certainly places contact after ad 850, but unfortunately most are longlived enough to provide little aid in pinpointing the exact time(s) of impact.” Bey and Ringle propose a convincing architectural seriation and relative chronology for several of the major structures on the North Terrace, principally based upon the three floors in a series of six soundings between the Castillo and the Temple of the Warriors Complex. Evidently the Inner Castillo was built first, followed by the Castillo. The Temple of the Chacmool postdates the Castillo, although since its terrace molding and caches are similar they may have been close in date. The Temple of the Chacmool apparently was used for a short time, since it only has 15 replasterings, but the subsequent Temple of the Warriors was clearly used and maintained for a longer time, judging from its 131 coats of plaster. Unfortunately, none of these major structures bears a hieroglyphic date. The closest thing to a chronological linchpin are the radiocarbon dates associated with the lintel from the Castillo, the midpoints of which fall at about ad 890 (see Ringle et al. 1998:191, table 1). Thus, their interpretation accords with Cobos’s view that there was only a modest architectural assemblage on the North Terrace at the time the Monjas was constructed, but that the construction of monumental buildings in that area increased dramatically after about ad 900. 24

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How does the Chichén Itzá chronology, which admittedly is still imperfect and disputed (particularly the date of its demise), correlate with that at Tula? At Tula, evidence from various archaeological projects has produced a generally accepted chronology with two Epiclassic phases (Prado, ad 650–750, and Corral, ad 750–900), an Early Postclassic phase (Tollan, ad 900–1150), and two later phases with Aztec ceramics (Fuego and Palacio) (Mastache et al. 2002:ch. 3). As Smith (this volume) notes, general consensus among archaeologists working in central Mexico is that Epiclassic Tula was a “small settlement with modest public architecture concentrated at the location known as Tula Chico,” and that the major urban expansion and interregional interaction at the site occurred during the Tollan phase, when the principal structures of Tula Grande were built. This results in an occupation for “Toltec” Tula that scarcely overlaps the “short chronology” for Chichén Itzá. However, Smith notes the tenuous nature of this chronology, based on a scattering of radiocarbon dates and incompletely published reports, while indicating some recent evidence pointing to an earlier placement for the Mazapan phase in central Mexico (and by extension the Tollan phase) between ad 800 and 1000 (Cowgill 1996, 2000). Smith also notes that Osvaldo Sterpone’s excavations at Tula Grande have uncovered substructural levels of construction associated with an early facet of the Tollan ceramic complex and radiocarbon dates suggesting that architectural activity had begun at Tula Grande by ad 700–950. If more detailed publication of his results confirm this, it would accord with George L. Cowgill’s ideas, and would have a significant impact on conceptions of Tula’s role in Mesoamerican prehistory, perhaps transforming it from the only major central Mexican urban capital during the Early Postclassic period to merely one of a number of contemporary and competing Epiclassic centers. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere between these extremes. The evidence that Tula Chico’s ceremonial center is, to some degree, a smaller model of Tula Grande, coupled with Sterpone’s evidence for significant pre-Tollan–phase construction at Tula Grande, indicate that the site was emerging as

a significant regional center during the Epiclassic period (see Kowalski, this volume). But as Bey and Ringle discuss in this volume, the major expansion of monumental architecture adorned with sculptural programs featuring fully developed “Toltec” iconography coincides with the Tollan phase at Tula, but the major structures on the North Terrace at Chichén Itzá with the greatest parallels to those of Tula also postdate ad 900, making a strong case that some “Toltec” iconographic motifs appear earlier at Chichén Itzá than they do at Tula. Given the suggestions that the Tollan phase may begin somewhat earlier than the generally accepted date of ad 900, we are still left with questions about the developmental sequence at Tula and the nature of its interaction with other Epiclassic central Mexican centers and with Chichén Itzá. As Smith suggests (this volume), the discussion must remain open “until additional fieldwork and analytical research produce a firmer and more widely agreed-upon chronology for Tula.”

Kings and Councilors at Chichén Itzá An important outcome of this volume is a recognition that Chichén Itzá had a more centralized form of government than was posited during the late 1980s and 1990s. Studies of Chichén Itzá’s hieroglyphic inscriptions, coupled with interpretations of its “group”-oriented art style and a retrospective application of a form of group governance known as multepal described for the last days of Mayapan, led several scholars to propose that Chichén Itzá’s political system differed dramatically from that found at Classic Maya centers. Rather than being governed by a paramount divine king, or k’uhul ajaw, Chichén Itzá was considered to have had a government in which collective decision-making was in the hands of a council consisting of local lords and lineage heads who had roughly equal status and power (for overviews, see Grube and Krochock, Kowalski, and Cobos, this volume). Several contributors to this volume contradict this extreme egalitarian model for Chichén Itzá’s political organization, reasserting the idea that the site had a more centralized form of government, with

power centered either in a single paramount ruler or divine king, or possibly shared between a senior and junior ruler. But there is also evidence that the centralized kingship was complemented by a royal advisory council (or councils) of some sort. Nikolai Grube and Ruth Krochock provide new evidence regarding the number of individuals named in the inscriptions and their relationships to one another. Many of the names that Michel Davoust and others originally identified as separate rulers or high-ranking nobles now have been interpreted as the names of deities who are associated with the human protagonists mentioned in the texts or to whom offerings are made as part of the ceremonies carried out within the structure in question. In addition, on the basis of new epigraphic readings for the yitaaj glyph (a former linchpin in the identification of multepal as a “brotherhood” of equals), the concept of an egalitarian conciliar government at Chichén Itzá has been withdrawn. Grube and Krochock note that during the period from ad 869 to 881 K’ak’upakal’s name appears more frequently than that of any other individual, occurring at Chichén Itzá as well as appearing at several outlying centers (Halakal and Yula). Although K’ak’upakal is not named as a divine king using the k’uhul ajaw royal title common at other Classic-period Maya cities (or at northern capitals such as Uxmal or Ek Balam), the fact that his name occurs more frequently, as well as the number and variety of titles coupled with his name, strongly support the idea that he was the site’s paramount ruler during the late ninth century. Cobos notes that work by García Campillo (2001) also identifies K’ak’upakal as the paramount ruler of Chichén Itzá during the late ninth century. But he also asserts that after ad 900 Chichén Itzá was governed by a single high king who bore the title of K’uk’ulkan (Feathered Serpent). He bases his interpretation on a combination of ethnohistoric references from Fray Diego de Landa, who mentions that “with the Itzas, who occupied Chichén Itzá, there reigned a great lord, named Kukulcan” and who associates the site’s “principal building,” the Castillo period, with this ruler (Tozzer 1941:20–22, Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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178–179), and several accounts in the Relaciones histórico-geográficas de la gobernación de Yucatán (Garza 1983:1:182, 200, 216, 305, 411, 426, 440; Roys 1962:52). Further supporting his case is the iconography of the North Temple of the Great Ballcourt, which Wren and Schmidt (1991:216–222; Wren 1994:27–28) have interpreted as a record of the inauguration rituals of a supreme ruler associated with a feathered serpent (among other icons). Kowalski (this volume) suggests it may not be necessary to choose between the concept of centralized kingship versus council-based government. He presents evidence that Chichén Itzá was headed by a paramount divine king assisted by at least one royal council. Based on Grant Jones’s 1998 discussion of the type of divine kingship and royal council found among the Itzá Maya of Tayasal, Kowalski interprets the series of figures on the benches from the Temple of the Chacmool as a council consisting of Batab’ob clad in more “priestly” Maya garments and war captains (Achkatob) wearing a Teotihuacan-derived “Toltec” military costume. These council members face a table altar that was the throne once occupied by the paramount political leader. The notion that such daises and “altars” were seats of royal power is supported by the identification of other iconographic imagery suggestive of centralized rulership at Chichén Itzá, some of which is consonant with a form of “dual kingship” suggested by Lincoln and some of which suggests governance by a supreme divine king as argued by Wren and Cobos. The fact that the Itzá government at Tayasal had both a more powerful senior ruler, and a subordinate junior ruler, provides some support for a modified version of Lincoln’s arguments on behalf of a “dual rulership,” but one in which a single high king wielded greater authority. The arguments for centralized rulership presented in this volume are now complemented by those of Ringle (2004:170), who has proposed that the paired figures of “captain serpent” and “captain sun disk,” whom Lincoln viewed as emblems of dual rulership offices, represent not two contemporary coequal rulers, but the image of the living ruler, associated with the Quetzalcoatl cult and accompanied by its feathered serpent icon, and the 26

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image of an ancestral solar deity who bestowed power and legitimate rule on the Quetzalcoatl lord. He follows Wren and Schmidt (1991) in interpreting the reliefs on the north wall of the North Temple of the Great Ballcourt as investiture ceremonies of a local paramount ruler, and he suggests that the Great Ballcourt itself may have been a location where the king of Chichén Itzá invested rulers from other dependent or affiliated sites with their insignia as well. Although it is likely that centralized power continued to exist in the form of either a single or complementary senior-junior dual kingship at Chichén Itzá (with the highest-ranking lord perhaps bearing the title K’ak’upakal prior to ad 900, and the title K’uk’ulkan thereafter), hieroglyphic texts also indicate that references are made to various other individuals of lordly status, some of whom participate in building dedication rituals (see Grube and Krochock, this volume; Grube 1994; Kelley 1982; Krochock 1991, 1998; Schele and Freidel 1990; Wagner 1995). Further, rather than focusing on the image and deeds of a paramount king, Chichén Itzá’s public art, particularly that of the North Terrace, de-emphasized the image of the ruler, as sculptural and mural programs incorporating more high-ranking members of the community were given prominence (Proskouriakoff 1950:170–172; Schele and Freidel 1990). As David Freidel (this volume) observes, these artistic innovations, coupled with the lack of Maya texts containing traditional dynastic geneaologies in major civic-ceremonial structures of the North Terrace, still indicate that “the patterns in evidence concerning rulership at Chichén, taken all together, are presently unique in the Maya corpus.”

Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Interlinked Political Economies of the Epiclassic-Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World Virtually all investigators now accept the notion that Chichén Itzá’s rise as a regional polity was closely tied to its emergence as a dominant power in interregional trade networks (see Kepecs 2003:262,

and this volume). It is probably fair to say that a majority of scholars working in northern Yucatan, including many contributors to this volume, while not accepting Thompson’s “Putun Hypothesis” in all its particulars, would agree that Chichén Itzá’s relatively rapid rise to power, and its willingness to actively incorporate more non-Classic and “Mexican” forms and motifs in its architecture and art, is based on the fact that the groups who were referred to as the “Itzá” were non-local Maya peoples from the southern and southwestern base of the peninsula. Such groups were already involved in long-distance trade and, in response to the political disintegration and collapse of southern Maya Classic cities, established Chichén Itzá as a new capital. Chichén Itzá both preserved important aspects of Maya culture and political organization and transformed them by developing a form of government that was a modified form of divine kingship. That new form of government utilized both local lineage heads and possibly the lords of some conquered or allied polities in more collective decision-making and public performance, and visibly incorporated them in monumental art programs. As part of their strategy for political and economic dominance, the Itzá established control over or maintained a working relationship with a series of coastal ports and trading centers (e.g., Isla Cerritos, Can Balam, Cozumel, and various of the Belizean Cayes) and deliberately sought to integrate themselves into wider networks of long-distance trade and elite exchange (Dahlin et al. 1998; Kepecs 2003; Masson 2003), forming what have been termed “Maya-Mexican cartels,” while competing with and ultimately defeating other regional states or polities centered at Coba in the east and in the Puuc area in the west (see Kowalski, this volume, and Freidel, this volume; Andrews 1990; Andrews et al. 1988; Andrews and Robles Castellanos 1985; Freidel 1985, 1986, 1992; Kowalski and Dunning 1999; Robles Castellanos and Andrews 1986). Susan Kepecs’s and Dan Healan’s contributions to this volume address aspects of interregional trade in greater detail. Healan provides an overview and update about what obsidian

exchange can reveal about the nature of the relationship between Tula and Chichén Itzá. Healan notes that although obsidian production at Tula was an economically important and probably a state-controlled industry, obsidian workshops at Tula itself were not producing blades in quantities much greater than those needed to supply the local populace, and probably were not involved in large-scale production for export. Most of the obsidian found at Tula came either from the Pachuca or the Ucareo source, but proportions of material from these two sources changed over time. Some ninety to one hundred percent of the material came from the Ucareo source during the Prado phase (ad 650–750), after which the proportion of Pachuca material steadily increased during subsequent periods, to reach fifty to sixty percent during the Early Tollan phase (ad 850–950) and seventy-five to eighty-five percent or greater during the Tollan phase (ad 950–1150). Tula’s dependence on Ucareo/Zinapécuaro obsidian during the Epiclassic period (ca. ad 650–850) is consistent with patterns at other prominent central Mexican Epiclassic centers in Morelos (i.e., Xochicalco), Oaxaca, Yucatan, and Belize. Excavations at Isla Cerritos (Andrews et al. 1989) revealed that about two-thirds of the obsidian found there came from the central Mexican sources of Pachuca, Hidalgo, and Ucareo, Michoacan, the two principal sources for Tula. Since Isla Cerritos has been identified as the principal port facility for Chichén Itzá, the presence of such obsidian can be interpreted as evidence for regular commercial exchange between the two centers. Healan’s examination of samples from Isla Cerritos and Schmidt’s Chichén Itzá project reveal that twenty-two percent appear to be from the Pachuca source, while another thirty percent appear to be from the Ucareo source. This is consistent with Geoffrey Braswell’s (2003) study of some 2700 Chichén obsidian artifacts, which revealed that about fifty-two percent come from these two central Mexican sources, while the remainder come from eight other sources, most of which are in Guatemala or the Gulf Coast region. Since the overall relative proportion of Ucareo to Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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Pachuca obsidian at Isla Cerritos is 58:42, a proportion that roughly parallels that of the Corral phase (ca. ad 750–850) at Tula, Bey and Ringle (this volume) have suggested that this was the time when the exchange occurred. But Healan points out that differently dated lots from Isla Cerritos have different proportions, indicating that “Ucareo predominated in Terminal Classic/Epiclassic contexts, while Pachuca predominated in Early Postclassic contexts” (Healan, this volume), and thus exhibiting the “same temporal shift from predominantly Ucareo to predominantly Pachuca that is seen at Tula.” Because Ucareo and Pachuca are the two most common sources of obsidian both at Tula and Chichén Itzá, and because the proportions of these two types seem to change in parallel proportions at both Tula and Isla Cerritos, Healan argues that the exchange between the Itzá polity and the Tula polity was direct and unmediated. Healan posits that Tula’s obsidian industry involved two “tiers,” consisting of more local, more privately organized components and nonlocal, state-managed components. Local communities near the Pachuca source probably paid tribute to Tula both in the form of finished blades and prepared polyhedral cores. The Ucareo obsidian apparently came from subject communities in the Acambay region, where enclaves of workers were established to acquire the raw material. According to Healan, regular payment of obsidian as tribute was apparently imposed on these communities subject to Tula’s power, but physical signatures of its presence is otherwise weak, indicating that Tula was the capital of what Ross Hassig (1985) terms a hegemonic empire, “a rather ‘loose’ system of administration characterized by little direct intervention in the affairs of subjugated lands beyond the imposition of tribute quotas.” Tula could have managed production and distribution of obsidian from these sources without it passing directly through the city. The volcanic glass itself was used to manufacture new, more lethal cutting weapons, whose presence is implied both by blade collections and artistic representations at Tula and Chichén Itzá, and whose acquisition was instrumental in helping the Itzá consolidate their 28

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power in northern Yucatan and dominate the circumpeninsular trade routes. Kepecs’s chapter builds on research from her Chikinchel Archaeological Project to investigate how Chichén Itzá’s rise to power and consolidation of political hegemony is related to its participation in systems of macroregional exchange. During the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic period, Chichén Itzá gained control of a wedge of territory stretching from the extensive north coast saltworks at Emal, located in the Chikinchel region, to the coastal port of Isla Cerritos in the Cupul region. The Itzá dominated a corridor through the Cupul region by means of a regional hierarchy of secondary adminstrative centers stretching from the inland Chichén Itzá to the coast. High-quality salt was one of the commodities the Itzá exchanged for “high-value, low-weight exotics” from around the Epiclassic/ Early Postclassic Mesoamerican world. Kepecs sees the Terminal Classic–Early Postclassic transition as a period when older Classicperiod land-based trade routes were being superseded by the development of maritime trade routes that linked the Yucatan Peninsula and Gulf Coast with inland centers in central Mexico. The Itzá, stemming from the Maya-speaking groups known colloquially as the Putun, were active agents in expanding long-distance seaborne trade, and were responsible for the rise of Chichén Itzá as a key political capital dominating the pan-peninsular exchange network. The Itzá’s rise is compared to that of the late medieval Venetian merchant sailors, who exploited new types of ship design and navigational techniques to expand their control of the silk, spice, and salt trade in the Mediterranean. Using the world systems approach, Kepecs (this volume) argues that the interrelationship between Tula and Chichén Itzá should not be understood simply as an example of one more powerful polity (Tula) conquering a less powerful state (Chichén Itzá), but as the outcome of their roles as regional capitals involved in organizing and managing long-distance trade routes as well as more localized systems of tribute in “interpenetrating economies on multiple scales.” This model posits a complex and symbiotic relationship between

the two centers, with the sharing of art forms and symbol systems between these two centers arising as the result of the adoption of mutually acceptable symbols of elite status and prestige as part of an adaptation to turbulent conditions during the Epiclassic and Terminal Classic periods. Although Kepecs’s discussion is grounded in a socioeconomic approach to understanding the transitions taking place in Mesoamerica during the Epiclassic through Early Postclassic periods, she recognizes that economic ends are interrelated with ideological factors. Thus, she accepts the findings of Ringle et al. (1998) that a reinvigorated Quetzalcoatl cult was adopted by rulers at various rising centers (e.g., Xochicalco, Cacaxtla, El Tajín, Tula, and Chichén Itzá) and that the spread of the cult fused a proselytizing zeal with the promotion of military power, while stressing that the regional elites who adopted the cult undoubtedly did so not just to realize spiritual benefits, but to demonstrate that they shared a similar elite status that conferred real world rewards.

