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VII:1/ Summer/Autumn 2001
by Carlo and Robin Gay
A fascinating lithic culture, almost unknown today, flourished in the Sierra Madre del Sur of Western Mexico in early pre-Hispanic times. Developing parallel to the equally arcane stone-working tradition of the Mezcala, the Chontal people created a vast array of figurative sculpture apparently intended to accompany the dead in afterlife. Their innovative art prefigures the great Mesoamerican civilizations and is compelling evidence for a reappraisal of the role played by the Guerrero region in the history of ancient Mexico.
A new publication Chontal, Ancient Stone Sculpture from Guerrero, Mexico by Carlo and Robin Gay,* finally takes this interesting quesion in hand. With over 200 illustrations, the book provides the reader with a unique view of the corpus of Chontal ritual sculpture, one of the richest and most varied of ancient Mexico. It summarizes almost forty years spent by the late Carlo Gay and his research associate Frances Pratt recording and analyzing some five thousand of these artifacts, now housed in public and private collections around the world.
Seated Figure
(profile and back)As with the earlier work, Mezcala, Ancient Stone Sculpture from Guerrero, Mexico (Carlo Gay and Frances Pratt, Balsas Publications, 1992), the authors of this volume attempt to bring into focus one of Mexico's early cultures through a stylistic analysis of its artistic production and by inference from better-documented Formative and Classic Period traditions. They suggest a developmental sequence for the Chontal based on artifact seriation, and include a description of four closely related styles: San Jeronimo, Corasalso, Sultepec (across the border in the state of Mexico), and the notable Teotihuacan tradition of portable stone sculpture, which evidence suggests was rooted in the Chontal region long before the "City of the Gods" was built in the Valley of Mexico.
The following article is based on excerpts from the book and is intended to provide a general overview of Chontal culture.
Like the Mezcala, their neighbors to the south, the Chontal probably derived from a Eurasian people who settled in the Balsas River region in Guerrero after the last ice age, perhaps attracted by the great variety of natural resources. They eventually moved north to the region encompassing the drainage systems of the Tepecoacuilco and Cocula rivers.
Inference drawn from known Early Formative sites in similar environments of the Mexican Plateau suggests that the Chontal probably lived in small clusters of wattle and daub huts with masonry foundations, growing maize, beans, avocado, chili peppers, and squash, and storing food in earthen pits. They also hunted, fished, trapped, and collected wild fruit, herbs, and medicinal plants. Available game probably included deer, wild boar, and turkey as well as rabbit and wildfowl.
Assuming small settlements of twenty-five to one hundred inhabitants, the basic social unit would have been the family, each providing for its needs by harvesting forest and fields, hunting and fishing. Individual family members would have had their area of responsibility in the procurement and preparation of food, in agricultural activities, and all the necessities of daily life. Family occupations may also have included making and repairing tools and weapons, baskets, nets and ropes in addition to weaving and tanning skins. Specialized artisans would have produced ritualistic paraphernalia such as the stone effigies intended for burial with the dead. Community leaders would have included shamans and experienced individuals who knew how to exploit local resources and organize public projects.
Despite the extremely rugged topography of much of Central Mexico, trade and commerce were an important aspect of village life of the time. Frequent contact between communities meant that religion, mythology, ritual iconography, and artistic styles were also shared, at least in part. The widespread practice of burying the dead under, or close to, settlements and of creating portable anthropomorphic sculpture is indicative of a pan-Mesoamerican magico-religious belief system associated with death and ancestors.
The Chontal corpus of artifacts is of such quantity and variety as to suggest the tradition flourished for a prolonged period of time, spanning from at least 1500 BC in its early manifestations to possibly AD 600 in its derivative phase. In central Mexico this period was marked by the emergence of complex civilizations revolving around large ceremonial centers and cities, governed by a powerful elite. Given such changes, and keeping in mind that trade went two ways, the effects on societies such as the Chontal can reasonably be assumed to be significant. Nevertheless, for most of its duration Chontal material culture does not appear to have changed substantially. Judging by the almost repetitious reliance on unvaried subject matter and iconography-figures, face panels, and masks-significant variations in socio-religious organization, giving rise to differing styles, are unlikely to have occurred. Influences on the art styles of other cultures are discernible, however. The Chontal style obviously had a great impact on Pacific Coast traditions, with which trade must have been intense. Among these are San Jerónimo and Corasalso. At a certain stage, other lithic styles indigenous to the middle Balsas River drainage, primarily the Mezcala and the Olmec, obviously influenced the Chontal. Finally, in its late phase the Chontal style becomes inextricably entwined with the Teotihuacan.
While no Chontal sites have been identified as yet, caches of artifacts have consistently been reported from various points along the sierra dividing the Tepecoacuilco and Cocula river valleys, as well as from locations in the two valleys themselves. The area around the village of Maxela has frequently been referenced as one of the prime locations where Chontal objects have been found.
The Chontal region of the Cocula river drainage extended as far south as Ixcateopan, whereas in the Tepecoacuilco River drainage, it reached north to the environs of Huitzuco and Tlaxmalac. Chontal, Teotihuacan, and hybrid Chontal/ Teotihuacan artifacts have been found in considerable quantity near the town of Tepecoacuilco. The relatively broad distribution of the sites that have reportedly yielded Chontal figurative sculpture, plus the number of examples found, tends to indicate that it was widely available in Guerrero as integral to collective beliefs and rites and was not necessarily reserved for a small elite.
