People of Clay and Stone: Indexing Other-than-human Animacy and Collective Identity in Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-3129089/v1

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People of Clay and Stone: Indexing Other-than-human Animacy and Collective Identity in Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-3129089/v1

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This paper analyzes the unique assemblages of humans and other-than-humans animated the sacred landscape of Cerro de la Virgen, a hilltop site occupied during the Formative period (1800 BCE – 250 CE) in the lower Río Verde Valley of coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. Commensalism in the region increased markedly in scope and complexity throughout the Formative period, culminating in the region’s first polity at 100 CE. Feasting practices became relatively standardized, but the placement of objects and bodies in public architecture—a set of collective practices associated with the vital forces that animated the cosmos—varied considerably from site to site during the late Terminal Formative period (150 BC—250 CE). Lower Verde scholars have argued that these idiosyncrasies reflect the myriad collective identities of the region’s hinterland communities—a pattern rooted in local affiliations that may have conflicted with an expanding regional identity centered at the urban center of Río Viejo. I augment this discussion by highlighting the role that the materiality of the landscape, present before humans even occupied the region, played in the construction of collective identity. I develop an interpretive approach that pays special attention to Indigenous concepts of ontology, particularly those related to animacy and its transference, and utilizes the semiosis of American philosopher, Charles Sanders Peirce, to elucidate meaning from deposits of cached objects. I argue that animate qualities assembled through fired clay and chiseled stone at Cerro de la Virgen afforded a ritual pattern that was unique in coastal Oaxaca at the end of the Formative.

indigenous ontology

semiotics

Oaxaca

Formative period

religion

Life in ancient Mesoamerica was inexorably bound to many ontological principles, none more important than the accessibility of the vital cosmic forces that animated the world (Freidel et al. 1993; Furst 1995; Harrison-Buck 2015; Joyce 2020a; López Austin 1988, 1989; Stross 1998). For ancient Mesoamericans, the boundaries between the natural world, human culture, and the divine were often blurred (Monaghan 1995, 2000). Religious experience was entangled with everyday life such that the animating practices through which people transferred, transformed, and concentrated the vital forces of the cosmos defined sacrality (Joyce 2020b; Stross 1998). Consulting revered ancestors, petitioning deities of the earth and sky, consecrating marriages, and interacting with sacred buildings, mountains of creation, maize, and life-bringing storms all relied on this foundational precept. Religious rituals involving other-than-human beings were consequential to the creation, integration, and maintenance of collective identities, but they could also create fissures along which people negotiated or contested political authority (Barber 2013; Blackmore 2011; Hutson 2010; Hutson et al. 2018; Joyce 2018; Robin 2002; Smith 2015). Among the most politically potent and archaeologically visible contexts of negotiation involved the ritualized placement of offerings within public buildings (Joyce 2020a, 2020b; Joyce and Barber 2015).

Public buildings and communal spaces gathered not only people, but also objects, places, substances, qualities, and ideas that were imbued with the same vibrancy as human life. In this paper, I analyze the unique assemblages of humans and other-than-humans that animated the built landscape of Cerro de la Virgen, a hilltop site occupied near the end of the Formative period (1800 BCE – 250 CE) in the lower Río Verde Valley of coastal Oaxaca, Mexico. Commensalism in the region increased markedly in scope and complexity throughout the Formative period, culminating in the region’s first polity at ca. 100 CE (Hepp 2019; Joyce et al. 2016). An urban center developed at the site of Río Viejo, and several secondary communities emerged in the valley. The polity appears to have been tenuous, collapsing little more than a century after its rise. Archaeological evidence suggests that political authority was not centralized at Río Viejo but was rather diffuse and distributed among hinterland communities with distinct collective identities (Barber et al. 2014; Joyce and Barber 2015:821; Joyce et al. 2016).

Local histories and the unique materialities of nearby landscapes were deeply embedded in the construction of monuments, the caching of objects, the interment of human bodies, and the commensal acts of feasting and drinking (Barber 2013; Barber et al. 2014; Brzezinski 2019; Brzezinski et al. 2017; Joyce 2020a; Joyce et al. 2016; Joyce and Barber 2015). While some practices in the lower Verde reflect widespread, standardized modalities of commensalism, the discursive act of object caching varied considerably in scale and character from site to site. I argue that this variability points to the construction of unique collective identities that can be, in part, attributed to the inherent materiality of the landscape that was present even before humans occupied the region. I draw on Indigenous concepts of animacy as well as the semiosis of Charles Sanders Peirce to elucidate meaning from deposits of cached objects. At Cerro de la Virgen, the animacy entrapped in fired clay and chiseled stone afforded a ritual pattern that was unique to coastal Oaxaca, and possibly to all of Mesoamerica.