Looking at Art: Form, Content, and Cultural Identity One nearly constant factor in the Chichén Itzá–Tula debate has been the issue of comparative imagery. Much of the discourse has centered on identifying the symbols and formal traits that the two sites share, on differentiating between “Toltec” and “Maya” elements at Chichén Itzá, and on noting the apparent discrepancies between glowing Aztec descriptions of Toltec art and art actually discovered at Tula. By now Mesoamericanists are familiar with the litany of traits that Chichén Itzá and Tula share, and recognize that each site also possesses unique elements. Tozzer’s (1957) encyclopedic study of Chichén Itzá exemplifies one line of investigation, that of differentiating so-called Maya from Toltec elements (Taube 1994). Yet Tozzer (1957:23) noted that in some cases distinguishing Toltec from Maya elements seems to be a visceral and intuitive exercise as much as an objective identification.

As noted, many scholars now hold that there probably was not a Tula Toltec or central Mexican conquest of Yucatan (Andrews 1990; Kurjack 1988), although several continue either to argue that Tula did indeed defeat Chichén Itzá (e.g., Coe 1994:143– 144, 1999:165–180; Diehl 1983:144–152; Hammond 1982:142; Kelley 1984;) or to recognize that significant central Mexican Tula Toltec art forms and symbols appear at Chichén Itzá in specific combinations and clusters that indicate that Tula had a dramatic impact on Chichén Itzá (e.g., Coggins and Shane 1984; Taube 1994). One of the most recent overviews of the archaeology of Tula (Mastache et al. 2002) refers periodically to architectural or iconographic parallels between Tula and Chichén Itzá, but largely skirts the issue of how such similar forms were disseminated. Although we acknowledge that the artistic and iconographic parallels between Chichén Itzá and Tula are real and profound, we would argue that the merging of apparent Mexican and Mayan building types, imagery, and symbols at Chichén Itzá may more properly be understood as symptomatic of subtle and complex social processes in Yucatan after the Classic period. It is also time, we believe, to reevaluate exactly what is meant by “Toltec” versus “Maya” art at Chichén Itzá, especially since many buildings, such as the Temple of the Warriors (see Kowalski, this volume), incorporate canonical “Maya” and “Toltec” forms, symbols, and imagery that are fully integrated into the overall design program (Stone 1999; see Schmidt, this volume, for comparable mixtures of Maya and “Toltec” iconography in other building complexes). Because of a general dearth of recognizable Classic Maya forms and symbols at Tula, discerning Mexican from Mayan influences at the site has not been as much of a concern (cf. Kristan-Graham 1989; but see Koontz 2000; Schmidt, this volume, on cacao imagery at both sites). But some scholars have wondered how, or if, we can reconcile Aztec accounts of both Toltec artistry and art from Tula with Tula’s art. Michael Coe’s (1994:141) remark that “the Aztec testimony that the Toltecs [of Tula] were master craftsmen has not yet been confirmed by archaeology” expresses a popular sentiment. Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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Recently, John Pohl (1999:155) stated that the disparity between Sahagún’s praise for Tula’s art and the art itself “could be explained as Aztec idealism, cultural nostalgia for a lost world.” Pohl’s ideas are the result of a nuanced reading of the sources, a reading that accepts that Tula was not the Tollan of the sources, but one of many important regional capitals in Mesoamerica that was invested with ancestral origins and political legitimacy (Matos Moctezuma and López Luján 1993; Umberger 1987). Pohl’s reading also underscores that Aztec accounts of Tula and/or Tollan may best be read for their poetic and metaphorical content, not for actual descriptions of Tula and/ or Tollan (Davies 1975, 1977:14–23). In addition, we need to remember the obvious, that aesthetic sensibilities in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries do not equip us to view Tula through Aztec eyes. But we can appreciate how closely Aztec art was modeled on prototypes from Tula (including bench friezes, atlantids, chacmools, standard-bearers, warrior figures, name glyphs, and colonnaded halls; Matos Moctezuma 1988; Nicholson 1971:118– 123; Pasztory 1983:pls. 86–88, 137, 144, color pl. 28; Umberger 1987:69–82). This may be a case of politically charged antiquarianism (Umberger 1987) or even a genuine appreciation of Tula artistry and craftsmanship. Although no contemporary depictions of Ce Acatl Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl are known from Tula, the fact that the Aztecs carved an image of a figure accompanied by a feathered serpent and a One Reed name glyph at Cerro la Malinche (Figure 10) (Krickeberg 1969:pl. 18; Kubler 1984:fig. 40; Pasztory 1983:56, pls. 67–68) indicates that they considered Tula to be the seat of this king’s fabulous reign as well as a source of their political legitimacy. Instead of reasking why the Aztecs admired Tula and called fine artisans the Toltecayotl after Tula (León-Portilla 1980:ch. 1), we might ask why the Aztecs would not be drawn to the art of a powerful and wealthy polity whom they claimed as ancestors and cultural progenitors. This brings us back to the question of why and how Tula’s art has been described through the ages. After Sahagún visited Tula in the middle of the sixteenth century, he wrote descriptions of 30

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some monuments that fairly accurately describe some hallmarks of Tula’s art: “[an unfinished] serpent column, the round stone pillar made into a serpent. Its head rests on the ground; its tail, its rattles are above. And the Tolteca mountain is to be seen; and the Tolteca pyramids, the mounds, and the surfacing of Tolteca [temples]” (Sahagún 1950– 1982:bk. 10:165). Thereafter, Charnay was the first to write about Tula in detail. He seems to have had a somewhat ambivalent reaction to Mesoamerican art. On the one hand, he dismisses much of its aesthetic value: “We ought not to deceive ourselves about the beauty and real merits of the American relics. They are archaeological objects, nothing more . . . they call forth surprise, rather than admiration, everything is badly done” (Charnay 1885:348). On the other hand, he said this about Tula in particular: “On examining the monuments at Tula, we are filled with admiration for the marvelous building capacity of the people who erected them . . .” (Charnay 1887:107). However, Charnay (1887:98) makes it clear that, above all, Tula and its art are vital for his own theories about the “Toltec” unity of ancient America. Later writers have not been so charitable toward Tula and its art. In a popular college text, Coe (1994:142) characterized Tula as an “unsympathetic art style,” and the whole of Postclassic Mexican art as “harder, far more abstract, and less exuberant than those of the Classic period” (Coe 1994:129). Acosta (1956–1957:76), who excavated the site, asserted that the architecture of Tula has a majestic conception but a mediocre realization. In his survey of ancient American art, Kubler (1984:83) states: “The expression attained by the sculptors of Tula differs from that of their predecessors at Teotihuacán by the choice of deliberately harsh forms, which avoided grace and sought only aggressive asperities, gritty surfaces, and bellicose symbols.” Interestingly, Kubler, the architect of the theory that Chichén Itzá influenced Tula, does not mention the appearance of Chichén Itzá’s art tradition, and so it is not possible to compare what he has to say about the relative aesthetics of both sites. To many, Tula does appear “unfinished” or “rustic,” making it difficult to reconcile the

figure 10 Relief carving of a figure with a feathered serpent and a One Reed name glyph, Cerro la Malinche, Hidalgo. Drawing by Jeff Kowalski, after Krickeberg 1969: fig. 18 and Pasztory 1983:fig. 68).

