Cantona, in the Mexican state of Puebla, was a major Epiclassic civic-ceremonial center featuring 27 ballcourts and an eclectic art style that drew on Gulf Coast and central Mexican traditions. Despite its relevance for the study of regional interactions during this dynamic period, the site has not received the archaeological attention it merits, either through extensive excavations or full publication of those archaeological projects that have been carried out. This catalog of the site's statuary by Jesús Sánchez, one outcome of a subproject of Angel García Cook's Proyecto Arqueológico de Interpretación Cantona, constitutes a major step toward filling the publication gap; as the first volume in a series of catalogs of Cantona's prehispanic sculpture, it represents the first, one hopes, of many significant contributions to the archaeology and art history of Epiclassic Mesoamerica.
This catalog also reflects a new, more rigorous stage in the development of the regional/site catalog form in the literature of Mesoamerican art history. Unlike earlier sculptural catalogs like those of Beatriz de la Fuente and associates on Tula and the Huasteca in the 1980s, which devoted minimal space to the theoretical underpinnings and justification of the taxonomy employed, Sánchez makes the underlying assumptions of his classificatory system clear and the definitions of his terminology explicit. His presentation of his methodology is epistemologically sophisticated, self-consciously acknowledging the importance of the author's perspective in the construction of archaeological taxonomies.
The introduction provides a brief overview of the site and of Sánchez's research on Cantona's sculpture. He first identifies 696 examples (the majority are fragmentary) that he classifies into 28 types, followed by a preliminary iconographic analysis. The low yield of interpretive results from this approach led him to question the utility of traditional art-historical concepts of iconography. This prompted a theoretical exploration and revision of basic concepts such as style, type, and sign, which led to a revised taxonomy. The results of this initial stage are presented in Sánchez's 2010 book, El nombre de la cosa: Modelo taxonómico de artefactos, and are briefly summarized in Chapter 1 of this catalog, “Construcción Espistemológica.”
In the first chapter he emphasizes the theoretical basis of his taxonomic system, “Taxonomía Semiótica,” which combines Marxist and semiotic approaches: “una semiótica crítica, cuya construcción aún considero en proceso y sustentada en efecto en el materialismo histórico, como teoría substantiva” (p. 23). Drawing on Baudrillard's theory of the object, he presents the work of sculpture as an instrument of communication, a conveyor of ideological content in the Marxist sense. Classification and analysis thus need to address all dimensions of the object from its material characteristics as a product of human labor to its symbolism. Sánchez's approach encompasses descriptive data (for him, the proper domain of archaeological analysis) and interpretation, use value, and ideological value (based on Baudrillard's sign value): it treats each sculpture both as an artifact with a social function and as a representation. His description of each one includes its material, whether monolithic or composite; technique; form, whether isolated or an architectural sculpture; function; and type based on technique. In analyzing content, he focuses on the “model” for the statue, which is not an interpretation of complex communicational content, but instead is a simple identification of what is represented (e.g., a male figure). This basic description is intended as a basic prerequisite for further interpretive hypotheses, which Sánchez leaves for the future while acknowledging that the original symbolism is lost and only approximations are possible.
The catalog is organized by subfamilies of statuary. The first is anthropomorphic statues, which are subdivided into supergroups by content: heads, busts, torsos, trunks, phalli and feet. The second subfamily is zoomorphic, broken down into complete bodies, heads, and phalli. (There are many examples of apparent feline phalli, identified by their distinctive anatomy, and Sánchez suggests that they serve as images of fertility and power because of the vigorous reproductive behavior of pumas and jaguars [p. 259].) Each entry is illustrated by one or two clear photos of the object, with further comparative illustrations of the statues from Cantona and selected parallels from Tula, the Huasteca, and the Mezcala style in the plates at the end of the volume. Also included in the plates are plans showing the context of the sculptures and color photos of Cantona's architecture. The concluding chapter summarizes the productive processes, chronology, and basic subjects of the material and attempts to identify substyles. The result is an attractive and user-friendly compendium of basic data on the statuary of Cantona, to be supplemented by future catalogs covering other sculptural types at the site.
