Ninth-Century Stelae of Machaquilá and Seibal

Visual discourse and socio-historical explanation

The dissertation summarized by this report considered the stelae programs of Machaquilá and Seibal via analogy to linguistic discourse in part to avoid some of the pitfalls of traditional art historical stylistic analysis. For example, a stylistic analysis may have described the formal patterns among Machaquilá's late stelae as a 'developmental trajectory' with its own inherent 'inertia,' inevitably leading toward subsequent productions. In contrast, the discourse-based study presented herein stressed the agentive role of Machaquilá's artists and patrons in the sequential modification of the city's stela 'template.' Alternatively, a stylistic analysis may have considered the presence of non-Classic features in the stelae of Seibal the 'influence' of foreign groups who actively affected the city's art. Again, by stressing the agency of the local producers of these stelae, the visual discourse analysis of this study demonstrated that the non-Classic visual devices were not imposed but selected. What remains to be addressed is whether, and, if so, how, 'visual discourses' can be explained; that is, how they relate to the broader social and historical contexts of their production and reception.

The geopolitical situation of both Machaquilá and Seibal seem to have affected the visual discourses of their stelae. Machaquilá's insular, conservative stela compositions and the obsession with a peculiar calendrical patterning could be seen to parallel the site's geopolitical isolation. Machaquilá is nestled in rough terrain, away from other contemporaneous political powers. Additionally, assuming the dry Machaquilá riverbed was used as a trade route, the city's conservative stelae likely served as a visual expression of political stability and, by extension, security of the trade route in the midst of political turmoil following the fall of the Mutal polity.

Seibal, located at the crossroads of several major trade routes, likely attained its late ninth-century success in part from managing economic exchange among various regions. The visitors from other polities that oversaw Aj Bolon Haabtal Wat'ul K'atel's arrival, accession, and first period-ending ceremonies presumably had a vested interest in establishing a strong polity at this trade-route nexus to serve as a 'buffer' for interaction with non-Classic peoples. Seibal's diverse, heterogeneous late stelae, as well as the possible depictions of merchants on Stela 17 (Figure 21) and other sculptures (e.g. Stela 20), thus could relate directly to Seibal's geopolitical location at the nexus of wide-reaching trade networks.

Considering further the potential role of mercantilism leads to other possible explanations of each site's ninth-century visual discourses. In his treatise on fifteenth-century Italian painting, Michael Baxandall described how the mathematical skills essential to merchants, such as gauging and proportions, were deeply involved in the art of the time.³⁷  Since trade-route maintenance was likely central to the political successes of ninth-century Machaquilá and Seibal, perhaps the nature of their art was related and could be explained in a manner analogous to Baxandall's discussion of fifteenth-century Italian painting. Throughout Mesoamerica, certain mathematical concepts were fundamental to economic exchange – market days were scheduled according to different calendars in different towns, and trade items likely had to be measured and valued according to varying local conventions. Perhaps the alternate period endings used at Machaquilá for stela consecration ceremonies were scheduled to fall on 1 Ajaw or 13 Kumk'u market days, when more people would be present in the city's ceremonial center to witness the ruler's display of power and authority. Perhaps the interest in figural proportions evident in Machaquilá's stelae also appealed particularly to mercantile-minded rulers and visitors. At Seibal too, the incorporation of mercantile iconography such as walking sticks and the use of non-Classic calendrical systems may have been directed toward the visual and mathematical 'cultural equipment' of merchants.

Baxandall provided another observation of fifteenth-century Italian painting with potential explanatory value for the visual discourses of ninth-century Machaquilá and Seibal. In explaining the changes evident in painting contracts, Baxandall noted a "selective inhibition about display," that is, an aesthetic of humility or reserve, as a general tendency in Western Europe in the latter half of the fifteenth century.³⁸  Perhaps a similar "fashion," with similarly "elusive moral overtones," occurred in the Southern Maya Lowlands in the ninth century.³⁹  In the eighth century, opulence and corpulence were common features of K'uhul Ajaw portraits, serving as visual signs of kings' access to goods, lives of leisure, and, by extension, political power. At Machaquilá, the reduction of detail in costume elements and the change in figural proportions toward a more svelte portrayal of the K'uhul Ajaw may reflect a selective inhibition about display analogous to that described by Baxandall. At Seibal, the people portrayed on stelae were presented without the royal titles so common in the Classic period. In several cases, they are not even named. In addition, the portrayal of a single figure dressed in non-royal garb on Seibal Stela 20 may indicate a growing taste for humility. Perhaps the extreme economic disparity between the expanding elite class and the commoners in the eight-century Southern Maya Lowlands resulted in a reactionary ninth-century elite aesthetic of reserve. In this sense, the preceding, eighth-century stelae characterized by Tatiana Proskouriakoff as 'Ornate' and 'Dynamic,' with their extreme elaboration of motifs and long lists of elite titles, might be more accurately conceptualized as 'decadent,' that is, as excessively sophisticated, in the eyes of ninth-century Maya.⁴⁰  In contrast, the late stelae of Machaquilá and Seibal, traditionally classified as 'decadent,' could be seen to involve selective inhibitions about display as a visual remedy to potential social schism resulting from the elite excesses of the eighth-century past.

This sampling of possible explanations is by no means exhaustive, nor is it intended to claim any of these interpretations are definitively correct. Instead, analogy to Michael Baxandall's insightful explanations of fifteenth-century Italian painting highlight the limitations of developing such social explanations for the visual discourses of ancient Maya visual culture. The social history of art is an enticing approach from which to relate visual discourse to non-visual social phenomena, and has proven effective and enlightening when supplementary evidence is available to support its social explanations. For the ancient Maya, we have no contracts, no letters describing patrons' reactions to different artists' works, no textbooks of mercantile mathematics. We also lack a large proportion of ancient Maya visual culture; works of paper, wood, and other organic or water-soluble materials quickly deteriorate in the tropical climate of the Southern Maya Lowlands. The data provided by archaeology, although rich and informative, is of a different temporal scale than the discursive practices of artistic production. Further, archaeological scholarship suffers the same limitations as art historical analysis in its inability to retrieve with certainty or specificity the thoughts and intentions of people from the artifacts they produced and used. Without supplementary evidence and a broader corpus of visual culture, we cannot corroborate social explanations such as those suggested herein. A range of causal relations can obtain among a social group and their visual expressions – without corroborating historical evidence it is not possible to know which relations were actually involved in visual discourse. Still, the archaeological excavations currently underway at Machaquilá and planned for Seibal may recover unexpected supplementary sources that could support or disprove specific explanations of these polity's ninth-century visual discourses. While the discourse analyses presented herein can rule out some scenarios, such as foreign invasion, they require corroborating evidence before we can select among the possible alternative explanations they suggest.

Endnotes

37. Baxandall 1988:86-108.

38. Ibid.:14.

39. Ibid.

40. Proskouriakoff 1950.

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