The Murals of Cacaxtla: The Power of Painting in Ancient Central Mexico 9780292760899

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The Murals of Cacaxtla The Power of Painting in Ancient Central Mexico

CLAUDIA BRITTENHAM Foreword by Maria Teresa Uriarte Castaneda

� LA PINTURA MURAL

� PREHISPANICA ��

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

ENM£XICO

University of Texas Press � Austin

Publication ofthis book has been aided by a grant from the Millard Meiss Publication Fund ofthe College Art Association.

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Copyright © 2015 by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in China First edition, 2015 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 http://utpress.utexas.edu/index.php/rp-form @ T he paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements ofANSI/Nrso 239.48-1992 (R1997) (Perma­ nence of Paper). Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brittenham, Claudia. The murals of Cacaxtla : the power of painting in ancient central Mexico / Claudia Lozoff Brittenham. pages cm. - (Joe R. and Teresa Lozano Long series in Latin American and Latino art and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-292-76089-9 (hardback) 1. Cacaxtla Site (Mexico) 2. Maya painting - Mexico Tlaxcala (State) 3. Maya mural painting and decoration - Mexico - Tiaxcala (State) 4. Tiaxcala (Mexico : State) -Antiquities. I. Title. Fl435,l.CJ2B75 2015 972' .47- dc23 2014011404

Contents

List of Illustrations and Tables Foreword

1111

A Foreign Style? 81 Reconsidering Captive Art 83

xiii

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Polemics of Style

xv

4. The Temple of Venus: Astral Bodies

1

Style

The Acropolis and Its Paintings Greater Cacaxtla-Xochitecatl

17

Patterns of Naming

26

Cacaxtla among the Epiclassic City-States Art and Identity

37

Artists

48

Chronology

52

3. The Feathered Serpent and the Captive Stair: Polemics of Style

The Dangers of Difference

133

The Battle Mural in Mesoamerican Context 142

Of Maize, Cacao, and Men Supernatural Landscape

53

The Serpent Corridor 54 Feathered Serpents 57 Aquatic Borders 62 Feathered Serpents and Aquatic Borders 67 T he Afterlife of the Feathered Serpent 69 The Captive Stair 73 Text and Image 78

127

145

A Merchant God and His Wares Painting Luxury 159

50

111

n7

G. The Red Temple: Maize in the Underworld

47

Materials and Techniques

33

Burial

45

2. The Murals

Time and Inevitability Doubling 121

25

Between Powerful Neighbors

104

5. The Battle Mural: Violence in the Plaza

Diego Munoz Camargo's Description of Cacaxtla 24 Problems of Evidence

99

Bilingualism and Polyv alence

12

93

97

Venus/Star Symbolism

11

1. Cacaxtla in Context

Chaos Again

91

149

164

176

7. Structure A: The Mountain ofSustenance The Portico and Jamb Murals: A Portrait of the Altepetl 185 Guardians and Antecedents 189 Names and Dates 196 Duality and Difrasismo 197 Sustenance Mountain 201

183

140

vi

The Muro ls of Cocoxtlo

Continuity and Change

205

Painted Earth: The Inner Mural 205 Lau:r Interventions: Blood and Clay 208

Buried Paintings Conclusion

217

212

Appendix: Radiocarbon Dates for the Cacaxtla Murals

221

A Review of Radiocarbon Dating and Reporting Early Classic Radiocarbon Dates at Cacaxtla

221

223

Radiocarbon Dates Associated with Mural Painting Chronology of the Cacaxtla Paintings Notes

List of Illustrations and Tables

225

Bibliography Index

224

223

279

247

lllustrations

Figure 25. Pyramid ofthe Flowers, Xochitecatl

Figure 1. Structure A, south portico mural

Figure 26. Aerial photo of Xochitecatl

2

20

Figure 27. Female figurines, Xochitecatl

Figure 2. Structure A, north jamb mural during excavations 2

Figure 28. Map ofthe Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley

Figure 3. Structure A, inner mural

Figure 29. Codex Xochitecatl 23

2

Fi gure 4. Battle Mural shortly after excavations 3 Figure 5. Cuarto de la Escalera 3 Figure 7. The Captive Stair undergoing conservation 4 Figure 9. Temple ofVenus

Figure 10. Maya mural painting, North Acropolis, Calakmul 6 Figure n. Mural painting, Tetitla apartment compound, Teotihuacan 6

13

Figure 15. Plan ofCacaxtla 14 15

Fi gure 17- Building B, Cacaxtla

15

Figure 18. View of the Great Plaza

Figure 35. Stela 11, Yaxha Maya 30 Figure 36. "Bebedores" mural, Cholula

31

Figure 37. "Chapulines" mural, Cholula

31

Figure 39. Jaguar-helmeted ceramic fi gure, Once Sefiores, Cacaxtla 32 Figure 40. Teotihuacan tripod vessel with jaguar p Figure 41. Map of Mesoamerica 34

16

Figure 19. Building B during excavations, Cacaxtla 17 Fi gure 20. Greater Cacaxtla-Xochitecatl 18 Fi gure 21. Small pyramid to the east ofthe Cacaxtla acropolis 18 Figure 22. Reconstruction ofthe Plaza de los Tres Cerritos 18 Figure 23. View ofthe Cacaxtla acropolis 19 Figure 24. View ofXochitecatl 19

Figure 34. Estela Lisa, Monte Alban 30

Figure 38. Structure with Teotihuacan-like taludtablero, Cacaxtla 32

12

Figure 13. The Cacaxtla acropolis 13

Figure 16. Building F, Cacaxtla

Figure 30. Route ofthe Olmeca Xicalanca according to Diego Munoz Camargo 24

Figure 33. Tripod vase from Tikal 29

5

Figure 14. Aerial view ofthe Cacaxtla acropolis

22

Figure 32. Procession ofpriests mural, Tepantitla apartment compound,Teotihuacan 27

5

Figure 12. View of Cacaxtla from Xochitecatl

21

Figure 31. View ofTeotihuacan from the Pyramid of the Moon 27

Figure 6. Red Temple during excavations 4

Fi gure 8. Painting from Pozo 11-A

20

Figure 42. Maya vase with court scene, K.1453 35 Figure 43- View ofXochicalco

36

Figure 44. Pyramid ofthe Plumed Serpents, Xochicalco 37 Figure 45. Maya jade plaque found near Teotihuacan 38 Figure 46. Ceramic urn with jaguar, Xochicalco 38 Figure 47. Huehueteotl sculpture, Xochicalco 38 Figure 48. Cinnabar-rubbed sculpture, Xochicalco 39

viii

List of Illustrations and Tables

The Murals of Cacaxtla

Figure 49. Female fi gure seated in elaborate frame, Xochicalco 39 39

Figure 50. Kneeling male figure, Xochicalco Figure 51. Monument ofthe Four Glyphs, Xochicalco 39 Figure 52. Stelae 1, 2, and 3, Xochicalco Figure 53. Stela 1, Teotenango

39

Figure 77- Polychrome vase, Tula

60

Figure 78. Group of the Thousand Columns, Chichen Itza 60

Figure 54. Reliefofa jaguar and glyphic texts, Teotenango 40 Figure 55. Stela, Patio de los Altares, Cholula 41

Figure 110. Xalla sculpture, Teotihuacan 78

60

Figure 111. Flaming pyramid glyph, Captive Stair

62

Figure 112. Spiky-headed glyph, Captive Stair

Figure 82. River in "Tlalocan" mural, Tepantitla apartment compound, Teotihuacan 62

Figure 113. Captive Stair riser

Figure 83. Aquatic scene, Zona 5-A apartment compound, Teotihuacan 62

Figure 114. Glyph A, Captive Stair

80

Figure 115. Glyph E, Captive Stair

80

Figure 58. "Pinturas realistas" mural, Tetitla apartment compound, Teotihuacan 42

Figure 85. "Conjectural" marine beasts, Teotihuacan and Cacaxtla 63

Figure 59. Mural showing Maya gods, Teotihuacan 43

Figure 86. Maya tripod vessel, Burial 48, Tikal

Figure 60. Lidded tripod vessel nicknamed "The Dazzler," Copan 43

Figure 88. Tomb 1, Rio Azul

Figure 62. Maya lidded tripod vessel, Kaminaljuyu 44 Figure 63- Cross section ofa Cacaxtla mural

48

Fi gure 64. Red Temple, east wall, photographed in raking light 49 Figure 65. Battle Mural detail

51

Figure 66. Reconstruction of the Serpent Corridor and Captive Stair 54 Figure 67. Serpent Corridor, east wall

55

Figure 68. Serpent Corridor. detail ofwest wall 55 Figure 69. Cross section ofserpent corridor and Red Temple 56 Figure 70. Red Temple, east wall, detail of superposed paint layers 56 Figure 71. Monument 19. La Venta

64

Figure 87. Maya vase with aquatic border, K.1941

Figure 61. Maya lidded tripod chocolate vessel, Rio Azul 44

57

Figure 72. Mural of the Mythological Animals, Teotihuacan 57

69

Figure 93. Prehispanic repair to Serpent Corridor

80

Figure 151. Lintel painting with scorpion, Mitla Arroyo Group 103

80

Figure 152. Maya plate showing Maize God, 1-,,..1.,

,-�- '1°T ·

Figure 290. Detail of lower register and recumbent figure, North Temple . Chichen ltza. Watercolor reconstruction by Adela Breton. National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution, MS 74 62-01.

stomach, and that the two secondary figures shar­ ing this calendrical name represent a maize plant in different states of growth (Graulich 1990:99, 103; see also Kubler 1980:164). But the meaning of the jamb murals is not direct or unitary. If the only goal was to represent maize, a maize plant like those of the Red Temple or the Structure A outer portico could have made the idea more explicit. These figures carry an added symbolic and representational burden, harder to decipher. Allegory, myth, or the integra­ tion of historical figures into the story of creation may be intended by these choices. By showing maize growing inside a mountain, Structure A seems to re-create the Sustenance Mountain (fonacatepetl) where maize was stored before the beginning of the present era (M.E. Miller 1999:181-182; Townsend 1997'.97-98). In the Nahua version of this myth recorded in the Leyenda de los soles, the god Quetzalcoatl saw a red ant carrying a grain of maize and asked the ant where he had found it. Upon hearing the ant's response, Quetzalcoatl transformed himself into a black ant, stole maize from Sustenance Moun­ tain, and brought the precious grains back to the gods in Tamoanchan. Quetzalcoatl then tried to carry the entire mountain back to Tamoanchan, but he failed, and it fell to the god Nanahuatl to break open the mountain with lightning, so that the Tialocs (rain gods) could plunder the maize, beans, amaranth, and other foods inside (Bier­ horst 1990:86-99, 215, 1992:146-147; Graulich 1997'.115; Lopez Austin and Lopez Lujan 2004; Tena 2011:176-181). The lightning serpent and the Tlaloc jar on the north jamb of Structure A may reference aspects of this creation myth. T here are pictorial parallels as well. In a ver­ sion of this story on page 43 of the Codex Borgia, eagles and jaguars are associated with this place of sustenance, much as they are at Cacaxtla. Tezcatlipoca and the Black Quetzalcoatl stand on jaguar and eagle thrones, respectively, consum­ ing frothy maize while the theft of maize occurs below (Figure 293; Boone 2007'.202-204). Per­ haps the Cacaxtla figures also guard maize. Structure A is not alone in re-creating Sus­ tenance Mountain with architecture. The Aztec Templo Mayor was also understood as a Suste­ nance Mountain (Broda 1987'.98; Matos 1986:4849, 71-74; Townsend 1982:48, 61), as well as a Serpent Mountain (Coatepec); both are aspects of

203

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Figure 291. Detail of the figure emerging from the shell on the south jamb of Structure A. Photo by Ricardo Alvarado Tapia. Courtesy of the Archive del Proyecto La Pintura Mural Prehispanica en Mexico, lnstituto de lnvestigaciones Esteticas,

Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico.

Figure 292. Detail of personified maize emerging from a conch shell, assisted by a small god, Temple of the Foliated Cross, central panel, Palenque. Maya. Drawing by Linda Schele, © David Schele. Courtesy of the Foundation for the Advancement of Meso­ american Studies. Inc., www.famsi.org. See Figure 243.

204

Structure A

The Murals of Cacaxtla

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abundance. Be they rulers or ancestors, deities or priests, they personify night and day, the rainy season and the dry season. An entire day and an entire year are encoded within this painting, as well as an entire agricultural cycle, from planting to harvest (Graulich 1990:99, 106; Uriarte 1999b74-78). In Postclassic Aztec thought, these cycles did not happen naturally, but were the result of struggle, warfare, and sacrifice, contin­ gent on proper human devotions. At Cacaxtla, the altepetl and its human rulers are shown at the center of this allegory of agricultural bounty, for without civilization, this painting asserts, maize could not exist. The Structure A portico and jamb murals are both cosmogram and political allegory-not that the two categories would have been separate for the ancient Cacaxtlans. Surely the inner chamber of Structure A was one of the most sacred places in the city. Continuity and Change

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Figure 293. Codex Borgia, page 43. Codex Messicano Borgia no Borg.mess. 1, © 2014 Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana. Reproduced by

permission of Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, with all rights reserved.

a protean Sacred Mountain/axis mundi (Lopez Austin and Lopez Lujan 2004:447, 2009). The way that the aquatic borders of Structure A incor­ porate animals from distant oceans may mark Structure A as a symbolic center, just as did the faunal offerings inside the Templo Mayor (Broda 198T99-102). Bowing into the inner room of Structure A, one enters the cave at the heart of civilization (see Figure 271). The walls of mud, in contrast to the stucco common in the rest of the city, con­ structed a primordial past, structuring a journey

into the center of the earth, where elite partici­ pants could reenact the movements of the gods at the beginning of time. The portico and jamb murals simultaneously represent Sustenance Mountain, which is one form of the mountain of creation, and the founding of the city of Cacaxtla as an altepetl, itself an act of creation. The jamb figures, representing maize as growing plant and ripe ear, lie inside the mountain, germinating in the earth, preparing to sprout into full fruition within the mouth of the mountain on the portico. T he portico fi gures are guardians of this place of

The vision of Structure A that I have just out­ lined represents just one moment in a long and complex history of modification. Structure A remained in use for an extended period of time, its architecture and decoration undergoing numerous changes to keep the space meaning­ ful. It began as a small single-room structure, with a door where the north portico painting is currently located (Figure 294). The building was then enlarged into the two-room structure seen today by expanding the inner room to the south and adding the outer chamber (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:20-22, 34-35; n.d.; Lucet 1998:118-121, 2013:30-36, 77-85). The first murals at Structure A were painted before the Battle Mural was created, and its latest murals remained exposed longest of all the surviving Cacaxtla paint­ ings, undergoing additional modifications after the Red Temple and Temple of Venus paintings were covered by new construction.

