Postclassic Huastec Art and the Cult of the Feathered Serpent

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Feathered Serpent was one of the principal Mesoamerican deities before the Spanish Conquest. During the Epiclassic and Postclassic periods, the cult dedicated to this ancient deity, associated with wind, fertility, and rulership, became firmly established within an international elite network, composed of diverse ethnic and cultural groups. The network shared a conventionalized visual language that transcended linguistic boundaries. Postclassic Huastec art reveals how a Huastec regional identity was constructed, asserted, and negotiated in the context of this interregional network. Artistic evidence from the Huasteca points to a prolonged cultural dialogue with their Gulf Coast neighbors as well as to stylistic and iconographic affinities with the American Southeast, Central Mexico, Oaxaca, and the Maya region. Artistic similarities range from portable artworks such as codex-style incised shell pectorals, polychrome vessels, black-on-white figural vessels, and red-on-cream murals to monumental anthropomorphic stone sculptures representing elite men and women. These elite Huastec patrons signaled their membership within the Epiclassic and Postclassic networks by commissioning such artworks and fashioning their costumes in a cosmopolitan style. This evidence indicates that the Huastecs were active participants in shaping the artistic vocabulary shared across Mesoamerica, while at the same time maintaining their own regional identity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Tales of the Feathered Serpent: Refining Our Understanding of an Enigmatic Mesoamerican Being   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23134