Sowing the Blood With the Maize: Zapotec Effigy Vessels and Agricultural Ritual

Abstract

This paper examines how maize and blood were central elements in ancient Zapotec religious practices and how they were conceptually linked. I analyze the iconography of different types of Classic period Zapotec ceramic effigy vessels. Using a comparative approach, I identify elements that frequently appear on the urns, such as maize plants in different stages of growth, or representations of the milpa. Framing these observations with early colonial historical accounts and ethnographic studies, I suggest that the main theme involved in these ancient representations was fertility, maintained by a sacred pact forged between humans and their deities that required sacrifice through bloodletting. The drawing and offering of blood insured a cycle of sustained and abundant growth for their most important crop: maize. Though many advances have been made in recent years regarding Zapotec iconography, I will offer some new interpretations regarding specific forms represented on the urns.

The Symbolism, Use, and Archaeological Context of Masks in Formative Period Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico

“…Two independent representations of a rain deity in the Terminal Formative period attest to the importance of such beings (and of the phenomena of rain and lightning) during this time. As other researchers have discussed (Covarrubias 1957; Flannery & Marcus 1976; Masson 2001; Sellen 2002; 2011; Taube 1995), the Formative period was a time of increasing representations of rain and lightning deities throughout Mesoamerica. Masks such as those found at Cerro de la Virgen were likely integral to rituals bringing living people into contact with, even merging them with, divinities, weather events and powerful animate objects.…”

Constituting Animacy and Community in a Terminal Formative Bundled Offering from the Coast of Oaxaca, Mexico

“…The human-object hybrid of mask and maskwearing ritual specialist has typically been referred to in the literature as a deity 'impersonator', a term that originated as a way to categorize phenomena that did not correspond to Western dichotomies of human and the divine (Jansen 1986;Sellen 2011). Classicperiod Zapotec urns and effigy vessels often depicted Figure 15.…”

“…11.11). individuals 'impersonating' the rain deity Cociyo, holding in their hands maize plants at various stages of maturation and engaging in bloodletting as a sacrificial offering to ensure an abundant harvest (Sellen 2002;. Adam Sellen (2011) and Javier Urcid (2005) have proposed that the effigies are idealized representations of noble ancestors impersonating deities related to the Mesoamerican ritual calendar. The variability in deity masks and costumes found on the vessels, and the fact that the mask types are actually interchangeable, supports the view that they represented real-life ritual attire (Sellen 2002).…”