Painted Earth: The Inner Mural The earliest painting at Structure A is the badly damaged mural on the rear wall of the inner chamber (Figures 295 and 296). It was likely added when Structure A was enlarged to its

present two-room form, painted on a layer of mud, rather than the lime plaster support more common in the other Cacaxtla paintings. 14 When Structure A was first excavated, the walls of the inner chamber appeared undecorated, mud­ colored above a white guardapolvo or dado band running around the lower edge of the wall. The only exception was a red dot painted on the center of the back wall (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:22), which echoed the red circles on the outer panels of the building. Because of this mark, archaeologists decided to investigate the back wall, and after removing a layer of mud ("un bafio de lodo"), they uncovered a painting in the center of the wall (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:21, 41-42, plates 51-52, n.d.; for discus­ sion, see also Carlson 1991:16-17; Foncerrada 1976:8; Gonzalez Hurtado 2013:215, 234-235; Lombardo 1979:151; Lucet 201377-79; Molina Feal 1994:40; Urcid and Dominguez 2013=651-659). Unfortunately, this painting is too damaged to understand much of its content, as most of the back wall has been destroyed by centuries of erosion. The mural consisted of a central scene, separated from the flanking figures by a border of intertwined blue serpents and stacked masks with a skull at its center (see Lucet 201rfigure 1.72, for an infrared photo which reveals round, goggle eyes and a circular disk in place of a nose). Inside the serpent frame, a figure on the right is posed in a dramatic and active position, legs spread wide. Another figure probably stood directly over the central skull in the border, but only a claw of a ja guar boot now remains (Figure 297). The

- Figure 294. Plan of Structure A, the initial one-room structure shown

in red. Diagram by the author after plan in Lombardo et al. 1986.

205

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206

Structure A

The Murals of Cacaxtla

153). All three of the paintings on mud are located in the interior of structures, just like the paintings on mud from the Aztec Templo Mayor, centuries later (Lopez Lujan et al. 2005=32). Wall painting on mud and on plaster also coexisted at Teotihua­ can, where the choice of support expressed mate­ rial meaning, the earth again deployed in interior spaces (Diana Magaloni Kerpel, personal commu­ nication 2006; Magaloni 2010:63). The Zapotec tombs of Monte Alban also have a mixture of mud and lime as support for painting, marking these spaces as symbolic caves (Magaloni 2010:64). 15 Figure 295. Structure A, inner mural. Photo by Ricardo Alvarado

Tapia. Courtesy of the Archivo del Proyecto La Pintura Mural

Prehispanica en Mexico, lnstituto de lnvestigaciones Esteticas, Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico.

Figure 296. Line drawing of inner mural, Structure A. Drawing

courtesy of Genevieve Lucet.

figures were smaller than the portico and jamb fi gures, about two-thirds human scale, as opposed to the nearly human scale of the other paintings (only the fi gures of the Cuarto de la Escalera, at 50-60 centimeters tall, are smaller; see Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:40). The central scene seems to have had a red background, but the flanking fi gures are painted directly on the mud-colored support. To the right of the central scene, two black-skinned figures, legs shown in profile, appear to be moving toward the center of the room. The outer fi gure wears ja guar boots, and a ja guar pelt hangs from his upper body. He carries a fringed shield or bag. The inner figu re wears white ties around his ankles; perpendicular to his body, he carries a bar wrapped in white cloth-perhaps a staff or torch. To the left of the central scene, all that remains are the feet of a single figure, painted black and raised in a posture of dance (Figure 298). The central scene might represent an action like capture or sacrifice, given the active pose of the rightmost fi gure, and the outer fi gures on the right seem to be moving in procession toward this central scene. It is difficult to say much more about this painting. The central scene seems to exist in a qualitatively different kind of space than the figures surrounding it, demarcated by both a shift in ground color-to the deep hematite red that often signifies sacred, timeless space elsewhere at

Cacaxtla-and the border of intertwined serpents and skulls. Javier Urcid and Elba Dominguez note the formal resemblance between these stacked skulls and the long-nosed masks that frame the comers of many Maya buildings in the Puuc, Rio Bee, and Chem�s regions of the Yucatan Peninsula during the Terminal Classic period (see Figure 274; Urcid and Dominguez 201J:658-659, fi gure 38). Although these masks were long identified as faces of the rain god Chahk, more recent investi­ gations suggest that they may instead represent animated mountains, marking the interiors of these buildings as symbolic caves (D. Stuart 1997). This form of rendering has roots in Classic Maya ceramics and sculpture, where, as at Struc­ ture A, serpents may emerge from these stony forms (see Figure 224; Boot 2004). As in the Puuc buildings, the blue skull and serpent border at Cacaxtla likely defined the space inside it as the interior of a mountain, the red color appropriate to this primordial, cave-like setting. With a few elegant strokes of paint, the modest space of Structure A's inner room was transformed into something monumental and sacred. The choice to paint on a mud rather than a plaster support may also have symbolic mean­ ing. Three paintings at Cacaxtla are painted on mud supports: the inner mural at Structure A; the painting in Pozo 11-A; and the murals of the Cuarto de la Escalera (Magaloni et al. 2013=150-

Figure 297. Skull in the center of the lower border of inner mural,

with claws of a jaguar boot above, Structure A. Photo by the author.

Figure 298. Dancing feet on the left side of the inner mural,

Structure A. Photo

by the author.

Thus, rather than interpreting the mud support as a characteristic of early paintings, as proposed by Genevieve Lucet (personal communication 2006; n.d.), I suggest that the choice of a mud support had symbolic resonance, related to the interior location of the painting. Unlike the later portico and jamb murals, this inner painting of Structure A was profoundly private, its dim recesses invisible from the north plaza. Entering the inner chamber to see this mural must have been a sig­ nificant ritual experience, available only to a select few.

207

208

Structure A

The Murals of Cacaxtla

Figure 299. Microscopic view of Structure A south portico mural, showing traces of a previous layer of paint beneath the present mural. Microphotograph by Diana Magaloni Kerpel and Andres Paz.

This inner mural was part of a program that extended onto the outer portico and jambs. The renovated two-room plan of Structure A, with its wide outer pillars, seems designed to showcase a painting framing the doorway into the inner room, but it was not designed to frame the pres­ ent portico and jamb paintings. Diana Magaloni's sampling has revealed another layer of paint beneath these murals, suggesting that a previous painting might have graced the portico walls (Fig­ ure 299; Diana Magaloni Kerpel, personal com­ munication 2009; Magaloni et al. 201p63-165). Only microscopic fragments of red and yellow pigment remain, and they are found only in some samples of the portico and jamb walls; this paint layer seems to have been stripped off in order to create the currently visible portico murals. These outer paintings were painted on stucco rather than mud, furthering the impression that the choice of support held symbolic meaning and was related to the location of the painting. It will never be possible to understand this earlier portico painting fully, but it seems likely that it coincided with the inner mural described above. The inner mural was eventually covered by a thick layer of mud, and a red circle was painted on the new mud wall. Perhaps this red circle some­ how commemorated the painting beneath; its very presence suggests that Structure A continued in use after the inner mural was concealed (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:41). 16 The inner painting may have been remembered and perhaps even more powerful because it was hidden.

The present portico and jamb murals may have been painted when the inner mural was covered. The inner mural is at a different scale and painted by different hands than the current portico and jamb paintings (see Brittenham 2008:178).17 We have seen how artists at the Serpent Corridor and the Battle Mural worked to minimize the differ­ ences between their personal styles; the lack of any such effort at Structure A makes it doubtful that the two paintings were in fact visible at the same time. The portico and jamb murals do share certain features with the inner mural, including the black body paint, the jaguar boots, and the dancing figure; more important, they also restate the idea of the mountain mouth, but in a Central Mexican, rather than a Maya, visual idiom. Although some authors suggest that the inner mural somehow synthesized the portico and jamb murals (e.g., Carlson 1991:16-17; Lombardo 1979:151; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:35), it is difficult to imagine what this scene could have added to the concise cosmology painted on the portico and jamb murals. I believe that the portico and jamb murals are better understood as a revision or restatement of the themes of the original mural program, updated after Structure A had been in use for some time, when the inner mural was covered. They were an enduring synthesis forged out of the experiment of the earlier program.

painted red and his jaguar helmet was retouched, its upper jaw widened to cover more of the repainted face (Fi gure 302). It is unclear how these changes altered the meaning of the mural, or why they were neces­ sary. One possibility is that these changes made the references to maize on the jamb murals more explicit, highlighting the resemblance between the north jamb figure and the small figure emerg­ ing from the conch shell on the south jamb, whose hair and skin were also repainted at this moment. This campaign did not substantially alter the meaning of the portico and jamb murals, but it might have revitalized them; the runny red pigment, in particular, seems to enliven the paint­ ings like an offering of fresh blood. Unfired clay reliefs were also added to the por­ tico mural, immediately bordering the doorway. These relief panels covered the inner border of maize plants flanking each of the portico scenes: in the process, these paintings were deeply scored so that the clay relief would adhere to the surface (Figure 303). Each panel shows a figu re seated on a zoomorphic mask with prominent fangs and a curling nose--the same kind of Maya "witz monsters," or animate mountains, pictured on the inner mural generations earlier. On the well­ preserved north relief, the figure wears a fringed

Later Interventions: Blood and Clay

Structure A held this central and significant place for decades after the portico and jamb murals were painted, and, indeed, at least two separate interventions modified the murals to keep them powerful. 18 First, the portico and jamb murals were heavily retouched (Diana Magaloni Kerpel, personal communication 2009). The bright red outlines on all four murals were added, covering previous black lines or adding what seem like daubs of fresh blood to the white ornaments of the fi gures. This red pigment has smeared and run over time, partly because it was applied to the already long finished painting (Fi gure 300). In this episode of modification, the face of the north jamb figure was also repainted, its color changed from black to pink (Figure 301; Brittenham and Magaloni n.d.; Magaloni et al. 201p65-167, 195-196). At the same time, this figure's hair was

Figure 301. Microscopic view magnified 2ox of Structure A north

jamb figure's face. It shows a layer of black pigment (carbon

mixed with hematite), which was covered by a layer of peach­

colored paint in the retouching of the paintings. Microphoto­

graph by Diana Magaloni Kerpel and Andres Paz.

Figure 302. Face of north jamb figure, Structure A. Photo by

Ricardo Alvarado Tapia. Courtesy of the Archivo del Proyecto La

Pintura Mural Prehispanica en Mexico, lnstituto de lnvestigacio­ nes Esteticas, Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico.

209

kilt and a serpent knotted around his neck; he lifts his left hand (shown as a right hand) in front of his mouth. Above him rears another monster mouth, indicating that he is sitting inside the maw of a stony cave. The wings of a bat swooping above the cave are preserved before the relief breaks off.

.J.

•• ,,.. ,. Figure 300. Detail of the south jamb figure, Structure A. The runny red lines

outlining the figure's white paper and cloth ornaments are a later addition. Photo by Ricardo Alvarado Tapia. Courtesy of the Archive del Proyecto La

Pintura Mural Prehispanica en Mexico, lnstituto de lnvestigaciones Esteticas,

Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico.

210

The Murals of Cacaxtla Figure 304- Maya "witz monster" from the base of Stela 1, Bonampak, with Maize God emerging from a cleft in the mountain. Note the groups of three dots marking the stony nature of this creature. Draw­ ing by Linda Schele, © David Schele. Courtesy of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc., www.famsi.org.

Figure 303. Addition of clay relief, Structure A: (a) clay relief from north portico; (b) view of south portico where clay relief has fallen off, revealing scene of maize plants growing which has been deeply scored to make clay adhere; (c) remains of the clay relief, which originally covered the south portico, now on display in the Museo de Sitio de Cacaxtla. Photo (a) © Enrico Ferorelli. Photo (b) by Ricardo Alvarado Tapia. Courtesy of the Archive del Proyecto La Pintura Mural Prehispanica en Mexico, Institute de lnvestigaciones Esteticas, Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico. Photo (c) by the author.

The south relief was heavily damaged during the initial discovery of the paintings; it also showed a figure seated in a similar posture on a zoomor­ phic mask, wearing a serpent necklace, but not enough remains to allow us to know if the figures were identical or contrasted in some way (for dis­ cussion, see Helmke and Nielsen 2013a:367-373; Urcid and Dominguez 2013:650-653). The seated figu re may be a ruler-perhaps doubled on the damaged south side (as the figure of 3 Deer Ant­ ler is doubled on the Battle Mural; see Chapter 5) or perhaps paired with an opposing figure as on the original portico and jamb paintings.

Like the murals, these reliefs blend pan­ Mesoamerican traditions in a distinctive way. While not in the elegant and refined style of a court like Palenque, the zoomorphic throne and cave mouth framing the seated man on each relief most closely resemble Maya prototypes. Helmke and Nielsen (201}367) even describe it as "rendered in almost pure Maya iconography, as though the artisan who modeled the panel had actually been trained in the Maya area." The cave mouth is decorated with triangular groups of three dots, which indicate stone in Maya glyphs and iconography (Figure 304). These marks are

Figure 305. Tomb 5, Suchilquitongo, Oaxaca. Photo by Michel Zabe. Courtesy of the Proyecto La Pintura Mural Prehispanica en Mexico, Institute de lnvestigaciones Esteticas, Universidad Nacional Aut6noma de Mexico.

