In the history of pottery decoration, stuccoed and painted vessels are a rarity. They were among the most prestigious objects of the ancient American city of Teotihuacan in Mexico and add one more question to the mysteries of that great site, which include, but are not limited to, social and political organization, religion, social mobility, craft organization, worldview, gender ideas, art, and language.
Cynthia Conides's new book, Made to Order: Painted Ceramics of Ancient Teotihuacan, seeks to approach these big questions through the detailed study of stuccoed vessels. These objects are well known, but until now, no major analysis has been devoted to them. Conides starts out with the common assumption that the stuccoed vessels are derived from or perhaps painted by the same persons who were responsible for the well-known murals. Obviously, murals and vessels have a similar stucco coating, and both are painted with mythological images. Conides, however, demonstrates the many differences between them, such as black versus red outlines, arguing that the stuccoed vessels are related more closely to other pottery forms, such as plano relief, and derive exclusively from ceramic workshops. Such concrete beginnings are very useful.
On the basis of recent iconographic analysis by various scholars, she enters more interpretive territory; she notes that many of the painted scenes on stuccoed vessels represent birds or butterflies or both, subject matter not particularly common in murals. She suggests that this butterfly interest was specific to the users of these vessels, who were likely members of a lower-echelon elite than the ones associated with murals. Most stuccoed vessels are found in tombs in apartment compounds and are common in the later phases of the city (especially late Xolalpan). One of the most useful parts of the book is the individual description of most currently known vessels. She sets up a contrast with the mural paintings and argues that the stuccoed vessels represent a more popular cult practice.
Moving into more imaginative reconstruction, she suggests that most Teotihuacan imagery had to do with internal ranking and status in the city, based especially on headdress forms. Finally, she also opines that Teotihuacan public religion revolved around deities who conferred benefits, such as fertility, on humans who received them with sacrifices in return. In a general sense, this is the basic Mesoamerican paradigm. Whether one agrees with these ideas, all these suggestions are valuable, because they emerge from the detailed study of specific objects and are the conclusions of a scholar who has long pondered them. They offer something to build on.
Despite the fact that Teotihuacan is the largest ancient American city, with pyramids rivaling those of Egypt, and despite its being extensively excavated, in many ways it has resisted easy explanation. Partly this is because it lacks monumental sculpture glorifying gods or the humans likely to have been rulers, as found often in contemporary Maya, Monte Alban, later Aztec, and earlier Olmec representations. Those forms of sculpture provide us with a Mesoamerican narrative of human and divine power, which is unclear at Teotihuacan.
The most distinctive art of Teotihuacan is painting, both on murals and stuccoed vessels, which are perhaps conceived of as miniature murals, thereby indicating the very importance of the painted form. Stuccoed vessels are fragile—once I saw the entire stucco portion fall off a vessel fragment as it was being readied for photography. To be sure, all sculpture in Mesoamerica was probably painted like a mural, and murals exist elsewhere together with sculpture. Still, the Teotihuacan insistence on painting—proved by the fragile stuccoed vessels—is notable.
Conides points out differences in iconography between media, which is helpful in an image system that is non-narrative and descriptive and for which we do not have texts. One of the earliest scholars of Teotihuacan, George Kubler, saw the image system as a language almost literally put together as a grammar (though we do not know the actual language). Most recently, experts agree that Teotihuacan had perishable books and that the images on murals and vessels related to or derived from them. On the murals, the motifs were elaborated into scenes or complex entities, while on the vessels they were abbreviated in emblems. The forms have a generic, but nonspecific similarity to Aztec picture writing. Codices were illustrated on Maya pottery and books, and writing was surely known at Teotihuacan since Teotihuacan is believed to have once conquered the Maya city of Tikal. The idea of books is helpful, but in the end not helpful enough.
Another unique feature of this painting tradition is the location of the murals, which are found mainly on the walls of apartment compounds. (Murals were also found on the exterior of buildings, but were more perishable.) The about 2,500 masonry apartment compounds are a rare form of habitation in Mesoamerica and suggest a well-to do population. The political organization of Teotihuacan has been controversial; although it is generally assumed to have been like that of the Aztecs, the city has also been assumed to have had a powerful despotic ruler, though apparently not one commemorated in images. I once raised the possibility that Teotihuacan had some kind of collective leadership, such as a council government or a republic at one time or another. Recent excavations searching for a grand ruler burial have failed to find proof of a despotic ruler, and it is now generally believed that Teotihuacan had some sort of collective organization. Conides does not enter this debate, but it is relevant to her discussion of status and rank symbols on pottery.
The calibration of collective organization and ranking is now an important issue in Teotihuacan studies. There are many “egalitarian” features at Teotihuacan, such as the apartment compounds or the composite censers with mold-made adornos. At the same time there are clear status differences within the apartment compounds, and indeed these are shown in the costumes and headdresses of the mostly human elite figures in representations. With the exception of one such headdress—the tassel headdress, which is clearly elite but its exact significance is not entirely clear—the others cannot be ordered into statuses and/or families or clans as yet. We are still dealing with generalities.
Our understanding of Teotihuacan affects our understanding of all of ancient America as a whole and has allowed me to see collective and cooperative features elsewhere. With detailed studies like that of Conides, we can put a bit of flesh on the bones.
