Photographic Documentation of Monuments with Epi-Olmec Script/Imagery

Our Work

This section includes access to the photographic documentation of the monuments; new observations on monuments discussed in the sketch of the history of documentation; and basic observations on those monuments not discussed in the historical sketch.

The La Mojarra stela

La Mojarra stela: main text

Because the text is quite clear, and Justeson had already traced it in its entirety, no new sign identifications have emerged. We provide here an album of photographs (view album) that covers the face of the La Mojarra stela.

La Mojarra stela: side text

The text on the side of the stela of La Mojarra is badly damaged by heavy vertical erosion and pocking. Justeson and Kaufman (1997) report on their examination of the monument, provide a drawing of the current state and reconstructed forms, and interpret the text. Justeson takes this text to be a retrospective on the career of the young (13-year-old) king, recounted in some detail in the text on the face of the monument, ending with a claim of shamanic transformation. The Tuxtla Statuette ends with a similar statement.

Here we provide a sequence of photographs (view album) of the glyphs in this text, alongside an instance of what appears to be the same glyph on the front of the stela.

Tres Zapotes Stela C

Most of the signs on the text of Tres Zapotes Stela C are still in larger measure unclear, but some are identifiable and can be assigned to the epi-Olmec tradition.

The circumstances of the photography were less than ideal both for the upper portion, at the site museum in the town of Tres Zapotes, and for the lower portion, on display in the Museo Nacional de Antropología, since we were not granted to either of these at night and therefore could not keep extraneous light away from the monument. Nonetheless, a fair amount of detail is apparent in the photos that enable us to improve on existing drawings and to identify one additional epi-Olmec sign (view Upper Section or view Lower Section).

At the Museo Nacional de Antropología, the lower half of the stela has been moved so that only the side bearing the text is visible. The side displaying the iconography is just inches from the wall; we were not able to photograph it.

Monuments of or relating to Cerro de las Mesas

We distinguish two types of figural sculptures at Cerro de las Mesas. The figures and their accoutrements on Stelae 3, 5, 6, and 8 and on the front of Monument 2 are very similar to one another. All of them have epi-Olmec iconographic elements; Stela 6, 8, and presumably 5 have epi-Olmec texts. We treat all of them as epi-Olmec. These sculptures differ systematically from those on Stela 4 and on the back sides of Monuments 2 and 4, which feature scantily-clad main figures with less imposing headgear. These seem likely to depict the successors of the epi-Olmecs as leaders of Cerro de las Mesas and the surrounding area.

Epi-Olmec sculptures

The imagery on these monuments is mostly quite clear, with the figures standing out in deep relief and with the interior detailing being rather deeply incised. The texts are incised onto raised glyph panels; the divisions between glyphs have survived relatively well, but the incising of the interior details is not as deep, and are largely illegible on Stela 5 and 8.

Stela 6

Remarkably for this site, the text of this monument is mostly quite clear, with only two largely abraded signs (view Stela 6 album).

Stela 8

One diagnostic epi-Olmec sign, mi, is recognizable (twice) in the badly weathered text of this monument (view Stela 8 album).

Stela 5

No non-calendrical signs have been found on this text. The trilobed element of the long count introducing glyph may immediately precede the long count, as on Stela 6 (view Stela 5 album).

The Chapultepec Stone

Because the Chapultepec Stone is in excellent condition, there are no new results to report concerning it (view Chapultepec Stone photographs).

Stela 3

This stela is carved on one face. It has no glyph panel. Its loincloth resembles that of Stela 6 and Stela 8, which are epi-Olmec in both text and iconography, as well as that of Monument 2.  The figure holds what seems to be part of a large plant, a long tapering unit ending with a leaf-shaped element; what is unmistakably the same object hangs down from near the belt of the figures on Stela 5, 6, and 8 and Monument 2.  The portion of the monument containing its headgear no longer exists for comparison (view Stela 3 album).