212

The Murals of Cacaxtla

the closest approximation of Maya writing found to date at Cacaxtla. Yet several authors have also detected resem• blances to Gulf Coast art in the scrollwork and ornament of the reliefs (e.g., Kubler 1980:172; Pina Chan 1998:97). The seated pose with one leg crossed over the other knee is common at El Tajin, as well as in the Maya area (Finegold 2004:37). Other scholars see a resemblance to Oaxaca: text panels at the site once described this relief as a Oaxaca-style image of the Zapotec rain god Cocijo (see also Galindo 2013:117; Garcia Cook and Merino Carrion 199T63). More important, the use of red-painted relief sculpture flanking a doorway, contrasted with surrounding mural decoration, recalls the program of a Zapotec tomb such as Suchilquitongo Tomb 5 (Figure 305; Diana Magaloni Kerpel, personal commu­ nication 2009; Fahmel 2oop53-160; A. Miller 199p64-208), recalling Simon Martin's obser­ vation that Sustenance Mountain is "the con­ ceptual prototype for [Maya] funerary pyramids" (2006a:160). These reliefs demonstrate how pan­ Mesoamerican evocations can coexist alongside, indeed, even coterminous with, a more specific citation of Maya or Teotihuacan art. It is possible to find a Maya antecedent for everything in this relief-it may, in fact, be the most Maya work of art at Cacaxtla-but the particular elements that were selected and the way that they were com­ bined and deployed simultaneously evoke a Oaxa­ can tomb and a Gulf Coast relief carving as well. A Cacaxtla native might have known the identity of these regal seated figures, but their power and importance were expressed in an idiom any Meso­ american viewer could understand. In spite of the change of style and medium, the addition of the clay reliefs did not substantially alter the core message of the Structure A painting program. T he inner doorway was still rendered as the entrance into a cave, and the space inside continued to function in the same way, its mud­ coated walls still equated with the center of the earth. T he clay reliefs may have updated the paint­ ing, picturing a new ruler (or rulers) of Cacaxtla. At the same time, the addition of the clay reliefs downplayed the previous emphasis on agricul­ tural bounty. What was so controversial about the allusion to Sustenance Mountain? It might be that a persistent drought made these claims that

Structure A

good governance would lead to abundant harvests more difficult to sustain-a massive sacrifice of over 150 children, perhaps a desperate plea for rain, coincided with the moment when Structure A was covered by new construction (see Chapter 1; Delgadillo and Santana 1990:50, 1995 [1984]:5864, 68-69; Lopez de Molina 1979b:144). While not disrupting its sacred function, the addition of the clay reliefs transformed the inner room of Structure A into a more menacing and uncertain space and placed an elite body even more visibly at its center. The story of Structure A underwent several revisions, fine-tuning but not completely changing its message. Structure A may in turn have revised stories told on the other murals of Cacaxtla. If the construction or repainting of Structure A corresponded to the covering-up of the Battle Mural (see Brittenham 2008:214-216), perhaps its murals rewrote the story, which had placed so much emphasis on conflict, reframing 3 Deer and his role at Cacaxtla. Having quite liter­ ally buried the past, did the painters of Cacaxtla set out to re-create the world anew at Structure A? Buried Paintings

Eventually, even these changes were not enough, and Structure A was engulfed by a new building campaign. The portico and jamb murals of Structure A were covered with fine earth when the building was covered by new construction, earth so fine that the archaeologists who exca­ vated it suggested that it might have been sifted (see Figure 2; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:21). T he doorway between the murals was blocked with adobes, and the paint fragments from the upper part of the portico murals, dam­ aged when the roof of the building was removed, were piled at the foot of the painting, a practice similar to the later burial of the Patio Hundido paint fragments, discussed below (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:21). The archaeolo­ gists who excavated Structure A wrote that it was "important to emphasize the intention to pro­ tect the murals in the moment when they were covered, which speaks to us of the relevance of their significance even when they were covered" (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:21; see

also Foncerrada 1976:5; Molina Feal 1987:200). The long-hidden inner mural may also have been remembered and singled out for special treatment when the building was buried: the inner room of Structure A was also filled with fine earth, although the fill was slightly less fine than that covering the portico and jamb murals (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:21, 22, 35, 41; Molina Feal 198T200). 19 Even at this moment of burial, the paintings of Structure A were cherished and remembered. And they were not alone. The painted walls of the Battle Mural (see Chapter 5), the Red Temple, the Temple of Venus, and, possibly, the Cuarto de la Escalera were also preserved to nearly their full height and covered with fine earth when they were superseded by new construction (see the summary in Brittenham 2009:135-138, 146-151). 20 The careful burial of the Cacaxtla paintings con• trasts sharply with the general pattern of rebuild­ ing at Cacaxtla, which shows little care for what had come before: buildings were truncated when convenient and filled with a rough mixture of stones, earth, and ceramic fragments (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:21, 33-34; Molina Feal 1980:48; Vergara and Santana 1990:37-40). Moreover, works of art in media other than painting did not receive special treatment; for example, the unbaked clay relief decorating Build­ ing E was literally cut off at the knees, along with the building that contained it, and it was not pro• tected in any way during subsequent construction (Figure 306; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:36-37). A jumble of fragmentary unbaked clay sculptures was found on the northeast side of the acropolis during excavations for the roof that now covers the acropolis (Figure 307; Pozo and Cala 9-A; Espinoza and Ortega n.d.:191-194, 321-332), and a single battered stone sculpture was found on one of the peripheral terraces of the acropolis (Rosalba Delgadillo Torres, personal communication 2006). In fact, nearly the only well-preserved sculpture from Cacaxtla is the clay relief on the portico of Structure A, and its sur­ vival may have been a side effect of protecting the mural painting to which it is attached. Even paint fragments seem to have been singled out for special treatment. In the Patio Hundido, thousands of paint fragments were carefully gathered; mixed with a very fine earth,

213

Figure 306. Remains of modeled clay sculpture on Building E, Cacaxtla. Photo by the author.

Figure 307. Unbaked clay sculpture recovered from deposit at the side of the Cacaxtla acropolis. M useo de Sitio de Cacaxtla. Photo by the author.

214

Structure A

The Murals of Cacaxtla

Figure 308. Offering of paint fragments mixed with fine earth and sealed beneath a layer of stucco, Patio Hundido. Photo courtesy of

Fototeca de la Coordinaci6n de Conservaci6n del Patrimonio Cultural, lnstituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia.

Figure 309. Fragments of modeled clay deposited directly in

the fill of the Patio Hundido. Photo courtesy of Fototeca de la Coordinaci6n de Conservaci6n del Patrimonio Cultural, lnstituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia.

just like the fill covering the other Cacaxtla paint­ ings; and sealed beneath a layer of stucco which was covered with ceramic offerings (Figure 308; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:22-23, 43; Leslie McCoy field diary, 27/III/76, in Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal n.d.). The archaeologists who discovered the cache in the Patio Hundido likened it to a human burial (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:22), and although no elite tomb has ever been found at Cacaxtla, the comparison is suggestive. The dismembered bodies of two children were placed in another cache in the Patio Hundido at approximately the same moment (Tomb B; see Delgadillo and Santana 1990:49). Thus, this burial of a wall painting may even sig­ nal a metaphorical equivalence between painting and the human body. 21 Although it seems radically different, the Patio Hundido cache may be equivalent to the burial of the earlier Cacaxtla paintings. In this later and more impoverished stage of construction at Cacaxtla, perhaps it seemed more appropriate to dismantle and bury the entire painting than to leave only half of it on a partially demolished

wall.22 Fragments of a three-dimensional poly­ chrome clay sculpture were mixed in with the fill of the patio, apparently without special treatment (Figure 309; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:22-23, 43). The contrast between the care­ ful burial of the paintings, even in fragmentary states, and the careless disposal of clay materials suggests that the painting had a special meaning for the inhabitants of Cacaxtla beyond that of other media. 23 In other words, the Cacaxtla paintings were buried because the substance of painting was in some way precious, more so than mere clay. The act of burying a painting seems to imply a desire to preserve the painting, but it is important to emphasize that there is no evidence of reentry to view the buried paintings of Cacaxtla in later moments, as there is in the case of other Meso­ american offerings, like Offering 4 at the Olmec site of La Venta (Drucker et al. 1959:152-161; Magaloni and Filloy 2013), or many tombs in the Maya and Zapotec areas (Chase and Chase 2003:265-275; Fitzsimmons 2006; Middleton et al. 1998). Nor was the location of the Cacaxtla paintings marked in any way in the buildings that later covered them. The Cacaxtla paintings were not buried in order to preserve them for

future use, although their treatment has had that result; they were protected at the moment of burial because they merited respect. Even after the Cacaxtla paintings were hidden, they were not forgotten. In subsequent campaigns of rebuild­ ing, spaces that had once housed paintings were singled out for special treatment and offerings even after the murals had long been buried (Brit­ tenham 2009:150; Delgadillo and Santana 1995 [1984]:58-69).24 Painting was remembered at Cacaxtla because it played a crucial role in defining and making visible a local identity which allowed the com­ munity-and its rulers-to survive the upheavals of the Epiclassic period. Yet remembering the Cacaxtla paintings also involved intentional acts of forgetting, as the special attention paid to them helped erase the memory of the city's past ties with Teotihuacan. Clay and stone sculpture at Cacaxtla were not as recognizably and distinctively cosmopolitan as the paintings, and these materi­ als did not receive such respectful burial. Paint­ ings were not buried simply because they were paintings-they were buried because they were Cacaxtla paintings, paintings in the Cacaxtla style, a style that may have begun as exotic but was transformed into something locally meaningful.

215

Conclusion

The six paintings surveyed here offer only glimpses of the Cacaxtla paint­ ing tradition. Like Teotihuacan before it, Cacaxtla was a painted city, alive with color, set apart from the world around it by the vibrant hues of its murals. There were undoubtedly more paintings once. Many may still lie submerged within the unexcavated bulk of the acropolis, while others are now lost to the vagaries of time and agriculture. Some may have been destroyed by human hands. And of course, the people who made this tradi­ tion vital-the artists, whatever their identities and life histories; the patrons who chose paint as their medium for memorialization; the audi­ ences who might have been puzzled, or shocked, or delighted by the murals-they are all long gone as well. T he study of ancient art always struggles with these kinds of lacunae. Some of the most perishable media, like books, textiles, performance, and body art, are almost completely lost, known only through faint echoes and copies in more durable media. But because murals are integrated with architecture, they exist on the knife edge of fragility and durability. Enough sometimes survives to allow us to reconstruct a tradition, but those surviv­ als-and their archaeological recovery-are still deeply fortuitous. Not a single monumental painting survives from the ancient Greek heartland, and only through the eruptions of Vesuvius were many Roman murals preserved for modern viewers. For every painted Buddhist cave that sur­ vives today, we have surely lost dozens more. The discovery of the Maya murals of San Bartolo, Guatemala, which extend our knowledge of the Maya painting tradition back into the first millennium BC, was the result of an amazing string of chances. Even the Maya murals of Bonampak, nearly contemporary to Cacaxtla and perhaps Mesoamerica's best-preserved

Conclusion

The Murals of Cacaxtla

painting program, still have losses and gaps that mean that their study will never be done, their interpretation never definitive. T he task of the his­ torian of ancient art is to extrapolate a story from just a few points, always aware that the next dis­ covery may completely upend what we think we know, just as the discovery of Cacaxtla upended so many of our certainties about the Puebla-T laxcala region during the Epiclassic period. We are trained to look for patterns, but the data set is so small that some patterns may be illusory. T his is particularly true at Cacaxtla. T he account in the preceding pages has stressed the cohesiveness of the Cacaxtla painting tradi­ tion-the very unity which makes it a recogniz­ able tradition even today and which made it such a powerful symbol of local identity during the Epiclassic period. From the earliest twitch of a painted feather at the Serpent Corridor to the solemn guardians of Structure A, the surviving Cacaxtla paintings are unified by a common paint­ ing technique, a shared palette, elegant and even line, and the use of duality as rhetorical strategy to articulate complex ideas. Once we train our eyes to appreciate its preference for clarity and simplic­ ity, a Cacaxtla painting can never be confused with a work from the Maya area or any other Meso­ american painting tradition. But it is worth dwelling for a moment on the diversity of the Cacaxtla paintings as well. T hose strange, staring, simple figures of the Temple of Venus are not the same as the very particular humans engaged in the agonies of combat on the Battle Mural; neither subject is painted in quite the same way as the riches on the old god's backpack at the Red Temple. The calligraphic excess of the border of serpents and skulls on the inner mural of Structure A is quite different from the stark legibility of the cartouche in Pozo 11-A, though both are painted on an atypical mud support. In order to construct narratives and traditions that make sense of the past, we train our eyes to overlook difference: Just how similar are the murals of the Tetitla and Tepantitla apart­ ment compounds atTeotihuacan, really? Is Maya artistic tradition as unified-and as universally sublime and calligraphic-as we like to tell our­ selves that it is? At Cacaxtla, I have argued, some of these divergences are deliberate, the results of chronol­ ogy, context, and the distinct aims of different

paintings. I have suggested. for example, that the mud support of the inner mural of Structure A re-creates the primordial space of creation, and that the differences in style between the Serpent Corridor and the Captive Stair are used polemi­ cally to draw distinctions between inhabitants of Cacaxtla and others. But these differences also remind us that, at Cacaxtla, every painting was an experiment. They highlight the newness of the Cacaxtla painting tradition. Maya painters had the weight of centuries of tradition to draw on, a vast rulebook and set of models stretching back into the Preclassic period. Even a painting program like that of Bonampak is strikingly conservative, combining vignettes that had been common currency for decades. If there is innova­ tion there, it lies in the complexity and cohesion of the program, and in the ways these vignettes were combined to represent an expanding cast of characters at the royal court. Cacaxtla painters also drew on many venerable traditions from all over Mesoamerica, perhaps even had access to some of the same pattern books and other perishable exemplars, but each painting at the city was new under the sun, not the reworking of tried and true models but a step into uncharted territory. Maybe it is the precariousness of that experiment-and the excitement that comes from it-that makes these paintings so powerful today. But we should also remember that they were not always satisfactory to their makers. As powerful as it is to the modem viewer, the Battle Mural was a fleeting presence on Cacaxtla's Great Plaza, modified, clarified, and then swiftly covered over when the experiment failed-or, perhaps. was too successful? Painting was mutable. Nearly every mural at Cacaxtla was modified, sometimes repeatedly. The Serpent Corridor, one of the earliest paintings at the city, was transformed into the Red Temple stair, architecture and painting program both growing more complex as the city around it did so, too. Structure A likewise underwent a series of restatements, from the original inner mural to the portico and jamb paintings, which were eventually capped with clay reliefs which sounded the same themes in more ominous terms. Even the Battle Mural, visible for only a short time, was revised to clarify its message, glyphs added to name each of the victorious warriors. Paintings might have even revised the stories of other paint-

