A Quarterly Review of World Archaeology

Edited by Martin Carver

Method
Maritime modelling: the Aegean after Thera
Microstratigraphy at Çatalhöyük

Research
Neolithic cart tracks in Germany
Salt production in Early Bronze Age Spain
Tutankhamun’s symbolic wines
Religious authority in ancient Hawai‘i
Taíno sculpture of polished wood
The invention of Cherokee writing

Project Gallery
September 2011

An Ottoman walrus belt-plaque from Hungary

Debate
Volume 85

Coping with climate change: the North Sea experience

ISSN 0003 598X

WILLIAM L. FASH & LEONARDO LÓPEZ LUJÁN of study. Each centre runs an annual symposium,
(ed.). The art of urbanism: how Mesoamerican many of them seminal: while Dumbarton Oaks was
kingdoms represented themselves in architecture and closed for renovation, including the construction of
imagery. viii+480 pages, 253 b&w & colour a superb new library building, the Pre-Columbian
illustrations. 2009. Washington D.C.: Dumbarton symposia were held in Peru in 2004, Mexico (2005),
Oaks Research Library and Collection; 978-0-88402- the Library of Congress (2006) and Guatemala
344-9 hardback £36.95, €45 & $49.95. (2007). These two books reflect the 2005 and 2007
JULIA GUERNSEY, JOHN E. CLARK & BARBARA ARROYO meetings.
(ed.). The place of stone monuments: context, use, and
meaning in Mesoamerica’s Preclassic transition. xx+358
pages, 291 illustrations, 5 tables. 2010. Washington The art of urbanism
D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and
Collection; 978-0-88402-364-7 hardback £44.95, Befitting a symposium held in Mexico City on the site
€54 & $59.95. of the Aztec Great Temple, this volume concentrates
on ritual public architecture in prehispanic central
Mexico: only five of the 13 chapters deal with other
topics — three on lowland Maya sites and one each
on San Lorenzo and El Tajı́n, on the Gulf Coast. Fash
and López Luján introduce the theme of ‘how the royal
courts of several very powerful, iconic Mesoamerican
centers represented their kingdoms in architectural,
iconographic, and cosmological terms’ and note that
current archaeological knowledge ‘permits us to address
the question of how ancient Mesoamerican cities defined
themselves...through their built environment’ (p. 1).
Two emic concepts were key: altepetl, ‘watery hill’,
‘Dumbarton Oaks’ means different things to different the native concept of a polity in its landscape, centred
people: to the historian, the famous Conversations of on a sacred mountain; and Tollan, ‘place of reeds’,
1944 held there that resulted in the United Nations literally meaning verdant wetlands, metaphorically a
Charter; to the musician, Stravinsky’s ‘Dumbarton civilised place, and especially one reflecting a glorious
Oaks’ Concerto in E-flat, premiered there in 1938; past. Thus Toltec Tula and Teotihuacán were both
to the gardener, its Georgetown acres are one of the Tollans, and the concept existed among the Maya,
finest created landscapes in America; and to scholars recorded epigraphically at Tikal and Copán, though
it represents some of the best work in the disparate whether it was autochthonous or imported is a matter
fields of Byzantine studies, garden history, and Pre- of debate.
Columbian art. Two chapters on the Olmec describe contrasting
Dumbarton Oaks is a Federal-era mansion in sites: San Lorenzo is the oldest large Olmec centre
Washington, D.C., housing three research centres (although the temporal placement of its striking
Review

founded by Robert Woods Bliss and Mildred Barnes but unstratified sculptures remains unclear), an
Bliss and for the past seven decades owned by Harvard archetypal altepetl amid the coastal swamplands
University. Mr Bliss collected Pre-Columbian art, Mrs (perhaps drier and more cultivable three millennia
Bliss rare books on garden history, and both of them ago). Olmec imagery documents the emergent
Byzantine art, when these were not fashionable fields Mesoamerican cosmology of complementary earth

