Werness, Maline

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Maline WernessDepartment of Art and Art HistoryUniversity of Texas, AustinM.D.W@mail.utexas.edu"A 'Handy' Identification of Artists in the Chocholá Style Ceramic Corpus"Maya potters working around 700 CE in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in modern-day Mexico created unique, deeply carved ceramics (IMAGE).  First named the Chocholá styleby Michael Coe in 1973, this ceramic group typically lacks provenience—almost all publishedChocholá specimens come from unauthorized excavations.  At present, the only major examplesof published work dealing with Chocholá style ceramics are Coe's  definition of the style,Carolyn Tate's  and Traci Ardren's  discussion of representative iconography and Nikolai Grube's, Jose Miguel García Campillo's (1992) and Eric Boot's  considerations of the hieroglyphic texts.Each of these brief publications leaves unanswered many questions about the style.  The style itself was clearly reserved for elite consumption.  The hieroglyphic texts foundon Chocholá pots refer to important, historical individuals whose names also appear in themonumental record (García 1992).  Furthermore, significant titles like sajal and bakab areubiquitous in the style, as is the deep carving used for rendering imagery (IMAGE).  The depthof carving (IMAGE) mimics that associated with monumental stone sculpture throughout theentire Maya region (cf. Tate 1985; Ardren 1995).  Ameliorating the style's historical lack of context, new excavations securely anchorChocholá ceramics in the North and suggest several spheres of production (IMAGE).  Based onepigraphic and archaeological evidence, the clearest identification pinpoints Oxkintok and itssurroundings, in the heart of the Puuc or hilly region of the Yucatán Peninsula .  The Xcalumkin1area bordering the Puuc region may also have acted as main area of production for the style .Chocholá ceramics have reportedly been found at both locations during recent excavations,which further solidifies the connection with production (Schmidt 2001; Dominique Michelet2007, personal communication).  Other areas of manufacture may very well have existed outsidethe Puuc region, however, as is implied by one Chocholá reference to Ti-ho (or modern Mérida),an area where excavations also unearthed an unusual variation of the style .  Now that productionsites can be identified, more specific techniques of manufacture can also be explored through theanalysis of individual hieroglyphic texts.  A single artist responsible for producing multipleceramics will be identified and technological aspects of ceramic creation will also be considered.Chocholá vessels, like most elite Maya ceramics, included writing in the form ofdedicatory formulae, or Primary Standard Sequences.  Such dedicatory formulae usuallyincorporate several different sections.  In the most complete Chocholá examples (IMAGE), apoorly understood hieroglyph opens the dedicatory phrase, followed by a reference to the waythe text was created—i.e., through carving.  An explicit reference to the vessel itself opens thenext section, and is followed by another text string that again mentions the vessel and furtheridentifies its intended contents (cf. Grube 1990).  Additional hieroglyphs are often included andreveal the name of the patron, the owner or the artist.  While personal names occur repeatedly inthe corpus of Chocholá ceramics, simple titles like bakab and sajal can also stand by themselves(cf. Grube 1990 and Boot 2006).  Several characteristics separate Chocholá style dedicatory formulae from more standardexamples, however (IMAGE).  First, the text itself may be reversed, either in the orientation ofindividual hieroglyphs or in the overarching reading order (García 1992: 188).  Chocholá textsalso frequently incorporate a reference to the carving of the vessel and certain syllables are givenfull form—the k'i syllable, for example, is almost always rendered as a bird wing, while in the2Chocholá corpus, it can appear either as a bird wing or as the entire bird itself (García 1992:188).  While these traits clearly distinguish the Chocholá style from other Maya ceramics, theyare not evident in every Chocholá example.  Chocholá texts can, for instance, follow morestandard dedicatory forms.  Even in these examples, however, a predilection for certain glyphictypes and styles can be seen (IMAGE).  In fact, it is the consistency of Chocholá dedicatoryformulae that allows for the inclusion of a stylistic subset of ceramics that do not containimagery .  Consistent glyphic forms occur repeatedly in the current corpus.  While it is not thepurpose of this paper to develop an in-depth understanding of such repetitions, a few generalcomments are warranted.  The u syllable, as a third person pronoun, is one of the most usedsyllables in ancient Maya hieroglyphic writing (IMAGE).  For this reason, it can take the widestvariety of forms.  In the Chocholá record, however, only two main versions of the u syllableoccur .  The first, and most common, is composed of two vertically arranged circles with visualdetails inserted between them (IMAGE).  