ings: the murals of Structure A could be imagined as a reworking of the history told on the recently covered Battle Mural walls, while Structure A and the Red Temple told parallel and mutually rein­ forcing stories albout sustenance. Nonetheless, there are some stories that we can tell about the development of the Cacaxtla painting tradition over those few brief centuries of its floresoence. Painting began simple and grew more daborate.The small gestures along the ground at the Serpent Corridor, the roundel or roundels in Pozo n-A, and the two painted pillars at the Temple of Venus eventually blossomed into the all-encompassing painted environments of the Battle Mural, the R,ed Temple, and Structure A. It is as if Cacaxtla painters gradually realized the full power ofthe mural format-how painting, integrated with architecture, and, eventually, with other media, such as the clay reliefs at Structure A, could create place, how painting could even create a mythical landscape, and by building that mythical landscape within the confines of the acropolis, sanctify the whole city. Of course, public art at nearly every Meso­ american city sought to do this in its own way. Ar-chitecture and urban planning, rather than painting, were often the preferred solutions, from the earliest Olmec centers of San Lorenzo and La Venta, through the geomancy ofTeotihuacan, to the monumental acropoleis of cities like Monte Alban, Tikal, Copan, and Xochicalco. We under­ stand most about the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan because we know it through both archaeology and sixteenth-century sources. From these sources, we can glimpse the meanings of this island in the middle of the lake, divided into four quarters like the universe, with theTemplo Mayor at its center integrating offerings from all over Mesoamerica. We see how it re-creates Serpent Mountain, Sus­ tenance Mountain, and other spaces of creation while simultaneously glorifying the exploits of certain historical Mexica rulers. We can under­ stand it as a statement especially powerful for the way that it drew on millennia of Mesoamerican traditions, transforming them into something dis­ tinctly Mexica but also universally recognizable. So what could painting do that other media could not? Painting was malleable and flexible, a fertile terrain for experiment, a space in which it was possible to meld Mesoamerican tradi­ tions into a powerful new synthesis. Compared

to sculpture or monumental architecture, the resources required were relatively modest: some expensive pigments, perhaps, and skilled paint­ ers with the appropriate technical knowledge, but painting did not demand the backbreaking and time-consuming labor of hauling and reshaping stone. It was faster: ideas could be worked into final programs in the space of weeks or months. Murals could be altered: nothing was set in stone, so to speak, and meaning could be clarified, refined, or rewritten, as politics and circumstances demanded. And failed experiments were far easier to dispose of: a painting could be covered by a layer of plaster and whitewashed out of existence, avoiding the lingering embarrass­ ment of a massive pyramid or a carved stela. Just what do you do with the hunk of stone that is, in some way, the embodiment of an unpopular king? Finally, and perhaps most crucially, painting offered many axes along which to join disparate traditions: color might make one claim, style and technique and subject, another. T hroughout Mesoamerica, there are moments where painting, in particular, was called on to serve this task of synthesis. From the Maya gods and glyphs rendered in Teotihuacan style at the Tetitla apartment compound to the Teotihuacan­ proportioned figures marching along the walls of Zapotec tombs at Monte Alban and Suchilqui­ tongo, from the stucco-painted tripod vessels of Tikal and Kaminaljuyu to the repeated experi­ ments integrating a variety of traditions at El Tajin and Las Higueras, Cacaxtla followed long­ standing Mesoamerican tradition in synthesizing styles and subjects in its painting. And it had many successors, notably, the murals of Maya­ pan, Santa Rita,Tulum, Utatlan, and Iximche­ Postclassic Maya experiments which vaunt their knowledge of Central Mexican deities much as Cacaxtla claims familiarity with the Classic Maya pantheon. Looking ahead, after the Spanish conquest, perhaps it is no coincidence that the mural format was again pressed into service at places like Ixmiquilpan, Malinalco, and Actopan to articulate the conjunction of two very different worldviews and artistic systems. Like Las Higueras, Santa Rita, or Actopan, Cacaxtla was neither a particularly populous nor a particularly powerful city, and its scope of influ­ ence was always decidedly local. Although its paintings claimed a much wider knowledge of the

219

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J

◄

220

The Murals of Cacaxtla

Mesoamerican world, that world might, in fact, have known almost nothing of Cacaxtla. But it is precisely that claim which makes the paintings so interesting and important. In spite of increas­ ingly concrete evidence to the contrary, it is easy to slip back into the habit of thinking that ancient Mesoamericans stayed neatly within the ethnic and regional boundaries that we have defined for them, that moments of connection between Mesoamerican cultures, like the interaction between Teotihuacan and Tikal. or Aztec imperial­ ism in Oaxaca, were the exception rather than the rule. In fact, the Mesoamerican world was always interconnected. Guided by Cacaxtla, we can see "hybridity" throughout the artistic and archaeo­ logical record, even in the most quintessential of Classic Maya forms, the cylinder vase. Meso­ american artists were always looking for ways to borrow, transform, and reimagine outside influ­ ences. There are no pure origins; even the Olmec, the supposed "mother culture" of Mesoamerica, drew together different regional traditions. In this vision, the fact of Cacaxtla's artistic synthesis is not shocking; to find a purely local and insular art tradition, whatever that might look like, would be. The Cacaxtla paintings invite us to interrogate the very nature of the shared Mesoamerican heritage. It is easy-and tempting-to cast these paintings in terms of a Maya/Central Mexican binary, to harden and reify the differences between the two styles, and to lose sight of the extent to which both are our own modem con­ structs_ Yet time and again, the Cacaxtla paintings subvert this binary, even while insisting on fram­ ing other kinds of binary difference. Furthermore, it is striking how many of the elements in the Cacaxtla paintings have antecedents or resonance in both Maya and Central Mexican cultures-and in other Mesoamerican traditions as well. From the aquatic border, to the feathered serpent, to the idea of a conquest monument or Sustenance Mountain, the Cacaxtla paintings emphasize

themes that all Mesoamericans believed were important. Cacaxtla artists were alert to forms and sym­ bols that could be read in multiple ways, and to the ways that bringing disparate traditions into conversation could also suggest new meanings. It is the active "correlation" of these traditions with one another and with local belief-to use Cecile Fromont's term-where Cacaxtla artists excel, choosing and crafting messages at once cosmopolitan and local (Fromont 2011:112-113). But for this to be possible at all implies both a greater degree of shared beliefs and more intensive historical contact between Mesoamericans than we commonly assume. It also suggests a kind of sophistication we are often too reluctant to ascribe to ancient artisans. The Cacaxtla paintings look so effortlessly "Mesoamerican" that it is difficult to disentangle these passages, so natural and expected that there's little impetus to even try. But perhaps that very familiarity is their greatest achievement. By adopting some of these symbols, the Cacaxtla art­ ists may have helped make them part of the Post­ classic Mesoamerican symbolic vocabulary that Aztec, Mixtec, and Maya elites were to draw on centuries later. In contrast to Cacaxtla art, Aztec art often naturalizes its borrowings of Maya, Gulf Coast, and other Mesoamerican art so completely that we still struggle to see them today. Maintain­ ing legible stylistic ties to the exotic south was no longer the aim, as it had been for Cacaxtla and so many of the other Epiclassic polities. But in the end. both the beleaguered altepetl and the expan­ sionist state faced the same challenge: how to invent a tradition at once familiar and distinctive, one that would unify members of the altepetl, but also resound throughout the rest of the known world. The murals spoke in their own time, then were silenced for a millennium. How surprised the Cacaxtlans would be to see the reverberations their tradition has today, from the slopes of the Sierra Madre to the ends of the earth.

APPENDIX

Radiocarbon Dates for the Cacaxtla Murals

It is understandable to want exact dates and a clear sequence for the Cacaxtla paintings. Mesoamerican­ ists have grown accustomed to the historical precision provided Maya monuments with Long Count dates, which record the very days on which particular events occurred. No such certainty is possible at Cacaxtla. All lines of evidence suggest that Cacaxtla's paintings date to the Epiclassic period. between AD 650 and 950, but no available chronometric methods can provide a precise date for any of the Cacaxtla paintings. Ceramic and radiocarbon evidence from Cacaxtla both have significant limitations. Ceramics recovered at the site are a regional variant of the Coyotlatelco ceramic complex that is a marker of the Epiclassic period throughout Central Mexico (Abascal et al. 1976:7-21; Delgadillo 2005, n.d.; Gaxiola 2006:48; Lopez de Molina 1980:296, 1981:170-172; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:18; Molina Feal 1978:56; Santana 1984:269-270; Solar 2006:13-14 for recent approaches to Coyotlatelco ceramics, see Solar, ed. 2006; Sugiura 2005). Unfortunately, ceramics cannot be used to date the paintings or the construction phases at Cacaxtla more precisely. T he enormous amounts of fill used in the latest renovations make it difficult to obtain a satisfactory ceramic sequence (Hers 1987:240; Lopez de Molina 1978:58; Molina Feal 1977=2). Most of the spaces o f the acropolis were swept clean before being renovated, removing ceramics and other materials contemporary with the occupation of each building, which might have furnished important information about how and when the spaces of the acropolis functioned. Construction fill for new buildings did contain ceramic materials, but since this material was brought from elsewhere and disturbed in the process of being reused, it does not accurately date the moment of construction. Ceramics and other chronological markers in construction fill may be substantially earlier than the construction where they were found. Furthermore, ceramic styles do not appear to h ave changed significantly during the period in which the paintings were created. Nor do radiocarbon dates provide definitive answers to Cacaxtla's chronological challenges. None of the eight radiocarbon measures taken from the acropolis and its surroundings directly date any of the paintings; rather, they correspond to other construction that must

be related to the paintings by stratigraphical analysis. Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon dating of the pigments in the murals, which would date the murals directly, is impossible because of the conserva­ tion interventions, such as coating with polymers, that the murals have undergone. But even if that were pos­ sible, it is important to recall that radiocarbon dates are probabilities, not certainties, with more than a century of margin of error built into them (Bowman 1990:38-50). However, because these measures have often been used to give improperly and inaccurately precise dates for the Cacaxtla murals, this appendix reviews the radiocarbon evidence associated with the site. A Review of Radiocarbon Dating and Reporting Essentially, a radiocarbon age is generated by measuring the decay of radioactive 14 C molecules in a sample of organic material (see Bowman 1990 for an introduction to the subject).1 Using a calculation based on the half.life of 14C, the radiocarbon age is reported as years before present (BP) with a margin of error, usually one stan­ dard deviation on a normal distribution curve (1-sigma, or 68.3% probability). However, because atmospheric levels of 14C have fluctuated over time, this radiocarbon age, or years BP, result does not correspond directly to calendar age. Calibration curves based on cross-checks with dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) have been constructed to control for these discrepancies. The calibration curves have changed over time, as have the standards for reporting calibrated ages. Calibrated results were often reported as the midpoint or intercept of the date range, plus or minus a term of error corresponding to the 1-sigma date range, but it is now more common to present either the 1-sigma (68-3% probability) or 2-sigma (95.4% probability) date ranges (Bowman 1990:49). To take a concrete example of how these changing procedures have affected the Cacaxtla chronology, Cacaxtla Sample 2 yielded a radiocarbon age of 1180 +/65 years BP. In 1978, this result was calibrated to cal AD 792 +/- 83 years.2 However, this does not mean that this sample dates to AD 792; it means that there is a 68.3% probability that the date of the sample falls between cal AD 709 and cal AD 875. Conversely, there is nearly a

Appendix: Radiocarbon Dates

The Murals af Cacaxt/a

222

d dates for the Cacaxtla samp l es Table 3. Comparison of the radiocarbon ages, original calibrated dates, and recalibrate Original

Recalibrated

Recalibrated

Location

Radiocarbon age

1-sigma date range

1-sigma date range

2-sigma date range

1 (UM 1040)

Str. A lintel

1205 +/· 75 BP

68o-830

694-894*

671-975

2 (UM 1041)

O'-2 layer II

1180 +/· 65 BP

709-875

773-961*

688-985*

3 (UM 1042)

Pozo 12 layer X

1350 +/· 90 BP

556-742

606-773

472-931

4 (UM 1043)

Pozo 8 layer XVI 11

1220 +/· 70 BP

653-835

694-886*

665-968*

5 (UM 1044)

A 4 layer II

1450 +/· 110 BP

414-638

436-672*

345-855*

6 (UM 1045)

Pozo 14 l ayer IV

1755 +/· 100 BP

91-297

139-391*

63-534*

135-410

25 -558

257-543*

135-632

Sample

7 (UM 1046)

Pozo 3 layer VI I

1745 +/· 120 BP

98-344

8 (UM 1047)

Pozo 9 l ayer II

1640 +/· 120 BP

245-507

* Indicates discontinuities in the probability curve for this date range.

Notes: Radiocarbon ages from Calvert et al. 1978:279-280; original calibrated dates derived from Lombardo et al. 1986:509; recalibrat·

ed dates generated in 2013 using Ca lib 6.o, http://ca l ib.qub.ac.uk/ca l ib/ca lib.htm l ; see Reimer et a l . 2009; Stuiver and Reimer 1993. See Brittenham 2008:appendix 1, for 2008 ca l ibration curves and detai l ed resu lts.

Calibrated Age Ranges

10.

