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SERPENTS, SKELETONS, AND ANCESTORS?: THE TULA COATEPANTLI REVISITED

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2014

Keith Jordan
Keith Jordan*
Affiliation:
Department of Art and Design, California State University, Fresno, 5225 North Backer Avenue M/S CA65, Fresno, California 93740-8001
*
E-mail correspondence to: [email protected]
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Abstract

Since Acosta's work in the 1940s, relief carvings of serpents entwined with partially skeletonized personages on the coatepantli at Tula have frequently been identified as images of the Nahua Venus deity, Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli. Comparing these Toltec sculptures with this deity's iconography in Late Postclassic to Colonial period manuscripts, however, provides no support for this identification. Based on the northern Mesoamerican cultural connections of the Toltecs, the author suggests parallels between the coatepantli reliefs and the public display of ancestral and sacrificial human remains at Chalchihuites sites. Identification of the coatepantli figures as venerated ancestors from an ancestral cult is also supported by iconographic and archaeological evidence from Tula. Parallels to the coatepantli images in depictions of both living elites and ancestors juxtaposed with serpents from other Mesoamerican art traditions bolster this interpretation. On the basis of the evidence, the author hypothesizes that the skeletonized figures at Tula symbolize deceased kings and honored warriors rather than conquered foes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , Fall 2013 , pp. 243 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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