Mary Ellen Miller was educated at the universities of Princeton and Yale, receiving her PhD in History of Art from Yale, where she held the posts of Sterling Professor of the History of Art and Dean of Yale College. Since 2019 she has directed the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, California. Dr. Miller has worked extensively in Central America, particularly Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras, where she has carried out research in Maya art, architecture, and culture, and devoted years to the study of Maya paintings. She has written many articles on Mesoamerican art for learned journals, and her book with Linda Schele, The Blood of Kings (1986), is considered a landmark in Maya studies. With Megan O’Neil, she is the author of Maya Art and Architecture (2014, second edition) and, with Karl Taube, The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (1993). A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Miller has delivered the Andrew W. Mellon lectures at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Slade lectures at the University of Cambridge, England. World Art of World This famous series provides the widest available range of illustrated books on art in all its aspects. To find out about all our publications, including other titles in the World of Art series, please visit www.thamesandhudsonusa.com. There you can subscribe to our e-newsletter, browse or download our current catalogue, and buy any titles that are in print. The Art of Mesoamerica From Olmec to Aztec Mary Ellen Miller World Art of World Sixth edition 1 Made in a mold and finished by hand by Maya artists in the eighth century CE, With 276 illustrations, 242 in color this figurine of a standing warrior is also a diviner, wearing a mirror in the form of a rabbit on his chest, a reference to the Mesoamerican belief of a rabbit on the silvery moon. Highlighting both the face and the feather suit, the tenacious Maya blue paint has survived for over 1,000 years. Pronunciations and spellings of Mesoamerican names require some attention. In the sixteenth century, the letter “x” in the Spanish alphabet was pronounced like the phoneme “sh” in English today. In general, names in native Mesoamerican Contents languages with this consonant require the “sh” sound – as in Yaxchilan, for example – and a final “j” is an aspirated “ah,” so that an approximation of the Copan king Yax Pasaj’s name would be “Yash Pasah.” Most Mayan “c”s, regardless of the following vowel, are hard. When “u” precedes another vowel, the resulting sound is similar to a “w,” as in Nahuatl. Spanish words ordinarily have a stress on the final syllable unless they end in a vowel, “n,” or “s” (when preceded by an “n” or a vowel) – in which case the penultimate syllable is stressed. Most words 6 Map Chapter 6 in Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, take the emphasis on 8 Preface 129 the penultimate syllable. Words in Mayan languages are not The rise of Classic strongly accented. Accents are generally used in this work Maya cities only where they occur on names in Spanish (e.g. José). In Chapter 1 general, place names used here are the standard ones found 11 Chapter 7 on maps published by national governments, although accents Introduction have been dropped where they would not be used in native 153 Late Classic: Maya cities pronunciation. Chapter 2 at their height 24 The Olmecs: Establishing Mesoamerican foundations Chapter 8 199 Mesoamerica after the fall Chapter 3 of Classic cities 52 Late Formative: A diverse Mesoamerica comes of age Chapter 9 238 The Aztecs: A new Chapter 4 world found 82 Teotihuacan: City of fire, city of water 278 Chronological table 279 Select bibliography Chapter 5 288 Illustration credits 108 Classic cities from coast 291 Index to coast The Art of Mesoamerica © 1986, 1996, 2001, 2006, 2012 and 2019 Thames and Hudson Ltd, London This sixth edition 2019 All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 2019 in paperback in the United States of America by Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10110 www.thamesandhudsonusa.com Library of Congress Control Number 2018958047 ISBN 978-0-500-20450-4 Printed and bound in China through Asia Pacific Offset Ltd 010_023_WoAMeso5E_Ch1_Introduction.qxd:008-019 AM Chap 1 Introduction 15/3/12 12:05 Page 15 010_023_WoAMeso5E_Ch1_Introduction.qxd:008-019 AM Chap 1 Introduction 15/3/12 12:05 Page 14 YUCATAN Cancun Ek’ Balam • HUASTECS Chichen Itza “CHICHIMECA” GULF OF MEXICO Dzibilchaltun Coba Tancah PUUC Mayapan Tulum AREA COZUMEL I. Uxmal Kabah Jaina Sayil Labna NAYARIT MEXICO CHENES El Tajín AREA TOTONACS Etzna Ixtlan del Río Santa Rita Tula MAYA LOWLANDS Chupicuaro Teotihuacan Río Bec Veracruz Cerros Tlatilco Tlapacoya San Bartolo JALISCO •• Us Calakmul Cacaxtla um Altun Ha Mexico City/Tenochtitlan Remojadas