Two vessels in the Tucson Museum of Art

PRE-COLUMBIAN ART Selections from the Tucson Museum of Art Permanent Collection PRE-COLUMBIAN ART Selections from the Tucson Museum of Art Permanent Collection This online catalogue has been made possible by a generous grant from the Arizona Humanities Council and support from the Latin American Art Patrons of the Tucson Museum of Art ©2014 Tucson Museum of Art. All rights reserved CATALOGUE DESIGNED BY: Melina Lew, FreshCutGrass Branding+Design INTRODUCTION BY: Julie Sasse, Ph.D., Chief Curator and Interim Curator of Latin American Art ESSAYS BY: Anna Seiferle-Valencia, Ph.D., Independent Curator Alexander Tokovinine, Ph.D., Department of Anthropology, Harvard University CATALOGUE ENTRIES BY: Rebecca Mountain, M.A., School of Anthropology, The University of Arizona PHOTOGRAPHY BY: David Longwell Rachel Shand CATALOGING BY: Susan Dolan, Registrar and Collections Manager COPY EDITING BY: Katie E. Perry COVER: Maya Culture, 600 – 900, Mexico, Incense Burner Fragment with Eigy Head, buf clay with red slip, Gift of Frederick R. Pleasants. 1971.27 ABOVE: Maya Culture, 700 – 900, El Salvador, Tripod Cylinder Vessel with Underworld Scene, polychrome clay, Gift in memory of Joseph and Matilda See. 1991.15 Contents 4 INTRODUCTION Julie Sasse, Ph.D. ESSAYS 5 Stories Made of Earth: Moche and Nazca Pottery at the Tucson Museum of Art Anna Seiferle-Valencia, Ph.D. 14 Two Vessels in the Tucson Museum of Art Alexander Tokovinine, Ph.D. 23 Frederick R. Pleasants: A Curator and Steward of Pre-Columbian Art Anna Seiferle-Valencia, Ph.D. 31 EXHIBITION CHECKLIST TWO VESSELS IN THE TUCSON MUSEUM OF ART Alexander Tokovinine, Ph.D. Two Vessels in the Tucson Museum of Art Alexander Tokovinine, Ph.D. 1971.20 This elegant beaker with slightly everted walls and a nearly lat bottom is decorated with a horizontal band of hieroglyphs and two image cartouches cut through the dark exterior slip (burnish?) into the ine grey paste of the vessel’s body. It appears that it was stuccoed at some point, obscuring the carved and incised designs, but the stucco has been largely removed from the decorated areas. Apart from that, there is no other obvious sign of modern intervention, although the author did not have a chance to examine the vessel in person. The shape, text, and iconography of the beaker resemble the Chochola style of ine serving vessels produced in Eastern Yucatan, particularly in the area of Tiho (Merida), Chochola, Oxkintok, Uxmal, Xkipche, and Xcalumkin in the seventh and eighth centuries of the Late Classic period (Coe 1973; Tate 1985; Werness 2010). Iconographic and chemical analysis, however, indicates that some broadly similar vessels lacking the strongest attributes of the Chochola style came from the lower and middle Usumacinta River region (Reents-Budet and Bishop 2012:292). The unusually Plumbate-like surface inish and paste of the beaker in the TMA collection are shared by only a few Chochola-style vessels (Werness 2010:72, ig. 41). The bottom of the beaker is lat compared to the usually rounded bottom of Chochola-style beakers. The image cartouches of Maya Culture, 600 – 900, Mexico, Yucatan Peninsula, Carved Vessel, clay, Gift of Frederick R. Pleasants. 1971.20 —15— Chochola-style pottery are characterized by low relief and rather aggressive background removal resulting in deeply recessed areas, while the imagery tends to overlow the cartouche boundaries (Houston 2012; Tate 1985:124). The cartouches on this vessel are in low relief but more shallow with very little background removal. The imagery stays within the boundaries of the cartouches. The text is arranged in a horizontal band along the rim and not in a diagonal band on the side of the vessel. That said, Chochola-style pottery exhibits a large variation in forms and surface decorations (Werness 2010), although this vessel clearly does not belong to the same subset of Chochola style as most beakers illustrated by Tate (1985). One of the two cartouches on the vessel shows an upper torso of a deity facing right and gesturing with the left arm in the same direction. The deity may be identiied as the Classic Maya Rain God, Chahk or God B in Schellhas’ classiication (Taube 1992). The visible attributes include reptilian facial features, shell earlares, a shell crown, and a long braid of hair that goes under the crown and extends above the face. There are also T24 “shiner” marks on the torso highlighting the luminous or perhaps snake-like surface quality of Chahk’s skin. The other cartouche features a deity seated cross-legged facing and gesturing to the left. His snake-like facial features, “shiner” body marks, and a prominent torch in the forehead indicate that it is a representation of the Classic Maya lightning deity, K’awiil or Schellhas’ God K (Taube 1992). One unusual feature is the presence of wing feathers on K’awiil’s arms. This attribute may point to K’awiil’s role