Exploring Zapotec Ceramic Art

Introduction

The Zapotec, whose ancient culture flourished for over a millennium in southwest Mesoamerica, have been the topic of a diversity of studies primarily because their unique history provides clues about the origins of civilization and how urban societies evolve. As with other ancient societies, focus on their archaeological record has been key for inferring certain aspects of human behavior and cultural development, such as technology, subsistence, exchange, residential patterns, scribal traditions and political organization (Rickards 147).

Zapotec Art

The majority of Zapotec urns are associated with mortuary contexts, and in particular tombs, where they were placed in different positions relative to the structure: on the roof, in front of the entrance and in niches above the entrance, or within the tomb itself, in the antechamber, in wall niches and on the floor. However, some urns have been found as offerings related to buildings, placed under stucco floors or in cache boxes near salient features of the structure.

The urns vary in height from 10 centimeters up to one meter, and many are made in series, frequently consisting of sets of three, four or five. Most ceramic objects found in the valley of Oaxaca are fabricated from a fine grey paste and many have applications of red pigment that have been identified as either cinnabar or hematite. Although rare, some examples are painted white or polychrome. Most urns are found empty, but perhaps they originally contained some evanescent substance that has disappeared with time (Lind 192). Furthermore, there is a great deal of evidence for reuse of the urns, given that many are broken and worn when discovered in situ.

Studies on the topic of the urns have been published since the early twentieth century, but to date there is little consensus on what the effigies symbolize and how they relate to ancient religion and ritual. Early interpretations held the position that the effigies represent gods from a complex pantheon. Joyce Marcus made a sharp break with this paradigm when she questioned the existence of deities among the ancient Zapotec, maintaining instead that the effigies represent royal ancestors wearing supernatural guises (Marcus 1983; Marcus and Flannery 1996). Current research demonstrates a correlation between the entities in the Zapotec calendar day-name list and the complexes of masks and costumes worn by the figures displayed on the urns.

Woven into the debate on symbolism are explanations about what the particular function of the vessel attached to the effigy may have been. Early interpretations supposed that they held cremated remains Chavero 524). However there is no archaeological evidence the Zapotec cremated their dead and placed human remains in the vessels.

The Database

The catalogue of Zapotec Effigy Vessels is a versatile tool designed to present the most up to date information on the urns in a way that is inter-relational and easy to access. An on-line catalogue of artifacts is a dynamic entity, one that can be constantly updated, corrected and added to as new information comes forth. This format avoids the pitfalls of previously published ...