Xochipala - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Xochipala is a minor archaeological site in the Mexican state of Guerrero

Guerrero

Guerrero officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Guerrero is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 81 municipalities and its capital city is Chilpancingo....

, whose name has become attached, somewhat erroneously, to a style of Formative Period

Mesoamerican chronology

Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian , the Archaic , the Preclassic , the Classic , and the Postclassic...

figurines and pottery.

Archaeological site

The Organera Xochipala archaeological zone takes its name from the nearby village of Xoxhipala and the local organ pipe cactus. Unlike the better-known Xochipala-style figurines and stone bowls, which have been dated to the Formative (or Preclassic) Period

Mesoamerican chronology

Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian , the Archaic , the Preclassic , the Classic , and the Postclassic...

1500 to 200 BCE, the archaeological site belongs to the Classic

Mesoamerican chronology

Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian , the Archaic , the Preclassic , the Classic , and the Postclassic...

and, most importantly, the Postclassic eras

Mesoamerican chronology

Mesoamerican chronology divides the history of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica into several periods: the Paleo-Indian , the Archaic , the Preclassic , the Classic , and the Postclassic...

, from 200 to 1400 CE. In the mid-20th century this site, representative of the Mezcala culture, was extensively looted of an estimated 20,000 pieces.

The site is particularly notable for the discovery of a corbelled arch, an innovation generally attributed the Maya. Whether the corbelled arch was independently developed in Guerrero or was imported from the Maya regions is still unsettled.

Formative Period figurines

The Xochipala style is represented by some of the earliest and most naturalistic Mesoamerican figurines, as well as a number of bowls intricately carved from very hard stone.

The first rediscovered Xochipala-style figurine was purchased in Guerrero in 1897 by William Niven

William Niven

William Niven was a mineralogist and archeologist noted for his discovery of the minerals yttrialite, thorogummite, aguilarite and nivenite , as well as a set of controversial tablets...

and sold to the Peabody Museum

Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology

The Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology is a museum affiliated with Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.Founded in 1866, the Peabody Museum is one of the oldest and largest museums focusing on anthropological material, and is particularly strong in New World ethnography and...

in 1903. Unfortunately, no Xochipala figurine has yet been found in archaeological context

Archaeological context

In archaeology, not only the context of a discovery is a significant fact, but the formation of the context is as well. An archaeological context is an event in time which has been preserved in the archaeological record. The cutting of a pit or ditch in the past is a context, whilst the material...

, but only through collectors and art dealers. The earliest date assigned to any figurine is 1500 BCE. but without provenance

Provenance

Provenance, from the French provenir, "to come from", refers to the chronology of the ownership or location of an historical object. The term was originally mostly used for works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including science and computing...

, so dating is based on stylistic and compositional characteristics.

To achieve a more realistic look, many of the figurines were first modeled without clothing, which was then draped applique

Applique

In its broadest sense, an appliqué is a smaller ornament or device applied to another surface. In the context of ceramics, for example, an appliqué is a separate piece of clay added to the primary work, generally for the purpose of decoration...

-like about the body. It has been suggested that the nude figurines may have been dressed in perishable clothing.

Critical assessment

There is near universal praise for these early figurines:

"Near Xochipala a number of solid clay statuettes have been found dating from about 1300 BC, but modelled with a sureness of hand, a sensitivity to three-dimensional form, and a liveliness that suggests a well-established tradition." Hugh Honour
Hugh Honour
Hugh Honour is a British art historian, famous for his writings. His A World History of Art, co-authored with John Fleming, is now in its seventh edition; his Chinoiserie first set the phenomenon of chinoiserie in its European cultural context, and his overview of Neoclassicism is still "an...

"Expressive gestures, naturalistic forms of hair, breasts, and plastic arms and legs make early and rare Xochipala figures among the finest ceramic works of the ancient New World". Mary Ellen Miller

". . . some of the most imaginative, lively, and naturalistic figuines yet known in Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica is a region and culture area in the Americas, extending approximately from central Mexico to Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, within which a number of pre-Columbian societies flourished before the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the 15th and...

". David Grove
David Grove
David C. Grove is an American anthropologist, archaeologist and academic, known for his contributions and research into the Preclassic period cultures of Mesoamerica, in particular those of the Mexican altiplano and Gulf Coast regions...

"This small group constitutes some of the greatest miniature ceramic sculpture made in the Americas. The figures stand out in intensity and naturalism from all other works." "These primal works of superb technical virtuosity represent some of the greatest ceramic figurines in all of the vast body of Mesoamerican art." Gillett Griffin

Olmec?

In his seminal 1972 book, Carlo Gay attributed the sophisticated artistry of the Xochipala figurines to a precocious culture that was the predecessor of the Gulf coast

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is a partially landlocked ocean basin largely surrounded by the North American continent and the island of Cuba. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United States, on the southwest and south by Mexico, and on the southeast by Cuba. In...

Olmec

The Olmec were the first major Pre-Columbian civilization in Mexico. They lived in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in the modern-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco....

s. According to Gay, the naturalistic "Early Xochipala" figurines led over centuries to the stylised "Late Xochipala" style which in turn led to what archaeologist Gillett Griffin has called "abstracted, . . . ideal," and "contrived" Olmec art.

Despite what Griffin describes as a "pure Olmec stratum", others have found few similarities between Xochipala figurines and Olmec art. David Grove

David Grove

David C. Grove is an American anthropologist, archaeologist and academic, known for his contributions and research into the Preclassic period cultures of Mesoamerica, in particular those of the Mexican altiplano and Gulf Coast regions...

, for example, finds that minor quantities of some Olmec attributes appear in Gay's "Middle Xochipala" sequence and in the stone bowls, but these attributes are otherwise missing from Xochipala art. Michael Coe, however, sees "nothing [in the Xochipala figurines or stone bowls] which would lead into the Olmec pattern". Gay's proposal is "now widely regarded as untenable".

By way of an alternate explanation of Xochipala precociousness, David Grove

David Grove

suggests that the earliest figurines were influenced by the "already developed and sophisticated ceramic traditions of northern South America", an idea that is not widely accepted in the archaeological community.

External links

Princeton Art Museum Xochipala collection

Archaeological site

Formative Period figurines

Critical assessment

Olmec?

External links

Further reading