Stone Trees Transplanted? Central Mexican Stelae of the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic and the Question of Maya ‘Influence’

Agency, Alterity, Appropriation: Postclassic Lowland Maya Uses and Modifications of the “Mixteca-Puebla” or “International” Style

“…In studies of interactions between the Maya and peoples of other regions of Mesoamerica, the discourse of “influence” in the last century frequently recycled colonialist tropes and stereotypes of Native Americans going back to the European conquest and colonization of the New World (Jones 1995:22–26). The Maya were usually framed as the “good Indians” or “noble savages,” while the central Mexicans were the barbarians that either led them astray as (literal) bad influences or stood in passive need of enlightenment from their Maya neighbors (see Jordan 2014:78–80 for further discussion and Pasztory 1993 and Stone-Miller 1993 for additional critical remarks on “influence” as commonly used in pre-Columbian art history).…”

“…It has the advantage of stressing the agency of the “borrowers” over the suggestion of passivity in “influence,” though of course any term can potentially become overused and its meaning overextended or blurred once entrenched in the discourse of any field. The possible social mechanisms for the selective adoption and adaptation of images and styles from outside of a polity, ethnic group, or culture are many and varied (see Jordan 2014:86–93, 190–193), as the discussion below reflects. They include the far journeying of elite ritual specialists to acquire exotic sacra (both objects and ideas) to bolster their prestige at home (Helms 1988, 1993), the ritual “purchase” of foreign cults and their paraphernalia (Pohl 2001), trade, gift exchanges between elites, and religious pilgrimage (Ringle et al 1998).…”

“…Some of these same Mayanists (including, in addition to Morley, Thompson [1954]), however, often embraced central Mexican “influence” or invasion to explain the divergences from Classic styles among the Postclassic Maya, both at Early Postclassic Chichen Itza and in Late Postclassic works in the International Style. Since the Postclassic Maya were framed as “decadent” by comparison with their privileged Classic predecessors, central Mexican outsiders often got credited with a major role in their alleged cultural and aesthetic decline (see Jones 1995:21–104 and Jordan 2014:77–80 for critical historiographies). Later in the twentieth century, some Mayanists began to reverse the flow of “influence” to claim selected aspects of Postclassic central Mexican art, particularly at Early Postclassic Tula, as reflections or imitations of Maya ideas (e.g., Miller 1985; Schele and Mathews 1998:200–201, 358–359), sometimes couched in stigmatizing terms as inferior provincial copies (e.g., Kubler 1961; Lincoln 1990:189–194)…”