reality of the archaeological remains with the fabulous descriptions of Toltec Tollan (López Austin and López Lújan 2000:43). While some of Tula’s “impoverished” appearance may be due to the Aztec visits to and reoccupation of the site and selective “reuse” of buildings (Diehl 1983:27, 166– 169), which included the looting of artifacts as well as the stripping of carved panels from building facades and interior rooms, the site’s architectural constructions and sculptural style do seem less finished and sensitive than those of Chichén Itzá. However, the four monumental atlantids standing atop Pyramid B rank among the finest of Mesoamerican sculpture. Their existence may indicate the presence of several sculptural workshops or canons at Tula. Because Chichén Itzá and Tula share many features of visual culture, it sometimes has been tacitly assumed that there is a unified “Tula– Chichén Itzá art style” (or “Toltec art style”). But do the parallels really constitute an art style? “Style” is a problematic word and concept that is used too often and without consistency, a word that is “gray with fatigue” according to Kubler (1979). According to one current definition, “[style]

as defined by art history is rooted in the belief that artworks from a particular era (the T’ang Dynasty, the Italian Renaissance, the 1960s) share certain distinctive visual characteristics. These include not only size, material, color, and other formal elements, but also subject and content” (Atkins 1990:155). This definition, and others that art historians use (e.g., Shapiro 1953), tend to give priority to form over content. The usual discussion of a socalled Toltec art style at Tula and/or Chichén Itzá inverts this and favors content (particularly iconographic motifs) over form. A review of the imagery suggests that, despite compelling similarities, Tula and Chichén Itzá do not possess a unified art style. Let us consider a well-known comparison of warrior figures from each site (Figures 11–12), since their obvious similarities of costume, insignia, and weaponry formed the basis for Tozzer’s (1930, 1957) identification of ethnic “Toltec” and a basis for identifying the “Toltec-Maya” style at Chichén Itzá. Both figures are on stone pillars carved to represent a standing profile male wearing the regalia of both warrior and ruler; each is carved with two horizontal levels of relief on the rectangular face of a pillar. Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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a

a

figure 11 a) Sculpted pillar with “Toltec” figure from the Temple of the Warriors, Chichén Itzá (after Proskouriakoff 1950:fig. 107b); and b) drawing of the sculpted pillar from the Temple of the Warriors, Chichén Itzá (after Morris et al. 1931:2:pl. 44).

But the figures are carved according to different formal canons and systems of figural proportion. The Tula figure is short and stocky relative to the framing, with the head large in relation to the body; this proportional system is common for central Mexican art traditions, such as Teotihuacan. In contrast, the Chichén Itzá figure is taller and slimmer, with a subtle swayed pose and an aquiline nose that is more characteristic of Maya art. While it is clear that the figures share some of the important costume elements of a common “Toltec Military Outfit,” it is also evident that the images 32

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were carved by sculptors trained in different workshops, suggesting that they had different cultural backgrounds. In addition to displaying different approaches to rendering figural form, the figures at the two sites appear as parts of different design programs (discussed in greater detail by Kowalski, this volume). The Chichén Itzá pillars emphasized the larger human figure in a composition that has precedents on Classic Maya stelae. Like stelae, which depict historically documented rulers and other members of courtly society, the individual

a

b

figure 12 a) Sculpted “Warrior Pillar” from Pyramid B, Tula; and b) drawing of sculpted “Warrior Pillar” from Pyramid B, Tula. Photograph by Mark Miller Graham; drawing by Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

identity and social position of dozens of different types of figures is specified through costume differences and name glyphs (although these no longer take the form of standard Maya glyphic signs in longer dated texts) (Kristan-Graham 1989). In contrast, the Tula pillars feature two alternating rectangular registers framed by small panels containing Cipactli glyphs (see Kowalski, this volume, Figure 12). One register contains a warrior figure, while the other register features an iconic array of weapons that appears to be emblematic of “sacred war” (Kristan-Graham 1989). This composition gives equal visual weight to the human figure and the iconic symbol in a manner recalling the approach of the Teotihuacan mural paintings, the Mixtec codices, or other central Mexican traditions. In her important article, “Identity and Difference: The Uses and Meanings of Ethnic Styles,” Esther Pasztory (1989) used the theories of Fredrik Barth’s Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (1969)

to approach the study of style in the art of PreColumbian societies. Noting that art styles in Mesoamerica seem to correlate closely with, and serve to define, the regional cultural traditions of various peoples (e.g., Teotihuacanos, Zapotecs, Maya, etc.), she proposed that the “basic function of an ethnic style is to create a coherent visual form that functions as a badge of identity within the group; by projecting the image of a self, ethnic style immediately implies the existence of others who do not belong. Ethnic styles create identity and difference through the formal articulation of visual images, ranging from dress to architecture . . . In this process, visual symbols in works of art are essential, they are continuously needed, and are manufactured” (Pasztory 1989:18). In discussing such ethnic styles, however, it is important to keep in mind the distinction between style (whose definition may involve the recognition of a characteristic use of particular subjects or symbols, but which focuses on the Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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recognition of a relatively consistent use of media and identifiable handling of form) and iconography (which involves the use of specific culturally defined motifs and symbols, or clusters thereof, and particular meanings they are intended to convey) (Duro and Greenhalgh 1994:155–156, 361–364; Fernie 1995:345–346, 361–364; Panofsky 1955:26– 41). Although some proponents of the “New Art History” dismissed the study of style because of its associations with the discipline’s idealist and elitist background (Rees and Borzello 1986:4), other investigators (particularly anthropologists, but also art historians such as Pasztory) view it as a more active agent in “information exchange” that shapes perceptions of social and cultural identity (see Conkey and Hastorf 1990 for archaeological applications, and Hegmon 1992 for a review of archaeological research on style). Pasztory noted that there are very few instances in Mesoamerican art in which one group actually used the style of another group in its own art forms (the clearest examples being the use of Teotihuacan architectural and art forms by the Maya of Kaminaljuyu and Tikal during the Early Classic period). In discussing the two opposing teams shown on the bench relief panels from the Great Ballcourt at Chichén Itzá (see Kowalski, this volume), she notes that they have clear differences in costume (possibly intended to represent different ethnic types or possibly intended to refer to ritual groups associated with opposing mythic forces of light versus darkness), but notes that the figures “are not in different styles” (Pasztory 1989:32). As we pointed out earlier, the iconographic correspondences between the warrior figures of Chichén Itzá and Tula do not indicate that they constitute a unified art style. There are other possible reasons why the two sites might share such a common costume but depict it according to local stylistic canons. Pasztory (1989:36) noted that one use of style—or in this case, the reuse of an ethnic identity based on a specific iconographic complex displayed in elite attire—is to convey a connection with antiquity as a form of “validation through history.” Rather than representing individuals who share an actual ethnic identity (i.e., representing 34

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Tula soldiers as conquerors at Chichén Itzá), the “Toltec Military Outfit” could refer to the fact that the armies of both sites adopted common cult affiliations and/or emblems of military ranks or sodalities. Furthermore, for elites at both sites, the Teotihuacan-related aspects of the costume may have served as a form of ancestral recall (for a comparable example in Aztec elite clothing, see Anawalt 1990), referring to their real or imagined association with Teotihuacan (Stone 1989), which for the Epiclassic Mesoamerican rulers had become recognized as a hearth of civilized values as well as a reference to their sacrificial and warmaking powers. But as the previous discussion of differences in the formats, sculptural treatments, and figural proportions of the warrior figures on pillars at both sites demonstrates, Chichén Itzá and Tula did not depict this common imagery in a unified art style. As defined above, the concept of style stresses the holistic quality and formal integrity of all art produced within a society at a particular time and stresses the unified visual character of any individual monument. As Kubler (1962:33, 117–121) pointed out, however, individual aspects of an artwork’s form actually may belong to “simultaneous series” of different “form classes,” each of which has an individual developmental history, but which have been merged to create a particular visual artifact. Keeping this in mind, it seems plausible that the concept of multipillared halls has highland Mexican roots, but that the notion of carving an image of a historical figure on each of the faces of the supporting pillars more likely stems from longlived Maya formats for dynastic stelae sculptures. The pillar sculptures are part of a larger discussion involving the concept of roofing large interior spaces. At Chichén Itzá, carved pillars comprise colonnades on top of the Temple of the Warriors and in the Northwest Colonnade, to name the most famous examples. At Tula, only four pillars are known, all reconstructed by Acosta to stand on top of Pyramid B. Yet at both sites many plain pillars and columns also support colonnaded structures. The chronology for this building type is confusing and difficult to establish, aside from a

general Epiclassic date (see Kristan-Graham, this volume). One scenario has the colonnades being developed in northwest Mexico, where they date to the mid-sixth century (Holien and Pickering 1978), adapted by the architects of Tula, and subsequently borrowed by the builders of Chichén Itzá (see Kowalski, this volume). Kristan-Graham (this volume) analyzes colonnaded halls, along with sunken patios and plazas at Tula Grande, and concludes that although these forms have some general formal similarities with structures at Teotihuacan and Chichén Itzá, much stronger parallels are apparent closer to home in the Bajío and Zacatecas. For example, in the site cores of Tula, Alta Vista, and La Quemada, a large sunken plaza is fused with a colonnaded hall that is constructed to look like Tollan, with an artificial lake and reeds. The analogous spatial patterning not only implies a similar use of public and ritual space but also links the three sites, which were entrepôts of exchange and political centers on the northern fringes of Mesoamerica, in a chain of ritual centers endowed with symbolic associations of ancestry and prestige. (Future work will reveal the appearance of the Epiclassic center underlying Tula Grande and examine how it compares to its Epiclassic neighbors in northern Mexico.) KristanGraham’s concern with broad patterns of use and symbolism rather than with identifying cultural labels or constructing even a loose seriation of style or symbols removes the colonnaded hall—once considered part of the riddle of temporal primacy of Tula or Chichén Itzá—from a matter of chronological debate and places it into a broader discussion of symbolism and the agency of architecture. So far, we have focused on showing that one so-called Toltec trait—the colonnaded hall—may have originated at sites to the northwest of Tula, and that if it did appear earlier at Tula than at Chichén Itzá, it is nevertheless probable that the concept of adorning supporting pillars with figural reliefs has Maya precedents. Identifying stylistic differences and multiple origins for different features changes the parameters of the Tula–Chichén Itzá debate by demonstrating that their shared motifs, symbols, and architectural elements could result from more

