Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The ancient cultures along the Gulf Coast of Mexico produced some of the most significant sculptural traditions of Mesoamerica. The types of sculptures range from colossal heads, figurative statues, carved and plain stelae, large-scale terracotta sculptures, and relief-carved ball-court panels to yokes, hachas, and palmas decorated with intricate entrelaces. Although some traditions have received a lot of scholarly attention, others have not—and few studies have attempted to understand the relationships of these diverse sculptural traditions over time and space. The cultural-historical approach to the region has led to its conceptual segmentation as well as of its artistic developments, resulting in an oversimplified cultural and by extension sculptural sequence that proceeds from south to north: the Preclassic Olmec in the south, Classic Veracruz along the central Gulf Coast, and the Postclassic Huastec culture in the north. In this session, archaeologists and art historians working in the Mexican Gulf lowlands will examine sculpture relative to issues such as interregional and intraregional connections, continuity and disjunction, cross-media relationships, and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Participants will consider social memory, reuse, and ritual destruction, as well as the visual references in cultural dispersal, with an eye toward creating a new synthesis of ancient Gulf Coast sculpture.

Other Keywords
Iconography and epigraphy • Iconography and Art • Sculpture • Veracruz • El Tajín • Classic Veracruz • Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis • Cultural Heritage and Preservation • Museums, Collections, and Repatriation • Conservation and Curation

Geographic Keywords
Puebla (State / Territory) • Tlaxcala (State / Territory) • Veracruz (State / Territory) • United Mexican States (Country) • Yucatan (State / Territory) • Corozal (State / Territory) • Quintana Roo (State / Territory) • Campeche (State / Territory) • North America (Continent) • Mesoamerica: Gulf Coast

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-7 of 7)

  • Documents (7)
Documents
  • Cerro de las Mesas Monument 2 (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Cherra Wyllie.

    This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cerro de las Mesas Monument 2 is a colossal portrait head. Its flattened rear surface contains a relief-carved scene with a ruler in a broad-brimmed hat, vanquished captive with a calendric sign above his or her head, and a worn hieroglyphic text placed between them. In its entirety Monument 2 bridges the site’s Olmec heritage with...

  • Classic Veracruz Sculptures and Bodies in Fragments (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Rex Koontz.

    This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As part of a larger study on Classic Veracruz fragmented bodies and sculptures, I sketch two case studies of contexts in which fragmented yokes, decapitated heads, and figurine body fragmentation come together in Protoclassic and Early Classic Tres Zapotes and Cerro de las Mesas.

  • El Tajín en tiempos de 13 Conejo: Expresiones de un nuevo estatuto simbólico (ca. 800-1100 dC) (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Arturo Pascual Soto.

    This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Si bien el culto al soberano no podría expresar de mejor manera el carácter sagrado que se le confería de antiguo y el extraordinario poder que se concentraba en su persona, es en El Tajín cuando evoluciona sobre las bases de una ideología de reciente introducción hacia una liturgia ligada a una tradición cultural que en el Epiclásico...

  • The Female Terracotta Sculpture at the North Carolina Museum of Art: Pastiche or Fake? (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Yuko Shiratori. Ángel González López.

    This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Large-scale female terracotta sculptures were extensively produced in the Mixtequilla region of Veracruz during the Late Classic period. It is likely that numbers of these sculptures were looted and smuggled into the United States prior to the 1970 UNESCO Convention on Cultural Property. This paper focuses the female terracotta...

  • Flayer and Flayed Figures in Central Veracruz, Mexico: Is It Xipe? (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Annick J. E. Daneels.

    This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The god Xipe Totec has been mostly analyzed from Postclassic evidence (Toltec and Aztec). He is recognized by the representations of a person wearing the skin of a flayed victim or the victim himself. While both types of figures appear in several regions of Mesoamerica, their contexts vary. In this paper I will review Classic and...

  • La Piedra del Gigante de Orizaba y el Monolito de Maltrata: Estudios iconográficos y su protección como patrimonio arqueológico (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Yamile Lira-Lopez.

    This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. La Piedra del Gigante y el Monolito de Maltrata, pertenecen a lo que se llama escultura monumental en piedra, y se encuentran ubicadas en la región de los valles intermontanos de las Grandes Montañas, al centro y oeste de estado de Veracruz. Son importantes representaciones en bloque amorfo de piedra que relatan un evento...

  • Situating a Cached Ballgame Yoke from Matacanela, Veracruz (2021)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcie Venter. Lacy Risner.

    This is an abstract from the "Sculpture of the Ancient Mexican Gulf Coast, Part 2" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The ballgame complex was an important component of the Classic Veracruz style that spanned the Late or Epiclassic period (AD 600–900) and that was concentrated along the Mesoamerican Gulf lowlands and extended into adjacent regions. The ballgame, however, has early roots, both in Mesoamerica in general and in Veracruz in particular. In...