The Artifacts and Their Style
More or less concurrent and parallel with the Mezcala, the Chontal people developed a spectacular tradition of making portable stone sculpture as grave offerings. Like the Mezcala lithic tradition, Chontal lapidaries began with experimental attempts to anthropomorphize functional diorite axes, in time creating a diversified repertory of portable stone sculpture. This included standing and seated figures, heads, face panels, and masks, and to a much lesser extent animal effigies, architectural models, and ritual objects.
The vast inventory of Chontal artifacts, recorded from tribute interred as dedicatory offerings in the Templo Mayor of Mexico City and from material gathered during more than a century by museums and collectors, consists exclusively of portable stone sculpture. No pottery attributable to the Chontal tradition has been recorded.
Despite the fact that Chontal artisans created a range of human and animal effigies, amulets, ornaments, ritual implements, and household utensils such as vessels, mortars and grinding stones, they did so by working stone with stone and their lapidary technique was on a strictly Neolithic level. Further limitations were imposed by the frequent hardness of the stone. Like the Mezcala, they fashioned artifacts from pebbles, cobbles, and slabs found in riverbeds. In general, the natural stones that were chosen by the artisans of the Chontal area were porphyry and porphyritic stones, serpentine, diorite, calcite, and andesite. The Chontal lapidaries relied mainly on pecking and abrading techniques to shape their sculpture. Pecking entails chipping away small portions of stone at a time, using a pointed stone chisel and a wooden mallet. The bow drill was employed, both for drilling holes and to facilitate sawing. Fine polishing was achieved by abrading. In all, the process of pounding, chipping, sawing, drilling, and polishing was long and laborious and gave little scope for spontaneous effect. The secret to the expressiveness of the sculpture lies instead in the fervent and reverent attitude of the maker, who strove to impart a significant spirituality to his work.
Unlike Mezcala figurative sculpture, which, especially its earlier stage of development, is noted for its basic simplicity, from the very beginning Chontal figures, face panels, and masks reflect a marked tendency towards naturalism, evident in their curvilinear configuration and often well-defined facial features. Particular emphasis was placed on the depiction of the nose, which was usually long and straight during the early phase of the tradition, and became shorter and more aquiline as time went on.
Representation of the face through masks, face panels, and heads is a defining characteristic of Chontal iconography. Heads were usually adapted from pebbles and cobbles of porphyry or mottled green-and-white stones such as syenite and dolerite. They generally retain the natural, rounded shape of the stones. Face panels and masks were created from flatter cobbles or slabs of porphyry, green-and-white stones with a porphyritic texture, calcite, andesite and serpentine.
The Chontal produced far more heads, face panels, and masks than any other type of votive artifact. The relative abundance of face panels and masks in particular, and the care and inventiveness expended in their making, is an indication of their importance in the Chontal belief system.
Chontal masks and face panels are frequently complemented with zoomorphic and non-figurative elements. This combining of natural features in unnatural ways is evocative of shamanic transformation as well as of composite, supernatural beings or inhabitants of the world beyond. Both of these are more clearly articulated in the art of other cultures, and indeed are consistently recurring themes in the iconography of all later Mesoamerican civilizations.
Inlays of shell or other materials in the eyes or mouths often completed the Chontal rendering of the face. While few inlays have survived, the rough, unpolished surfaces of the eye and mouth cavities on face panels are often an indication that they held other material.
FiguresThe formative period of the Chontal tradition is characterized by figures adapted from functional diorite axes. Towards the end of the period, small, cylindrical riverbed cobbles approximating the shape and size of a celt came into use. As the tradition progressed the celt form was adhered to less strictly and was abandoned altogether in the mature phase.
Chontal figurative sculpture evolves from simple to complex, and from abstract to more naturalistic. The Chontal figures of the late period tend towards a more naturalistic portrayal than those of the early and middle periods, as evidenced by more accurate proportions of the body, as well as fully resolved facial features and attributes such as pectoral muscles, hands, abdomen, flexed legs, and feet. The consistent positioning of the arms crossed over the abdomen or the chest suggests death or estrangement from human affairs.
Essentially unadorned, Chontal figures apparently fulfilled their purpose unto themselves, without recourse to distinguishing accoutrements or complementary symbols to enhance any political, magical, or religious meaning they may have held, thus indicating that the artist was not constrained by formalized conventions. The art of Meso-American ranked societies bears iconographic elements-paraphernalia of rulership or stereotyped positions of authority or obeisance to it-clearly relating to divinities and an elite class of rulers. The art of the Chontal shows no such traits. Except for some hieratic figures distinguished by headdresses or zoomorphic attributes (possibly indicating clan distinction or moral authority reached through age, wisdom, and/or personal achievement), and a few rare representations of palanquins, Chontal sculpture has little in common with the portrayal of an elite class of rulers and their association with the supernatural world that is so predominant in classic Mesoamerica.
The art of the Chontal introduces a new chapter in the understanding of the formative period of the Teotihuacan tradition of portable stone sculpture (500-100 BC) in that both cultures share many stylistic traits. When closely compared, they evidence a convincing, homogeneous sequence of figurative portrayals from the basically conceived Chontal effigies to the classical and often more naturalistic figures, face panels, and masks of later Teotihuacan sculpture. The obvious concordance of subjects, workmanship, and a subtle stylistic affinity connote a continuity of development, suggesting the Chontal may relate to the formative phase of the Teotihuacan.
In addition to the interdependence of these two cultures, two peripheral manifestations are relevant to the Chontal: the Sultepec, adjacent to a volcano of the same name in the state of Mexico where it borders with Guerrero; and the San Jerónimo, named for the eponymous site on the Pacific Coast north of Acapulco. Space constrains us here from more detail.
Of the innumerable artifacts of Formative Mesoamerican cultural history, few manifest the inherent mysterious power and poignantly human attributes of Chontal stone sculpture.