Monument 2 (also known as the Papaloapan stela)

Cerro de las Mesas Monument 2 is a stela carved on four sides. One continuous scene wraps around three sides of the stela, while another occupies a single side; there is no overlap across the corners, which separate the two scenes. The side of the stela occupied by a single scene, and the opposite side, is wider than the other two sides.

We treat the broader, middle face of the three that bear a continuous scene as the front of the monument. A single, large figure occupies the entirety of this side, above the level of the base panel; part of his clothing wraps around the right corner and lies along almost the entire length of the (viewer’s) right hand side of the monument. This figure holds in his forward (right) hand the severed head of a kneeling victim, which wraps around the left corner of the front face of the stela; on the (viewer’s) right is the kneeling body of the beheaded figure, whose blood spurts from his neck. Clearly the figure on the front face is the main figure of the scene (view the Papaloapan Stela album).

The main figure’s left arm is held downward behind him, and holds what is probably the knife that he used to sever the head that is held in his other hand. The decapitated kneeling figure’s arms are behind his body, stretching straight down, and are plausibly tied behind his back although the details to confirm this interpretation are not clear.

The main figure on the front of the stela resembles those of Stela 5, 6, and 8.  The loincloth design is like that on Stela 6 and 8; the beard-mask that it wears is like that of Stela 5 and 8.  The wristlets and armlets are like Stela 6 and 8, with three uninterrupted bands flanked by a pair of circles on each side. A seemingly flexible vertical unit hangs down in front of the figure, ending with a leaf-shaped element, as on Stela 5, 6, and 8.  The headgear, which on Stela 5, 6, and 8 has diagnostic epi-Olmec elements, has been lost from this monument.

The other scene, on which we refer to as the back side of the monument, appears to be completely distinct and to have no relationship to the other scene: they differ in iconography, style, and content, and in particular they have no features that tie them to any epi-Olmec sculpture. One of the more striking differences in content is that the figures are sparsely clad, like those on Stela 4 and Monument 4.  The scene displays two figures facing one another across what appears to be a folded cloth bearing a geometric design. Above the figure on the right is a raised panel, divided up by three horizontal lines, that may well be the remains of a text of four signs or glyphic units.

The base panel of the three-sided scene displays a saurian figure with a monster/god head. The head of one such figure, facing left, is on the right front side of the face of the stela, its body wrapping around to the (viewer’s) right side. The same figure or another similar one is on the left side of the base panel on the front of the stela. Accordingly, this base panel seems to have been conceived originally as wrapping around the stela at its base. The surface of the left side of the stela, which continues the scene on the front, is destroyed at the level of the base panel. On the back, the base level is seriously eroded, but contains the remains of a base panel, whose surviving details do not seem consistent with a continuation of the saurian figure.

We therefore suspect that the scene on the back was carved onto the stela after the now three-sided scene was had already been carved. The scene with scantly clad figures would then postdate the scene with classic epi-Olmec features. This is consistent with widely-shared views according to which Monument 4 and the back of Monument 2, which also have scantily clad figures, are of Late Classic date. John Graham identifies scantily clad main figures on Terminal Classic monuments at Seibal as depictions of people from Tabasco or southern Veracruz; they might be from the same cultural group as the people who appear to have taken over control at Cerro de las Mesas after the epi-Olmec era, and possibly ended epi-Olmec control there.

Monuments that appear to postdate the epi-Olmec period

The discussion of Monument 2 in §4.2.6 suggests that the sculptures depicting sparsely clad figures with minimal adornments as main figures postdate the epi-Olmec period at Cerro de las Mesas. Two other monuments fall into this group. All three seem to make (minimal) use of hieroglyphs.

Monument 4

What is generally treated as the front of this beautiful sculpture, carved in the round on three sides, is one of the most frequently illustrated sculptures from Cerro de las Mesas. The icon at the forehead of this sculpture recalls the Zapotec day sign Reed (Caso’s Glyph D); it differs in having a roughly U-shaped element in place of the central circle of the Zapotec form. The double-striped face painting on the cheek of this monument recalls features both of Monte Alban I and II versions of the Zapotec sign for the day Flint, which depict a sacrificial victim with face painting, and markings on some instances of the epi-Olmec syllabogram sa (based on *sa7=sa7 ’noble(man)’). Oaxacan influences have been noted at Cerro de las Mesas during the Monte Alban II era.

