The Battle Mural at Cacaxtla Revisited: Ethnicity and Historicity in Epiclassic Central Mexico

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The extraordinary wall paintings of Cacaxtla, Tlaxcala, Mexico, have been the focus of much analysis and debate since their rediscovery in 1975. The hybridity of the images, in terms of both content and style, clearly demonstrates long-distance contact with the Maya Region during the Epiclassic Period (800-1000 CE), but the nature and meaning of that interaction remains stubbornly unclear. This paper revisits the largest and best-known of these paintings, the Battle Mural applied to the north side of the Great Plaza beneath Building B. Scholars have differed to as to whether this scene is metaphorical, historical, or some combination of the two. In this paper I argue that some important ethnic distinctions between the two opposing sides have been overlooked and that the Battle Mural may have a greater significance for the whole Cacaxtla painting tradition than commonly realized.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53708