Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos: Middle Preclassic Lowland Maya Figurines, Ritual, and Time

By Prudence M. Rice

Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos explores the sociocultural significance of more than three hundred Middle Preclassic Maya figurines uncovered at the site of Nixtun-Ch'ich' on Lake Petén Itzá in northern Guatemala. In this careful, holistic, and detailed analysis of the Petén lakes figurines—hand-modeled, terracotta anthropomorphic fragments, animal figures, and musical instruments such as whistles and ocarinas—Prudence M. Rice engages with a broad swath of theory and comparative data on Maya ritual practice.
 
Presenting original data, Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos offers insight into the synchronous appearance of fired-clay figurines with the emergence of societal complexity in and beyond Mesoamerica. Rice situates these Preclassic Maya figurines in the broader context of Mesoamerican human figural representation, identifies possible connections between anthropomorphic figurine heads and the origins of calendrics and other writing in Mesoamerica, and examines the role of anthropomorphic figurines and zoomorphic musical instruments in Preclassic Maya ritual. The volume shows how community rituals involving the figurines helped to mitigate the uncertainties of societal transitions, including the beginnings of settled agricultural life, the emergence of social differentiation and inequalities, and the centralization of political power and decision-making in the Petén lowlands.
 
Literature on Maya ritual, cosmology, and specialized artifacts has traditionally focused on the Classic period, with little research centering on the very beginnings of Maya sociopolitical organization and ideological beliefs in the Middle Preclassic. Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos is a welcome contribution to the understanding of the earliest Maya and will be significant to Mayanists and Mesoamericanists as well as nonspecialists with interest in these early figurines

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Release date: Apr 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781607328896

Book preview

Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos

Middle Preclassic Lowland Maya Figurines, Ritual, and Time

Prudence M. Rice

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO

Louisville

© 2019 by University Press of Colorado

Published by University Press of Colorado

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Louisville, Colorado 80027

All rights reserved

The University Press of Colorado is a proud member of the Association of University Presses.

The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, Utah State University, and Western State Colorado University.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-888-9 (cloth)

ISBN: 978-1-60732-889-6 (ebook)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5876/9781607328896

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Rice, Prudence M., author.

Title: Anthropomorphizing the cosmos : Middle Preclassic lowland Maya figurines, ritual, and time / Prudence M. Rice.

Description: Louisville : University Press of Colorado, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019000654 | ISBN 9781607328889 (cloth) | ISBN 9781607328896 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Maya sculpture

—Guatemala—Petén (Department) | Mayas—Guatemala—Petén (Department)—Antiquities. | Excavations (Archaeology)—Guatemala—Petén (Department) | Figurines—Guatemala—Petén (Department) | Rites and ceremonies—Guatemala—Petén (Department)—History—To 1500. | Nixtun-Ch’ich’ Site (Guatemala) | Petén (Guatemala : Department)—Antiquities.

Classification: LCC F1435.3.S34 R54 2018 | DDC 972.81/2—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019000654

Cover illustration by Don Rice

To Don,

for making everything better

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part I. Introduction: Background, Contexts, and Theories

1. Why Figurines?

Early Figurines Cross-Culturally

Interpreting Figurines

2. Ritual, Cooperation, Costly Signaling, and Storytelling

Selectionist Perspectives on Ritual: Cooperation and Costly Signaling

Storytelling

Past Is Prologue: A Just-So Story

Part II. Formative Mesoamerican and Maya Human Figures and Figurines

3. Overview: The Human Figure in Formative Mesoamerica

Figurines

The Olmecs

Mutilation

4. The Preclassic Maya Lowlands and Central Petén

Ixlú and Nixtun-Ch’ich’