complex and reciprocal economic, social, and political processes rather than outright conquest. But it is important to note that Tula and Chichén Itzá do have something else in common that is very unique: the spatial and conceptual matrix in which these features are located. A case in point is the processional imagery that typifies much of the two-dimensional imagery from Tula Grande and the North Platform from Chichén Itzá. At Tula, in Building 3 (the Palacio Quemado) and in the vestibule that serves as a foyer to Pyramid B, carved and painted bench friezes depict profile figures involved in funerary, mercantile, rulership, and perhaps bloodletting rituals who appear to move through colonnaded halls (Kristan-Graham, this volume). But unlike bench friezes elsewhere in Mesoamerica, where two files of figures converge upon a central motif, at Tula processional figures appear to turn corners and meet at doorways, but typically do not represent the finale of processions. Since the axial and iconographic foci of the processions are keyed to open doorways, however, real actors could actually have been poised there to complete the processions and rituals portrayed, varying the finales for specific requisites, with the decorated benches serving alternately as stage, seat, or altar (Kristan-Graham 1999:173, fig. 7.10). Farther south at Chichén Itzá, rituals are represented on another type of architectural furniture, carved and painted daises at the Temples of the Chacmool and Warriors. The dais in the Northwest Colonnade is located to the right of the stairs that leads up to the Temple of the Warriors and is in a roughly analogous position to part of the bench friezes that once lined the Pyramid B vestibule at Tula (Stone 1999:figs. 13.2–13.3). The dais is carved and painted on three sides with thirty-two figures, most of them warriors. This is significant, for the dais is adjacent to carved pillars on the temple stairway that represent bound figures, deities, deity impersonators, and/or priests (Stone 1999:311). The dais could serve alternately as a throne, altar, dance platform, or feasting table, and could accommodate several individuals. It was in a prime location for public rituals, for whomever sat or stood on it would have a commanding Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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view of rituals, be a focal point of rituals, and be seen by the masses (Kristan-Graham 2003). Above the dais is a wall painting depicting what Andrea Stone (1999:316) describes as dancing warriors participating in the festival of Pacum Chac, a military ceremony that honored war chiefs. At Chichén Itzá, as at Tula, processional imagery occurs on benches that most probably held ritual participants and/or objects. This is a distinct shift from Teotihuacan processional imagery, which may have been the inspiration for later Epiclassic processional bench imagery. The innovation at Tula and Chichén Itzá, however, is that at these two sites the imagery is part of actual ritual furniture, while processional imagery of humans and animals at Teotihuacan occurs on taluds that project from lower walls, such as murals from the Palace of the Jaguars (Pasztory 1997:fig. 14.2). This brief discussion of bench friezes at Tula and Chichén Itzá (and there are numerous other comparisons to be made) illustrates a compelling idiosyncrasy in narrativity between the two cities; bench friezes feature the sequential telling or showing of a story that takes place in time and space to create a narrative-ritual nexus. This suggests that the two sites were doing more than just partaking of a common pool of Epiclassic symbols and characters, but perhaps that the designers of the cities were sharing conceptual and spatial organizing principles. Virtually any discussion of the similarities between Chichén Itzá and Tula stresses the near identity of the Temple of the Warriors and Pyramid B (Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli Pyramid), so that our comments have concentrated on pointing out some of their important differences. But at Chichén Itzá it is the Castillo (Structure 2D5) that forms the conceptual and spatial center of the North Terrace, and thus of the entire community (Figure 5). Charles Lincoln (1990:578, 589–590), noting that four sacbeob (1, 2/3, 4/7, and 6) emanate from the North Terrace to create an imprecise but quite noticeable quadrant “grid” (see Schmidt, this volume, Figure 1), has made a convincing argument that the North Terrace served as the architectural center of the Chichén Itzá “community 36

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pattern,” and that it was likely to have been planned as such from near the inception of the site’s development rather than representing a later “Toltec” afterthought. Cobos (this volume) differs by arguing that the great architectural expansion of the North Terrace occurred after ad 900, a date close to those from radiocarbon samples associated with the Castillo. Bey and Ringle (this volume) concur, but note that the Inner Castillo and West Colonnade were probably constructed during the ninth century, possibly contemporaneously with many of the other Chichén-Maya structures with inscriptional dates. It seems significant that a major pyramid-temple already marked the focal point of the North Terrace during the ninth century, prior to the beginning of the Tollan phase at Tula, and that even the Castillo itself appears to predate the major edifices of Tula Grande. At Tula the only counterpart for the Castillo is the unprepossessing platform known as the “adoratorio” located near the center of the Tula Grande plaza (Figure 13; Acosta 1944:146–148, 1956–1957; Healan 1989:27–28, fig. 3.3; Mastache et al. 2002: 129–131), and this hardly seems likely to have inspired the Castillo. Thus, there is no prototype at Tula for the most important Toltec-Maya edifice at Chichén Itzá. Although the Castillo has been considered a Toltec-Maya edifice because of its feathered serpent columns and the depictions of “Toltec” warriors on its jambs (Tozzer 1957:34, 73–75, 149), the pyramid-temple’s radial plan clearly has many antecedents in Maya architecture both in the southern and northern lowlands (e.g., at Uaxactun, Tikal, Seibal, Copan, Dzibilchaltun, Ikil; Aimers 1993; Coggins 1980, 1983; Cohodas 1980; Kowalski et al. 2002; Kubler 1961:53) (Figure 14). For the Maya, such radial structures had a long history of being associated with solar or other cyclical time counts and with public rituals connected with creation myth and seasonal agricultural renewal. This pattern clearly was repeated at Chichén Itzá, albeit in a form that more deliberately mingled Classic Maya forms, symbols, and mythic references with those of other regions of Mesoamerica (perhaps particularly from Cholula; see Ringle

figure 13 The adoratorio platform in the Tula Grande plaza. Photograph by Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

et al. 1998:194, and McCafferty, this volume). The recent excavation and restoration of the comparable High Priest’s Grave structure (outlined by Peter Schmidt, this volume), whose radial plan resembles that of the Castillo, show that it also features a thoroughly syncretistic mingling of Maya and “Mexican” iconography, including featheredserpent imagery, images of warriors in the “Toltec Military Outfit,” as well as Maya-related images of the Principal Bird Deity and long-nosed corner masks. Such deliberate combinations of innovative and “foreign” motifs with more local and traditional Maya ones serves to reconfirm the fact that the Toltec-Maya style developed at Chichén Itzá differs dramatically from the art style at Tula, and that although they share several important iconographic elements, they were planned by elites of different ethnic backgrounds, executed by different architects and artists, and calculated to convey different messages to different audiences. Returning to a consideration of Chichén Itzá, Freidel (this volume) contributes to the discussion of its syncretistic art style and its fusion of traditional Maya with newer iconographic symbols reflecting its ties with other Mesoamerican

polities. Building on his own previous work and that of others (Freidel 2000; Miller 1977; Schele and Mathews 1998:218–219, 370n43), he notes that twisted cord (or related intertwined serpent) imagery seen in the iconographic programs of several of the Toltec-Maya structures on the North Terrace has roots in Maya art that extend back to the Late Preclassic period, and that it is associated with a cosmic umbilicus and cord-like links that provide pathways of spiritual communication and transferal of divine energy between the world of the living and that of the gods and ancestors. Iconographic and linguistic arguments link these cosmic cords with cordage (k’aan) as well as with other glyphs and symbols connected to divine power and creation (e.g., ka’an, sky; kan, snake; kan, the number four; and k’an, cross). In particular, he points out that the Castillo pyramid, whose serpent balustrades recently have been interpreted as an indication that it served as a local version of a Coatepec or Serpent Mountain, has twisted serpent bodies associated with the k’aan (divine cords) symbolism of both Preclassic and Classic Maya art and iconography. Coupling this with the fact that the radially symmetrical plan Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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figure 14 Structure E-VII-Sub at Uaxactun, Guatemala, a radially symmetrical pyramid-temple of the Late Preclassic period (after Proskouriakoff 1946:5).

