Envisioning the Iconographic and Epigraphic Corpus of Cerro de las Mesas

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Coffee, Clever T-Shirts, and Papers in Honor of John S. Justeson" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this paper, we honor John Justeson’s contributions to the study of Mesoamerican writing and symbolic systems by revisiting the Epi-Olmec corpus of Classic period Cerro de las Mesas (300–900 CE). Four of the stelae from this site contain examples of the Epi-Olmec script, and their accompanying iconographic programs make these monuments distinct from other objects on which this script has been found, situating the visual culture of Cerro de las Mesas between the earlier Olmec horizon and the later Classic Veracruz culture. In this paper we report on new imaging work performed at the Museo de Antropología de Xalapa in 2022 at John’s behest. Three-dimensional photogrammetric models created from these efforts have brought out greater iconographic and epigraphic details, which allow for more accurate drawings. We then discuss the Cerro de las Mesas corpus in light of both these results and previous research, including John’s 2005 photographic documentation project with Jorge Pérez de Lara and his seminal collaborative publications with Terry Kaufman on the Epi-Olmec writing system. We conclude with some observations on Epi-Olmec iconography and script as revealed via this work, as well as thoughts for future investigation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)   •
• Coffee, Clever T-Shirts, and Papers in Honor of John S. Justeson

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35989.0