Figurines and Ritual; Calendars and Cooperation

5. Central Petén Preclassic Anthropomorphic Figurines: The Body

Visual Characterization of Clay Pastes

Manufacturing Procedures

Sex and Gender

6. The Human Head and Face in Formative Mesoamerica: Biological Considerations

The Human Head

Cranial Modification

The Human Face

7. Central Petén Preclassic Anthropomorphic Figurines: Heads and Faces

Head Shapes: Dimensions and Proportions

Facial Features

Concluding Thoughts

8. Formative Mesoamerican Heads: Headgear, Headdresses, and Hairstyles

Olmec Colossal Heads and Other Sculpture

Headbands, Year Signs, and Emblem Glyphs

Central Petén Figurine Hairstyles and Headgear

Part III. Time, Formative Heads, and Maya Writing

9. Temporality, the Sacred Almanac, and Writing

Temporality: The Many Flows of Time

The 260-Day Sacred Divinatory Almanac

Counting and Writing

The Maya Long Count

Conclusions

10. Maya Head-Variant Graphemes

Head-Variant Glyphs: Varied Perspectives

Classic Head-Variant Numbers 0 through 13

A Final Comment

11. Summary and Overview: Preclassic Figurine Heads and Classic Maya Portrait Glyphs

Head Shapes and Glyph Cartouches

Early Mythology: Perspectives from the Popol Vuh

Summary

Part IV. Additional Perspectives for Interpreting Early Maya Figurines

12. Sound: Musical Instruments and Zoomorphs

Musical Instruments

Discussion

13. Geochemistry: Compositional Analysis of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ and Ixlú Figurines

Methods

Results

Interpretation: Fragmentation, Circulation, and Enchainment?

14. Figurines’ Meanings and Contexts

Kinds of Meanings

Some Newer Approaches to Objects’ Meanings

Contexts, Again

Early Ritual Areas and E-Groups

Part V. Conclusions

15. Anthropomorphizing the Cosmos

Legitimation: Cosmological Others

So, Why Figurines? And Who Were They?

Embodiment, Fragmentation, Partibility, Enchainment, Miniaturization

Contexts, Meanings, and Uses

Time, Calendrical Ritual, Political Power, and Figurines

Concluding Thoughts

Appendix: Concordance of Figurine Numbers, Illustrations, and Provenience Information

References

Index

Figures

1.1. The Mesoamerican culture area

3.1. The Gulf coast lowlands (Olman)

3.2. Olmec colossal heads

3.3. Las Limas Monument 1 (Señor de Las Limas)

4.1. The southern Maya lowlands

4.2. The site of Ixlú

4.3. The site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’

5.1. Figurine torsos

5.2. Figurine torsos

5.3. Figurine legs and lower torsos

5.4. Figurine arms, hands, and feet

5.5. Seated and standing figurines

6.1. Human crania, unmodified and modified

6.2. Heads of Olmec and other figures, showing modifications

6.3. Profiled human face showing bimaxillary protrusion

7.1. Details of forming figurine heads

7.2. Facial features, hair/headgear, and profiles of figurine heads

7.3. Facial features, hair/headgear, and profiles of figurine heads

7.4. Other lowland Maya figurine heads

7.5. Facial features, hair/headgear, and profiles of figurine heads

7.6. Profile heads of God N, showing aged male facial characteristics

8.1. Middle Formative headdresses and headbands

8.2. The Tikal Emblem Glyph

8.3. The Maya Jester God

9.1. Hypothetical Olmec day signs and cylinder seal

9.2. Signs in possible early Olmec-related scripts

9.3. Putative Mesoamerican abacus-like counting devices

10.1. Head-variant glyphs for the personified numbers 0 through 13

10.2. The Terminal Preclassic incised jade ear ornament from Pomona, southern Belize

12.1. Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic whistles/ocarinas and adornos

