Pre-Columbian Art Winter 2022
Archaelogists associated with Mexico’s National Institute of Archaeology and History (INAH) made a strange discovery earlier this month at the Templo Mayor, the temple complex at the center of Mexico City, formerly ancient capital of Tenochtitlan.
The INAH archaelogists uncovered a ritual offering of starfish, about 160 in total, enveloping the skeleton of a jaguar, according to a recent video released by the institute. Like the majority of the offerings found at the Templo Mayor, the starfish were dedicated to the two-sided god Huehueteotl-Xiuhtecuhtli, who represents both water and fire, agriculture and war.
The starfish were first discovered in 2019 when archaeologists kept finding small white stones in a layer they were excavating in an altar. Their scientists quickly saw that they were the bones of starfish, which was further confirmed by the imprint of a starfish which was found mostly intact. The starfish found there are believed to all belong to the same species, Nidorellia armata, or the chocolate-chip starfish, on account of its black spots and beige pattern.
The bones of these marine creatures make up a stunning 80% of the composition of layer they were studying, making it the largest documented starfish offerings in Mexico. Amidst this pile of starfish bones the skeleton of a jaguar was revealed.
“It’s very interesting because, if you think of it, the pattern on the starfish looks very similar to the pelt of a jaguar,” archaeologist Miguel Báez Pérez said in an interview with INAH. “That’s probably the reason they chose this species but we still need to do an exhaustive review to confirm that this is the only species present.”
The starfish remains are being cleaned and bagged to be further analyzed at the Institute of Marine Scientists at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
“The offerings tell us about the conquest of marine regions, coastal regions and obviously the extraction of precious materials,” said Miguel Báez Pérez.
https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/starfish-altar-mexico-1234622383/
######
Researchers Decipher the Glyphs on a 1,300-Year-Old Frieze in Mexico
Jane Recker
March 8, 2022
Researchers discovered a 50-foot stucco frieze in the ancient archeological site of Atzompa in Monte Albán, Mexico. INAH
Researchers with Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) have deciphered an ancient frieze adorned with one of the longest examples of Zapotec writing in the Oaxaca Valley, according to Hyperallergic’s Valentina Di Liscia. Discovered in 2018 in a complex called Casa del Sur at the ancient archeological site of Atzompa in Monte Albán, the frieze illustrates in high-relief glyphs some of the beliefs of the Mixtecs and Zapotecs, two of Mexico’s largest Indigenous cultures.
The iconography on the nearly 50-foot-long limestone and stucco frieze, dating to between 650 and 850 C.E., includes a quetzal bird, monkeys, jaguars and supernatural protective figures. The researchers discovered figurative and numerical depictions of the Mixtec calendar’s year of the lizard, as well as the quincunx—a geometric design alluding to the four directions and the center of the universe.
The frieze contains glyphs that depict the cultural beliefs of the Mixtecs and Zapotecs, two of the largest Indigenous cultures in Mexico. INAH
A Google-translated statement from INAH describes the motifs as “manifestations of the cosmic world to which the construction of [Casa del Sur] responded to.” Lead researcher Nelly Robles García says, “In general, the glyphs are allusions to power in the city, to supernatural protection, and to a time without time.”
Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Monte Albán was founded between the seventh and ninth centuries B.C.E. Over a period of 1,500 years, the area was inhabited by the Olmecs, Zapotecs and Mixtecs. Atzompa was built between 650 and 850 C.E. as a satellite city to Monte Albán, as the Zapotec civilization expanded in the region, according to Heritage Daily.
Atzompa is situated on a hill overlooking the nearby Valley of Etla. Evidence suggests the town served as a final way station for quarried stone being transported for construction in Monte Albán, and that its hilltop position allowed it to serve as a defense against the nearby Mixtec.
The original frieze is estimated to have been about 100 feet long and would have decorated the main façade of the Casa del Sur, according to the Art Newspaper’s Gabriella Angeleti. It would have been visible to a busy ceremonial plaza, and, due to its location, Robles García says the glyphs impart a “message or discourse of power.”
When the Zapotecs abandoned Atzompa around 850 C.E., the frieze was partially destroyed. Researchers have found funerary urn fragments nearby that may have served as sacrificial offerings from the Zapotecs to “demystify the space.”
“Materials such as limestone and stucco require a high degree of specialization for their handling and restoration,” says Robles García in the statement. “The frieze should be considered one of the most important artifacts among the institution’s conservation priorities.”
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/researchers-decipher-the-glyphs-on-a-1300-year-old-frieze-in-mexico-180979691/?utm_source=smithsoniantravelandcult&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20220323-travel&spMailingID=46587958&spUserID=NzQwNDU3ODAxODcS1&spJobID=2202622200&spReportId=MjIwMjYyMjIwMAS2
######
NEW YORK, NY.- The tropics are a paradise for everyone but a skeleton. Humidity keeps rainforests green but does little to preserve bodies, leading to a dearth of ancient skeletal remains in neotropical regions such as Central America.
But deep in the jungles of Belize, under the dry refuge of two rock shelters, the skeletons of people who died as many as 9,600 years ago have been exceptionally well preserved. Their bones offer a rare glimpse into the region’s ancient genetic history, which is largely unknown.