as a deity who goes to and then rises from the Underworld in order to retrieve the seeds of cultivated plants including maize and cacao. Simon Martin who reconstructed diferent parts of that mythical narrative (Martin 2006, 2012; Miller and Martin 2004:62-63) points to a scene on a now-lost capstone from the Temple of the Owls at Chichen Itza that shows K’awiil rising into the sky from the jaws of the Underworld (Martin 2006:ig. 8.14; Miller and Martin 2004:ig. 27). That K’awiil has serpent-wings under his arms. The pairing of Chahk and feathered K’awiil alludes to the moment when the rain deities split the turtle shell of the Maize God’s earthly prison enabling his resurrection (Taube 1993:66-67; Zender 2005:8-10). References to parts of this mythical narrative, usually as combined images of God L and K’awiil, are found on many Chochola-style vessels (Tate 1985:129-130; Werness 2010:171-183). The dedicatory inscription on the vessel (Figure 1, Table 1) consists of 23 glyphs arranged in ten or eleven glyph blocks in a horizontal band along the rim. The text contains readable sections and most characters are identiiable. However, some spellings are either senseless or contain previously unattested lexical items (see below). A few characters are heavily altered including at least one case of a 180° rotation. The implication is that part of the inscription may be deined as “pseudoglyphs,” although such characterization is inherently problematic (Calvin 2006). The author of this inscription clearly had some knowledge of the conventions of the script, but perhaps struggled to produce clauses beyond the most basic formulaic expressions. It is important that some Chochola sub-styles and similar vessels from the Usumacinta River region may feature pseudoglyphs (Werness 2010:120-121, 212, ig. 98). The possibility of scribal error, however, substantially complicates any identiication of potentially new glosses because any unusual spelling may also be discarded as simply erroneous. —16— Table 1 Inscription on the vessel 1971.20 A u-ja-?yi u-jaay the ine vessel of B a-ku ta-ba a[j]-kutab he of the drum C ? ? ? D XOOK xook Xook E ?CH’OK-ch’o-ko ch’ok youth F ke-le-ma keleem young man G sa-T533 ? ? H NAAH naah[al] house / north / irst I AT-yu ataay count (?) J MAN-le manel buying (?) K ?lu (turned 180°) ? ? Despite spelling irregularities, most characters in the inscription are well-executed. Stylistically, the inscription does not readily align with the core Chochola style set, but resembles some contemporaneous carved texts from the Xcalumkin area. The sa syllable in Block G (with an unusual wavy rather than straight central double line) is remarkably similar to the sa variant on Columns 1 and 2 at Xcalumkin (Graham and Von Euw 1992:173-174) and on an incised vessel (K8017) signed by a Xcalumkin carver (Grube 1990:328, ig. 8). Like most Chochola-style dedicatory texts, the inscription begins with ujaay “his ine clay vessel” (Grube 1990:322-323), although the execution of the yi sign is very unusual. The name and titles of the owner follow, beginning with an enigmatic a[j]-kutab, “he of kutab”, where kutab is probably a noun derived with the –ab nominalizer or the –Vb instrumental suix. Potential cognates in Ch’orti’ suggest that aj-kutab could mean “he of drumming” —17— or “he of the drum”: kut “beating, tapping”; kuti “beat, tap, strike”; kutin “large native drum” (Wisdom n.d.:499); ahkes taka inte’ kutin “make a noise (clamor) with a drum” (Wisdom n.d.:446). The next block probably contains the irst word of the personal name of the owner, but the glyph cannot be read or even identiied as a known character. Block D concludes the personal name clause with a word for “shark” (xook). More titles follow, although instead of the usual chak ch’ok sequence in Block E, one inds the word ch’ok spelled twice: with a half of the Tlaloc-eye CH’OK logogram and the syllabic ch’o-ko. The word keleem spelled (ke-le-ma) concludes this common formula ([chak] ch’ok keleem). The next block contains an enigmatic combination of sa and T533 where one would expect a more straightforward spelling of a title like sajal. After that the text becomes increasingly hard to understand (perhaps, a relection of the limitations of the carver’s literary skills). Block H appears to feature a full version of the NAAH logogram, but the context of the word naah and, consequently, the best translation option are hard to establish because of the problems with reading the words before and after the block. The spellings in blocks I and J may be tentatively read as ataay and manel. It is tempting to link the irst word with a Tzeltalan gloss for “counting numbers” (Kaufman 1972:94) and the second one with a Ch’olan and Tzeltalan word for “buying” (Kaufman 1972:109; Kaufman and Norman 1984:125). Merchant activity-related titles would be highly appropriate given the abundance of reference to the divine patron of