Art, Form and Expression in the Ancient Mexico

The fragment before us was cut out and removed from the wall assembly known today as Techinantitla, and was part of a group of representations in which there were other birds, snakes, trees, calendrical signs and other motifs.  this quetzal carries a standard, which must be a war banner since other quetzals of the same pictorial set carried shields or chimallis. A scroll coming out of the beak indicates that the bird is singing. 

Our piece, as with many others of Mesoamerican art, is at the same time a sculpture and a useful, hollow artifact for ritual use. In this case it is not just a vase, but rather a “conduit”.  What is the monkey holding in its hands? Everything seems to indicate that it is a rod. It could be a blowgun, which is associated with hunting in forested regions.  

The quadripartite scheme and circular composition, from a Greek cross and of the same shape as the vessel, conveys an image of the cosmos. In the Mesoamerican worldview the quadripartite motifs symbolize the surface of the earth with the center and the four cardinal points; they constitute a two-dimensional representation of the apparent paths of the Sun throughout each day and during the year.

This vessel corresponds closely with modalities recovered in the largest archaeological site of that tradition in Mexico, which is known as Paquime or Casas Grandes. In this case, two zoomorphic heads, perhaps foxes or coyotes, have been used as handles for the vessel. Their identification is difficult because it is a schematic design.

This piece could belong to both the valley of Mexico and Puebla-Tlaxcala. This sculpture was part of the decoration of the entrance of a palace or temple and is very likely, almost certainly, to have had a mate (perhaps another feline, maybe a coyote or, more likely, an eagle). The eagle-jaguar pair symbolizes war and each of these animals lent their name to the two main military special forces.  

This figure is part of a group of which we have many more examples, which became part of different collections; in general, the figures of the birds are kept fairly complete, which would indicate that their fragmentation was not accidental but, at some point, they were deliberately detached from the building in ruins, with care in order to cut each of the figures to separate them.  

This sculpture accurately represents the characteristic style, of a limited naturalism, of the work produced in La Huasteca: very expressive, particularly in the face, and somewhat schematic in the design of the body. it seems to be a representation of the priest of the wind god called Ehecatl in Nahuatl, whose worship is another one of the features that brings the Toltec-Mexica tradition closer to the Huastec.    

  Among the Mesoamerican instruments with the most acoustic and iconographic complexity are the slide flutes of south-central Veracruz. The flute is made up of a long tube that houses a ceramic pellet inside which travels freely along the tube; to play it you must tilt your head back and then forward. This movement allows the displacement of the pellet from one side to another, thus shortening or increasing the size of the tubular chamber which generates microtonal sounds similar to the chirping of certain birds. 

Air-spring flutes such as this one are mainly found in the cultures of Central-southern Veracruz and the Mayan region during the Classic and Early Post-Classic periods. They generally appear associated with domestic or ritual spaces of the elite, for which they are not so common. This example represents a dog, although it only includes the head and the tail.

The piece is of unknown origin although both this panel, like the other from the same collection, have been attributed to the site of El Chicozapote, northwest of Yaxchilan. The composition of the scene is closed, since both characters are facing each other, and the stasis of the figures is broken by the movement of the hands, which at the time must have spoke for themselves, a language of gestures by researchers of the mayan culture is yet to be deciphered.

As much for the shape of the container as its decoration, the vessel we see does not correspond to the most recognized Tarascan pottery, it is likely related to the type called Chila polychrome, identified by Isabel Kelly in the area of Apatzingan in Tierra Caliente, Michoacan.  

The plate has a red background decorated at the back with vegetable and floral motifs; the central axis is traversed by a series of semicircular and open elements with dots on the inside reminiscent of the signs used to define water or water-related spaces; two circular flowers with points combine diagonally with two flowers with four petals forming a quatrefoil.  

In the case of this vessel we found a conceptual representation of the hand/wing/claw, where three channels are carved (two of them curved) representing the fingers bent towards the inner part of the vessel. In front of the hand/wing/claw, on the left, we see the X or St. Andrew's cross which, according to the above, possibly evokes the celestial invocation of the Olmec "dragon". While on top of the complete piece we find four parallel and broken lines carved in the form of lightning, representing the flaming eyebrows of the same "dragon".