Across the Hills, toward the Ocean: Teotihuacan-Style Monuments in Guerrero, Mexico

Nielsen, Jesper Tang; García, Elizabeth; Rivera, Iván Puentes

doi:10.5876/9781607328360.c006

Cited by 5 publications

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“…To this, we can note the use of these headdresses as crowns for calendrical dates, serving to name particular named years. This is a convention found in the writing of Monte Albán (Caso 1928:46, Figure 21, 1967Urcid 2001:111-113), in the texts of Teotihuacan, often topping the Reptile Eye ("Reed") sign (Caso 1967:159-161;Helmke and Nielsen 2011: 15), in Ñuiñe (Rivera Guzmán 2014) and Epiclassic writing Nielsen 2011:15-19, 2019a), and Classic Maya writing (Stuart 2015). This pattern would endure into the Colonial period, such as the renditions of k'atun wheels of the Yucatec Maya in which the headdresses of old were replaced with the crown of European monarchs, just as examples of the twentieth day sign Ajaw-as for instance in the Book of Chilam Balam of Ixil-are written, not with a headband, but with a European crown (Bricker and Miram 2002).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…It should be noted that the Year Sign headdress also appear as part of toponyms, or place names, for example on the monument displayed at Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul and on a stela reportedly from Acatempan in Guerrero (Figure 13; Nielsen et al 2019b). Other examples also include Teotihuacan-style mirrors from Copan (the Margarita Tomb) and Querendaro in Michoacan (Nielsen 2006(Nielsen :3-5, 2019.…”

Section: The Year Sign Headdress: Crowning Years and Individualsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Crowning Rulers and Years: Interpreting the Year Sign Headdress at Teotihuacan

Nielsen

Helmke

2019

Ancient Mesoam

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Headdresses, as opulent markers of rank and affiliation, offer a unique opportunity to examine sociopolitical roles and offices at Teotihuacan. In particular, in light of the few surviving glyphic texts from the site, the representations of headdresses, either in isolation, as part ritual investitures, or actively worn by individuals, are in fact one of the few ways to achieve a deeper understanding of the nature, structure, and institutional aspects of social stations and in the ancient metropolis. In this paper, we will first discuss the elemental properties of headdresses in Teotihuacan iconography as well as the rites of accession upon which these symbolic markers were acquired. Thereafter, we suggest that several kinds of headdresses are also associated with specific named houses at Teotihuacan, which indicate their close affiliation with certain powerful institutions. Finally, we focus on some of the specific types of headdresses, and especially those qualified by the so-called Year Sign (Figure 1). Based on comparisons with Classic and Epiclassic calendrical records, wherein dates are also crowned by the same headdress, as well as with the diadem of the Late Postclassic Mexica rulers, the xiuhhuitzolli, we put forth a new interpretation of its meaning at Teotihuacan.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 91%

Section: The Year Sign Headdress: Crowning Years and Individualsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crowning Rulers and Years: Interpreting the Year Sign Headdress at Teotihuacan

Nielsen

Helmke

2019

Ancient Mesoam

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“…Written referents were made to insignia of offices [42] but not to named individuals as was the Classic Maya practice. Nevertheless, monuments displaying elements of Teotihuacan style and symbolism that were erected in both the Maya region [43] and Guerrero [44] did include named persons. Teotihuacan glyphs tended to be large, and iconographic, not easily recognizable as scriptural accounts [38] .…”

Section: Mesoamerican Writing Numeration and Calendarmentioning

confidence: 99%

Communication, Computation, and Governance: A Multiscalar Vantage on the Prehispanic Mesoamerican World

Feinman

Carballo

2022

J. Soc. Comput.

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Writing has often been put forth as one indicator of civilization. This correspondence dovetails with the even broader cross-species expectation that the degrees of social complexity and levels of computational communication should closely correlate. Although in a general sense across human cooperative arrangements, a basic relationship between these variables undoubtedly exists, more detailed and fine-grained analyses indicate important axes of variability. Here, our focus is on prehispanic Mesoamerica and the means of computation and communication employed over more than three millennia (ca. 1500 BCE-1520 CE). We take a multiscalar and diachronic analytical frame, in which we look at 30 central places, six macroregions, and Mesoamerica as whole. By unraveling elements of "social complexity", and decoupling computation from communication, we illustrate that institutional differences in governance had a marked effect on the specific modes and technologies through which prehispanic Mesoamerican peoples communicated across time and space. Demographic and spatial scale, though relevant, do not alone determine time/space diversity in media of computational communication. This article is part of the theme issue "Evolution of Collective Computational Abilities of (Pre)Historic Societies".

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“…Several 'ethnic enclaves' flourished at Teotihuacan, including a Zapotec barrio, and bone isotopes indicate the presence in apartment compound N1W5:19 of a small group of West Mexican people who spent at least some time in Michoacán (Begun 2013). While carved stones or stelae with 'Teotihuacan imperial iconography' have been reported in Guerrero (Nielsen et al 2019), there is minimal evidence of an impactful Teotihuacan physical presence (Reyna Robles 2006). At Teotihuacan, Mezcala-style sculptures appear in several contexts, such as the Feathered Serpent Pyramid (Cowgill 2015, fig.…”

Section: Mezcala Sculpture Beyond Guerreromentioning

confidence: 99%

Commensalism, Imaginaries and Early Urbanism: A Mezcala Sculpture in the Mixteca Alta, Mexico

Blomster¹

2022

CAJ

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Early urban societies feature specialized processes that integrate disparate populations as part of their social construction. One such process is commensalism and the associated display of exotica from interregional interaction. Hosts of a feast between 400 and 300 bce at the early urban centre of Etlatongo, in the Mixteca Alta of Oaxaca, Mexico, displayed pottery that manifested relationships with urban elites at Monte Albán and other regions of Oaxaca, but also expressed connections with something fundamentally different. The hosts sacrificed a greenstone sculpture in the Mezcala style from Guerrero state, located to the west and previously unknown in Oaxaca aesthetics. The discovery of this figure contributes to reassessing the extent of interaction during a time often marked by regionalism in Oaxaca as well as providing information on the little-known Mezcala civilization. A relational ontology explores how the discovery of this agentive object and the alterity of its aesthetics facilitates understanding perceptions of distant others or imaginaries, and how such entanglements facilitated processes of status differentiation for nascent urban elites, particularly their role as mediators.

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Across the Hills, toward the Ocean: Teotihuacan-Style Monuments in Guerrero, Mexico

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Crowning Rulers and Years: Interpreting the Year Sign Headdress at Teotihuacan

Crowning Rulers and Years: Interpreting the Year Sign Headdress at Teotihuacan

Communication, Computation, and Governance: A Multiscalar Vantage on the Prehispanic Mesoamerican World

Commensalism, Imaginaries and Early Urbanism: A Mezcala Sculpture in the Mixteca Alta, Mexico

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