∗
Department of Archaeology, Boston University, USA (Email: ndch@bu.edu)
ANTIQUITY 85 (2011): 1077–1081 http://antiquity.ac.uk/ant/085/ant0851077.htm
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and sky envisioned as a saurian chimaera: Anne are striking. William Saturno has penetrated further
Cyphers and Anna Di Castro note it on ceramics into the Pinturas pyramid at San Bartolo and found
c.1300 BC, and on stone monuments; pottery both earlier examples of mural art, and a text in Maya
figurines have supernatural elements deriving from hieroglyphic script which again includes an early
the cosmic monster and may also represent ball-game version of Ahaw, and thus takes both Maya literacy
players, participants in a rite that survives in Mexico and defined rulership back to the fourth century BC.
to this day. The origins of both writing and rulership must now
While San Lorenzo is a low, broad hill in wetlands, be sought in the Middle Preclassic before 400 BC,
Chalcatzingo in the highlands of Morelos is a perhaps several centuries earlier.
contrasting form of altepetl, a double sacred mountain San Bartolo lies isolated and enveloped in the
with both rock art and freestanding sculpture in Petén rainforest: in contrast, Cholula, the subject
the terraced ceremonial precinct at its base dating of Gabriela Uruñuela, Patricia Plunket and Amparo
around 900–500 BC. The best-known rock carving, Robles’s chapter, is covered by the colonial and
‘El Rey’, shows a seated figure within an ophidian ‘sky- modern city in the Puebla basin east of Mexico City.
mountain cave’, a portal to the under/Otherworld, Founded 3000 years ago, it had by the time of the
from which emerge scrolls of mist to join the rain Spanish conquest become a major pilgrimage focus
falling without. David Grove and Susan Gillespie (compared by Gabriel de Rojas in 1581 with Rome
note that he, or she, has been identified as a ruler, a and Mecca) with one of the largest pyramids ever
deity or a conflation, and suggest instead an ‘ancestral raised in the New World. Cholula has been under-
spirit’. Some of the other carvings are more obscure in investigated, and sadly under-reported, in comparison
their import, but overall Chalcatzingo’s ‘people of the with Teotihuacán, but gives us clear evidence that
mountain’ cemented their relationship with their en- the latter was not the sole metropolis of Classic
vironment in both artistic and architectural creativity. period central Mexico. The late Ignacio Marquina
Joyce Marcus examines the slightly later mid- made a brave job of reconstructing what the Great
millennial rise of Monte Albán in Oaxaca, a strategic Pyramid and its purlieus might have looked like based
hilltop where three valleys join, which became a grand on decades of sporadic tunnelling and excavation:
plaza enclosed by impressive ceremonial buildings. the present authors now suggest at least eight
She argues that its Zapotec rulers saw it ‘as the major construction stages for the pyramid instead of
capital of a militaristic, expansionist state early in its Marquina’s five, beginning around the first century
history, but later as more of a religious and elite center’ AD or slightly earlier and continuing for 1500 years.
(p. 77) with abundant dynastic art, as, presumably, the The universal Mesoamerican cosmic model of four
focus of economic life shifted into the valley below world quarters and a centre seems to have informed its
under a pax zapoteca which lasted for several centuries. design, embellished with architectural sculpture and
Marcus argues also for a master plan under which murals: the authors see it as an attempt to integrate
symmetry, or the appearance of it, was sought in the diverse communities into one of America’s first cities.
last centuries BC, and replicated on a smaller scale at The next two papers deal with Teotihuacán: Zoltan
San José Mogote, the earlier primate site in the Valley Paulinyi argues for the presence of a Mountain God on
of Oaxaca. two mural panels now in Denver and Brussels, looted
In the Maya lowlands the small city of San Bartolo before 1950, and in so doing casts doubt on the very
has Late Preclassic murals of the first century BC: existence of the ‘Great Goddess’, whom he regards as
they show a developed Maya art style depicting a scholarly syncretism of an array of deities. William
coherent narrative scenes, involving on the north wall and Barbara Fash and Alexandre Tokovinine discuss
the maize god and on the west wall veneration of the ‘House of New Fire’, retrodicting Aztec ideas to
the Principal Bird Deity by penis-perforation and explore how later cultures sought gilt by association
animal sacrifice. Clear relationships exist with Olmec with Teotihuacán, and also how the distant Maya
imagery, and with Preclassic architectural sculpture. related to the city. They argue that the Adosada
Ending the western wall is the enthronement of platform attached to the front of the Pyramid of the
a ruler (with an Ahaw glyph in an accompanying Sun was the Wite’ Naah mentioned on monuments
text) seated on a scaffold throne, being presented (for example, at Copán, Tikal and Yaxchilan), where
with the headdress of authority: parallels with the Classic Maya lords came to have their rulership
accession stelae of Piedras Negras nine centuries later validated in the centuries before the great city fell.

