[Aztlan] About those banners and standard bearers

[Jerry Offner]

Roberto--I appreciate your reply, your careful location of the objects and your assurance that there is no shield on the back--it has been 30 years since I visited Tula, Hidalgo.  The Borbonicus images do show individuals, but they are quite alive, carrying banners, typically with one hand held higher and one lower on the pole.  I don't think it was beyond the ability of the Toltec stone workers to depict such a pose if they wished (also see below).   My post related to evidence that statues/sculptures held banners.  

The best evidence that comes to mind for me is the Magliabecchiano (f. 70r, also on the FAMSI site--and a round of applause for FAMSI for making all this so easily available).  The illustration on that page does appear to show a very elaborate banner coming out of the left front corner of the temple top platform at an angle (it seems less likely that it is coming out of the sacrificial victim's head--but perhaps someone has reasoned this out?).  However, no statue is holding it and my request was for pictorial or written evidence that statues held banners.  The Magliabecchiano artist may have been intending to show many more banners and it could also be argued (only, not demonstrated) that the artist had no space to show standard bearers. But that is not what we see.

The Tula figure I referenced may or may not be for this purpose--perhaps the opening and surrounding structure was designed to hold a container of beating hearts or other body parts, or just as well something entirely unrelated to sacrifice. (An ocote-type torch?  What do we know about nighttime rituals and ceremonies?  What organic traces are there on these standard bearers--blood, cellulose, tar?).  That is what I meant by holding "something." 

In modern times, one of the better ways to judge the authenticity of a wooden or cloth-lined ceramic mask from Mexico or Guatemala is to study its wear patterns to see if they indicate repeated use during dances--chin, nose, forehead, any attaching strings--although these can also be faked).  Roberto or someone on the list, can you comment on wear patterns throughout the openings (or even organic residue after a millennium)? One reasonable working hypothesis is that even a well secured pole would leave characteristic wear marks as the banner moved in the breeze during the considerable life of these statues.  It could be argued that is why the Tula figures are so thickish around what had to be a two-hands joined opening.  A smoother or rougher wear pattern on this should be visible even in very porous (and not terribly hard) stone--unless soil conditions have carried off all the evidence. Digital microscope attachments for a portable PC should not be difficult to find and finding wear would improve the state of our evidence and not require us to project late period practices to Toltec times.  

So, I reload now and ask: do we have written or pictorial evidence of inanimate standard bearers bearing any standards, or do we have any evidence through wear patterns or other evidence from the objects themselves that objects identified as standard bearers in fact bore standards? 

This is a little like the problem caused by counterfeits and fakes.  Once one is admitted as real, it changes the entire aesthetic landscape and in fact creates new niches in the landscape that can be filled by new fakes or by over-ambitious interpretations by art historians, iconographers, ethnohistorians, and archaeologists.  Not to mention "disjunction" problems of imputing late period practices to Toltecs.

In the landscape of our knowledge about the Nahua, it seems a good idea to make sure that standard bearers bore standards. Things change, albeit slowly.  I remember a landscape of chaste, peaceful Maya priest astronomers from a few decades ago. Only a few parts of that survive in the current landscape of understanding about the Maya.

As usual, the answers are likely to be far more complicated than we can suppose.  

Jerry Offner