12.2. Anthropomorphic and zoomorphic whistles/ocarinas and adornos

13.1. Scatterplot showing geochemical groupings of ninety-three figurine samples

13.2. Dendrogram showing stepwise clustering of ninety-three figurine samples

Tables

2.1. General chronology of the southern Maya lowlands and Petén lakes

3.1. Comparison of characteristics of four masked heads incised on the Señor de Las Limas sculpture (figure 3.3)

5.1. Counts of anthropomorphic figurines and fragments by paste color at Nixtun-Ch’ich’ and Ixlú

5.2. Counts of hollow anthropomorphic figurine body parts by paste color at Nixtun-Ch’ich’ and Ixlú

5.3. Measurements (in mm) of Preclassic figurine torsos from Nixtun-Ch’ich’ and Ixlú

5.4. Measurements (in mm) of Preclassic figurine torsos from Nixtun-Ch’ich’ and Ixlú by paste color

5.5. Measurements (in mm) of probable female and male Middle Preclassic figurine torsos from Nixtun-Ch’ich’ and Ixlú

6.1. Types of infant head modification

7.1. Dimensions (in mm) of figurine heads (including headgear) from Nixtun-Ch’ich’ and Ixlú by paste color

7.2. Dimensions (in mm) of figurine faces from Nixtun-Ch’ich’ and Ixlú by paste color

7.3. Comparison of dimensions (in mm) of Preclassic figurine heads from Nixtun-Ch’ich’, Cahal Pech, San Lorenzo, and Cantón Corralito

7.4. Characteristics of the heads of central Petén figurines by paste color

7.5. Figurine heads (by ID #s) having characteristics of age seen in Classic iconography

9.1. Day names and senses (meanings) in five Mesoamerican calendars

10.1. Interpretations of head components of Glyph C of the Lunar Series

10.2. Maya numbers, associated days and months, and Lunar Glyph C

10.3. Shared patronage domains of Maya numbers

10.4. Time-related signs in head-variant number glyphs

10.5. Palenque Triad founders and Maya number patrons

10.6. Characteristics of the head glyphs of numbers and day names in the Maya almanac

12.1. Musical instruments, zoomorphic figurines, and adornos by paste/slip color

13.1. Clay paste colors of identifiable figurine fragments sampled for INAA and in total population

13.2. Identifiable figurine body parts sampled for INAA and in total population

13.3. Site locations of identifiable figurine fragments sampled for INAA and in total population

14.1. Recovery locations of ninety-two figurines by INAA geochemical group

14.2. All figurines (including semi-whole, miniature, body parts), cylinders, and musical instruments by recovery location (Nixtun-Ch’ich’ sectors plus Ixlú) and paste/surface color (white/cream and other)

14.3. Counts and percentages of paste/surface-color categories of identifiable anthropomorphic figurine body part fragments by context at Nixtun-Ch’ich’ (N-C) and Ixlú

14.4. Counts (percentages) of figurine body part fragments in different areas of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ and at Ixlú (excluding four semi-whole figurines and two miniatures)

14.5. Identified and tentatively identified sides of identifiable figurine body part fragments at Nixtun-Ch’ich’ and Ixlú

14.6. Sides of identifiable figurine body part fragments by location at Nixtun-Ch’ich’

Preface

I still remember the first time I came across a Middle Preclassic (ca. 800–400 BC) lowland Maya anthropomorphic fired-clay figurine. It was a fragment, a flat torso—head, legs, and arms missing—from Ixlú. It was so oddly shaped, compared to the rest of the potsherds in the bag, that I first thought it was some kind of handle for a dish. It certainly didn’t seem like an intriguing class of artifact I would one day study and write about at length.

For decades, our work in the lakes area of central Petén, northern Guatemala, was focused on the Postclassic and Contact periods (ca. AD 1000–1700), largely because the lakes region was a focus of poorly understood Postclassic settlement. Our excavations primarily involved clearing the upper levels of humus and constructional collapse around structures to expose their latest occupational surfaces, along with conducting test soundings to assess chronological histories. Some of those test units, taken to bedrock, penetrated Middle Preclassic platform construction and refuse. Thus it became apparent that the islands, peninsulas, and shorelines of the lakes were as attractive to early settlers in the Middle Preclassic as they were to Terminal Classic and Postclassic residents 1,500–2,000 years later.