A group of scientists has extracted these ancient people’s DNA, offering new insight into the genetic history of people in the Maya region. The paper was published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. The researchers identified a previously unknown mass migration from the south more than 5,600 years ago that preceded the advent of intensive maize farming in the region. This migration of people, who are most closely related to present-day speakers of the Chibchan languages, contributed more than 50% of the ancestry of Mayan-speaking peoples today.
Lisa Lucero, an anthropologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who specializes in the ancestral Maya and was not involved with the research, said the new results “have the potential to revise and rewrite the early history of the First Americans.”
Xavier Roca-Rada, a doctoral student at the University of Adelaide, said the results “fill a gap between the oldest previously studied individuals from the Maya region and the time before the settling of Mesoamerica.”
The new paper emerged from ongoing excavations led by authors Keith Prufer, an environmental archaeologist at the University of New Mexico, and Douglas Kennett, an archaeologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The researchers have been excavating two rock shelters in the Bladen Nature Reserve, a remote and protected area of Belize that kept the sites, which were used as cemeteries, undisturbed for thousands of years. “People just kept going back to them over and over and over again and burying the dead,” Prufer said.
The shelters were also occupied by the living, who made tools and cooked, evidenced by the buried bones of armadillos, deer and a type of rodent called a paca, Prufer said. The bottom of the excavated pit held a piece of a giant sloth, which may have even predated human occupation of the shelter, he said.
The excavations also revealed a secret, formerly slimy layer of protection underground. Around 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, before the classic period of the Maya, people harvested tiny Pachychilus snails for food. “They would boil them and lop off the end of the shell and eat the flesh out of them,” Prufer said. Whoever inhabited these shelters feasted on these snails, and their discarded shells shielded bodies buried below. “This layer of snails actually protected the lower burials from the Maya digging through them,” he said.
Kennett and Prufer study these early burials to understand how the region transitioned from hunting and gathering to the development of intensive agriculture of maize, chili peppers and manioc (also called cassava). In a 2020 paper, they described evidence of maize consumption in the bones of individuals who lived 4,000 to 4,700 years ago.
David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, led the extraction of ancient DNA from 20 individuals buried in the shelters over the course of 6,000 years. The analysis revealed several human migrations into the Maya region, in what is now southeastern Mexico and northern Central America.
They found three distinct groups: one living 7,300 to 9,600 years ago, another living between 3,700 and 5,600 years ago and a third group of modern Maya people. The first group appears genetically linked to a southward migration through the Americas during the Pleistocene. But the second group was related genetically to the ancestors of Chibchan speakers living farther south.
The authors hypothesize that this population turnover came from a mass migration from the south. “That was the spectacular result,” Kennett said.
The finding overturns an old assumption that farming technology spread through the Americas by the diffusion of crops and practices — the spread of knowledge as opposed to the spread of people, Reich said. The new results suggest this migration was critical to spreading farming, such as a scenario in which Chibchan speakers migrated northward with varieties of maize, which they then cultivated and spread in local populations, the authors wrote.
“People were actually moving into the region from the south, carrying these domesticated plants and also the systems of knowledge about how to grow them,” Kennett said.
David Mora-Marín, a linguistic anthropologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an author on the paper, conducted an analysis of early Chibchan and Mayan languages. He found that a term for maize had diffused from the Chibchan language into Mayan languages, further supporting the idea of a Chibchan origin of maize.
The field of ancient DNA has been criticized for a lack of ethics or appropriate engagement with communities that may be descended from the ancient humans being studied.
Kennett and Prufer conducted their archaeological research with the Ya’axché Conservation Trust, a Belizean nongovernmental organization that is largely staffed by descendants of Maya communities. The researchers consulted with these communities, presented results from studies and translated summaries of findings into the Mopan and Q’eqchi’ languages at the locals’ request. In the discussions, the communities expressed a desire to learn more about the diets and precolonial family units of the ancient people living in the cave. Because of these conversations, the authors placed a greater emphasis on these topics in the paper, Kennett said.
Krystal Tsosie, a genetics researcher at Vanderbilt University, said she wanted to see a more detailed description of how the community’s feedback influenced the paper. Tsosie added, “The process of proper engagement also means properly and transparently crediting the community members for informing and enriching the research.”
Ripan Malhi, a genetic anthropologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, noted that the authors uploaded the ancient DNA data to a public database “with no safeguards or limitations on use indicated.” Ancient DNA can offer a shortcut to the DNA of modern communities without their consent. “This may have implications for the present-day Maya in the region,” he said.
Lucero and Roca-Rada said that more data was needed to prove the researchers’ hypothesis that a southern migration had brought maize to the Maya region. To Lucero, the question is whether researchers should acquire that data. “Should we dig up ancestors?” he asked. “Would we want someone to dig up ours to answer interesting yet nonvital research questions?”
Kennett and Prufer last visited Belize in January 2020 to present the preliminary results from the new paper to Maya communities. The pandemic has since prohibited the researchers’ return, but Prufer said they hoped to go back this summer to continue excavating and “keep our promise to return each year that we work and update everybody.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.https://artdaily.cc/news/144842/Human-migration-brought-maize-to-Maya-region--study-finds