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They note the arguments that the Moon Pyramid was these pervasive Mesoamerican narratives. There is an
Teotihuacán’s ‘water mountain’, and in the next paper extensive discussion of recent work in Tula Chico,
Barbara Fash contends that ‘early Maya rulers used the northern and older monumental focus of the site
water management as a key component of their core belief between AD 650 and 850: the sequence of shifting
systems and basis for political hierarchy’ (p. 246). Water alignments of its urban grid shows that there is even
is politically important in the Maya lowlands, despite more to Tula than has so far met the eye.
their tropical location — the seasonal distribution Tula has been linked with Chichén Itzá in legend,
of rainfall makes provision, storage, and in larger iconography, and imaginative interpretation for
communities management, vital. Fash notes that some decades. The myth of Quetzalcoatl Topiltzin
water could be controlled from the level of the local decamping seawards towards Yucatán, the emphasis
residential cluster centred on a waterhole — as in on Feathered Serpent imagery at Chichén, the
the Maya highlands, where Zinacantan is the classic numerous warrior images at both sites, and, perhaps,
study — to major reservoirs like those surrounding the striking architectural parallels between Tula
the royal core of Tikal, and that iconography Pyramid B and its frontal gallery with the Temple
reflects the elite’s channelling of water control and of the Warriors at Chichén (albeit some similarities
administration as a source of power. were caused by reconstruction) all underwrote a
Rex Koontz tackles El Tajı́n on the Gulf Coast, model of Toltec invasion of Yucatán and the
possibly intermediary between Yucatán and the establishment of a client kingdom. Recently the
highlands (or, specifically, between Chichén Itzá chronologies have clashed, with the rise of Chichén
and Tula) in the Terminal Classic, but so little apparently antedating its supposed progenitor, but the
published, apart from its sculptures, that accurate resemblances remain, as does the lack of any similar
assessment is difficult. Koontz sticks to the sculptures, Maya site. William Ringle and George Bey look
noting both a ‘flowering mountain’ and a drainage at ‘how foreignness was incorporated and manifested
system that allowed deliberate flooding of the Great at Chichén Itzá...mediated by...new forms of military
Xicalcoliuhqui walled enclosure: Tajı́n seems to have organization’ (pp. 328–9). Many of the offerings
shared broader Mesoamerican concepts of landscape recovered from the Sacred Cenote are warrior-
symbolism. Among the familiar carvings, Koontz associated, as are murals and architectural sculpture.
recognises a figure he dubs ‘the flying impersonator’ Where such buildings can be dated, it seems that
who ‘represented an elite administrative class’ and was their ‘Modified Florescent’ style began around AD
‘a key participant in ballgame decapitation sacrifice’, 880, while the Puuc style at Chichén may begin in
and argues that the function of Tajı́n’s complex the mid-seventh century and still be going strong until
narratives was to consolidate social identities into the 880s, and even later at Uxmal.
single compositions, also placing them within a A complex model of symmetry and complementarity
broader cosmology. among the warriors on sculptured piers breathes new
Tula, the principal central highland site (apart from life into what had seemed a set of identikit images.
Cholula) for the period between Teotihuacán and Ringle and Bey associate this with a concomitant
Aztec Tenochtitlan, has by contrast been well- increase in the complexity of the site’s overall
published in recent decades, and the late Alba iconography, with an ‘increased number of emblems
Guadalupe Mastache, Dan Healan and Robert from elsewhere in Mesoamerica and the reorganization of
Cobean describe four centuries of the city’s history. public space’ (p. 374) reflecting a leadership shift from
They argue that in Tula Grande, familiar from its a ruler and his nobles (the ‘divine kingship’ of much
massive atlantid warrior-statues, Pyramid C on the Maya scholarship) to one in which the nobility were
east side of the plaza was ‘almost certainly the principal organised in military orders of Eagles and Jaguars.
structure, the axis mundi’ on which the site was The next two chapters return to the central highland
Review

focused; it was damaged by Aztec relic-mining, but Postclassic: Leonardo López Luján and his father,
its plan and an adosada platform on its front recall Alfredo López Austin, examine the relationship
Teotihuacán, as does the presence of two principal between Tula and the later Mexica (Aztecs) of
but unequal pyramids. A new carved pillar segment Tenochtitlan. The latter raided Tula for objects which
from Pyramid B bears images of Quetzalcoatl and were installed as venerated relics in the Mexica
Tezcatlipoca, resembling those of later Aztec kings but capital, transformed ‘first into the successor of the
suggesting that Toltec iconography already encodes legendary Tula, and later in the new projection of the an