Not until our field research moved westward to the large site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’ on the western shore of Lake Petén Itzá did we begin to encounter sufficient numbers of Preclassic anthropomorphic figurines to warrant a separate study. Preclassic terracotta figurines, I started to realize, have an inconsistent pattern of occurrence in Petén and the southern Maya lowlands (Rice 2015b) and seem to be largely absent in the northern lowlands. They have an even more inconsistent pattern of reportage—which is to say, they’ve been largely ignored. It is not clear how much of this inattention is a result of the difficulties of finding and exposing large areas of Middle Preclassic and earlier occupation under massive Late Preclassic– and Classic-period constructions or of the relatively uncommon and fragmentary state of these artifacts or both. Nevertheless, early published reports from large excavation projects at Uaxactun, Tikal, Seibal, Altar de Sacrificios, and nearby Barton Ramie devoted few if any pages to figurines. (This is my excuse for failing to immediately recognize that Ixlú torso. It’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

Since the mid-1990s, however, study of Preclassic or Formative terracotta figurines has burgeoned. This is particularly true in western Mesoamerica and the Gulf coast lowlands of Mexico but somewhat less so in the Pacific coast region and still less in the Maya lowlands to the east. The present study is not so much concerned with the underlying reasons for this expansion—such as a synergy of post-processual and later theoretical orientations, including gender studies, agency, embodiment, and materiality/material culture studies/material engagement theory. Rather, I am more preoccupied with the broader social and temporal contexts of the figurines themselves.

Excavations at Nixtun-Ch’ich’ thus far have yielded 312 identifiable fragments of Preclassic hand-modeled, fired-clay anthropomorphic figurines, animal figures, and musical instruments (whistles, ocarinas), plus 65 other unidentifiable pieces. These objects first emerged in appreciable quantities in our 2007 excavations at Mound ZZ1 on the tip of the Candelaria Peninsula extending eastward into Lake Petén Itzá. Upon learning that this platform was going to become the foundation for a new hotel, we excavated a salvage trench that yielded abundant figurine fragments (Rice 2009). Since our work, the upper tier of Mound ZZ1, once the site of an early eighteenth-century mission church, has been completely bulldozed, although the hotel was never built.

Timothy Pugh’s recent project at Nixtun-Ch’ich’, originally focused on the Postclassic period, also recovered quantities of Preclassic and Classic figurines, plus recognition that the site exhibited significant urban planning with a unique grid initiated in the Middle Preclassic period, 800–400 BC (Pugh and Rice 2017). Excavations probing the early history of this grid—especially the depression on the central axis known as Fosa Y (Rice and Pugh 2017; Rice, Pugh, and Chan Nieto n.d.)—provided the impetus for a more thorough exploration of early central Petén figurines: the widespread (albeit not plenteous) occurrence of these objects at this unusual site demanded attention to the who, what, when, why, where, and how of their manufacture and use. Above all, the concern here is with the Preclassic anthropomorphic figurines’ heads and faces.

The research question guiding this work is, What can we learn about the Middle Preclassic lowland Maya from handmade, fired-clay figurines? Most broadly, the question that begins and ends this book is, Why figurines? Cross-culturally, anthropomorphic terracotta figurines can be found in abundance accompanying the cultural changes associated with the emergence of societal complexity, or what could be called neolithization. These developments, whether in the Neolithic Near East, Jomon Japan, or Formative/Preclassic Mesoamerica, involved the beginnings of food production and sedentarization concurrent with social relational shifts culminating in the birth of complex societies. Why figurine manufacture accompanied these profound transformations is a compelling question suggesting broad global processes but also involving particularistic local issues of ontology, cosmogony, materiality, sociopolitical relations, biology, and creative expression/visual rhetoric. Numerous shared circumstances can be identified, but it would be foolhardy to think there could be a single, universal answer or cause. Here, early Maya figurines from central Petén are examined as a case study: figurines, like animals, are good to think (borrowing from Lévi-Strauss).

The chapters in this volume are organized into five parts. Part I chapter 1 presents an overview of ancient anthropomorphic figurines of fired clay, noting their cross-cultural co-occurrence with the emergence of societal complexity. The chapter also reviews some theoretical concepts underlying the archaeological study and interpretation of these models of the human body. Chapter 2 provides a different theoretical background to village figurine use through the perspective of ritual and selectionist theory—specifically, the costly signaling of aggrandizers among hunter-gatherers. Concepts are illustrated by a fictional just-so story highlighting the role of calendars and cooperation as they relate to emerging cultural complexity.