Cl.-:=J □

IU a

[]

-

II I 100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

cal AD

900

Figure 310. Comparison of origina l ly reported and recalibrated dates from the

eight Cacaxtla radiocarbon samples. Original 1-sigma date ranges are reported in b lue. reca l ibrated 1-sigma date ranges are in black, and recalibrated 2-sigma

date ranges are indicated in white. With recalibration, most date ranges are ap­ proximately half a century later. Graph by the author, based on data generated by Calib 6.o, http://calib.qub.ac.uk/calib/calib.html in May 2013.

one-in-three chance that the date does not fall within this period. Furthermore, radiocarbon calibration has been considerably refined since the late 1970s, when this sample was first measured. I have measured the radiocarbon ages against updated calibration curves, using the program Calib 6.o available at http:/ /calib.qub .ac.uk/calib/calib.html (Reimer et al. 2009; Stuiver and Reimer 1993). This recalibration moves the date range ofSample 2 over sixty years later, moving from cal AD 709-875 to cal AD 773-961 (1-sigma) or cal AD 688-985 (2-sigma). Because ofthe jagged nature of the calibration curve, certain calendar years within these date ranges are even less likely to be the correct result. Recalibration of the Cacaxtla samples moved most ofthe date ranges over forty years later, as is shown in Figure 310. A properly reported radiocarbon date offers accuracy but not precision. There is a 94.5% chance that the object being dated will fall within the 2-sigma range reported, but that range is often as much as 400 years for the Cacaxtla samples. Talcing the intercept of a radio­ carbon date (i.e., reading cal AD 792 +/· 83 years as a definitive statement that Sample 2 dates to AD 792) offers false precision and no accuracy. Furthermore, changes to calibration curves mean that many early radiocarbon measures, like those from Cacaxtla, may have shifted considerably in time. Eight radiocarbon samples from Cacaxtla and its surroundings provide the only absolute dates known for the site (Calvert et al. 1978:279-280; Lombardo et al. 1986:509; see Serra and Lazcano 2011:52, for dates from Xochitecatl and Nativitas). Ofthese samples, only four relate to the Cacaxtla acropolis itself (Samples 1, 2, 4, and 5); the other four samples were taken from test pits surrounding the acropolis (Samples 3, 6, 7, and 8). The dates will be discussed in chronological order, from oldest to most recent, finishing with the radiocarbon measures from the acropolis which provide the most assistance in dating the Cacaxtla paintings.

Early Classic Radiocarbon Dates at Cacaxtla Three ofthe eight radiocarbon measures taken at Cacaxtla date to the Early Classic period. Samples 6, 7, and 8 came from the lowest layers of test pits to the west, east, and south ofthe Cacaxtla acropolis, respectively, yielding recalibrated dates ranging between the first and sixth centuries AD (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal n.d.:23-29; Santana 199oa:62-65). It is significant that these samples reflect substantially earlier dates than the samples taken from the upper layers ofthe Cacaxtla acropolis, suggesting that Cacaxtla may have had a substantial Early Classic occupation (see Chapter 1; Brit­ tenham and Nagao 2014; Santana n.d.). In this respect, Cacaxtla seems to have differed from the neighboring hills ofXochitecatl and Nativitas, which were completely abandoned between AD 200 and 650 (Lazcano and Flores 200T226-231; Serra 1998:58-63; Serra and Lazcano 2005=293, 2008:159, 2011:Gi-67; Serra and Palavicini 1996:54-57). Although Serra and colleagues suggest that the entire Cacaxtla-Xochitecatl complex was abandoned during the Early Classic period (Serra and Lazcano 2005:293), the radiocarbon and ceramic evidence seems to suggest that the residential areas of Cacaxtla were con­ tinuously occupied from the Late Predassic on (Abascal et al. 19767-21; Lopez de Molina 1980:296, 1981:170-172; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:18; Molina Feal 1978:56; Santana 1984:269-270). Cacaxtla may not have marched in lockstep wjth its neighbors. The other early measure, Sample 5, with a 2-sigma calibrated date range between the fourth and ninth centuries AD, illustrates some ofthe perils ofradiocar­ bon dating. This charcoal sample was taken from the area in front of Structure A (Calvert et al. 1978:280; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal n.d., especially field diaries for 7/xr/75 to 2/xu/75). Although the sample was interpreted as coming from "ritual fires in front of[the] murals ... from [the] time of Cacaxtla's abandonment" (Calvert et al.1978:280), the resulting date is substan­ tially earlier than the eighth-century date proposed for the paintings on the basis ofstylistic evidence and the three other radiocarbon measures which will be dis­ cussed below. One possible explanation for this discrep­ ancy is that the charcoal sampled was part of construc­ tion fill brought from elsewhere when Structure A was buried and not a result of ritual activity surrounding the burial (see Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal n.d., field diaries for 7/x1/75 to 2/xn/75). If this is the case, this date cannot offer much assistance in dating the Struc­ ture A paintings. The charcoal sampled must have been burnt before the paintings were buried, but it could have been burnt considerably earlier and only later included as construction fill. Alternatively, a reused wooden beam {Santana 199oc:33) from Structure A might have been burnt, once again yielding an inappropriately early date. This measure serves to emphasize how radiocarbon results will always benefit from cross-checking and inter­ pretation, and that the value ofradiocarbon data depends on a clear understanding of what is being measured.

Radiocarbon Dates Associated with Mural Painting Although not directly related to the acropolis murals, Sample 3 may offer some aid in dating the Cacaxtla painting tradition. This charcoal sample came from a test pit to the south of the acropolis in an area called La Mesita (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal n.d.:29; San­ tana 199oa:64).This test pit also contained a consider­ able number of fragments of painted stucco from wall paintings or polychrome reliefs, similar to those on the acropolis (Santana 199oa:64).These painted fragments were found several levels above the remains of the fire from which the carbon sample was taken (the sample came from Level 10 of the test pit and the painted stucco from Level 2, counting from the surface down; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal n.d.:29). Thus, this painted sur­ face must have been dismantled and buried some time after cal AD 472-931, a date which coincides well wjth the other evidence for the date ofthe Cacaxtla paintings (Santana 199oa:80). The remaining three radiocarbon samples from the acropolis present a suite ofclosely related dates that helps fix the chronology of the Structure A paintings and the Battle Mural. These dates can only be indirectly related to the Red Temple, Temple ofVenus, Cuarto de la Escalera, and Pozo n-A paintings through stratigraphic analysis, and because not all ofthe intervening space has been excavated, some ofthat analysis remains conjec­ tural. These radiocarbon measures have often been cited in dating the Structure A portico and jamb murals to ca. AD 755 and the Battle Mural to ca. AD 792, even in recent publications. In addition to being based on an inaccu­ rate understanding of unrecalibrated radiocarbon date ranges , both ofthese proposed dates misunderstand the relationships between the radiocarbon samples and the mural paintings. The earliest ofthe three measures, Sample 4, comes from one of the deepest layers of a test pit dug within Building B, the structure that covered the Battle Mural. and has a recalibrated 2-sigma date range of cal AD 665-968. The sample came from charcoal in a layer of fill between 1. 3 and 2.1 meters below the level ofthe Great Plaza (Calvert et al. 1978:280; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal n.d.; Lesley McCoy, field diary, 13/1v/76, in idem; see also Santana 199oa:87). One stucco floor, approximately 1.1 meters below the level ofthe Great Plaza, separated this sample from the talud that supports the Battle Mural. Both the Battle Mural and Structure A must be later (and perhaps appreciably later) than this date. There is no way to directly relate this sample to the Red Temple or the other paintings in the southern part of the acropolis. 3 The wooden lintel from which Sample 1 was taken spanned the door of Structure A during its initial phase of construction. When the building was enlarged and the paintings added, this door was covered up and now lies behind the north portico painting (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:21; see Figure 271). As Andres Santana notes, this lintel does not directly date the murals; it

223

224

The Murals of Cacaxtla between the samples dating to cal AD 665-968 and cal can only serve as a terminus post quern for the Structure AD 688--985. The radiocarbon date from the first lintel A paintings (199oq3-34). which were made after this original doorway was blocked up. As I have argued above of Structure A, cal AD 691-975 years, may indicate when (seeChapter 7), the inner mural of Structure A was prob­ the North Platform was constructed. This review of the stratigraphic and radiocarbon ably painted and then covered over before the portico evidence reveals problems with both traditional chro­ and jamb paintings were begun, suggesting an even nologies and more recent challenges to them (see the greater distance between the latter paintings and cal review in Brittenham 2008:199-205). There is no AD 665-968 date. This sample may provide evidence for reason to suppose that the Battle Mural and Structure A the timing of the first stage of construction at Structure paintings were separated by over a century, as the initial A. However, even in this context, the date may be too investigators suggested (Lopez de Molina and Molina early. Santana suggests that wood was systematically Feal 1986:76); on the contrary, the potential presence reused at Cacaxtla, making it unreliable for dating of the same artist's hand on both paintings raises the (199oc:33), and if the central portion of the tree that possibility that they were painted within decades of one formed the lintel was sampled, that too might yield an another (Brittenham 2008:185-187). At the same time, inappropriately early radiocarbon date (Bowman 1990:15, the compressed chronology proposed by Moreno and 51, 53). All that can be said with certainty is that all of the colleagues (2005=55) must be rejected on three counts: it Structure A paintings-the inner wall and the portico does not take into account the multiple stages of modi­ and jamb paintings-are later, and perhaps substantially fication at theRed Temple and Structure A; it is based later, than cal AD 665-968. Chronologies that place the on an inappropriate reading of the radiocarbon dates as Structure A paintings at AD 755 (the value originally certainties rather than probabilities; and it does not take reported for this sample; see, e.g., Espinoza and Ortega into account the necessary recalibration of those radio­ 1991:June 28, 3c; Lombardo 1986:244; Moreno et al. carbon dates. The one date on which both chronologies 2005:55) should be strongly questioned. A date several agreed, ca. AD 755 for the Structure A portico and jamb decades later might be preferable on archaeological as murals, is probably several decades too early, given that well as stylistic grounds. this radiocarbon sample came from a wooden lintel of Finally, Sample 2 comes from a burnt offering made on the Great Plaza in front of the talud of Building B and the phase prior to the present configuration of Structure A and furthermore has been moved several decades has a recalibrated 2-sigma date range of cal AD 688-985. This offering consisted of burnt plant material associated later by a recalibration of the radiocarbon results. This recalibration of theCacaxtla radiocarbon dates shifts the with a group of twelve bodies, eleven children and one paintings approximately fifty years later, a result satisfy­ adult (Delgadillo and Santana 1995 [1984]:58-59; Lopez ing in terms of both ceramic and stylistic evidence. de Molina and Molina Feat 1986:23; Santana 199oc:34). Because this sample comes from burnt remnants of a short-lived plant, it may be the most precise and reliable Chronology of the Cacaxtla Paintings of the radiocarbon dates fromCacaxtla (Andres Santana Sandoval, personal communication 2006; see Bowman Taken together, these radiocarbon dates make several 1990:19). If this date does reflect the moment when the Palace and the northern platform were both sealed important points. First, they offer evidence forCacaxtla's beneath new constructions, accompanied by a massive EarlyClassic period occupation. Second, they highlight child sacrifice (seeChapter 1), it also provides a dated the rapid pace of architectural change at Cacaxtla. The link between the northern (Battle Mural and Structure three or more stages of construction that the latest three A) and southern (Red Temple,Captive Stair, Temple of samples represent may have been compressed into less Venus, and Cuarto de la Escalera) painting sequences. than a century. Finally, these samples confirm an eighth­ All of the whole surviving paintings atCacaxtla were bur­ or early ninth-century date forCacaxtla's artistic apogee. ied by this construction, though the Patio Hundido paint somewhat later than has been previously proposed. The fragments may have been created later.Cal AD 688-985 two-sigma range for all of these dates, cal AD 665-985. is thus a terminus ante quern for all of these works as well surely encompasses the creation of all of the visible as a terminus post quern for the paint fragments found Cacaxtla paintings. buried in the Patio Hundido. This date is most helpful in The most readily datable paintings seem to straddle precisely fixing the moment when the Structure A por­ the moment of the Maya collapse, providing a bridge tico and jamb paintings disappeared from view, because betweenClassic Maya painting of the eighth century and they were covered directly by the platform supporting the art ofChichen Itza in the ninth and tenth centuries. the Patio Hundido. All of the other paintings had already But if the latest paintings visible at Cacaxtla correspond been covered before this moment. to this moment of upheaval, it is important to note that These dates suggest a close chronological relationship they are but the latest manifestations of a tradition that between the Battle Mural and Structure A, once more began decades, if not centuries, earlier-and that even corroborating the stylistic and stratigraphic evidence earlier examples ofCacaxtla-style paintings may sti11 be (Brittenham 2 008:185-187; Foncerrada 198 0:192; buried within the acropolis. Kubler 1980:163).4 Both of these paintings are bracketed

Notes

Chapter One 1. Excavations around the periphery of the acropolis, to install drainage systems and the pillars of the roof that presently covers the site, can only hint at this earliest his­ tory. However, these excavations do confirm the impres­ sion of centuries of continual construction and intense rebuilding (Espinoza and Ortega n.d.; Sanchez del Real 1987). T he area under the center of the acropolis may have an even longer history: a core sample (sondeo) from the Patio Hundido in the center of the acropolis went down over sixteen meters without hitting bedrock (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:33, n.d.; see diagram in Lucet 2013:fi gure 1.8). Since the Patio Hundido lies approximately six meters above the Great Plaza, and the South Plaza another two meters below that, this test core still reveals at least another eight meters of human construction in the central part of the acropolis, beyond what has been extensively excavated. However, this area is difficult to excavate without jeopardizing the stability of the paintings and destroying later construction, so it remains difficult to understandCacaxtla's earliest occupation. 2. The talud-tablero construction system, common at many Mesoamerican sites, pairs a lower sloping wall (the talud) \\'ith an upper vertical wall (the tablero). The pro­ portion and ornament of Cacaxtla's talud-tableros most closely resemble architecture at Xochicalco, particularly the earlier structure within the Pyramid of the Plumed Serpents (Garza and Alvarado 2007:253-254; Lucet 2013:95-96; Saenz 1963=12). Pyramid B at Tula also has architectural decoration based on recessed panels which recall theCacaxtla forms (1 am grateful to Jeff Kowalski for this suggestion). 3. We cannot say much about the context of the mural found in Pozo 11-A, where excavations were too limited to understand the building it occupied; it seems to have been in an interior space near the eastern edge of the acropolis (Espinoza and Ortega n.d.; Lucet 2013=77-78; Moreno et al. 2005). Nonpainted decoration, like the stucco lattices of theCelosia or the Patio de los Altares, do accompany more residential spaces (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:26, 39). Of course, it is not clear that any space on the acropolis was purely residential; most people lived on the surrounding slopes (Lazcano

and Flores 2007; Serra and Lazcano 2008, 2on:118--148), and the elite spaces at the top of the acropolis probably served residential, administrative, and religious func­ tions simultaneously, like so many other courts and palaces throughout Mesoamerica (see essays inChristie 2003; Evans and Pillsbury 20 04; Inomata and Houston 20 01). Paint fragments have also been reported at Mixco Viejo, but Serra and Lazcano note only traces of mono­ chrome red walls (2011:126). 4. The reconstruction of the South Plaza is based on excavations around the periphery of the acropolis, which revealed a series of buildings sharing a common floor level (approximately two meters below the level of the Great Plaza) on its western, southern, and eastern edges, including the SerpentCorridor/Captive Stair/Red Temple complex, the Temple of Venus, theCelosia, Por­ tico Fin the southeastern comer of the acropolis , and an unnamed talud beneath the eastern portion of the Palace (see Lucet 2013=54-73, n.d.:tables I and 2). No excava­ tions have been conducted in the center of this proposed South Plaza, which lies underneath later constructions called the Palace andConjunto 2, and more complex constructions may be buried in this area. Still, it is likely that an open plaza occupied at least part of the space, since the porticoes of the Red Temple and the Temple of Venus seem to be oriented toward such an inner plaza (Santana, Vergara et al. 1990:329, 332). 5. The nomenclature of these buildings is confusing. During the initial stage, the Great Plaza was surrounded by the talud supporting the Battle Mural on the north (Building B-sub); on the east, Building D and to its south, the Edificio de las Columnas (facing outward): the colonnaded building underneath the Palace on the south (no name given in the excavation reports); and Building E on the west. After the transition to sunken plaza. the Great Plaza was surrounded by Building B on the north, the building covering Building D on the east (no name in the reports), the Palace on the south, and the building covering Building E on the west (again, no name in the reports). See Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:34-40, and Lucet 1998:127-133, 2013:41-55, for more information on these buildings. 6. The southern part of the acropolis was nicknamed the Palace because the patios surrounded by small rooms suggest a residential function (Lopez de Molina and