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ecumenical Tollan’ (p. 411); the real Tula was discarded by sculptures of supernaturals interpreted as paired
as a now-superfluous model for Mexica validation bird and jaguar masks, an early version of a
and aggrandisement. Eduardo Matos Moctezuma Mesoamerican trope. These T-shaped slabs of 1000–
contributes an essay on the configuration of the 700 BC she proposes as gnomons tracing the path of
Tenochtitlan sacred precinct, where he long directed the sun and monitoring the agricultural calendar. An
excavations at the Templo Mayor site and oversaw the earlier phase included stone-cored jaguar sculptures
development of its impressive museum, bringing the cloaked in modelled clay: had the site not been
Mexica back into the heart of Mexico City. The twin carefully excavated, we might have had nothing but
temple-pyramids of Tlaloc and Huitzilopochtli echo, plain monoliths. The technical progression from
he notes, two conjoined mountains — something modelled clay to carved stone images is important
seen two millennia earlier at Chalcatzingo. to understanding emergent Mesoamerican style.
Finally, a coda by Davı́d Carrasco draws out three Martı́nez draws parallels from discoveries at Ojo de
themes: the symbolism of the community centre Agua (Chiapas), much later sculptures at Teotihuacán
as an imitation or renovation of an archetype; and Chichén Itzá, and Zazacatla, Morelos, the subject
the integration of such centres with their peopled of the next chapter.
peripheries and economic support zones; and the Here, Giselle Canto Aguilar and Victor M. Castro
construction and management of a symbolism of the Mendoza report recent discoveries at a riverside centre
natural landscape, especially of mountains, water, and of 800–600 BC coeval with and similar in several
their synergism. ways to both nearby Teopanticuanitlan and the well-
published Chacatzingo. Structure 1 is a lajas dry-
The place of stone monuments walled building of imported blue-grey slabs laid
horizontally and diagonally, retaining an earthen core
The place of stone monuments is in many ways a and enshrining a pair of seated niched figures in
complementary volume: where the emphasis of The Olmec style, each from a different rock source and
art of urbanism is on structure and symbolism in the flanking a central monolith. The authors see Structure
emergent Mesoamerican urban fabric, most of the art 1 (and the larger Structure 1-A which succeeds and
considered being an integral part of the architecture it incorporates it) as part of a three-dimensional model
adorns, and with an inclination towards the Classic- of the cosmos and a sacred mountain, the niches
Postclassic, Julia Guernsey and her colleagues focus being cave-entrances into it: there are clear parallels
firmly on the Preclassic. There is some overlap in with the ‘thrones’ of La Venta and San Lorenzo on
regional coverage, with essays on Olmec sites at the Gulf Coast as well as with the cliff sculptures
La Venta and Tres Zapotes on the Gulf Coast, of Chalcatzingo, and closer to hand the cave art
but the emphasis has Morelos and Guerrero in of Oxtotitlán, all developing a Middle Preclassic
western central Mexico, and the Pacific coast and narrative of rulership.
highlands of Guatemala, receiving the most attention. Christopher Pool reports on his work at Tres
The editors outline the overall theme, enlarging on Zapotes, Veracruz, also in terms of Middle Preclassic
areas not otherwise covered such as Oaxaca and political place-making. He argues that carving and
the Preclassic Maya lowlands (though omitting an placing stone monuments in the culturally-modified
important discovery, Cival Stela 2), explaining why landscape were consistent ideological acts; he also
San Lorenzo’s uncontexted Olmec monuments were usefully reassesses the chronology of Tres Zapotes
not included, and advancing several original ideas. sculptures, contributing new insights on the dating
Gerardo Gutiérrez and Mary Pye look at nahual trans- of stelae, including both the mask panel and text of
formations in Guerrero-Morelos, concentrating on TZ Stela C.
human-feline transformation figurines, particularly Rebecca González Lauck deals with the important
one from near San Pedro Aytec on which there are two Olmec centre of La Venta further east, where she
personages: transformation is symbolised by inverting has worked for over two decades. The site was
the figure to expose the second face and torso, carved ravaged by Mexico’s oil giant PEMEX, and González
on the lower reverse of the first. valiantly tries to reconstruct what was until half a
Guadalupe Martı́nez Donjuán gives a succinct century ago a pristine sacred landscape adorned with
account of Teopantecuanitlan in Guerrero, its sunken multiple sculptures, including colossal heads more
patio containing a ‘symbolic ballcourt’ and bordered sophisticated in design than those of Tres Zapotes