The six chapters in part II situate Preclassic Maya figurines in the broader context of Mesoamerican human figural representation. Chapter 3 begins with an overview of the well-known Gulf lowland Olmec colossal heads, figurines, and masks and the question of mutilation of these objects. Chapter 4 establishes the setting of the figurines analyzed here: the central Petén sites from which they were recovered and the Mayas’ ideas about the powerful and mysterious cosmic forces that regulated daily life, such as those of maize, rain, and the sun. The focus of chapter 5 is the figurines’ bodies, including their manufacture and problems of identification of sex/gender. Chapters 6 through 8 address the head. Chapter 6 explores some of the biological considerations of the human head and face, particularly the practice of cranial modification. In chapter 7 these considerations are related to Maya figurines, with specific attention to facial features. Chapter 8 looks at headgear, headdresses, and hairstyles, highlighting the importance of the Maya paper headband and the Jester God.

Part III comprises three chapters that explore relations between anthropomorphic figurine heads and the origins of writing in Mesoamerica. Chapter 9 discusses the beginnings of Mesoamerican calendrics, particularly the 260-day divinatory almanac, and the early importance of literacy and numeracy. In chapters 10 and 11, the features of Maya figurine heads are compared to the head-variant graphemes in use in Classic script, which are especially common among the myriad signs relating to time and its passage, including numbers, days, months, and calendrical periods.

Part IV's three chapters explore the role of Preclassic anthropomorphic figurines and zoomorphic musical instruments in lowland Maya ritual, in which they seem to have had a prominent public mandate in addition to possible household use in divination. Chapter 12 reviews the fired-clay musical instruments (whistles and ocarinas) from Nixtun-Ch’ich’ and Ixlú, which were made in the form of anthropomorphic or zoomorphic figurines. Chapter 13 presents the findings of a chemical compositional analysis of a sample of the figurines, which sheds light on production, exchange, and practices surrounding their roles in central Petén. Chapter 14 explores different theoretical and methodological approaches to ascertaining the meanings of objects, combining these approaches with a review of various recovery contexts to consider the roles of early figurines in the communities that made and used them.

The concluding part V and chapter 15 weave together these many themes and theories, returning to the role of figurines during times of major social transformations and addressing the need for societal order and legitimacy. Community rituals involving these artifacts operated in many ways to mitigate the uncertainties of these transitions.

Acknowledgments

Excavations at Ixlú and Nixtun-Ch’ich’ in 1995–96 were funded by the National Science Foundation; later work at Nixtun-Ch’ich’ in 2006–7 was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Heinz Foundation. The most recent projects at Nixtun-Ch’ich’ were undertaken with support to Tim Pugh from the Wenner-Gren Foundation (Grant #9284), the National Science Foundation (NSF Grant #BCS 1219646), and the City University of New York. I am grateful to Roberto Vergara and family, owners of the land on which Nixtun-Ch’ich’ sits, for permission to excavate on their cattle ranch and interest in protecting this extraordinary site.

All projects were carried out with the cooperation of the Instituto de Antropología e Historia (IDAEH) of Guatemala, and I gratefully acknowledge their support. Special thanks go to American and Guatemalan project members, especially Miriam Salas and Evelyn Chan. In particular, I acknowledge IDAEH and Evelyn for their role in facilitating the export of drilled powder samples for INAA under Tim’s permit and Leslie Cecil for her collaboration in carrying out the analyses reported in chapter 11.

This book’s focus on the human head and anatomical characteristics has benefited immensely from wide-ranging discussions with Bill Duncan. My interest in figurines has been greatly furthered by productive interactions with Christina Halperin. Katie South and Nate Meissner have rethought the complex early chronology of the Mound ZZ1 salvage trench. Numerous colleagues kindly read and commented on various iterations of these chapters, patiently answered questions, or supplied me with data; I thank Will and Tony Andrews, Leslie Cecil, David Freidel, Norman Hammond, Andy Hofling, Laura Kosakowsky, and Joyce Marcus. Lurking errors of fact and interpretation, however, are solely my responsibility.