The other is created by an oblong, vertically arrangedset of two parallel, curved lines in a comb-like shape.  Another typical inclusion can be seen inthe reference to the carving of the vessel—the famous lu-bat collocation followed by y-uk'ib'(IMAGE).  In this case, as has already been noted, the k'i syllable often takes the form of a full-figured bird.  The other diagnostic characteristic here, though, is the use of the knot form of theyu syllable.  While not as common (or as varied in form) as potential u syllables, the yu syllablecould have been rendered differently.  The repetition that occurs within Chocholá dedicatoryformulae is also unusual.  Ancient Maya artists frequently used different variations of the samesyllabic sign when it appears multiple times in a single inscription.  Chocholá artists, on the otherhand, seemed to prefer the visual parallels such repetition offered.  When yu or lu syllables areused multiple times in the Chocholá corpus, for example, they almost always take the same form.3Thus, the Chocholá style is an example of a highly systematized pattern of ceramic production.  While Chocholá ceramics were made at a number of different locations, they seem tohave been created over a fairly short period of time.  In fact, based on both epigraphic analysisand depositional information, the production of the style seems to be limited to the eighthcentury, and might be further restricted to the first half of that one hundred year period .  Suchevidence indicates that only one or, at the most, two or three generations of artists could havebeen responsible for creating the style.  While the vast array of ancient Maya monuments and artobjects have long been credited to a small number of scribes and artists, little effort has beenmade to identify specific craftsmen or their production techniques.  Chocholá texts and imageryprovide a unique opportunity for identifying artistic hands and examining production techniques.While the same artist can be connected with several ceramics in the larger Chocholácorpus, due to time constraints only two examples will be considered here.  The first (IMAGE)has been recognized as Chocholá since the style was so named by Michael Coe in 1973 (cf. Coe1973: cat. 55).  The second vessel, however, has long resided in private collections and has notbeen published before now.  Happily, it was recently donated to the University of Texas, Austinunder the care of Dr. Steve Bourget and can now be included within the larger Chocholágrouping.  Even a cursory perusal of the texts on each ceramic indicates their striking similarity(IMAGE).  Not only does each text say exactly the same thing, both do so by using precisely thesame combination of hieroglyphs.  The two texts can be read as follows: u-ja-yi yu-k'i-b'i ti-tzi-hi li ca-ca-wa for ujaay y-uk'ib' ti tzihil cacaw referring to the vessel as a drinking pot for freshcacaw, a chocolaty drink frequently referred to in standard dedicatory formulae when a liquid isnamed .  The texts themselves are not at all unusual in the wider scope of Maya dedicatoryformulae.  In fact, they display none of the characteristics that, as mentioned above, serve to4separate the Chocholá style from more typical renditions of the dedicatory formulae.  It is theexact replication of the textual string, which is otherwise completely normal, that makes thesetwo examples interesting.  The similarity exhibited by these two ceramics goes further than just using the samewords to create the highly formulaic dedicatory text.  The inclusions within each glyphic signreplicate one another exactly across these two ceramics.  Simply consider the first term, ujaay.As already stated, the u is one of the most used syllables in the ancient Maya hieroglyphic recordand occurs in two basic forms in the Chocholá corpus.  The two ceramics under considerationhere both use the u syllable composed of two vertically arranged circles.  While the two circlesare standard, the central visual element can take a number of different forms, as this illustrationindicates.  The two Chocholá pots considered here, however, contain exactly the same series ofhorizontal, parallel lines in contrast to other options.  The rest of the two texts bear the sameconsistent rendition of the glyphic shapes and their constituent elements.  Small deviations in therepresentation of the k'i syllable are the only exception to this duplication, although the wingform is used in each case instead of the full-figure bird.  The marked similarity of these two text strings indicates that they were created by thesame hand.  The individual glyphs do reflect minute differences—one seems to be morecurvilinear, for example, while the other has a kind of vertical stretching of the glyph block.  Incomparison with other signs from typical Chocholá pots, however, the level of similaritybetween these two examples is unique and therefore particularly striking .  In fact, one wouldexpect the slight variation evident in these two instances; simply consider the slight differencesin a person's signature across multiple examples.  In this case, in addition to the duplication ofglyphic forms, similarities in details caused by the specific motor skills of the artist in questionsupport this identification.  