of the structure has deep roots in Maya architecture, and with the recent identification of the jadeinlaid, red-painted jaguar throne inside the Inner Castillo as a possible creation throne-stone of the maize god, he argues that this central structure marks Chichén as a local, Itzá Maya version of a creation mountain, the K’an Witz. While linguists can determine whether Freidel’s homophonies hold, his overall iconographic interpretation and his recognition that structures such as the Castillo embody deep-seated Maya iconographic themes to identify Chichén both as a Puh (metropolitan successor capital to Teotihuacan) and a regional “Tollan” are worthy of serious consideration. The syncretistic nature of Chichén’s art style is also discussed by Schmidt (this volume), whose investigation of the substructure of the Temple of the Big Tables revealed that the pillars of the sanctuary combined images of warriors wearing the “Toltec Military Outfit” between upper and lower 38

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panels depicting Maya Pawahtun deities. Such mingling of forms and motifs occurs not only near the site center, but also at the more distant Initial Series Group, where there are buildings with both “Toltec” warrior iconography as well as carved relief upper facades featuring images of Maya deities such as Pawahtunes. Schmidt proposes that the Initial Series Group, may have been the residential and administrative compound of one of the site’s elite lineages (perhaps the Kupul family), in which case the combination of Maya with “foreign” forms was a deliberate choice by members of the local Maya leadership. Bey and Ringle (this volume) return to the perennial “chicken or egg” problem of determining whether certain “Toltec” forms and symbols appeared earlier at Tula or Chichén Itzá, but interpret their findings in light of social and cultural processes involved in the spread of the Quetzalcoatl cult. According to their analysis, present evidence

indicates that full-fledged “Toltec” iconography and sculptural motifs (i.e., benches with figural friezes, atlantean figures, marching jaguars, coyotes and eagles devouring human hearts, chacmool sculptures, serpent pillars in doorways, etc.) did not appear at Tula until the Late Tollan subphase, whose inception is now placed at ad 900 (Mastache et al. 2002:ch. 3). Stratigraphic sequences, radiocarbon dates (ca. ad 890 for the Castillo), and inscriptional dates (ad 998 for the Osario) indicate that many of the late buildings with the most fully developed “Toltec” iconographic programs at Chichén Itzá, such as the Castillo, the Temple of the Chacmool, the Temple of the Warriors, and the Osario, were built between about ad 900 and 1000. However, Bey and Ringle note that some individual elements of the “Toltec” style appear on earlier structures on the North Terrace. For example, the Inner Castillo has a chacmool figure in the outer chamber of the sanctuary. Its upper facades displayed “prowling jaguars” and circular shields that seem to be prototypes for those carried by “Toltec” soldiers elsewhere in Chichén art, but it lacks feathered serpent doorway columns or stairway ramps, suggesting that it predates the period of maximal contact with Tula. The Inner Castillo building apparently was constructed during the ninth century, prior to the appearance of the “Toltec” iconographic repertory at Tula. According to Bey and Ringle, this lends support to the notion that at least some of the iconographic motifs that define “Toltec” culture and art style have precedence at Chichén, and were then transferred to and absorbed at Tula. Bey and Ringle point out that the current estimate for the beginning of the Late Tollan subphase at ad 950 provides only a “narrow window of overlap” between the period when mature “Toltec” iconography was featured on structures built both at Chichén Itzá and Tula, and suggest that this might mean that the end of the Sotuta period must be placed later at Chichén, or that the Late Tollan phase must be placed earlier, an option that they prefer. This leads them to conclude that “[i]n any event, architectural and iconographic evidence seem to accord Chichén priority in terms of the particular exchange with Tula, although Chichén itself was

heir to a number of Epiclassic central Mexican and Gulf Coast sites.” One such site was Cholula, where the taludes of the Patio of the Altars on the south side of the Great Pyramid feature a greca T frieze that resembles, and apparently predates, the tabular panels adorning the terraces of the Castillo at Chichén Itzá (see McCafferty, this volume). Bey and Ringle attribute the distinctive shared architectural and iconographic traits at Chichén Itzá and Tula to the fact that they emerged as powerful capitals and were involved in an active interregional exchange system when the ideology of the Quetzalcoatl cult reached a mature stage and when a “well defined set of symbols” was made available for adoption to the rulers of both sites (even though they were modified to suit local tastes and based on local needs). Thus the circular Corral Temple at Tula reflects the impact of round structures in the Huastec region, an area of economic importance to Tula, while the abundance of long-snouted “Chaak” masks on Toltec-Maya architecture reflects its embeddedness in the local Yucatecan political economy. Viewed in this light, the Itzá’s eagerness to adopt and adapt building types, art forms, and iconographies from other regions of Mesoamerica has plausibly been interpreted as the result of both the spread of a specialized elite cult of the Feathered Serpent during the Epiclassic and Terminal Classic period (Freidel 1985, 1986; Lopéz Austín and Lopéz Luján 2000; Ringle et al. 1998) and an accompanying syncretistic process that involved the sharing of elite cult practices and symbols as political economies were merged in a Mesoamerican world system (Kepecs, this volume; Kepecs et al. 1994).

Concluding Thoughts In an important essay on the Epiclassic period in Mesoamerica, Marvin Cohodas (1989:228) pointed out that, although the monuments of Chichén Itzá either vie with or outstrip those of any contemporary regional capital in Mesoamerica, “archaeologists typically consider that these monuments merely reflect ideas or follow trends that originated elsewhere. The intense elaboration in monumental Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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art of ideas characteristic of the central Mexican tradition is conventionally explained as the result of invasion or colonization, and is referred to by Lincoln (1986:143) as acculturation. Archaeologists have been reluctant to view this adoption of nonMaya ideas as a conscious choice by the rulers and artists of Chichén Itzá to ally themselves further with the economic and political systems of highland central Mexico.” In an effort to understand why the traditional Toltec conquest model continued to exert such influence in the field, despite growing contradictory evidence demonstrating that it was chronologically untenable and overly simplistic even as a cultural-historical explanation, scholars such as Oriana Baddeley (1983:57–58), Cohodas (1989:228), and Lindsay Jones (1995) have pointed out that such interpretations also reflected implicit (or sometimes explicit) impositions of Old World historical paradigms on New World archaeology, with the conquest of the peaceful, theocratic civilization of the Classic Maya (exemplified by the ChichénMaya buildings and hieroglyphic texts) by the more secular, militaristic Toltecs paralleling the succession of Classical Greece by Imperial Rome (Brunhouse 1971:169). Lindsay Jones (1995:22–25) has pointed out that the polarity between aggressive “Toltecs” and pacifistic Maya stems from alternative visions and categorizations of the “civilized” versus “untamed” nature of “Indian” societies and personality stemming from accounts dating to the time of the conquest, so that “in short . . . the infamous story of a confrontation between Toltecs and Maya at Chichén Itzá depicts a collision not of two historical peoples but of two idealized images (or sets of images) of the American Indian. The historical peoples and geography of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica provide a skeleton, but fertile Western imaginations flesh out the body and set it in motion” (Jones 1995:25). Jones notes that this “paradigm of polarity” resulted in the conception that the Maya were identified as “astronomer-priests, worshippers of time, contemplative intellectuals,” who are considered “the Greeks of the New World,” and whose “benign purity is eventually contaminated by sanguinary 40

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Toltec Mexican warriors who bring with them the vile practices of human sacrifice, cannibalism, idolatry, and sodomy. The two are not only different, they are opposites” (Jones 1995:33; Schele and Miller 1986:18–32; Thompson 1954:111–115, 205). In a similar vein, Wren and Schmidt (1991:201) have pointed out that “Chichén Itzá has generally been regarded as a dramatic instance of a wider shift that occurred during the Terminal Classic period in the balance between two Mesoamerican cultures presumed to represent two radically different and incompatible world views. In this shift the pacific, refined culture of the Maya in the southern lowlands disintegrated over a period of a least a century while the aggressive, violent culture of central Mexican peoples associated with the Postclassic period rose to ascendancy” (Morley 1946; Thompson 1966). Recent scholarship, which has resulted in the documentation of Maya royal dynastic histories and politics (e.g., Martin and Grube 2000; Schele and Freidel 1990; Schele and Miller 1986) and which has recognized the importance of warfare, captive taking, and personal sacrifice among the ancient Maya, has forced a radical reassessment of the “traditional interpretation of Maya culture as peaceful and harmonious” (Wren and Schmidt 1991:201). On the basis of this reassessment, Wren and Schmidt (1991:201) interpret Chichén Itzá as a “multi-ethnic polity,” but one in which the innovative and syncretistic mingling of forms and symbols from various Mesoamerican cultural traditions occurred not as the result of a Toltec conquest involving the “forceful suppression of the native population,” but as an instance of “cultural convergence . . . between the elite of two ethnic groups” that was part of broader processes of social, political, economic, and religious transformations occurring during the Epiclassic through Early Postclassic periods in Mesoamerica. Throughout the last century the Tula–Chichén Itzá debate has mutated from a universalist view of the “Toltecs” as the great civilizers of ancient Middle America (considered a more historical people by Charnay and as a mythic template by Brinton), to a unilineal model of diffusionist