commerce, God L (Tokovinine and Beliaev 2013:184-189), on Chochola-style vessels. The problem is that the ataay-manel sequence will be otherwise unique in the Classic Period corpus and that it comes from an inscription with possible pseudoglyphs. The latter issue is highlighted by the last glyph in the inscription that looks like a typical Chochola lu syllable variant turned upside down. Once again, it may be an otherwise unique character, but it is just as likely that the carver ran out of known spellings and simply illed the remaining space with a random selection of signs. In summary, the beaker may be tentatively identiied with the Chochola-style sphere, but not with the core sub-set. Speciic paleographic features point to the Xcalumkin region. The imagery in the cartouches evokes K’awiil’s journey to retrieve the maize and cacao seeds facilitated by Chahk who splits the earth surface allowing the lightning deity to enter and leave the underworld. The dedicatory inscription is relatively well-executed but features many unusual or aberrant/erroneous spelling. Even if the spellings faithfully record previously unattested glosses, such departure from the more typical content of the dedicatory formula implicates a diferent or unusual social context in which this vessel was commissioned and produced. —18— 1980.12 This ine Saxche/Palmar polychrome vessel belongs to a well-known subset of painted Late Classic vessels characterized by idiosyncratic dedicatory texts and frequent depictions of supernatural scenes on a red background. The production of this type of pottery has been attributed to the region around the archaeological site of El Zotz because of the link between the term “pa’ chan ine vessel” found in the dedicatory texts on these pots and the ancient name of the site – Pa’ Chan – which is also occasionally mentioned in the titles of the vessels’ owners (Houston et al. 2007). The chemical analysis of some vessels has also pointed to El Zotz as one of the production locales (Reents-Budet 1994:155). Uaxactun had been identiied as another production center of this pottery (Reents-Budet 1994:125, 135, 155), but it was largely based on an erroneous link between the Pa’ Chan toponym and Uaxactun (Houston et al. 2007:413-414). Uaxactun still boasts the highest quantity of vessel fragments which belong to the stylistic group (Smith 1955:ig. 32b, 37a, 38b, 41a, 72b), but these are still too few to serve as a strong indicator of local production. Archaeological investigations at El Zotz have not yet exposed large deposits of such pottery. Table 2 Inscription on the vessel 1980.12 DEDICATORY TEXT A B C D E F G H I a-AL-ya ?T’AB yi chi u tz’i ba li ?u alay t’ab[aay] y-ich here it ascends (is dedicated) the surface of u-tz’i[h]baal the decoration of u- his/her … CAPTION 1 J1 J2 J3 J4 J5 bo-bo HIX u wa-?yi ? CAPTION 2 bob hix u-wa[h]y ? coyote jaguar [is] the demon of K1 K2 K4 K5 u-?ki-li u wa-WAY ? ukil u-wa[h]y ? [is] the demon of ? ? ? The dedicatory inscription occupies a horizontal band along the vessel’s rim. Most hieroglyphic blocks are occupied by single head variants of glyphs, which is typical for this style. The choice of “bat” tz’i and “skull” ba allographs is another characteristic trait. The inscription ends abruptly with an —19— uninished word as if the artist ran out of space, a feature also present on other vessels in the group (e.g. K5647, K7980). Neither the type of the vessel nor the name of the owner is speciied. The scene on the vessel’s body shows two wahy supernatural creatures: demons of the night or personiied evil spells who could be sent to cause disease and death to one’s enemies (Houston and Stuart 1989; Stuart 2005). The creatures on the TMA vessel are rather unique and are not listed in the comprehensive overview by Grube and Nahm (1994). One of them looks like a jaguar with a jade necklace. Caption 1 identiies it as a bob hix, but the name of the owner cannot be discerned. The gloss bob possibly means “coyote” as bojb “coyote” in Ch’orti’ (Hull 2005:11). Hix is a common term for jaguar and feline creatures in general. So the name of this wahy implies a supernatural hybrid of a coyote and jaguar (hix). The second wahy demon looks like an unknown animal with feline paws wearing a scarf. The gloss ukil in Caption 2, however, eludes secure translation. The toponym of Ukuul “place where uk abounds” in the vicinity of Yaxchilan (Boot 2009:183) suggests that ukil might well be a designation for an animal, but the author has not been able to ind a suitable translation. The owner of this demon also remains undeciphered. Maya Culture, 600 – 900, Guatemala, Vase, Codex Style with Three Gods, clay polychrome, Gift of Robert and Marianne Hyber. 1980.12 —20— REFERENCES Boot, Erik 2009 The Updated Preliminary Classic Maya - English, English - Classic Maya Vocabulary of Hieroglyphic Readings. 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