Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein

DOCUMENT Citation Only Susan Milbrath.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Animals are prominent in annual rituals performed at the end of the year, as seen on page 49-52 of the Codex Borgia. Animals attacking each other and scenes of struggle involving animals and anthropomorphic gods are related to sequences in the yearbearer cycle that define the Calendar Round. Yearbearer...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cynthia Kristan-Graham.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. At the Postclassic Maya city of Chichen Itza, buildings, planned spaces, and imagery blend with the landscape to form meta-narratives. One instance is the Sacred Cenote, a limestone sinkhole that was a major focus of rituals. The cenote rim features frogs/toads carved from the living rock, and at one time...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Gabrielle Vail. Allen Christenson.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Scholars have long recognized that certain Mesoamerican deities appear in animal as well as anthropomorphic form. The Maya creator Itzamna, for example, has aspects corresponding to a bird, a turtle, and an alligator, while the aged "God L" may be linked to the opossum in its anthropomorphic form (Pawah-Ooch),...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Aguilera. Emily Umberger.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This study focuses on questions about serpents and gender associations in Aztec art--questions raised by a ceramic fragment located in storage in the Brooklyn Museum. On it Coyolxauhqui, the enemy of the Aztecs’ supernatural patron, Huitzilopochtli, is depicted with two different types of imaginary serpents, a...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Leonardo López Luján. Alejandra Aguirre Molina. Israel Eizalde Mendez.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Over the course of four decades, the Templo Mayor Project (1978–2018) of Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) has excavated more than two hundred offerings in the area corresponding to Tenochtitlan’s sacred precinct. These rich Mexica deposits from the fourteenth, fifteenth, and...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Cecelia Klein.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. All sixteen birds carved on the sides of the Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars at Chichen Itza have been traditionally identified as eagles. Because each pair of birds flanks a large relief of a seated jaguar holding a heart, it has been assumed in the past that the platform celebrated military orders like...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Merideth Paxton.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Dresden Codex is a Postclassic Maya document that is thought to have originated in the Yucatán Peninsula. The opossum figures in the panels at the tops of its section on the New Year (pages 25-28) are associated with the uayeb, the five nameless, unlucky days that mark the ends of the 365-day haabs. A...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Keith Jordan.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper examines the predatory animals on the relief friezes of Pyramid B at Tula, clearly based on Teotihuacan models originally expressed in different media and contexts--murals in interior spaces--and the possible reasons for both Tula's borrowing of this imagery and its redeployment in sculpture in the...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elena Mazzetto.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In documentary sources recording Nahuatl culture of the Late Postclassic period, a bird called zollin, identified as a quail (Cyrtonyx montezumae) is especially prominent. Indeed, these small birds were often chosen to be sacrificed before the divine effigies and, in some cases, to be consumed during ritual...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Jeanne Gillespie.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the Tratado de supersticiones (1626) Hernando Ruíz de Alarcón documented invocations and prayers to pre-Hispanic divinities to assure a good catch/hunt or to protect against poisonous/painful bites/stings. This confirmed that these divinities remained important the local consciousness even 100 years after...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Elizabeth Baquedano.

This is an abstract from the "Animal Symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica: Papers in Honor of Cecelia Klein" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Frogs and toads were important animals in Mesoamerica with several species of Mexican frogs. They were especially associated with the rainy season. Some species of frogs are active above ground only in the reproductive period while some species of toads spend part of the year underground. These batrachians are...