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Visualizing Culture, Society, and Ideology in Mesoamerica: Books on Olmec, Izapan, Classic Maya, and Teotihuacán Archaeology and Art

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Ritual and Power in Stone: The Performance of Rulership in Meso-american Izapan Style Art. By GuernseyJulia. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. 213. $45.00 cloth.
The Teotihuacan Trinity: The Sociopolitical Structure of an Ancient Mesoamerican City. By HeadrickAnnabeth. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. Pp. 210. $55.00 cloth.
The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya. By HoustonStephen, StuartDavid, and TaubeKarl. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Pp. 324. $55.00 cloth.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 September 2022

Jeff Kowalski
Jeff Kowalski*
Affiliation:
Northern Illinois University
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Type
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Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , 2009 , pp. 193 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 by the Latin American Studies Association

References

1. David C. Grove, “‘Olmec’ Horizons in Middle Formative Mesoamerica: Diffusion or Social Evolution?” in Latin American Horizons, ed. Don S. Rice (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1993), 83–111; Kent V. Flannery and Joyce Marcus, “Formative Mexican Chiefdoms and the Myth of the ‘Mother Culture,‘” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 19 (2000): 1–37; Arthur Demarest, “The Olmec and the Rise of Civilization in Eastern Mesoamerica,” in Regional Perspectives on the Olmec, ed. Robert J. Sharer and David C. Grove (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 303–344.

2. Lee A. Parsons, The Origins of Maya Art: Monumental Stone Sculpture of Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala, and the Southern Pacific Coast (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1986); Rosemary Joyce and David C. Grove, eds., Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1999); John E. Clark and Richard D. Hansen, “The Architecture of Early Kingship: Comparative Perspectives on the Origins of the Maya Royal Court,” in Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, vol. 2, ed. Takeshi Inomata and Stephen Houston (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001), 1–45; Virginia M. Fields and Dorie Reents-Budet, eds. Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship (London: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Scala Publishers, 2005).

3. Mathew W. Stirling, Stone Monuments of Southern Mexico, Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 138 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1943); J. E. S. Thompson, “Some Sculptures from Southeastern Quetzaltenango,” Notes on Middle American Archaeology and Ethnology 17 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1943), 100–112.

4. On shamanic aspects of Olmec art, see Peter T. Furst, “The Olmec Were-Jaguar Motif in the Light of Ethnographic Reality,” in Dumbarton Oaks Conference on the Olmec, ed. Elizabeth P. Benson (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1968), 143–178; F. Kent Reilly III, “Art, Ritual, and Rulership in the Olmec World,” in The Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership, ed. Jill Guthrie and Elizabeth P. Benson (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, and Harry N. Abrams, 1995), 27–45. Comparative discussion of shamanistic elements in the art of early China appear in K. C. Chang, Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). A critique of the emphasis given to shamanism in discussions of Mesoamerican art is Cecelia F. Klein, Eulogio Guzmán, Elisa C. Mandell, and Maya Stanfield-Mazzi, “The Role of Shamanism in Mesoamerican Art: A Reassessment,” Current Anthropology 43, no. 3 (2002): 383–420.

5. On creation mythology and characters related to the Popol Vuh in classic and preclassic Maya art, see Michael D. Coe, “Hero Twins: Myth and Image,” in The Maya Vase Book, vol. 1, ed. Justin Kerr (New York: Kerr Associates, 1989), 161–184; Michel Quenon and Genevieve Le Fort, “Rebirth and Resurrection in Maize God Iconography,” in The Maya Vase Book, vol. 5, ed. Barbara Kerr and Justin Kerr (New York: Kerr Associates, 1997), 884–899; William A. Saturno, Karl A. Taube, and David S. Stuart, The Murals of San Bartoló, El Petén, Guatemala, Part 1: The North Wall (Barnardsville, NC: Center for Ancient American Studies, 2005).

6. In addition to works cited in notes 2 and 3, see Jacinto Quirarte, Izapan Style Art: A Study of Its Form and Meaning, Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology 10 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1973); Michael D. Coe, “Early Steps in the Evolution of Maya Writing,” in Origins of Religious Art and Iconography in Mesoamerica, ed. H. B. Nicholson, UCLA Latin American Series 31 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1976), 107–122; Gareth W. Lowe, Thomas A. Lee Jr., and Eduardo Martínez Espinoza, Izapa: An Introduction to the Ruins and Monuments, Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation 31 (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University, 1982); Virginia G. Smith, Izapa Relief Carving: Form, Content, Rules of Design, and Role in Mesoamerican Art History and Archaeology, Studies in Pre-Columbian Arts and Archaeology 27 (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1984); Jonathan Kaplan, “Monument 65: A Great Emblematic Depiction of Throned Rule and Royal Sacrifice at Late Preclassic Kaminaljuyu,” Ancient Mesoamerica 11, no. 2 (2000): 185–198.

