Epi-Classic Cultural Dynamics in the Mezquital Valley

Cerro de las Mesas

In 1941, the archaeologists Matthew Stirling and Philip Drucker, sponsored by the Smithsonian Institute and the National Geographic Society, carried out explorations at the site of Cerro de las Mesas, Veracruz. During the excavation of Trench 34, an offering was found with 800 jade pieces at the base of a mound from the Central Group (Drucker, 1943:11, 13-14). The offering included figures of varied proportions and attributes, such as carved plaques, perforating discs, beads, earflares, and several samples like those we have been repeatedly mentioning (cf. Drucker, 1955:figs. 31b, e, and 34a).

The pottery from the mound in front of which the offering was recovered (sherds from the fill and complete pieces from funeral offerings located in the building) has been studied by Drucker and assigned to the Lower Horizon II (approximately A.D. 750-1000). In the results published in 1943, he suggested that given its connection with the building, the offering itself could date from that time (1943:79-80; 1955:29), as it was not possible to provide an absolute dating. However, in 1952, Drucker himself initiated a study of jades that was published three years later by the Smithsonian, and this is what he said:

"[…] jade has proved to be not an easy material to study. Not only jade objects have been widely commerced in Mesoamerica, but also, and as it has been repeatedly demonstrated, some pieces were preserved for a long time—maybe as relics, or treasures, or even possibly as objects d’art [sic]—. Placing a jade piece in a timeframe is not the same as positioning a ceramic type or categorizing a distinctive trait; the only thing this may provide is a possible limit date. The Olmec jade figurines represent the best possible example one may find. Of course, these objects are easily recognizable, from a stylistic point of view. This evidence suggests that the period, or at least the main period of manufacture, took place during the Middle Pre-Classic in the Tres Zapotes–La Venta horizon […]. However, a number of objects of this type are present in the offering from Cerro de las Mesas, presumably brought from the neighboring Olmec region, during a period considered on different basis as contemporary to Upper Tres Zapotes (A.D. 750-1000). Consequently, if these different assumptions are correct, the objects had been manufactured quite a long time before being buried under the steps at the front of the mound […]. All by themselves, the data from Cerro de las Mesas may completely mislead us" (Drucker, 1955:30).

We have transcribed this extended quotation because of the perspicacity with which the author has approached the issue of a chronological determination, a problem other scholars were also forced to address, like for instance those who studied the objects from the Sacred Cenote.

The mound with which the offering was associated is a referral of when the jades were not deposited (that is, prior to its edification), but the construction of the building and the deposition may not necessarily be a synchronic phenomena. Thus, as an early limit, we have the dates corresponding to the Lower Horizon II, which, as already seen, encompasses approximately the years between A.D. 750 and 1000.¹⁴  On the other hand, and considering that the pieces may have been offered to the mound during the last years of occupation or even after the mound was abandoned, we have like the latest limiting date, the years A.D. 1400 to 1450 approximately, after which no activity has been detected at the site (Drucker, 1943:81-87). This range generates more problems than it solves around the origin and meaning of the offering.

As a result of Drucker’s comprehensive analysis (1943:13-14; 1955:29-67), elements of contrastable functionality, temporality and provenience were integrated, with no apparent order or association with human remains or remains of any other kind. No particular piece outstands among the others, and neither a pattern may be identified concerning their condition (there are new samples and others worn out by usage, complete and fragmented, with jewels or valuable ornaments as the most important pieces…). What we have here is a deposit where, from our point of view, elements that originally were a part of other contexts, wherefrom they were extracted to constitute a new, different one, were joined together. It would be only reasonable to think that in the process, the pieces lost their original meaning to assume a different one, whose sense remains absolutely elusive.

Because of the characteristics presented so far, we are favoring a later date for the deposit; besides, in the equivalent to the Drucker’s Lower Horizon II, in other regions the pieces appeared arranged in primary contexts, like those from which, assumedly, some of the pieces included in the Cerro de las Mesas offering were plundered.¹⁵

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Endnotes

14. Jiménez Moreno considers that the Lower Horizon II for Cerro de las Mesas actually began around A.D. 300 to end approximately in A.D. 800 (1959:1027-1028).

15. It is possible that samples like the ones we are interested in do exist at the site, in their original context. In Drucker’s ceramic analysis, several burials containing jade objects were mentioned, though they have not been described in detail (maybe Stirling did, in his general field season report, though we have not consulted with him). This would deserve an in-depth study, as some of the components in the offering may even have been removed from local deposits.

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