Measurement in Cacaxtla: A Multicultural and Symbolic Convergence

Abstract

From the analysis of the mural paintings at Cacaxtla, it was determined that the painters shared a system of measurement with the builders of this site and those of the Puuc area. In the Maya area, the basic unit was divided into subunits that measured its ninth and sixteenth parts but the division system found in Cacaxtla corroborates this information and shows that it derived from working in situ with a string that is folded in half or in thirds in a repetitive manner. Study of the composition of the paintings shows the use of a grid, a resource widely used in Mesoamerica. Furthermore, the use of units of measurement found in Teotihuacan and Nahua culture in combination with the zapal system open the discussion about measurement as a resource for creating meaning. This expression must be contextualized in the multicultural expressions found in the paintings and this period of political reconfiguration, the Epiclassic (a.d. 650–950). The systems used to measure distances, time, liquids, and weights come from concepts and knowledge developed over centuries. Progressively, these systems were incorporated into shared customary systems among specific populations, thus integrating a series of factors specific to the culture of the social group that generated them (Morley and Renfrew 2010; Renfrew and Morley 2010). Different features stand out in this collective social construction, mainly regarding what is measured (sometimes in reference to something physical and sometimes a concept), the type of reference measurements used (for example, with or without relation to the human body), the way of relating what is large with that which is small, and the way in which the measurement is applied to the object.