As always, I am deeply grateful to Don Rice, and I dedicate this book to him. Skilled in computer illustration, he cheerfully takes the published illustrations I need as well as my original drawings, redraws the former and cleans up the latter, and compiles them into final publication-ready figures. We’ve known each other for eons (since eighth grade!), and together we’ve managed to survive grad school, jobs (including thirteen years in separate states), fieldwork, administration, retirement—and each other—aided by our bevy of cats.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Henry David Thoreau (Walden, 1854)

Part I

Introduction

Background, Contexts, and Theories

Motion was an inherent quality of life, and energy and spirit continually moved through the twin fields of time and space.

Ringle 1999: 188

What can we learn about the early lowland Mayas from ceramic figurines? The answer proposed here is that these objects played a role in time- and calendar-related public rituals. This proposition was developed through analysis of a corpus of 377 low-fired (well below 1000˚C) clay figurines and fragments recovered from two archaeological sites in northern Guatemala. The analyzed artifacts include 255 largely fragmentary, handmade, anthropomorphic (modeled on the human body) figurines, thought to represent important beings such as ancestors and supernaturals, plus 132 zoomorphs, musical instruments, and other pieces. They date primarily to the Middle Preclassic period, ca. 800–400 BC, although a few were made earlier.

Part I establishes the spatio-temporal occurrences and theoretical/interpretive contexts of these small objects. Chapter 1 opens with a query, Why figurines? Cross-culturally, the widespread early manufacture of fired-clay anthropomorphic figurines, particularly females, accompanies the transition to sedentary village life and the protracted, stressful circumstances of emerging societal complexity. Discussion moves to concepts aiding the interpretation of figural representations, commonly recovered as discarded fragments. Chapter 2 backgrounds the interpretation of these artifacts in Preclassic/Formative Mesoamerica through two foci: the role of ritual, highlighting aspects of selectionist theory such as costly signaling and cooperation; and grounding in earlier pre-village, hunter-gatherer adaptations and observations of the natural world as they pertain to calendar development.

Chapter 1

Why Figurines?

Worldwide, the human body has provided a model for conceptualizing and categorizing the organization of natural, social, and cosmic spaces (e.g., Csordas 1990, 1994b; López Austin 1988; Mauss 1973; Robb and Harris 2013). A key symbol (see Ortner 1973: 1339–40) in art and religion, the human body synthesizes several dialectical relations: it is both model of and a model for reality (Geertz 1973: 91–94), and it is both physical and social—the physical body is a microcosm of society—with these dual meanings continually exchanged (Douglas 1973: 93, 101; see Sandstrom 2009: 263–64). Depicted in varied media—clay, paint, wood, stone; from miniatures to monoliths; from two-dimensional stick-figures to low-relief and in-the-round sculptures—the human figure and particularly the human head and face have dominated the visual arts for millennia.

Early Figurines Cross-Culturally

Anthropomorphic figurines were produced in many times and places throughout the premodern world. Of interest here is the co-occurrence, in both Eurasia and Mesoamerica, of figurines with times of dramatic cultural changes. One such period falls at the end of the Pleistocene (in Eurasia); the other, later and more widespread, comes at the time/stage of early-middle Holocene neolithic transformations associated with emerging cultural complexity.