cultural contact involving the imposition of new cults, building types, and art forms on Yucatec Maya by invading Tula Toltecs. The strength of this model was such that when it began to be questioned (e.g., by Kubler, Pasztory, Cohodas, or Parsons), the factions were so convinced of their own intellectual integrity and compelling arguments that scholarly debates at times mirrored the militancy of the battling Toltecs and Mayas. From the 1970s onward, as the fields of archaeology, ethnohistory, epigraphy, and art history have shed light on these ancient cities, as well as expanded our understanding of the complexities of the Epiclassic–Early Postclassic transition, the tone of scholarly debates has softened, even as the recovery and interpretation of new data has continued to generate excitement and widen our viewpoints. It is now apparent that the evidence for interregional interaction that Charnay and others once saw at Tula and Chichén Itzá is not the exception—but the norm—of Mesoamerica after the Classic period. As these two sites emerged during

the Epiclassic period—a time of shifting alliances and exchange patterns as well as emergent art traditions with shared innovative architectural elements, symbols, and glyphs—both found a way to survive and prosper after the decline of other centers (e.g., Xochicalco, Cacaxtla, Uxmal), while others (such as Cholula and El Tajín) may have continued to flourish as well. By and large, the contributors to the volume are less concerned with whether Tula conquered Chichén Itzá (although the consensus is that it did not), than with considering the complex processes of culture change, the far-reaching effects of new exchange patterns, the development of new types of political systems, and the use of innovative visual and symbolic systems to support claims of authority at these metropolitan and cosmopolitan urban centers and examining how such processes affected the relationships of these “Twin Tollans” with their Mesoamerican neighbors and permitted them to emerge during the Epiclassic–Early Postclassic transition as dominant powers in the greater Mesoamerican world.

Notes 1

Because discussing Tula and Tollan has the potential for much confusion, we have asked the authors to be as precise as possible in describing peoples and places. In this volume, the generic term “Toltec” refers to the inhabitants of the mythic Tollan, while “Tula Toltec” or “Toltec from Tula” refers to people who lived at Tula, Hidalgo. We have encouraged the authors to frame and articulate the issues at hand in any way they see fit. Therefore, some discuss the “Chichén Itzá–Tula problem,” while others describe the “Tula–Chichén Itzá relationship.”

2

Complete comparative trait lists and discussions of the parallels can be found in Coe 1994:143–144, 1999:165–180; Davies 1977:202–203; Diehl 1983:147– 150; Kubler 1961; Sharer 1994:399–402; Tozzer 1957; and various other general surveys of Mesoamerican archaeology and art.

3

The tricky business of equating the mythic Tollan with one specific geographic place is akin to a passionate debate in biblical archaeology: should

places mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, such as Mounts Sinai and Horeb, be sought out, or should the Bible be read as didactic poetry, metaphor, and sacred political charter, rather than as a straightforward key to ancient geography and history in the Middle East? The two sides of the debate cannot be easily reconciled. One side is based on faith, that the Bible is a collection of stories and revelations about actual events, while the other is based on an understanding that the Bible is poetic literature that is reread and reinterpreted from generation to generation (Kugel 1997). 4

The work of the Carnegie project concentrated on the excavation and restoration of the site’s major buildings, including the Temple of the Warriors (and its earlier prototype, the Temple of the Chacmool), the Mercado, the Caracol, the Monjas, and the Temple of the Wall Panels, among others. Although the Carnegie project resulted in the publication of extraordinarily detailed and dependable

Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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celebration of peace between the victorious Toltec and the vanquished Maya” (Tozzer 1930:161). In his 1957 comparative study, he discussed the components of the outfit in more detail, and associated it more specifically with comparable warrior imagery at Tula and the notion of a military entrada or takeover of the local Maya by the Tula Toltecs, led by a ruler bearing a Quetzalcoatl title. To be fair, Tozzer does admit that inconsistencies in the ethnohistorical accounts regarding K’uk’ulkan in Yucatan make it difficult to be sure of his historical reality, and notes that references to K’uk’ulkan in connection with different times, different events, and different cities make it likely that more than one individual bore this title. But he explicitly states that the nature of the similarities in material culture between Chichén Itzá and Tula indicate that Tula was the donor and Chichén Itzá the recipient, and that the predominance of “Toltec” warriors at both Tula and Chichén and lack of “Maya” figures at Tula, supports the idea that “Mexican invaders actually entered and conquered Chichén Itzá” (Tozzer 1957:27, 148). It should be noted that Tozzer was uncertain whether the Toltec dominance of Chichén was achieved by military force or through diplomacy. While he viewed many of the battle scenes on the gold disks and public art as depicting victories of ethnic Toltec over ethnic Maya, he proposed that they represented “local engagements” by Chichén Itzá against its neighbors rather than the conquest of Chichén Itzá itself (Tozzer 1957:176). For reconsiderations of the “Toltec Military Outfit” and its particular relationship to Teotihuacan, see Coggins 2002 and Stone 1989.

excavation reports for individual structures, there was no systematic effort to map the entire site or study its settlement patterns, and stratigraphic relationships of ceramics and artifacts were not always carefully documented. Concurrently with the Carnegie excavations, Mexican archaeologists from the Monumentos Prehispánicos division of INAH restored the Castillo, the Great Ballcourt, and various small platforms, such as the Tzompantli, the Eagles and Jaguars, and the Venus Platform or “Mausoleum.” Histories of archaeological activity and interpretations of Chichén Itzá can be found in Ewing 1972; Freidel et al. 1993; Jones 1995; Kubler 1961; Lincoln 1986, 1990; Ramírez Aznar 1990; and Tozzer 1957. A recent review of archaeology at Chichén Itzá, which views the site in the context of larger issues of “knowledge production,” colonialism, cultural imperialism, the “touristic gaze,” and other contemporary issues, can be found in Castañeda 1996.

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5

The Yucatec Maya word “Puuc” refers to a continuous range of hills, also known as the Sierrita de Ticul, that runs from Maxcanu in the northwest of the Yucatan Peninsula until it tapers out in the vicinity of Lake Chikankanab. The ancient sites located south of this range, including wellknown centers such as Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, Labna, Chacmultun, and many others, feature architecture built with a common “veneer masonry” over a lime concrete hearting, and facades adorned with pre-cut sculptured stone elements, including colonnettes, step-fret designs, mat-weave lattice patterns, long-snouted masks, human figures, and other motifs (see Andrews 1986; Dunning 1992; Gendrop 1983; Kowalski 1987; Pollock 1980).

6

In his 1930 article, published prior to the publication of the Carnegie's volumes on the Temple of the Warriors (Morris et al. 1931) or Acosta’s reports on Tula (many of which appeared in the Revista mexicana de estudios antropológicos or the Anales del Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia between 1940 to 1964), Tozzer provided a basic description of the “Toltec Military Outfit,” which he interpreted as evidence for the “Mexican” ethnic identity of the wearer. Instances in which Maya figures mingle with “Toltec” figures in collaborative scenes (e.g., the reliefs of the Lower Temple of the Jaguars) were interpreted as post-conquest rites “in

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7

Chichén-Maya–style buildings included the Monjas, the Iglesia, the Akab Dzib, the House of the Deer, the Red House (Casa Colorada), the Temple of the Three Lintels, and various other structures. These buildings utilized construction techniques and had architectural sculpture programs featuring geometric cut-stone “mosaics” and longsnouted mask panels like those of the Puuc cities. Several Chichén-Maya or Pure Florescent structures are associated with hieroglyphic inscriptions on lintels, jambs, or other architectural elements whose Maya dates were typically recorded in a regional tun-ajaw system, and were determined to fall in the period from 10.1.17.15.3 (ad 867, on the

Watering Trough Lintel) to 10.2.12.2.4 (ad 881, on Lintel 2 of the Temple of the Four Lintels) in the Long Count (Thompson 1937; see Grube 1994; Kelley 1982; Krochock 1998; and Wagner 1995 for more recent reviews of the relevant dates). 8

The distinctive circular temple building known as the Caracol, which featured Maya inscriptions and incorporated Puuc-like mask panels, but which had an innovative plan thought to be associated with the cult of the central Mexican deity Quetzalcoatl, was considered to be transitional between these otherwise chronologically sequent and ethnically distinct styles. An inscription and date that is possibly associated with the Great Ballcourt on the so-called Great Ballcourt Stone has been discussed more recently (see Grube and Krochock, this volume; Krochock 1998; Wren and Schmidt 1991:204–209).