7. Joyce Marcus, “Lowland Maya Archaeology at the Crossroads,” American Antiquity 48 (1983): 454–488; Linda Scheie and David Freidel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya (New York: William Morrow, 1990); William L. Fash, “Changing Perspectives on Maya Civilization,” Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1994): 181–208; Takeshi Inomata and Stephen D. Houston, eds., Royal Courts of the Ancient Maya, vol. 1 (Boulder, CO.: Westview Press, 2001); Arthur Demarest, Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Rainforest Civilization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Robert J. Sharer with Loa P. Traxler, The Ancient Maya, 6th ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006). On hieroglyphic writing and iconography, see Linda Scheie and Mary E. Miller, The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art (Fort Worth, TX: Kimbell Art Museum, 1986); Michael D. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992); David A. Freidel, Linda Scheie, and Joy Parker, Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path (New York: William Morrow, 1993); Stephen Houston, “Into the Minds of the Ancients: Advances in Maya Glyph Studies,” Journal of World Prehistory 14, no. 2 (2000): 122–201; Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube, Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya, 2nd ed. (London: Thames and Hudson, 2008).

8. Janet C. Berlo, ed., Art, Ideology, and the City of Teotihuacan (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1992); Kathleen Berrin and Esther Pasztory, eds., Teotihuacan: Art from the City of the Gods (San Francisco: Thames and Hudson and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1993); George L. Cowgill, “State and Society at Teotihuacan, Mexico,” Annual Review of Anthropology 26 (1997): 129–161; Esther Pasztory, Teotihuacan: An Experiment in Living (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997); Saburo Sugiyama, Human Sacrifice, Militarism, and Rulership: Materialization of State Ideology at the Feathered Serpent Pyramid, Teotihuacan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

9. For the examples at Reyes Etla, see Joyce Marcus and Kent Flannery, Zapotec Civilization: How Urban Society Evolved in Mexico's Oaxaca Valley (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996), 216. The zone 11 mural appears in Arthur G. Miller, The Mural Painting of Teotihuacan (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1973), 91–92, figs. 147–149.

10. Sugiyama, Human Sacrifice, 235–36. For an alternate interpretation of this head as a Teotihuacán war serpent related to the later Aztec Xiuhcoatl, see Karl A. Taube, “The Temple of Quetzalcoatl and the Cult of Sacred War at Teotihuacan,” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 21 (1992): 53–88.

11. Clara Millon, “Painting, Writing and Polity in Teotihuacan, Mexico,” American Antiquity 38, no. 3 (1973): 294–314; Clara Millon, “A Reexamination of the Teotihuacan Tassel Headdress Insignia,” in Feathered Serpents and Flowering Trees: Reconstructing the Murals of Teotihuacan, ed. Kathleen Berrin (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, 1988), 14–134.

12. Richard E. Blanton, Gary M. Feinman, Stephen A. Kowalewski, and Peter N. Peregrine, “A Dual-Processual Theory for the Evolution of Mesoamerican Civilization,” Current Anthropology 37, no. 1 (1996): 1–14, quotation on 1.

13. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

14. Arthur Demarest, “Ideology in Ancient Maya Cultural Evolution: The Dynamics of Galactic Polities,” in Ideology and Pre-Columbian Civilizations, ed. Arthur A. Demarest and Geoffrey W. Conrad (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research, 1992), 135–157.

15. Esther Pasztory, “Abstraction and the Rise of a Utopian State at Teotihuacan,” in Berlo, Art, Ideology, 288.

16. This recalls the work of Elizabeth M. Brumfiel, who suggests that Aztec state religion and ritual gave ideological support to Tenochtitlán's imperialistic policies by inculcating a sense of divine mission in young men in the military, an institution that also provided the best opportunity for personal betterment in a fairly rigid class society. See “Aztec Hearts and Minds: Religion and the State in the Aztec Empire,” in Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History, ed. Susan E. Alcock, Terence N. D'Altroy, Kathleen D. Morrison, and Carla M. Sinopoli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 283–310.

17. Adam Herring, Art and Writing in the Maya Cities, A.D. 600–800: A Poetics of Line (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

18. Joyce Marcus, Mesoamerican Writing Systems—Propaganda, Myth, and History in Four Ancient Civilizations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992).