a c El Mirador Cuicuilco Cholula • Puebla in Malinalco Cerro de las Mesas ta Lamanai TABASCO R. Chalcatzingo Las Bocas Uaxactun Naranjo COLIMA Tres Zapotes Tikal Xochicalco El Zotz BELIZE La Venta Pomona Laguna de OLMECS San José Atlihuayan Palenque los Cerros de Motul Monte Alban . Yaxha Teopantecuanitlan R s Piedras Negras Yaxchilan Tayasal San Lorenzo o Oxtotitlan lc Las Limas oa ón R Caracol ac Tonina Bonampak asi . PETEN Xochipala Cerro de la tz P Mezcala GUERRERO a Ceibal Yagul o Chiapa de Corzo Xoc Campana C Mitla Altar de Sacrificios Juxtlahuaca • CHIAPAS Monte Negro • Oaxaca MIXTECS Ancient sites Dainzu GUATEMALA Quirigua Cuilapan . MAYA HIGHLANDS R Modern towns Nebaj Mixco Viejo ua ZAPOTECS ag HONDURAS ot PACIFIC OCEAN M Copan Utatlan Cahyup Izapa Iximche Guatemala City/ El Baúl Kaminaljuyu Chalchuapa Ocos Escuintla N 0 200 miles EL SALVADOR Takalik Abaj Santa Lucía Cotzumalhuapa 0 300 km 2 Mesoamerica, showing sites mentioned in the text. 6 7 Preface coverage follows at mesoweb.com and at theguardian.com/science/ archaeology. High-quality photographs and video postings can take the interested observer from armchair to fieldwork with unprecedented ease. At the same time that new information proliferates – and with generally improved Wikipedia entries that detail site walkthroughs or the careers of archaeologists – the latest technology often results in homogenized, simplified readings and interpretations, repeated from one web posting to another. The journal Ancient Mesoamerica covers art and archaeology, while the newly founded Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture will address art history exclusively, across all regions and time periods, including Mesoamerica. Recent exhibitions continue to bring new discoveries and scholarly interpretations to a broader audience. As I write this, As I have written this book for over thirty years, I have learned thoughtful exhibitions have galvanized those interested in not to get comfortable with one set of interpretations, nor with Mesoamerica: “Teotihuacan: City of Water, City of Fire” brought a chronology, nor even a geography. The Art of Mesoamerica now the unprecedented new discoveries of the twenty-first century from starts earlier, with radiocarbon dating that reveals control of that ancient capital to San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2017 and Mesoamerica’s signature material, jade, back to 1800 bce in the 2018, while “Golden Kingdoms” amassed treasures of gold, textiles, tropical forest of the Gulf Coast. Its end is signaled with the jade, turquoise, and stone from the Andes to the Aztecs, drawing Spanish invasion of 1519, but the manipulation of Mesoamerica’s crowds in both Los Angeles and New York City in 2018. “Made in precious materials – whether feathers or pigments or obsidian the Americas,” launched at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts in 2015, – does not cease abruptly, like the drop of a curtain, and the brought together a worldwide deployment of new materiality from negotiations of the sixteenth century can be understood to be the moment of the Spanish invasion into the eighteenth century. a part of the process of Mesoamerican art-making rather than Special exhibitions sponsored by Mexico City’s Museo Nacional a coda. New discoveries continue to change the contours of study de Antropología, with stunning catalogs, have resulted in long and knowledge. The single largest Aztec monolith ever to be found queues of visitors. More broadly in Mexico, the National Institute came to light at the ancient capital within the heart of Mexico City of Anthropology and state governments have launched museums in 2006; in 2017, archaeologists announced that they had found at a number of sites to host new discoveries, from Cancun in the both a tower of hundreds of human skulls and a sacrificed wolf Maya region to Tehuacan, Puebla. Around the world, museums with twenty-two golden adornments. No one can predict what have put their collections online, making it possible to conduct revelations lie ahead. more research from one’s own computer. Museums increasingly The first decades of the twenty-first century have been rife follow guidelines that limit the growth of their collections to works with raw, new discoveries, from Olmec heads that have rolled long in circulation; resolving the problem of orphan collections in out of ravines along the Gulf Coast to the opening of some of private hands will require long-term solutions. the wealthiest tombs that the Maya interred deep within massive At the same time that many native languages can be considered pyramids. National Geographic magazine continues to provide “endangered” and at risk of ceasing to be spoken, others increasingly insightful coverage of archaeology, although its focus on the play a role in the United States.