9

According to Tozzer (1957:25) the Toltec period at Chichén Itzá was characterized by “an infusion of new rituals, new ideas of architecture as shown mainly in plans, new forms of art and of decoration, together with an increase in bas-relief, much of which was associated with similar features from other centers, especially from Tula, Hidalgo.” Wren and Schmidt (1991:200) in a recent overview of Chichén Itzá archaeology, art history, and iconography have summarized this conquest model in the following terms: “This process of subordination, affecting religious beliefs, ritual activities, and political and social patterns at Chichén Itzá has been thought to be most clearly mirrored by changes in architectural and artistic styles. The traditional interpretation of monuments at Chichén Itzá has been based upon the premise that the execution of all architectural and artistic works of art in a style native to the northern lowlands which had begun in the Late Classic period was suddenly halted by the Mexican entrada and was replaced, after a break in time, by a distinctive style that is Mexican in origin. The massive architectural complexes and their sculptural and mural decorations have been considered Postclassic in date and have been regarded as symptomatic of foreign cultural domination.”

10

Wren and Schmidt (1991:210–211) and Krochock (1998:16–17) also provide a summary of the problem. Krochock noted that: “According to the traditional

view, structures at Chichén Itzá have been assigned to either the ‘Florescent’ period, which was thought to correspond to the indigenous Puuc style of the Terminal Classic, or the ‘Modified Florescent’ period, which is supposed to correspond to the introduction of non-Maya (usually referred to as ‘Mexican’ or ‘Toltec’) architectural features during the Early Postclassic period (Andrews 1965; Robles Castellanos and Andrews 1986; Sharer 1994:389–390). These chronological distinctions were based on a proposed ceramic sequence in which Terminal Classic Cehpech Sphere ceramics predated Early Postclassic Sotuta Sphere ceramics (Brainerd 1958; Smith 1971). However, as many investigators have discovered, significant archaeological evidence supports a substantial overlap between Cehpech and Sotuta Sphere ceramics at Chichén Itzá (Andrews 1979; Ball 1979; Lincoln 1986, 1990;), Yula (Anderson 1994), Isla Cerritos (Andrews and Robles Castellanos 1986; Andrews et al. 1988), and smaller settlements between Chichén Itzá and the Yucatan north coast (Kepecs et al. 1994: 146–148). Also, as Tatiana Proskouriakoff first suggested, there is significant evidence for overlap or mixing of the supposedly distinct architectural styles including several examples of Maya hieroglyphic dates from the Terminal Classic or ‘Florescent’ period inscribed on structures that would otherwise be assigned to the ‘Modified Florescent’ or Early Postclassic period. Because of these findings, the traditional view that a non-Maya group conquered Chichén Itzá at around ad 900 is now being replaced by the notion that the incorporation of foreign groups at Chichén Itzá was a gradual process that began sometime after ad 800 and did not necessarily involve conquest (Andrews 1990; Freidel 1985, 1986; Kowalski 1985, 1989; Lincoln 1983, 1986, 1990; Sabloff 1990; Schele and Freidel 1990; Schele and Mathews 1998:198–204; Wren and Schmidt 1991).” New evidence regarding the timing and nature of the overlap may be provided by the analyses of the ceramics collected during the Chichén Itzá Archaeological Project directed by Peter Schmidt. Eduardo Perez, who serves as the ceramic analyst for this project, has provided evidence for rejecting the total overlap model, although he accepts that there was a moderate chronological overlap between the Puuc centers and Chichén Itzá.

Chichén Itzá, Tula, and Tollan

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Postclassic International Symbol Set. Founded during the Epiclassic period, but emerging from and continuing to thrive during the subsequent Early Postclassic period were Chichén Itzá and Tula. As Smith and Berdan (2003:4) put it: “. . . processes of trade and communication continued in the Early Postclassic period (ca. ad 950–1150) after the ninth-century collapse of the southern lowland Maya cities. Much of west Mexico was drawn into the Mesoamerican economic and religious orbit at this time. Major cities with considerable international influence arose at Tula in central Mexico and Chichén Itzá in Yucatan (Andrews 1990; Diehl 1983, 1993; Healan 1989; Tozzer 1957). These two cities were clearly in contact with one another, but the nature of their interactions had remained unclear.”

Perez apparently has identified some twenty-five pure Motul (Late Classic) contexts, particularly in the Initial Series group, followed by Cehpech contexts, then overlapping Cehpech and Sotuta contexts, and followed finally by various pure Sotuta contexts. Perez is proposing the following dates for these complexes: Motul (ad 600–850), Cehpech (ad 800/850–900/950), and Sotuta (ad 900/950– 1200). Publication of these data is expected in the near future, and this may help clarify the nature of the overlap, and whether Chichén Itzá persisted as a major power in northern Yucatan for a substantial period of time after the demise of the Puuc cities (David Freidel, personal communication, January 2005).

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11

Lincoln (1990:7) acknowledged that his views were controversial, stating: “I take the most radical position: that all the traits attributed to distinct and successive ethnic groups [at Chichén Itzá] are in fact contemporaneous, as well as functionally allied and complementary, during the Terminal Classic Period of ad 800 and after (Lincoln 1983, 1986). I believe that ‘Maya’ and ‘Toltec’ at Chichén Itzá are complete misnomers. For me, the two ‘styles’ do not reflect a mixture of two contemporaneous, distinct ethnic groups living side by side; in fact, the two ‘styles’ are aspects of the same one—with distinct icons reflecting functional social divisions within a whole, single, polity. It is only archaeologists, and not the archaeological data, which have created the division within Chichén.”

12

Smith and Berdan (2003:4) observe that the Epiclassic period witnessed the formation of a new and more decentralized trade network that flourished in coastal and peripheral zones (Smith and Berdan 2003:4; see Pollard 1997; Smith and HeathSmith 1980; Webb 1978). A common symbol system featuring designs such as the step-fret and stylized serpent imagery (in many cases featuring feathered serpents) was disseminated throughout many of the sites and regions that formed part of this emerging network (see Sharp 1978). Although the processes by which this iconographic imagery was disseminated seem to presage those later involved in the spread of the Mixteca-Puebla style (or what Donald Robertson called the “International Style” in its variants in the Maya area), Smith and Berdan (2003:4) propose that they be called the Early

k r i s ta n- g r a h a m and kowa l sk i

13

This is particularly intriguing in light of Hassig’s (1992:ch. 8) discussion of changing Mesoamerican warfare practices and weaponry. He has pointed out the so-called fending sticks (wooden weapons that look somewhat like a hockey stick) held by “Toltec” warriors both at Tula and Chichén Itzá are more likely a combination club and cutting weapon, and originally may have been edged by a series of small, razor-sharp obsidian prismatic blades (Hassig 1992:231n24). The use of such a machuahuitl prototype would account for the emphasis on new forms of quilted cotton armor (particularly evident as arm protectors) seen in the iconography at the two centers (Hassig 1992:114, 126). Although Hassig viewed the appearance of such weaponry and military garb at Chichén Itzá as evidence of a Tula Toltec dominance in the Itzá government, other explanations are possible. As in the case of the later Aztecs, Tula’s long-distance trade networks were probably protected by contingents of warriors stationed at key production centers and ports of trade, and accompanying merchant caravans on their travels. The Itzá could have come into contact with such warriors during their own trading expeditions in the lower Gulf Coast region and hired contingents of them to accompany and protect their own trading canoes, then, realizing that their arms and tactics were superior to those of other northern Maya groups whom they sought to dominate, adopted both their weaponry as well as aspects of their martial cults and symbolism as one of their pathways to power.

14

Patricia Anderson (1994) recently has pointed out the problematic nature of Tozzer’s putative ethnic identifications at Chichén Itzá.

15

The construction technology of each pillar is also quite distinct. The Tula pillar comprises four basalt blocks of nearly identical dimensions; the lower three blocks have carved tenons that hold the pillar together. In contrast, the pillar from Chichén Itzá is made from irregular blocks of soft limestone joined together with mortar; the mortar is also used to fill out the irregularities of the stone (Charlot 1931:233– 234). These differences also apply to the construction techniques between Tula’s Pyramid B and Chichén Itzá’s Temple of the Warriors. Although the temple atop the Tula pyramid did not survive, it was probably built with walls of adobe faced with small stone veneer and covered with plaster, perhaps with

some sections faced with carved stone panels as well (by comparison with better-preserved walls in the Palacio de Quetzalcoatl [Edificio 1] and the Palacio Quemado [Salas 1–3]; Healan 1989:17–27). The lack of durable mortar meant that the temple walls had long since disintegrated by the time of Acosta’s excavations. The Temple of the Warriors, by contrast, was constructed with a hearting of lime and rubble concrete laid up in courses and contained by much larger, smoothly cut and squared “veneer” stones that were then coated with plaster. Whereas the roof of Pyramid B was undoubtedly beam and mud mortar, the roof of the Temple of the Warriors consisted of a series of parallel Maya vaults faced with specialized “boot shaped” soffit stones (Morris et al. 1931:1:15–16, 204–227, 1931:2:pls. 4–5).

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