226

Notes to Page 26

Notes to Pages 16-25

Molina Feal 1986:38). However, because the spaces were swept clean before being covered by new construction, there is no definitive evidence that they were in fact used as living areas (Vergara and Santana 1990:42). I use this nickname for convenience but do not rule out a ritual or administrative function for many of these spaces, as was the case for so many other Mesoamerican palaces (Christie 2003; Evans and Pillsbury 2004; lnomata and Houston 2001). T he Palace is also not a single mono­ lithic unit, but, rather, a series of interrelated spaces that may have grown up gradually over time (Lucet 2013:63; Vergara and Santana 199oj6-37). For example, there was surely an intermediate stage of construction in the central part of the acropolis, resulting in the colonnaded building that formed the original southern end of the Great Plaza, corresponding to a moment when the Great Plaza was bordered by porticoed buildings at ground level on its east, south, and west sides, before being converted into a more sunken patio-like configuration (Lucet 1998:132-133, 139, 201r41-54). A test pit in the center of the Patio de los Altares in the Palace revealed another altar 1.6 meters beneath the present floor level (Delgadillo and Santana n.d.:19-21 and passim), and the room connected to the Cuarto de la Escalera was also at an intermediate level between the South Plaza and the Palace (Lucet 1998:140-141). Because excavations under­ neath the eastern part of the Palace have been so limited, we understand very little about the development of this part of the acropolis. At the moment that the Great Plaza was transformed into a sunken plaza, the northern portion of the Palace became its southern border. Like Building B and the buildings covering Buildings D and E, the Palace lies approximately 1.5 meters above the Great Plaza and was connected to it by a monumental projecting staircase. 7. The sacrifices in different spaces of the acropolis varied slightly in their details, but the overall impression is of a drastic response to a grave civic crisis (Delgadillo and Santana 1990, 1995 [1984]; Lopez de Molina 1979b:144; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:20). Both primary and secondary burials were represented, and some of the bones were mutilated or burnt. In the sixteenth century, child sacrifice was associated with the rain god Tialoc; perhaps a similar meaning was evoked at Cacaxtla nearly a millennium earlier (Delgadillo and Santana 1990:50, 1995 [1984]:68-69). 8. Ceramic evidence suggests that the period of Cacaxtla's occupation may extend slightly beyond the end of the Epiclassic Coyotlatelco phase into the Early Postclassic. Some of the ceramics found at Cacaxtla resemble the Mazapa ceramic complex at Teotihuacan (Abascal et al. 1976:18-19, figs. 8-9; Lopez de Molina 1980:297, 1981:171; Rattray 1996:226), corresponding to the Early Postclassic from ca. AD 850-1050 (Cowgill 2oorxvi) or ca. AD 900-1150 (Rattray 2001:435). Plum­ bate and pseudo-Plumbate ceramics, also characteristic of the Early Postclassic, have been found in small quantities at Cacaxtla (Abascal et al. 1976:18; Lopez de Molina 1981:171; Santana 1984:269; Serra and Lazcano 199T97; Serra et al. 2004:157). Cholulteca polychromes,

the Postclassic ceramics from Cholula, are very rare at Cacaxtla, but have been found in surface collections, especially near Monticulo B and San Miguel de! Milagro to the east of the acropolis (Pedro Ortega, personal com­ munication 2005; Lopez de Molina 1979b:146, 1981:171; Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:70; Molina Feal 19774; Santana 199oa:56, 82; Santana and Delgadillo 1990:286). Andres Santana also reports scarce surface finds of Late Postclassic Aztec I ceramics near Cacaxtla (199oa:82). However, the black on orange ("negro sobre naranjo") ceramics that are a marker of the Postclassic at Cholula and that are frequently associated with the proposed Olmeca Xicalanca occupation of that city, h ave not been found at Cacaxtla (Rosalba Delgadillo Torres and Beatriz Palavicini, personal communications 2006). Taken together, these data suggest that Cacaxtla's occupa­ tion probably extended at least a few decades into the Early Postclassic period, but that the city was completely abandoned by AD 1050 at the latest. 9. The original excavators refer to the twin pyramids as "Los Cerritos" or "Monticulos A and B" and the south­ ern plaza as the "Plaza de las Tres Piramides" (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:19, 40); in more recent reports, Serra and Lazcano term the two pyramids "Los Gemelos" and the southern plaza the "Plaza de los Tres Cerritos" (Serra and Lazcano 2008:139-141). 10. The current Mexico-Puebla highway, Autopista 150D, follows this route. Note that in Aztec times, the northern and southern routes were once again pre­ ferred over the route through the Puebla-Tiaxcala Valley because of the rivalry between Mexico-Tenochtitlan and Tlaxcala. 11. Note that there are reasons to be cautious about this interpretation: the flowering hill that is argued to represent Xochitecatl is one of a series of five such hills, and most recent studies do not accept the identification of these places as Cacaxtla and Xochitecatl (e.g., Boone 2oooa:173-178; Carrasco and Sessions 2007; Yoneda 2oop95, 2005). 12. The description is copied verbatim in Juan de Torquemada's Monarquia indiana (1969 [16i5]:volume 1, book 3, chapters 8 and 9, 256-258, 262-264)_ 13. Between eight and eleven kilometers (Munoz Camargo 1986:n53). 14. May also refer to the paso as a unit of measure, in which case it describes a distance of approximately twenty-five meters (Mufioz Camargo 1986:n54). 15- "Habiendo poblado Mexico y toda su comarca y redondez de la laguna, al cabo de tanto tiempo vinieron los ulmecas, chalmecas y xicalancas, unos en segui­ miento de otros. Como hallasen toda la tierra ocupada y poblada, determinaron de pasar adelante a sus aventuras y [se] encaminaron hacia Ia parte de! volcan y faldas de la Sierra Nevada, donde se quedaron Ios chalmecas, que fueron los de la provincia de Chalco, porque quedaron en aquel lugar poblados_ Los ulmecas y xicalancas pasa­ ron adelante, atravesando los puertos y otros rodeando­ los, hasta que vinieron a salir por Tochimilco, Atlixco. Calpan y Huexotzinco, hasta llegar a la provincia de Tiaxcala. Aunque antes de llegar a ella vinieron tomando

el tiento, reconociendo la disposicion de la tierra hasta que hicieron su asiento y fundaron donde esti agora el pueblo de Santa Maria de la Natividad, y en Huapalcalco, junto a una ermita que llaman de Santa Cruz, que los naturales Haman Texoloc, y Mixco y Xiloxochitla, donde esta la ermita de San Vicente y el cerro de Xochitecatl, y Tenayacac, donde estin dos ermitas, a poco trecho una de otra, que se llaman de San Miguel y de San Francisco, que por medio de estas dos errnitas pasa el rio que viene de la Sierra Nevada de Huexotzinco. Aqui, en este sitio, hicieron los ulmecas su principal asiento y poblaron, como el dia de hoy nos manifiestan las ruinas de sus edificios, que, segun las muestras, fueron grandes y fuertes. Y ansi, las fuerzas y barbacanas, albarradas, fosas y baluartes muestran indicios de haber sido la cosa mas fuerte del mundo y ser obrada por mano de innumerables. Gran copia de gentes [fue] la que vino a poblar, porque donde tuvieron su principal asiento y fortaleza es un cerro o pefiol, que tiene casi dos leguas de circuito. En torno de este pefiol, por las entradas y subidas, antes de llegar a lo alto de el, tiene cinco albarra­ das y otras tantas cavas y fosas de mas de veinte pasos de ancho, y la tierra sacada de esta fosa servia de bastion o muralla de un terrapleno muy fuerte, y la hondura de las dichas cavas debia de ser de gran profundidad, porque con estar, como est.in, arruinadas de tanto tiempo atras, tienen mas de una pica en alto; porque yo he entrado dentro de algunas de ellas a caballo y de industria las he medido, que un hombre a caballo y con una lanza aun no alcanza a lo alto en muchas partes, con haberse tornado a henchir de tierra con el tiempo y con las avenidas de aguas de mas de trescientos y sesenta afios a esta parte. Las cuales fosas y albarradas cifien toda la redondez de! cerro, que no debi6 de ser poca fuerza ni menos reparo en aquellos tiempos. En este dicho pefiol hay muchos indios poblados hoy en dia en partes, y va cavado por pefia viva, y se aprovechaban de muchas cuevas en que vivian en este cerro. En este fuerte tan antiguo, tan inexpungable, en las cumbres de el y en la sierra de T laxcala, que se llama Matlalcueye, y en lo alto y cumbre de Tepeticpac se retiraron y guarecieron las mujeres y nifios cuando el capitan Hernando Cortes y sus compafieros vinieron a la conquista de esta tierra y entraron por esta provincia de Tiaxcala, hasta que se le dio paz y seguridad." 16. The terms "Olmeca" and "Xicalanca" often turn up in longer lists of group names, and not always together (see Brittenham n.d.b). For example, the Flo­ rentine Codex mentions the "Olmeca, Uixtotin, Nono­ alca" and the "Olmeca, Uitxtoti, Mixteca," a remnant of the Tolteca who Jived in the fertile regions of the south where cacao and rubber grew; several pages later, the Olmeca Uixtotin, named after their leader, Olmecatl Uixtotli, were among the tribes that left the mythical Tamoanchan, moving east to the sea, where they became known as the Anahuaca Mixteca (Sahagun 19501982:book 10, chapter 29, 187-197). This association with the Gulf Coast is what we might expect, but in other sources, the Olmeca Xicalanca are more strongly associ­ ated with Central Mexico and the Puebla-Tiaxcala Valley.

In the work of Chimalpahin, the ·xochteca, olmeca, qui­ yahuizteca, cocolca" lived at Chalco Amaquemecan until ousted by the Chichimeca in the year 126 ! (Chimalpahin 1991:89-m; Leon-Portilla 1980:113-125). They were power­ ful sorcerers who controlled the nahual, or spirit of rain, and the nahual of wild beasts, and would travel inside clouds to go eat the people of Chalco (Chimalpahin 1991:89). Similarly, how the Olmeca Xicalanca got to the Puebla-T laxcala Valley varies in different accounts. According to Alva Ixtlilxochitl's Sumaria relaci6n, the Ulmecas and Xicalancas came from the east. They arrived in boats at Potonchan, traveled inland, and defeated the previous race of giants still lingering in the Puebla-Tiaxcala Valley (1952:19). But according to Diego Mufi.oz Camargo, the "olmecas, chalmecas, and xicalancas" (or "xicalancas, chozamecas, and zacatecas"), came from the west after having settled the Valley of Mexico and built their capital at Cacaxtla (198679-80, 99; see also m). In the Codex Vaticanus A (folio 66v) and in Mufioz Camargo's account, the Olmeca Xicalanca come from Chicomoztoc, and Munoz Camargo goes to great pains to stress that they are Nahuatl speakers (1986:81-82). They are the heroes of Munoz Camargo's account, peaceful sages who are displaced by the "cruel and seditious" Chichimeca. T hey are the villains in the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca, wealthy lords of Cholula, ruled by dual rulers called Tlalchiach Tizacozque and the Aquiach Amapane, who mock the Tolteca newcomers by throwing nixtamal water in their faces and are repaid for their cruelty with defeat (Kirchhoff et al. 1976:folios 8v-10r, 149-150; Leibsohn 1993:323-324). These sources do have some things in common. Most associate Olmecas and Xicalancas with the Puebla­ Tlaxcala Valley or with Chalco and Amaquemecan, just over the mountains to the west. Fewer, though still a sig­ nificant number, also indicate ties to the Gulf Coast-but nearly as many say that the Olmeca Xicalanca come from Chicomoztoc, a mythical place of origins to the north. In almost all the accounts, the Olmeca Xicalanca belong to a distant past, and, in the case of Sahagun and the other Valley of Mexico sources, a geographically removed one as well. Although sixteenth- and seventeenth-century historians believed in the historicity of the Olmecas and Xicalancas, these scant and contradictory sources provide insufficient evidence to identify a group in the archaeo­ logical record and, more important, offer almost no benefit in doing so, since they attest to little beyond the existence of peoples with these names. Furthermore. it is not even clear that the Olmeca Xicalanca are a kind of group that leaves traces in the archaeological record. or that we fully understand what kind of corporate entities are referred to by what we might call "ethonyms" in the sixteenth-century sources. Much of the thrust of twentieth-century scholarship was to reconcile these accounts into a single narrative, usually using migration as an explanatory tool. but the modern use of the term "Olmeca Xicalanca" creates the impression of unity where there is in fact substantial disagreement. For Wigberto Jimenez Moreno, the coastal

