#mixteca-puebla

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Human Skull With Mosaic Designs.

Culture: Mixteca-Puebla

Period: Late Postclassic

Date: A.D. 1300-1520

Medium: Bone, stone and shell

[artifacts-archive]

Labret

Mixteca-Puebla, Postclassic, ca. 1500 CE

Labrets or lip plugs (bezotes in Spanish) were decorations worn through a hole pierced in the lower lip. They have an uneven distribution in the ancient Americas and appear sporadically in such places as coastal Alaska, the Northwest Coast, and at various other points along the Pacific Coast. They also appeared in Central Mexico, where they became one of the defining culture traits of Mesoamerica.

[tlatollotl]

Vessel with Painted Motifs

ARTIST CULTURE Mixteca-Puebla

PERIOD Late Postclassic period, c.1200–1521

DATE c.1200–1521

FROM Puebla state, México

Provenience unknown, possibly looted

SLAM

[artifacts-archive]

Human Skull With Mosaic Designs

Mixteca-Puebla, Late Postclassic, 1300-1520 CE

This skull apparently belonged to a middle-aged adult, possibly a woman, between 30 and 40 years old at the time of death. The skull is broad and seems to have been subjected to intentional reshaping, but irregular flattening is perceptible only on the occipital bone. Reshaping caused the formation of a noticeable bun at the bregma. The lack of visible cut marks implies that no defleshing preceded its decoration. Diego de Landa provides a tantalizing account that may hint at the origin and function of some decorated skulls in Mesoamerica: In antiquity, they cut the heads of the Cocom lords when they died, and once boiled, they defleshed them, sawing half of the skull at the top and leaving intact the face with the mandible and teeth. To these half “skulls” they supplied what was missing in flesh with a certain resin, and they sculpted it very faithfully as the original face, and they kept (the decorated skulls) with the wooden statues (containing the cremated remains of ancestors), all of which they displayed in the domestic altars, together with their idols, in great reverence and subservience; and on every festive occasion they offer them food so that they will not be in need of anything.

[artifacts-archive]

Seated Figure (Penate) Mixteca-Puebla, Late Postclassic, 1300-1520 CE

Penates are frequently sculpted as seated with crossed arms, seeming to mimic the way dead individuals were arranged before being wrapped as mortuary bundles, publicly displayed during funerals, and eventually placed in tombs or caves. Hence they may be miniature representations of ancestors. Records of inquisitorial idolatry trials conducted by Spanish missionaries against native peoples substantiate that small stone figures, referred to as “idols,” formed an integral component of domestic and public rituals aimed at invoking dead ancestors in the face of life crises.

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Representation of a Skull.

Culture: Mixtec-Puebla

Region Central plateau (?), Mexico

Period : Late Postclassic

Date: A.D. 1200-1521

Medium: Carved obsidian, inlaid with shell and bone

[artifacts-archive]

Human Skull With Mosaic Designs

Mixteca-Puebla, Late Postclassic, 1300-1520 CE

[artifacts-archive]

Human Skull With Mosaic Designs

Mixteca-Puebla, Late Postclassic, 1300-1520 CE

This skull appears to have been from a young adult, possibly female, probably between 24 and 28 years old at the time of death. The scalloped and pointed shape of the tooth, attained by the process of filing the edges of the crown, has been widely documented in other Mesoamerican burials that span from ca. 300 BCE to the early colonial period. In the center of its labial surface, the tooth had a now-missing inlay, but the perforation (about 3 mm in diameter) has traces of a residue, perhaps remnants of adhesive. Dental embellishment frequently involved other teeth, but this pattern of modification has not been documented for PC.B.097, and the decorated tooth’s size suggests that it does not belong to this skull.