All of the sculptures illustrated tend toward an abstract and simplified style, in contrast to the Classic art traditions of neighboring Veracruz. A number of human representations dating to the Cantona II (50–600 CE) and Cantona III (700–800 CE, the city's Epiclassic florescence) phases emphasize facial deformities (e.g., catalog nos. 125, 142, 283). Sánchez suggests that the grotesque faces reflect ballgame injuries and represent decapitated players; perhaps they were intended as images of trophy heads honoring heroic victors (pp. 101, 260–261). This interpretation seems supported by the context of no. 283: although a surface find, it was discovered in a ballcourt. The apparent injuries could also be the result of ritual boxing or of warfare, although Sánchez does not raise these possibilities.
Of importance to the issue of long-distance interactions, Sánchez identifies stylistic subgroups based on affinities with other sculptural traditions – Mezcala, Huastec, and “Chichimec” – with similarities to both northwest Mexico and Early Postclassic Tula. He interprets this artistic diversity as reflecting the multiethnic population of the Cantona polity. He dates the “Chichimec” sculptures to Cantona III (though some are surface finds with less than a sterling context) and notes the similarity of their facial features and rectangular ear ornaments to Tula's atlantids and chacmools, suggesting that they are forerunners of Tula's sculptural style (pp. 152, 255). However, a significant problem for this suggestion and for Sanchez's claim that Tula's development began at least a hundred years after the fall of Cantona is posed by the Epiclassic relief fragments from Tula Chico, which he does not mention. Though there are no sculptures in the round known from Tula Chico, the surviving reliefs show that Tula's distinctive sculptural style was already present by the Prado phase (650–750 CE), coeval with or earlier than Cantona III. Sánchez also suggests that the similarities to Tula could be the result of intrusions of “Chichimec” populations from the Bajío and northwest Mexico in both cities (this claim is well supported for Tula by the Epiclassic archaeological record). Whatever the connection with Tula, Sánchez speculates that the “Chichimec” sculpture of Cantona was the product of immigrants from the northwest. This point stands in need of further elaboration and additional support by both comparative analysis and archaeological data from Cantona, and Sánchez fails to cite key books on northwest Mexican sculpture by Eduardo Williams (Las piedras sagradas, 1992) and Marie-Areti Hers (Los toltecas en tierras chichimecas, 1989) that could support his case. He also fails to make comparisons to the Early Classic sculpture of Loma Alta, Michoacán, which like that of Cantona includes phallic forms. Additional Cantona sculptures of other types that he identifies as showing Chichimec traits will appear in future volumes of the catalog series.
The Cantona statuary that Sánchez places in the Huastec substyle seem to be Classic (Cantona II) in date, contemporary with some of their putative counterparts from the Huasteca. In addition to formal similarities, they share phallic iconography, suggesting a common religious ideology focused on concerns with fertility that goes beyond shared sculptural styles. Longer-distance connections to the Maya area are hinted at as Sánchez discerns a possible ik sign on the pectorals of two anthropomorphic statues, nos. 392 and 477, though as he notes in both cases the condition of the sculptures makes it unclear whether that sign could be a star or inverted almena.
The bibliography is brief (four pages) and has several significant omissions. For a publication emphasizing Marxist approaches to ideology, the absence of Gramsci and Althusser is striking. As noted, Sánchez does not refer to Williams's or Hers’ work on northwest Mexican sculpture, despite possible connections between this material and Epiclassic Cantona. Neither is Elizabeth Jiménez García's 2010 preliminary catalog of Tula's sculpture for FAMSI cited.
Despite these limitations and the problems noted earlier, this book represents a major contribution to the archaeological literature on Cantona: it is a well-presented collection of useful basic data that will serve as a solid foundation for future comparative art-historical analysis. It addresses not only the city's links with West Mexico and Tula but also potential connections to Cacaxtla, Cholula, El Cerrito, and Teotenango.