227

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Notes to Pages 26-28 antecedents of the OlmecaXicalanca could be very remote indeed, perhaps even dating back to the Preclas­ sic Olmec (1967=5); they were "profoundly nahuatlized popoloca-mixteca" speakers (1942:127). Marta Fonce­ rrada, following Robert Chadwick (1966), considered the OlmecaXicalanca to be "a group of Mixtecan ethnic filiation [who] ... constituted a significant element in the cultural development" ofTeotihuacan (1980:186). However, Donald McVicker (1985:84) and Michael Coe (Coe and Koontz 2002:132) discuss the Olmeca Xicalanca as recent migrants from the south, something appropri­ ate in terms of the style of the Cacaxtla paintings but difficult to reconcile with the sixteenth-century sources. Linda Schele and Peter Mathews suggest that they are "Chontal-Maya speaking traders who allied themselves with other language groups on the Veracruz coast" (1998:383). Roman Pina Chan uses "OlmecaXicalanca" to refer to a peripatetic group that originated on the GulfCoast, settled atXochicalco, and then migrated to Cacaxtla via Chalco (1998:101-123, especially the map on 102). Yet each one of these authors is certain that their OlmecaXicalanca created the Cacaxtla paintings. The ethnohistorical sources do agree in giving the impression ofa time ofgreat population movement and upheaval.Almost every account lists migrations of numerous groups; while the specifics are difficult to map onto the archaeological record, the cumulative sense is that many people were on the move, and that this was a period of great disruption, caused, in some accounts, by the overthrow of an old order ("of giants," as lxtlilxochitl terms them) and the birth of a new. But this may be as far as we can push them. 17. If one were to give credence to accounts of an Olmeca Xicalanca presence in the Puebla-Tiaxcala Valley, Cholula presents a far more compelling case for the OlmecaXicalanca capital.Two independent traditions, the Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca (Kirchhoff et al. 1976) and lxtlilxochitl's account (repeated inTorquemada), place the OlmecaXicalanca there, with far more "eth­ nographic" detail than Munoz Camargo's speculative description of Cacaxtla.T here is also some evidence for a population shift at Cholula-after the city's Epiclassic decline, its Postclassic resurgence is attended by dramatically new forms of material culture with ties to the Gulf Coast and the Maya area (Alvarez lcaza 2008; Dumond and Millier 1972:1209-1210; Millier 1973=20-22; Urui'iuela and Plunket 2005:311-319; but see McCafferty 1996b:312-315). Attempts to reconcile the texts associating the Olmeca Xicalanca with both Cacaxtla and Cholula run into dif. ficulties. either suggesting that the regional capital ping­ ponged back and forth between Cholula and Cacaxtla over the course of the Epiclassic period or ignoring the substantive differences in material culture between the two cities as well as chronological difficulties (see, e.g., McCafferty 2003:223-231, 2007:455-462; Plunkett and Urni'iuela 2012; for critiques. Pedro Ortega. personal communication 2005; Lopez de Molina 1979a:465; San­ tana 199oa:82-83, 1990b, 2007, 2011:5-31, n.d.). 18. In the published excavation report, Lopez de

Molina and Molina Feal conclude their discussion of the OlmecaXicalanca in the sixteenth-century sources with the following statement: "Now that we think that they [the OlmecaXicalanca] are the ones who governed and dominated Cacaxtla, the archaeological materials should better define this image" (Lopez de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:17 ("Ya que que (sic) pensamos que ellos son los que gobiernan y dominan en Cacaxtla, los materiales arqueologicos deben ir definiendo mejor esa imagen"]). This methodological problem has also plagued investi­ gation at Chichen Itza (S. Gillespie 200T87, 106-109; Michael Smith 2007:586-591); it seems to be a particular challenge of the Epiclassic period (Urufiuela and Plunket 2005:319). 19. More precisely, there is a well-defined "Oaxaca barrio" centered around theTiailotlacan apartment compound in the western part of the city (Rattray 1993; Spence 1989, 2002; Spence et al. 2005; Urcid 2003; White, Spence et al. 2004; M. Winter 2009:181-183), as well as the "Merchants' barrio" in the northeastern part of the city, where both Maya and Gulf Coast traits are found together (Gomez and Gazzola 2009; Rattray 1984, 1990, 2004). Does this suggest something about emic constructions of identity, or about the way that we rec­ ognize these groups in the archaeological record? There is also iconographic evidence for a Maya presence in the murals of theTetitla apartment compound (see Figure 58;Taube 2003c). 20. One of the most exciting results of recent stable­ isotope studies is the evidence that they provide for dif­ ferent kinds ofmovements of people within Mesoamer­ ica. Immigrants came to Teotihuacan and lived there for the rest of their lives; individuals born at Teotihuacan traveled and lived elsewhere before returning to the city; people who had lived in several other regions ofMeso­ america finally settled atTeotihuacan-----or came there as prisoners. Many of the sacrificial victims at the Pyramid of the Moon and in the central offering at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid seem to have been recent arrivals to the city, perhaps brought there for the purpose of sacrifice, while other victims were longtime residents of the city (White et aL 2007; White, Spence et al. 2002:226-234; White, Storey et al. 2004:192; for the Pyramid of the Moon, see Sugiyama and Lopez 2006; for a review of Mesoamerican migration, see Spence et al. 2005; and for migration in the archaeological record generally. see Anthony 1990, 1997; Burmeister 2000). Mesoamericans were more mobile, and settlements more heterogeneous, than we have been accustomed to assume. 21. This brief description scarcely does justice to the complexity of the scene.T he two talud-tablero temples are different in profile and superstructure (one has a rounded roofcomb); the one toward which the figures are moving seems to be a radial pyramid as well, and its tableros are decorated with u-shaped forms recalling inverted Oaxaca scapular moldings. Does this record a journey from Teotihuacan toTikal, as Schele and Freidel (1990:161-163) suggest? While these details and the specific referents of the scene remain controversial. what is striking and incontrovertible is that the artist rendered

different kinds of architecture and architectural decora­ 270). Most of the ceramics found in the construction fill tion that have ethnic and cultural implications, rather of the acropolis are a provincial variant of the Coyotlatelco than showing all three structures with the same totaliz­ ceramic complex found at Teotihuacan after its collapse ingTeotihuacan convention. Difference matters for this (Abascal et al. 1976:17-19; Armillas 1946:144; Cyphers scene to be intelligible (for more on style as signifier of 2000:13; Delgadillo 2005; Lopez de Molina 1981 :171; Lopez difference in Mesoamerica, see Pasztory 1989). de Molina and Molina Feal 1986:69; Molina Feal 1977=3; 22. LikeTeotihuacan, Cholula's population expanded Rattray 1996:225-226; Serra and Lazcano 1997=94-96; dramatically during the first century AD, after an erup­ Serra et al. 2004:107-157, 174-190, 196-197; Sugiura tion of Popocatepetl rendered much of the surrounding 2005=95-98). But recent work on the Coyotlatelco ceram­ landscape uninhabitable. At about the same time, an ics has clarified that Cacaxtla's red-on-buff ceramics are eruption ofthe volcanoXitle in the southern Valley of not part of theTeotihuacan Coyotlatelco ceramic sphere, Mexico buried the city of Cuiluilco under meters of lava, but a regional variation, with similarities to the ceramics paving the way forTeotihuacan's rise. It is not clear if ofXochicalco (what Cyphers (2000:12-16] terms "Coyot­ this is uncanny historical coincidence, if both eruptions latelco A"; see also Solar, ed. 2006:13-14; Sugiura 2005). were the result of the same geological processes, or if See note 8 above for Cacaxtla's later ceramic history. attention to these eruptions, recently corroborated by 24. Whether Cholula was inhabited at all during archaeological excavation and dated more precisely using the Epiclassic period remains controversial. T he initial new chronometric techniques, represents a resurgence ceramics report by Eduardo Noguera in 1954 suggested of environmental determinism in narratives of Meso­ continuous occupation (Noguera 1954, cited in McCaf. american culture. It may also be that theTeotihuacan ferty 199Gb). However, during the Proyecto Cholula of narrative shapes our understanding of Cholula. In any the 1970s, ceramicist Florencia Muller and others saw case, it is important to emphasize that a volcanic erup­ evidence for a major break in occupation at Cholula tion, in and of itself, cannot explain a city: it may be part between the Classic and the Postclassic (Dumond and of why Teotihuacan and Cholula arose when and where Muller 1972; Marquina 1970; Muller 1970, 1973; Snow they did, but it cannot explain why they were so success­ 1969). Geoffrey McCafferty has challenged this finding, ful, or the form that their culture or urbanism took. arguing for a gradual transition from Classic to Post­ No gridded cities existed in Mesoamerica before the classic (1996a, 1996b, 2007). However, the pendulum first century AD, although axial site orientations were keeps swinging: Plunket and Urufiuela report finding common as far back as Olmec times, nearly a millen­ Postclassic materials directly on top of Classic materials nium earlier. During the first and second centuries AD, (separated, in some cases, by a layer of volcanic ash; see bothTeotihuacan and Cholula were laid out on grids Plunket and Urunuela 2005=section 03, 2008:117-118, with different orientations. Teotihuacan is oriented 15 ° 2012:61-62; Urunuela and Plunket 2005=309-312; see east of north, while Cholula's grid is oriented 24• north also Salomon 2006). Significantly, Coyotlatelco-related ceramics of any kind are rare at Cholula, although they of west, so that the Great Pyramid faces the setting sun are present at Cerro Zapotecas (Palavicini 2007=239-240, betv.•een Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl at the summer 246; Salomon 2006; Solar 2006:13-14; Sugiura 2005:85solstice (Aveni 2001:223-234; McCafferty 2001:286-287; 87, 95-98; Urui'iuela and Plunket 2005=315).The absence Millon 1973; Tichy 1981:221-223). It remains unclear of this characteristic ceramic marker of the Epiclassic which system developed first-the earliest constrnction period at Cholula, and its presence at Cerro Zapotecas, is at both Cholula and Teotihuacan does not appear to a powerful argument for Cholula's Epiclassic decline. A conform to the later city grid, though both grids appear partial abandonment of Cholula, as proposed by Uru­ to have been firmly in place by the mid-second century (Millon 1973; Plunket and Urunuela 2002a:27; Sugiyama i'iuela and Plunket (2005=312) and described in the text here, seems like a possible way to reconcile these differ­ 2005=38-52; Urui'iuela et al. 2009:147). In many ways, ent data sets. however, the strict priority of the invention does not Another volcanic eruption has been proposed as a matter. Several centuries later, Cholula's grid was surely factor in Epiclassic turmoil in the Puebla-Tiaxcala Valley, read in terms ofTeotihuacan's, its urbanism understood either as a cause of Cholula's decline ca. AD Goo or of to be likeTeotihuacan's but with a difference-a situa­ Cacaxtla's abandonment ca. AD 950 (Serra 199872; Siebe, tion which also describes the shared, but not identical, Abrams et al. 1996; Siebe, Macias et al. 1996). There material culture and forms of urban life in the two Early are reasons to be suspicious of all this volcanic activity. Classic cities (McCafferty 2000:345-350). First and foremost, that every major population shift at 23. Based on excavations at the acropolis and in Xochitecatl-Cacaxtla seems to coincide with a volcanic peripheral test pits, the entire Epiclassic period at explosion is suspiciously environmentally deterministic, Cacaxtla seems to correspond to a single ceramic phase, especially since a clear layer of ash was not found in though ceramics dating from the Late Preclassic (ca. 300 all excavations at the site. Furthermore, the timing of BC-AD 100) to the Early Postclassic (ca. AD 900-1200) this second eruption is extremely unclear-estimates have been found in the area surrounding the Cacaxtla range between AD 600 and 1000 (Plunket and Urunuela acropolis, with the majority dating to the Epiclassic (ca. 2008:117-118; Urunuela and Plunket 2005=318). An erup­ AD 650-950; Abascal et al. 19767-21; Lopez de Molina tion of the magnitude necessary to force the abandon­ 1980:296, 1981:170-172; Lopez de Molina and Molina ment of the site and such major changes in settlement Feal 1986:18; Molina Feal 1978:56; Santana 1984:269-

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Notes to Pages 34-44

patterns ought to leave a much clearer trace in the archaeological record. 25. Jimenez Moreno used "Epiclassic," without explanation, as an alternative designation for the Late Classic period, running from AD 600/700 to 900/1000 (1959:1063, 1966:49). T he intention may have been to highlight the transitional nature of the period, which he saw as the moment of a change from the theocracies of the Classic period to the militaristic states of the Postclassic-an evolutionary theory which excavations at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid at Teotihuacan and elsewhere have largely discredited. We now know that militarism has a long and illustrious history in Meso­ america. Like so much Mesoamerican chronological vocabulary, "Epiclassic" is an awkward term, which bears embedded within it a long history of assumptions about time, place, and cultural development (for further discus­ sion of terminology, see Berlo 1989b; Diehl and Berlo 1989:3; the other essays in Diehl and Berlo, eds. 1989; Naida 2002, 2007; Sanders 1989:211-212; Webb 1978). It is ironic that the "Classic period"-defined as the interval from AD 250/300 to 900, when the Maya erected stelae with LongCount dates-proves so unsatisfactory for the Maya region itself. Many of the hallmarks of "Classic" civilization, such as stelae, writing, and divine kingship, developed centuries earlier; the "hiatus" at T ikal, which served to divide theEarly Classic (AD 300--600) from the LateClassic (AD 600-900) period, now proves to be the result of local political circum­ stances rather than a general regional decline; the fifth century, with its intensive contact with Teotihuacan, seems significantly different from the centuries which preceded it. Even greater challenges arise with the Late Classic period: while the seventh and eighth centuries have a great deal in common, theClassic lowland Maya centers were largely abandoned by AD 800. An interme­ diate "TerminalClassic" phase, ca. AD 800-1000, has been created to contain subsequent developments on the Yucatan Peninsula. In addition to its Maya-centrism and evolutionary bias, the Preclassic/Classic/Postclassic chronological scheme does not translate well toCentral Mexico, where Teotihuacan's florescence began around the beginning of the millennium and continued into the LateClassic. When Teotihuacan was thought to have collapsed ca. AD 750, the problems of terminology were particularly acute (see, e.g., Diehl and Berlo 1989:2). However, Evelyn Rattray's revision of the Teotihuacan chronology suggests that the great metropolis was abandoned by AD 600--650, if not earlier (Rattray 2001:407, 435; see Lopez Lujan et al. 2006:30, for a date closer to AD 550). This brings theCentral Mexican chronology closer into phase with theEarlyClassic/LateClassic division of Maya his­ tory at the same time as this periodization is proving less apt for the Maya area. T he first millennium AD inCentral Mexico is now often divided into a Classic period from AD I to 650, followed by anEpiclassic period from AD 650 to 900/950 (see, e.g., M. Coe and Koontz 2002:9). The terms "LateClassic" and "Epiclassic" now have regional implications, suggesting the Maya area and