The fourth side of the monument is slightly curved, and bears a low relief carving that wraps around a beveled corner at its left. There is damage all along the back edge of that extension, damaging both the low-relief carving and the side of the full round sculpture, which seem to have met along a seam.

It appears that the sculpture on the back and the full round sculpture were carved at different times. The damage at corner on the left, from the point of view of the low-relief sculpture, has removed almost all if not all of the evidence that would allow one to prove which came first (view Monument 4 album).

There is a squared-cartouche glyph on the right of the low-relief side, at the head of a bound captive. It may (but may not) have a numeral coefficient above; if so, it is most likely 4 or 5, and is not a higher number inasmuch as the surface of the stone above the possible 4 or 5 is lower, and at the level of the remaining background. The interior of the sign is so badly damaged that its interior details are not clear; some of the lines that appear rather clear may be the result of damage. The general impression of the sign is abstract rather than iconically representational, but it may represent a face.

Squared cartouche day signs are found in some epi-Olmec texts – Chiapa de Corzo "Stela 2" (36 BCE), Cerro de las Mesas Monument 15 (468 CE), the Teotihuacan-style mask (Early or Middle Classic), so this could be an epi-Olmec sign which, however, is distinct from all other known epi-Olmec day signs (for days 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, 13, 16, 17, 18).

Stela 4

This monument probably postdates the epi-Olmec phase of the site’s sculptural tradition. The figure is scantily clothed, apart from the fashionable headwear. Lit from the left, the day sign appears to be the head of a bird; if so, it would not be clear whether it is better identified with Eagle or Buzzard/Crow. However, the sign’s details seem better brought out by lighting from the left. In this case, the features of the sign most closely resemble those of the Zapotec sign for the day Wind, with the muzzle and abbreviated lower jaw of the wind god.

The coefficient has been read since Stirling (1943) as a 5, in the all-dots system; it may in fact have been a 6, since the dot at the lower left corner does not have an iconographic function that is clear to us (view Stela 4 album).

The Alvarado stela

The Alvarado stela was photographed under difficult conditions, because it could not be photographed at night and it is fully exposed to outside light. It is also too high to place the lights so that they provide a raking angle from above. Nonetheless, the photographs provide clear enough data on most of the signs so that it can be determined that the text had nine or possibly 10 signs, five of which are relatively legible (we discuss the text as a sequence of 9 signs, A1-A9). Of the five legible glyphs, three are plausibly epi-Olmec (view The Alvarado stela album).

The sign at A9, which represents a kind of title according to Justeson and Kaufman’s analysis, has been adequately represented in past drawings.

The sign at A5 is very plausibly equatable with the pa epi-Olmec sign, given that the photographs reveal a series of striations on the "brush" end of the sign.

The "lazy 8" in a day sign cartouche at A1 has a clear tail emerging at the lower right, suggesting that it indeed depicts a coiled snake; there is no discernable trace of a head at the upper left, but the lazy 8 does not close up at the upper right, so it is possible that a head occupied part of the interior of the glyph. It is likely that the sign represents the day name Snake. However, no numeral coefficient seems to have been associated with the day sign. (The rectangle below the day sign is not especially plausible as a numerical bar.)

Epi-Olmec monuments from El Mesón

Columnar basalt monument from El Mesón

The general features of the figure, its context on a natural basalt column, and its general placement on that column recall those of the Alvarado stela. A significant feature of is the presence of the EARTH symbol at the bottom of the base panel; it is closer to the form of this icon as it is rendered in the epi-Olmec script than is that on any other monument (view Columnar basalt from El Mesón album).

There is a possibly glyphic element between the sky band and the headgear of the figure, which may end in a numeral bar. The features of this element, even its profile, are not clear to us.

Slab stela from El Mesón

Note the form of the object in the main figure’s forward hand, which provides a model for the sign discussed in section 2.10 (view El Mesón Stela 1 album).

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