As far as is currently known, human figures modeled of clay began to be made in Eurasia during the Late Upper Paleolithic era as components of a broader realm of conceptual, figurative, and representational artistic expression in varied media (see, e.g., Borić et al. 2013; Budja 2010: 507–10; Kashina 2010; Soffer, Adovasio, and Hyland 2000; Vandiver et al. 1989; White 2008). Often dubbed Venus or fertility goddess figures and recovered from central Europe to Siberia, these objects typically depict voluptuous females with pendulous breasts, broad hips, generously rounded abdomens, and large buttocks and thighs. These Rubenesque characteristics, viewed through the male gaze as accentuating female fecundity, led to early interpretations of the figurines as fertility fetishes. They were carved of stone and ivory as well as shaped in clay and sometimes coated with red ochre. Their appearance coincides with a semiotic transformation manifest in the emergence of new signs, symbolic activities, means of communication, and self-referential art (Wildgen 2004: 113–14; see also Overmann 2013). Representations of females may constitute a new level of collective perception . . . linked to norms valid for sexual selection, but they may also reflect new social and economic roles for males and females associated with settlement and subsistence shifts accompanying climate changes at the end of the last glaciation (Wildgen 2004: 115, 120).

Several thousand years later, fired-clay anthropomorphic figures were widespread during major Braudelian (Braudel 1972) long-term conjonctures and longue durée: the radical transformations in lifeways associated with the early Old World Neolithic. These developments include the beginnings of food production and animal husbandry, year-round sedentary village settlements, construction of permanent domestic and public architecture, material culture elaboration, new gender roles, and the interpenetrating processes of social and economic differentiation (ranking), centralization of political power in permanent leadership positions, and loss of village autonomy. Dependent on agriculture (itself partially a response to early Holocene climate change), these emergent properties led to new rules of social behavior, the appearance of new rituals, ceremonies, and beliefs, the co-ordination of labor to schedule tasks and promote exchange, the alteration of the natural and cultural landscape, the beginnings of new statuses and social relationships, and expansion into new regions . . . [and] the formation of ‘interaction spheres’ in which the identities of villagers were significantly altered, and new social and political relationships emerged (Yoffee 2005: 204). Figurines are found virtually worldwide in association with these developments in village societies and preceding the rise of cities and civilizations—for example, in the Near East (e.g., Kuijt and Chesson 2005; Rollefson 2008), the Indus valley (Clark 2003, 2009), southern Europe (e.g., Biehl 1996; Chapman 2000: 68–79; Gimbutas 1974), and Jomon Japan (Chapman 2000: 25–26; Habu 2004: 142–52, 250–52). And also in Formative (or Preclassic) period Mesoamerica (figure 1.1).¹

Figure 1.1. The Mesoamerican culture area, showing modern political borders and sites mentioned in the text.

In many parts of the world, the ubiquitous Neolithic-stage terracotta figurines, like those of the Upper Paleolithic, extend the general elaboration of the human body and secondary sexual characteristics, especially of females. Hands, arms, and feet are minimized and the head, if present, is often only a small projection between the shoulders, with little or no delineation of facial or other features. This is not to say that the human head was of no interest; instead, it may have been given separate and very different treatment. In the Neolithic southern Levant (Near East), for example, skulls were removed sometime after primary burial, and at Jericho adult skulls that had undergone cranial modification in childhood were covered with plaster and buried as objects of memory (Fletcher, Pearson, and Ambers 2008; Kuijt 2008; Kuijt and Chesson 2005: 175).² Some figurines may have been portrayals of specific individuals (see Bailey 1994; Biehl 1996), perhaps leaders, ancestors, shamans, or other ritual specialists, any of whom could have been of either sex. In all such early settings, these objects are thought to have played active roles in the constitution of social life, engaging in rituals and performances—the details of which are now lost—that furthered the creation of social identities, links with the past, and meaning-making in domestic and public spheres (e.g., Biehl 1996, 2011).

The many variations on this generalized pattern should not be ignored. In the early Bronze Age Balkans of southeastern Europe, figurines appear with the first settled, pottery-making farmers and they disappear abruptly with the abandonment of the Neolithic way of life (Bailey 2005: 3). In South Asia, the earliest Neolithic (7000–5500 BC) occupation at the site of Mehrgarh (Pakistan) is characterized by farming villages in which female figurines were made even before the appearance of pottery containers, although these objects, including males, continued to be made throughout the Indus, or Harappan, civilization (Clark 2009). Jomon Japan provides another variant on the theme, with widespread and apparently primarily female clay figurines (dogū) of the Middle through Final Jomon periods (ca. 3000 BC–AD 0) accompanying developing social complexity and sedentism largely based on collecting storable plant foods (Habu 2004: 77–78, 142–49, 252–60). In western Mesoamerica, these artifacts are found in a culturally analogous stage or period known as the Formative (ca. 2500 BC–AD 100/200).