Notes to Pages 44-61 Central Mexico, respectively.They may also refer to slightly different periods: in some systems, the Maya LateClassic runs from AD 600 to 800 and is followed by the TerminalClassic, AD 800 to 1000/1100, while the Central MexicanEpiclassic might begin around AD 600 or 650, with the fall of Teotihuacan, and continue to AD 900 or 950. In this text, I use the date range AD 650950 for theEpiclassic, because it most accurately reflects the period ofCacaxtla's apogee, and useEpidassic to refer to the region of Central Mexico directly impacted by Teotihuacan's collapse. No pan-Mesoamerican chronological scheme will prove entirely satisfactory.Especially during the first mil­ lennium AD, history simply did not move at a uniform pace across Mesoamerica. This diversity and chronologi­ cal discontinuity is part of what characterizes the era. (In this, it might be contrasted with theEarly-Middle Forma­ tive and Late Postclassic periods, where different regions of Mesoamerica simultaneously experienced more similar developments, although the mechanisms are of course different in the two periods.) I believe that part of the value of terms such as "Classic" or "Epiclassic" lies precisely in their problematic and unsatisfactory nature. The windows that they provide into Mesoamerican his­ toriography are important reminders of the assumptions that shaped and continue to shape our field; that little bit of discomfort that arises every time we use them is a use­ ful spur to continually interrogate the ways that we orga­ nize Mesoamerican history. No chronological vocabulary is perfectly satisfactory-even referring to the apparently neutral "century" divides history into artificial 100-year chunks. Better to retain the system that we have, but be clear about how we are using our terms. 26. The literature on style is extensive.Classic starting points are Ackerman 1962; Ginzburg 1998; Gombrich 1968; Kubler 1985 [1970]; Lang 1987; Prown 1980; Schapiro 1994 [1953]; I. Winter 1998. For questions of style and ethnicity, Barth 1969: Dean and Leibsohn 2003; Elsner 2003; Hodder 1982, 1990; S. Jones 1997; Kaufmann 2004=43-103; Neer 2005, 2010:6-11; and Pasz­ tory 1989 have been especially helpful. 27. A helpful construct here is the "script commu­ nity," a group of people who can read shared texts: both Maya city-states, with their distinctive material cultures, and Mixtec and Zapotec communities, with their shared material culture, constitute script communities­ though this is necessarily an elitist construct for ancient Mesoamerica. 28. All that the paintings provide evidence for is participation within a painting tradition, defined as a set of habitual technological, social, and artistic practices resulting from exposure to a certain kind of visual cul­ ture, embodied knowledge of materials and techniques, and participation in a system of aesthetics and concomi­ tant moral values. It is, of course, possible to speak of probabilities-it is likely, but by no means certain, that a person trained in a Maya painting tradition is ethni­ cally Maya-but absolute certainty must escape us. Nor should we expect the story to be as simple or neat--or as familiar-as any scenario we can imagine.

29. As Abascal and colleagues observe, there is no "single zone in which Mayas were 'Mexicanized' and Mexicans were 'Mayanized,' .. . instead, there were pro­ cesses of acculturation and interchange in many places along the great route Highlands-Gulf Coast-Tabasco/ Canipeche-Usumacinta, with another branch which extended to the Yucatan" (Abascal et al. 1976:47-48; see also McVicker 1985). 30. Of course, extensive contact between different regions of Mesoamerica was the norm, not the excep­ tion, in Mesoamerican history (Braswell, ed. 2oor Demarest and Foias 199p73-176).The change in the Epiclassic period is that Teotihuacan was no longer the dominant partner in all political and artistic exchanges. Chapter Two

3.Either palygorskite clay or prepared pigment may have been the object of trade. Leonardo Lopez Lujan and colleagues suggest that in Aztec times, Maya merchants may have controlled the technology for producing the pigment as well as the clay needed to produce it (Lopez Lujan et al.2005:22-27). However, trade patterns may have been different earlier in Mesoamerican history: the idiosyncratic greens at Structure A and the Temple of Venus suggest thatCacaxtlans were making their own lakes, not just importing them from the Maya area. In either case, transport costs may have made Maya blue pigment quite expensive, so its lavish use on theCacaxtla walls may be a public display of wealth. 4. Although Maya, Zapotec, and Cacaxtla painting techniques all lie on the border between fresco and secco,Cacaxtla and Zapotec painters seem to have started on dryer walls than did Maya painters, so that more of those murals appear " secco," less embedded in the lime plaster on microscopic examination. High rela­ tive humidity in the Maya area may play a role here. 5. For purposes of clarity and simplicity, I will refer to artists as male throughout this work, but this is not intended to deny that there were women artists in ancient Mesoamerica. For example, theCodex Telleriano­ Remensis record of the reign of the Mexica ruler Huitzil­ ihuitl shows a woman writing in a codex and labels her "la pintora" (Boone 2oos:20-21; Quinones 1995:folio 3or, 213-214; see also Boone 2oooa:26-27), while Michael Coe and Justin Kerr illustrate numerous images of Maya women wearing a scribal headdress and/or bearing the aj k'uhuun scribal title (M. Coe and Kerr 1997=97-101).

1. Nopal mucilage is the slimy juice in the cactus pads; nopal gum is a crystalline exudate (Magaloni 1994:57-73). The slimy texture of the nopal suggests that there is a good binder in there somewhere, but just where is not immediately obvious. Twentieth-century Mexican mural­ ists experimented with nopal binders in an attempt to create a Mexican mural technique, but the experiments were a dismal failure. As Desmond Rochfort explains, early murals by Xavier Guerrero and Diego Rivera " incor­ porated the use of juices from fermenting leaves of the nopal cactus as a paint binder and for helping to spread the paint. Aside from its appalling stench, the technique proved to be faulty, and was eventually abandoned in favor of the traditional buon fresco recipe. The use of nopal cactus leaves in part explains the reason for the less than perfect condition of the early mural panels in the Chapter Three Ministry ofEducation" (1998:22m11). In fact, the nopal gum is the effective binder, while the slimy mucilage was 1. In microscopic cross section, two layers of paint are mixed with the plaster (Magaloni et al. 2013=150-156). visible, and between them are two layers of enlucido, or 2. In fresco techniques, pigments are applied to plaster, the lower one thicker and coarser than the upper the plaster while it is still wet. The pigments become (see Figure 96: Magaloni 1994:46-47; Magaloni et al. integrated into the plaster as calcium hydroxide from the 2013:158-159). This seems to provide evidence for the drying plaster migrates to the surface and reacts with the moment when the upper wall was simply painted white. air, forming a crystalline layer of calcium carbonate cov­ 2. The SerpentCorridor dates to the early or middle part of Cacaxtla'sEpiclassic occupation, probably late ering the surface of the painting (Mora et al. 1984=11-12). seventh or early eighth century. The Pyramid of the By contrast, in secco painting techniques, pigments are Plumed Serpents at Xochicalco corresponds to one of the applied to an already-dry wall, using a binder (such as later construction phases at that site (there is an earlier egg yolk, oil, or, in Mesoamerica, plant gums) to make substructure within it), so it may postdate the Serpent the paint adhere; capillary absorption binds the paints to Corridor. The sites ofChichen Itza. Tula, and El Tajin all the wall (Mora et al. 1984:12-13; Magaloni 1994:20-21). flourished slightly later, beginning in the ninth or tenth However, Mesoamerican painting techniques challenge centuries. this dichotomy.Plant gums and resins added to both 3. Another concern with the "world religion" model the plaster and the pigments slowed d rying of both ele­ (Ringle 2004; Ringle et al. 1998) is that it seems to ments, and painting spanned the drying of the plaster explain art primarily in terms of external viewers­ (Magaloni 2001:159-161, 168-171, 188-196, 2004b:437, pilgrims and leaders seeking legitimation-without 2004c:251-252; Magaloni and Falcon 2008:195, 204205; Magaloni et al. n.d.:150-156; Vazquez 2010:124-136). taking into account the local needs and audiences that must have been primary, especially at smaller sites From an analytical standpoint, some pigments are like Cacaxtla, which seem unlikely to have been major embedded in the plaster, as in a fresco technique, while power centers which attracted crowds of external visi­ others are held in place by the nopal gum binder, as tors. Cholula also seems like a poor candidate for an in secco technique (there is no binder in pure fresco early center of dissemination of this imagery. given its technique).

232

Notes to Pages 73-86

Notes to Pages 62-72

troubles in the seventh and eighth centuries (see Chapter 1). Furthermore, it is striking how little feathered serpent imagery is actually found at Cholula, either in the Epiclassic period or in the sixteenth century (though the sixteenth-century destruction of the Temple of Quet­ zalcoatl obscures this issue, and feathered serpents do occur, along with other subjects, on polychrome ceram­ ics from Cholula). T his could be a valuable reminder that Quetzalcoatl worship and feathered serpent imagery may not be directly correlated; remember that Aztec images of Quetzalcoatl also frequently display a quite distinct iconography. 4. Curiously, the use of peaked diagonal dividers in the aquatic borders of Cacaxtla is known only from the later paintings of the Red Temple and the Temple of Venus, and not from the earliest Serpent Corridor, which one might expect to have the closest relationship to the Teotihuacan peaked form. The late murals of Structure A again return to the straight, serrated dividers found at the Serpent Corridor. What to make of this formal history is perplexing. Are the peaks a reference to Teo­ tihuacan. and if so, why are they found only in the later paintings? Similarly, is the straight form of the dividers at Structure A somehow archaizing, a reference to the earlier form of the Serpent Corridor? Or were the two forms interchangeable throughout Cacaxtla's history? The bodies of the feathered serpents pose a similar set of formal puzzles. The flexible, continuous, inter­ crossing feathers of the Serpent Corridor recall the repre­ sentation of feathers in Maya art, and indeed, the closest formal parallels for this feathered serpent, including similar feathers projecting beyond the serpent's body, are found at Chichen ltza, in the murals of the Temple of the Warriors and the Upper Temple of the Jaguars. The feathered serpent of Structure A, by contrast, more closely resembles Teotihuacan feathered serpents: the feathers are arranged in registers, with a ruff of stiff feathers originating from a common line of origin, a trait shared by feathered serpents at Xochicalco, Maltrata, Chichen Itza (Upper Temple of the Jaguars exterior reliefs, Venus Platform reliefs), and in many Postclassic sources. Indeed, most feathered serpents in Mesoamer­ ica have this confi guration of feathers, which makes the continuous form of the feathers at the Serpent Corridor even more striking. 5. These creatures reappear in the murals of the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen rtza, some centuries later (E. Morris et al. 1931:470, plates 149d, 159). At a site so much closer to the coast, ignorance of maritime life is a much less satisfying explanation for these creatures. Are the Chichen Itza painters looking back to Teotihua­ can--or perhaps to Cacaxtla? 6. In this book, hieroglyphic writing is represented with the following conventions: logographs (whether Maya or Nahuatl) are represented in bold caps; sylJabic transliterations are in bold; and transcriptions are in italics. 7. This relationship is emphasized at Structure A, where oblong eyes outlined in blue and more traditional "sea cockroaches" alternate on the north portico aquatic

border, while a form intermediate betwee n the two predominates on the south portico border. Archaizing Teotihuacan references are especially dense in this late painting (see Note 4 above). Also note the resemb lance to the geometric motifs at Teotihuacan's Quetzal papalotl Palace (A. Miller 1973:figure 7)8. Paired blue and yellow springs also signaled the future site of Tenochtitlan (Heyden 1989:64-67, cited in Lopez Austin 1997=110, 122m8). 9. T his iconographic parallel is all the more striking because the Feathered Serpent Pyramid was likely buried by the time the Zacuala murals were painted. 10. Feathered serpents and water are also associated in a few Epidassic monuments: the serpents on the Pyramid of the Plumed Serpents at Xochlcalco have shell or cloud-like forms on their bodies, and the feathered serpents on the Venus Platform from Chichen ltza swim alongside fish (see Figure 148). Overall, however, the association becomes less common as time passes. 11. T he Battle Mural presents another kind of integra­ tion of painting and lived space as it borders the Great Plaza, but at least on the east side, it also had a red, white, and blue border demarcating the painted surface from the architecture surrounding it (see Chapter 5). 12. T he only exceptions to this pattern are the Pozo 11-A painting, whose architectural context was not totally excavated; the Captive Stair, which is an exception to many of the patterns at Cacaxtla; and the inner painting of Structure A, which probably had a symmetrical deploy­ ment of figures and was a destination in and of itself 13. Had it survived, this black line would have been far thicker than that of the original corridor painting. This difference in preservation may have been the result of a slightly different formula or mode of application for the final black line. It also suggests a different order of operations: the white line results when a black line is applied before the rest of the paint and later flakes off, leaving the unpainted ground exposed, while the black line appears to have been applied last in the Red Temple painting. 14. Previous studies have posited only two stages of construction and painting at the Red Temple, treating the extension of the east wall and the addition of the stair­ case as contemporary developments (Lucet 2013:54-62; Magaloni 1994A5-46; Santana et al. 1990:330; Vergara and Santana 1990:37). However, the east wall addition and the stairs are distinct construction events (Pedro Ortega Ortiz, personal communication 2005), and the three-stage sequence presented here may better explain the stylistic and technical features of the painting (for further discussion, see Brittenham 2008:16!-175). 15. Diana Magaloni describes the painted-over serpent feathers on the east wall as pentimenti, changes made by the painter during the painting of the red-ground scene, which she considers to be contemporary with the addition to the east wall (1994:51-52). There is no plaster enlucido separating the layers of blue and red paint on this wall; the colors are directly superimposed. Whether this is also the case on the west wall remains to be determined.

16. By noting these details, I do not mean to imply brown skin in Glyphs C and F; white against red skin that the painters of the Red Temple stair were incapable in Glyph B. There may be some contrastive rhetoric of painting a serpent with flexible feathers or a border between the globular succulents growing out of the head v.