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The Bone Flutes of Ancient Oaxaca

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The Bone Flutes of Ancient Oaxaca 2009 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC Volume 41 ARND ADJE BOTH Guest Editor DON NILES General Editor FREDERICK LAU Book Reviews MARGARET SARKISSIAN Audio Reviews LISA URKEVICH Film/Video Reviews SUZEL ANA REILY Website Reviews Published by the INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC under the auspices of the UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION (UNESCO) SOUNDS OF DEATH AND LIFE IN MESOAMERICA: THE BONE FLUTES OF ANCIENT OAXACA by Sarah B. Barber, Gonzalo Sánchez, and Mireya Olvera Introduction Music archaeology is an inherently collaborative endeavour, bringing together experts from an array of fields to draw inferences about the physical and social aspects of music in ancient societies. As several authors have noted (Hickmann 2002; D. Olsen 2007), music archaeology requires both data and expertise from scholars in fields as disparate as musicology, ethnography, archaeology, art his- tory, epigraphy, and history. In this paper, we demonstrate the efficacy of an inter- disciplinary approach to music archaeology by presenting the case study of a bone flute from Oaxaca, Mexico. Employing perspectives from anthropological archae- ology, iconography, ethnomusicology, and materials conservation, we describe the entire research process: from the discovery of an ancient musical instrument to interpretations about the social context of ancient music itself. The indigenous music of Mesoamerica has been a subject of ongoing academic interest since the sixteenth century, when Spanish missionaries began documenting the use of music in Native American ceremonial practices. More recent examina- tions can be dated to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when schol- ars began to collect and document ancient musical instruments that entered the art market through illicit looting. Since that time, an enormous amount of information on ancient Mesoamerican music has been generated through research in iconogra- phy and art history, ethnomusicology, ethnohistory, and epigraphy. Archaeology itself has been under-represented in studies of ancient Mesoamerican music until recently. This has been due to the fact that most private and museum collections contain looted artefacts and because archaeologists rarely report musical instrument finds in any detail. Due to a theoretical shift away from materialist perspectives in anthropological archaeology, however, there is a growing interest in incorporat- ing information from such objects into archaeological interpretations of ancient society. This paper represents one such effort, as we seek to understand the social condi- tions of flute music in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica through the detailed analysis of a deer-bone flute from the site of Yugüe, on the western Pacific coast of Oaxaca (figure 1). The Yugüe flute is unique for several reasons. Dating to between 100 and 250 CE, it is one of the oldest complete bone flutes known for the ancient Americas.1 Beyond its age, the Yugüe flute is also unique because it is elaborately incised with a design pertaining to the social significance of music (Barber 2007; 1. Bone flutes of equivalent or greater age include thirty-two condor-bone flutes dating to 2500 BCE from the site of Caral, Peru (Shady Solís et al. 2000) and a human radius whistle or flute from the Bourneville Mound, Ohio, a Middle Woodland (1–500 CE) Hopewell site (Baby 1961). Yearbook for Traditional Music 41 (2009) BARBER, SÁNCHEZ, & OLVERA BONE FLUTES OF ANCIENT OAXACA 95 0 km 400 800 MEXICO Mexico City Puebla BELIZE Veracruz Oaxaca HONDURAS GUATEMALA EL SALVADORNicaragua San Pedro Jaltepetongo Costa Rica Oaxaca City Chiapas Oaxaca Guerrero Totolapan Río Viejo Tututepec Yugüe Río Tonameca 0 50 100 kilometres Pacific Ocean N Figure 1. Map of Mesoamerica and Oaxaca showing location of sites mentioned in the text. Barber and Olvera in prep.). One of six pre-Columbian bone flutes from Oaxaca, the Yugüe flute is the oldest and the only one for which there is well-documented archaeological provenience. For all of these reasons, the Yugüe flute is an invalu- able resource for understanding the social setting of flutes, and music more gener- ally, in ancient Mesoamerica. The following pages describe the interdisciplinary research process we employed to study the Yugüe flute. We begin with a discussion of the archaeological recov- ery of the flute. The flute was a funerary object, having been buried with a young man who presumably played the instrument in life. The object was not initially identified as a musical instrument because it was in a poor state of preservation—a common occurrence for archaeological finds of such antiquity. For this reason, we next describe the conservation techniques that were required to reconstruct and sta- bilize the artefact. We continue with a brief iconographic study of the instrument’s incising, a longer examination of which is being published elsewhere (Barber and Olvera in prep.). We then provide an organological analysis based on a considera- tion of the object’s form and raw materials. Because of its fragility, the instrument could not be played. The preservation condition of the flute highlights a common dilemma in music archaeology: the near-impossibility of replicating and testing the acoustics of many ancient instruments. Since the instrument was made with an ani- mal bone, any modern deer bone acquired to create a replica, even if its dimensions were similar, would have a different internal topography than that of the original instrument. We conclude by placing the Yugüe flute in the broader context of flutes in Oaxaca and Mesoamerica. 