Why figurines, especially female, in these spatially and culturally differentiated but broadly shared Neolithic circumstances? An early interpretation, originally proposed by Sir Flinders Petrie and promoted by Marija Gimbutas (1974) but now discredited (Conkey and Tringham 1995; Marcus 2018: 6; Ucko 1962; see also Ştefan 2005–6), focused on the transformations characterized by a shift in sociopolitical roles from females to males in non-sedentary or sedentarizing societies. This involved the decline of earlier matriarchy and a mythical female goddess—connected with natural forces, earth, and fertility; a Great Mother or Mother Goddess—and the rise of patriarchy. The shift accompanied a rejection of female leadership and property ownership (for example), replaced by an emphasis on males in these positions of authority.

These transformations underlie a provocative thesis proffered by Leonard Shlain (1998) but explained through different mechanisms. Shlain proposes that the submergence of a feminine principle by the masculine occurred at the threshold between orality and literacy, coinciding with early stages in the development of alphabetic writing and literacy as mechanisms for exercising power. These latter placed an advantage on linear, left-brain thinking, leaving visual, artistic, and iconic imagery demoted. What resulted was, in essence, a conflict over the alphabet versus the goddess (Shlain 1998).³ Changes in communication modes and media appear to be key, as in the semiotic transformations in the Late Paleolithic. Figurines (especially females) gained prominence in material culture assemblages—and visual discourse—dating to these major sociopolitico-economic metamorphoses. Writing systems also often originated in such eras (Houston 2004: 239). Is this coincidental, or might there be similar causal factors underlying both?

Joyce Marcus’s studies of early anthropomorphic figurines, especially in Oaxaca (highland Mexico), have identified cross-culturally valid empirical and gender-based propositions concerning their occurrence. For example, figurines are particularly associated with village societies and ancestor-based descent groups (Marcus 2018: 4). Ancestors could intercede with the spirit world on behalf of their descendants by being coaxed, with offerings and favors, to occupy a physical venue, such as a figurine (Marcus 2018: 4–5). Women generally carried out rituals honoring recent ancestors in domestic contexts, whereas men’s rituals focused on more remote lineage founders and were held in special structures (Marcus 2018: 5). Hand-modeled female figurines were most common in village societies, whereas mold-made and male figurines tended to be associated with cities and state-level societies (Marcus 2018: 7, 9). The end of handmade (primarily female) figurine manufacture can be associated with changes in ancestor status, as ancestors turned into the founders of royal dynasties (Marcus 1998: 21). At the same time, female figurines’ end may be related to the rise of a dominant organized religion (Proskouriakoff 2001: 342).

A study of the impact of modernization on an early to mid-twentieth-century Tzeltzal Maya community in highland Mexico (Nash 1967) provides insights into the social tensions resulting from pervasive cultural changes in village societies and their effects on the sexes. This small, relatively isolated village experienced increasing contacts with national and regional Ladino authorities, who imposed new regulations on indigenous leadership structures. Faith in traditional curers and the guardian ancestors they represented was eroded, and political conflict erupted between the curers and external civil authorities. Simultaneously, new economic activities (cattle raising and trucking) led to new sources of wealth and its distribution and to economic conflict. These structural and organizational changes in the social environment contributed to a dramatic rise in homicides, typically fueled by alcohol and exacerbated by suspicions of witchcraft (in half the cases). Men, who regularly carried arms, machetes, and knives as part of their daily agricultural activities, killed other men; women did not kill and were not killed but goaded their spouses, sons, or other relatives to action.

Anthropomorphic figurines were not directly involved in this twentieth-century Tzeltal case. But returning to the question of why figurines in antiquity, it can be posited that these objects may have helped negotiate and communicate new expectations for ancestral authority and new