“Tlaloc” and “Chicomoztoc” in the North: Evidence for Chthonic Concepts from Mesoamerican Cosmovision in the Caves of the Greater Southwest

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Claims for contact between Mesoamerica and the U.S. Southwest predate by centuries the inception of archaeology as a scientific discipline. However, despite such long-standing assumptions and the accumulation of evidence from the archaeological record, including ball courts, copper crotals, cacao, and macaws, as well as material manifestations of Mesoamerican ideologies, the timelines, sources, and mechanisms for these transmissions remain elusive. One of the most dramatic (if controversial) indicators for long-distance contact is the presence of the Mesoamerican storm god known in Nahuatl as Tlaloc in hundreds of images in rock art from New Mexico, Texas, Chihuahua, and Sonora, as well as on portable objects, including ceramics and painted effigies from at least five caves. Two other southwestern caves, both among the most important cave shrines in the region and at least one of which has been culturally modified, present unusual morphologies suggesting that they may have functioned as representations of Chicomoztoc, the Nahua “seven caves” of emergence. This paper presents new findings for both concepts and reconsiders their presence in the Southwest as well as the timing of their arrivals, suggesting that while Tlaloc may have arrived centuries earlier than previously recognized, the Chicomoztoc model may be even older there.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• The Subterranean in Mesoamerican Indigenous Culture and Beyond

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33125