The glyphs from each pot tend to look like they've been pulled5slightly up and to the right, a pattern that is especially noticeable in the first three glyphs, withtheir rounded-square forms.  This idiosyncratic feature reflects exactly the kind of subconsciousprocess and individualized development of motor skills that allows for the identification ofartists' hands.  The major difference between these two vessels is found in the constituent imagery(IMAGE).  Even though the texts are identical and the iconographic themes are similar—bothdepict young lords—the images themselves are markedly different.  Perhaps, then, when theimage becomes a major focus, the text can be standardized.1  This specific example, togetherwith the recognition that other individual artists' hands can be similarly identified (andeventually, it is hoped, linked with multiple production sites) has important implications forMaya ceramic production.  First, it is evident that individual, identifiable craftsmen createdmultiple elite ceramics in the same style over a short period of time.  Second, such consistency,in both the work of individual artists and across groups of artists, seems to indicate that there wasa coherent understanding of the way in which Chocholá ceramics should be produced that wasarticulated across space.  This, in turn, implies a much greater sense of artistic community thanhas previously been suggested. When the UT ceramic is examined further, the manner in which the glyphs were carvedcontains some intriguing information (IMAGE).  The first three glyphs seem to be carved using afine, though not sharp, point.  It has previously been assumed that Chocholá vessels were carvedduring the leather-hard stage, when the clay would have been partially dried (cf. Ardren 1995).In this instance, however, the softness of the line in all cases (i.e. the lack of hard edges) seems toindicate that the hieroglyphs were carved during the wet stage.  The last hieroglyph isparticularly interesting.  The deep impressions that can be seen on both the left and right sides1 There are several exceptions to this general rule even within the Chocholá corpus, but then, theChocholá corpus, as already noted, is surprisingly consistent.  6contrast markedly with the carefully incised lines evident in the same glyph from the otherceramic.  Furthermore, there is a variation in the thickness of line that does not occur in any ofthe other glyphs from the other ceramic nor in any preceding this final glyph from the UTceramic (IMAGE).  Both of these hieroglyphs end the dedicatory sequences in each case and, indoing so, curve around the bottom of the vessel form.  The varying depths and line thicknesses inthe UT ceramic, especially in the last glyph, may indicate that the ancient artist used individualstamps to create each incised hieroglyphic block.  Thus, the use of a stamp on the curved surfaceof the UT vessel would require a rocking movement to impress all edges of the stamp into thewet clay, This, in turn, explains the deeper impressions found in isolated areas of the hieroglyph.Thus, a single artist has been identified as the creator of at least two Chocholá ceramics(IMAGE).  The identical texts found on the two vessels considered here have larger connotationsregarding ceramic manufacture among the ancient Maya.  Certain potters, for example, seem tohave specialized in certain elite ceramic types.  Furthermore, the replication of some elements,like the dedicatory formulae, was not eschewed.  On a related issue, the wide distribution of theChocholá style, combined with the consideration of multiple pots from single artists, seems toindicate larger artistic and scribal schools that, in this case, covered the northern YucatanPeninsula.  Additionally, the way in which the hieroglyphs in the UT ceramic were createdprovides interesting implications regarding technical modes of production—if stamps wereindeed used in the UT example, then important evidence now exists for a way of producinghieroglyphic sequences on ceramics that has not been recognized until now.  Was this a functionof greater mechanization?  Were some vessels stamped first, before they were carved withimagery?  In this case, then, if a problem occurs in the process of creating the image, only theimage is lost as the text string could be replicated easily.  Or were the image and text both addedin the wet stage?  In such a scenario, the artist might be tempted to develop stamps so that he or7she would be free to spend more time on the actual image creation and less on the repetitious andexacting carving of the dedicatory formula.  There are some indications that stamps were used onother Chocholá dedicatory sequences, but how do the ceramics that contain no imagery yet mayreflect stamped hieroglyphic strings work into this continuum?  These are some of the questionsthat the present research raises and more work must be done on the Chocholá style before furtherconclusions can be reached.  8

A "Handy" Identification of Artists in the Chocholá Style Ceramic Corpus

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A "Handy" Identification of Artists in the Chocholá Style Ceramic Corpus

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