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(and comparable with those of San Lorenzo). La Venta of the relationships between water and rain gods and
also has large celtiform stelae, and González suggests between public and domestic rituals, although rightly
that Olmec carved celts were souvenirs, ‘which might concluding that the function of potbellies remains
explain their presence in the far reaches of ancient enigmatic. Federico Fahsen provides an efficient
Mesoamerica’ (p. 136); her review of sculptural pairs, overview of sculpture in the northern highlands of
triads and ensembles in context — recognising that Verapaz and Quiché: El Portón and La Lagunita are
where they were found was only their final, not the major sites, and past projects provide excellent
necessarily their initial disposition — is much more data. Fahsen argues that El Portón Monument 1 dates
convincing, and a real contribution to the debate on to c. 200 rather than 400 BC, and for population
landscape cosmology. replacement as the main cause of monumental
Michael Love takes a similar politico-ideological changes (whereas at Takalik Abaj a change of control
tack with Preclassic sculptures on the Pacific coast but a continuing population were proposed).
of Guatemala from around 900 BC, arguably the Between the Pacific Coast and the northern
beginning of the Maya monumental tradition but highlands lies the central valley of Guatemala,
with clear links west to the Gulf Coast. He notes where Kaminaljuyu was the principal Preclassic
the diversity of materials — a striking example is monumental centre. A fascinating contribution by
La Blanca Monument 3, a rammed-earth and clay Travis Doering and Lori Collins shows how 3-D laser
quatrefoil basin ‘symbolic of a portal to the supernatural’ scanning can recover almost-obliterated detail, here
dating to c. 800 BC —, the concentration of from KJ Monument 65. This large slab was carved,
Middle Preclassic monuments in major centres, and probably at different times, on both sides: one has
the contrasting Late Preclassic diaspora into smaller three enthroned lords each flanked by two kneeling
sites, including domestic contexts, with a wide men with what look like bound wrists, although the
variety of forms and themes. Sculpture was socially authors take up Guernsey’s suggestion that this is not
diverse, made by rulers’ attached specialists and so, and that obeisance of noble subordinates — with
by vernacular artisans to serve widespread religious elaborate individualised headdresses — rather than
precepts that included the veneration of natural forces presentation of captives is shown. The other side has
and ancestors. four figures, including a sky-borne ancestor, and text,
Christa Schieber de Lavarreda and Miguel Orrego but is eroded and marred by later attempts to split the
Corzo discuss the fascinating Pacific piedmont site slab, perhaps to make smaller stelae from it.
of Takalik Abaj, where a complex sacred landscape The final chapter by David Stuart deals with the
ascends in tiered terraces spread with cobble-faced neglected problem of plain stelae in the Maya
platforms. Those on Terraces 2 and 3 are bordered lowlands: many scholars have suggested that they
by a multiplicity of sculptures in a dizzying variety were painted, although evidence from coevally-buried
of formats, mixing Olmec and early Maya pieces (thus protected) plain monuments such as Cuello
with Pacific Coast potbelly figures; as at La Venta, Stela 1 suggests not. Stuart argues that ‘stoneness’ was
the locations of monuments are those of final use, what mattered, and that the celtiform shape of many
during Takalik Abaj’s floruit in 200 BC–AD 200. stelae links them with polished stone axes or jades like
Stylistic links run from La Venta to Kaminaljuyu, and the Leiden Plate; the hieroglyph for these ‘shiners’ may
in time from Olmec colossal heads to Classic Maya be read as LEM, ‘flash, shine, lightning bolt’. The use
royal stelae, but there is a striking mutual absence of some stelae as vehicles for royal texts and images
of influence with neighbouring Izapa. Many of the was thus epiphenomenal to their materiality as links
326 known monuments (140 of them carved) were between earth, man, and cosmos.
deconsecrated or desecrated, reused in construction, Both volumes have excellent bibliographies: Fash
revenerated as ‘old stones’ bereft of their original and Luján’s follows each chapter, Guernsey et al.’s
Review

meaning, and in some cases still venerated today. The is unified at the end; I find the latter the more useful.
site also had an early ballcourt, built c. 700 BC and Some papers use calibrated, others uncalibrated
buried three centuries later. Discoveries continue: the radiocarbon dates: the editors should have imposed
striking and important Altar 48 (fig. 8.16) was found uniformity to avoid the confusion that in the past has
only after this paper had first been presented. often arisen when the two are compared as equals; but
Julia Guernsey continues the Pacific Coast theme, overall these are splendid additions to Dumbarton
discussing both Izapa and potbellies in the context Oaks’ distinguished roster of publications.

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