96 2009 YEARBOOK FOR TRADITIONAL MUSIC Archaeological recovery The flute discussed in this paper was recovered during excavations undertaken at the archaeological site of Yugüe on the floodplain of the Río Verde (see figure 1). Oaxaca’s largest river, the Verde drains much of western highland Oaxaca and enters the sea near the modern town of Tututepec. The site was founded some time during the later Middle Formative Period (700–400 BCE) and was abandoned at the end of the Terminal Formative Period (100 BCE–250 CE). At 9.75 ha, Yugüe was a relatively small site that probably would have been part of a valley-wide pol- ity dominated by rulers living at the nearby urban area of Río Viejo (Barber and Joyce 2007; Joyce 2005, 2008). Yugüe’s small size indicates that it was neither a political nor economic hub. Nonetheless, Yugüe may have had ceremonial signifi- cance in the region since the centre of the site consisted of an enormous earthen platform rising ten metres above the surrounding floodplain. Excavations at the summit of this platform uncovered several public, ceremonial structures that were used over a four hundred year period for community burial, feasting, and caching (Barber 2005). The Yugüe flute was a grave offering included with one of the people who had been interred in a cemetery dating to the late Terminal Formative Period (100– 250 CE). This individual, identified during excavation as Burial 14-Individual 16 (henceforth, the “Flute Player”), was a young man who had died between the ages of fifteen and seventeen (Mayes and Barber 2008). In life, the Flute Player had enjoyed good physical health and had not engaged in any heavy labour that would have left indications on his skeleton. His cause of death is unknown, but it was neither caused by injury nor by an illness that had affected his skeleton before he died. The Yugüe flute, a four- or five-stop instrument made from a left deer femur, had been placed in his left hand, oriented as it would have been played. His fingers were curved around the bell, the stops were facing away from his body, and the entire instrument was resting against his left forearm. He was wearing a plaster- backed pyrite mirror pectoral and a small ceramic jar had been placed at his feet. The Flute Player’s physical condition and his grave goods indicate that he was an individual of unusual social status at ancient Yugüe (Barber 2005; Mayes and Barber 2008). Analysis of his teeth and joints has shown that he was healthier and performed less physical labour than most people who had been buried in the Yugüe cemetery (Mayes and Barber 2008). Good physical health and reduced labour are both common characteristics of higher-status people. Furthermore, the Flute Player’s grave goods constitute some of the most elabo- rate offerings known for the pre-Columbian era in the lower Río Verde valley. A musical instrument like the Yugüe flute would have required specialized knowl- edge to produce. The incised design on the flute’s surface, furthermore, reflects considerable artistic skill. Both specialized knowledge and artistic skill are widely accepted by anthropologists as factors that increase the social value of an object (Mills 2004; Weiner 1985, 1994). The pyrite mirror around his neck was imported from the Mexican highlands because neither pyrite nor the limestone used to produce plaster occurs naturally on the coast of Oaxaca. Like skilfully produced BARBER, SÁNCHEZ, & OLVERA BONE FLUTES OF ANCIENT OAXACA 97 Figure 2. The Yugüe flute as it appeared during excavation. objects, artefacts imported from great distances were often inherently valuable in ancient Mesoamerica (Helms 1988). Mesoamerican mirrors, in particular, were potent ceremonial objects associated with rulers, warriors, ritual specialists, and other high-status individuals throughout the pre-Columbian era (Schele and M. Miller 1986; Taube 2002). Restoration At the time of the flute’s recovery, excavators were unaware that they had found a musical instrument, which is a common problem in music archaeology research. During excavation, only the left side of the Yugüe flute was uncovered—a section of the instrument that contained some of the incised design but no orifices (figure 2). Nonetheless the flute’s significance as an art object was immediately recogniz- able, so special excavation techniques were employed to protect what was clearly an important and fragile artefact.
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