Studying identities in the past permits a diverse and situationally contextual reading of a foundational characteristic of humanity—the lived and embodied experience of performing “sameness” or “difference” (Appiah 2005; Butler 1990; Fowler 2010). Dominant trends in archaeological theory have dictated how scholars have conceptualized identity. Culture-historians of the early 20th century presumed that social identities were channeled through material culture and only changed in the wake of crisis or population replacement (Childe 1926). Later, efforts to categorize societies led processual archaeologists to regard culture as a means of adaptation, where identities functioned to fulfill basic human needs and adapt to changing environments (Binford 1971; Deetz 1967). Evolutionary views of identity were more dynamic, but they tended to oversimplify the complex ideational relations that account for the emergence of different identities, particularly how people experienced, recapitulated, and contested them. Critiques levied by the post-processualists of the later 20th century brought identity to the fore by positioning people as social agents that could reflect on and change the material conditions of their existence (Conkey and Spector 1984; Joyce 2000b; Sassaman 2000). Similar practices among groups did not necessarily correlate with a shared identity, however. Some practices may be undertaken by different identity groups or may become a means of identifying a group, rather than the other way around. As Christopher Tilley (1989) argued, just as we cannot glean a single interpretation from the archaeological record, people of separate identity groups may have interpreted identifying characteristics differently. In this way, identity is relational and contextual (Hepp et al. 2022).

Archaeological discussions of identity in the last century largely agreed on one fundamental tenet—that identity was socially constructed (Fowler 2010). The notion that identities manifest solely through people’s actions is problematic because it foists a Cartesian view of subjectivity and agency on the past that would not be familiar to societies outside of the modern West (Harris 2016). This “humanist” framework makes things and the materiality of the human body secondary to ideas (Harris and Robb 2012). Further, it transforms the other-than-human world into a passive slate on which people inscribe cultural forms. What ends up mattering is not the material character of the world, but rather the representations of ideas with which people engage symbolically. People certainly represent concepts through objects, but to privilege the ideational plane ignores the “vibrancy” of matter: its propensity to act independently of human intention (Bennett 2010). Attempts to break down the material-ideational dualism present in representationalist approaches have been bolstered by the “ontological turn” in anthropology (Bird-David 1999; Descola 2013; Viveiros de Castro 2004). Though not yet mainstream in archaeology, a renewed interest in non-Western ontologies has challenged the opposition of people and things by demonstrating that the boundaries between them are quite permeable (Alberti 2016; Harris 2016; Olsen 2010). Such a perspective does not merely afford agency to humans or things independently. Instead, what matters is the fluid relationality between entities that allows them to cohere, mutate, dissolve, and recombine.

An emphasis on relations also allows us to question the very meaning of “personhood”—the state or condition of being a person—and consequently, identity. For instance, does “personhood” refer to a unique condition of the human mind, or can other-than-humans take on person-like qualities? Do the things that delineate identity simply stand in for ideas, or can they affect the makeup of identities independently of human thought? Archaeological approaches that probe the issue of personhood have come closest to avoiding the humanist binds that complicate research on identity (Harris 2016:23–25). These studies share the fundamental tenet that personhood emerges from the relations in which a person is enmeshed (Chapman 2000; Fowler 2004, 2010; Gillespie 2001; Strathern 1988, 1992; Watts 2013; Harrison-Buck and Hendon 2018). The attribution of person-like qualities to other-than-humans is widely attested in the ethnographic and ethnohistoric record of Mesoamerica. For the Chatino of Oaxaca—the ethnolinguistic group most closely associated with the earliest complex societies of the lower Río Verde Valley—humans are infused with Tyi’i, an immaterial “soul substance” located inside the heart, to which it offers its strength (Bartolome and Barabas 1996:225). When a person faints, it is a sign that the Tyi’i has moved away from the body momentarily. Though Tyi’i embodies human vitality, modern Chatino ontology dictates that humans are not separate from the animal kingdom. Therefore, humans also possess Ni’cone, a vital essence shared with their unique animal companion (Bartolome and Barabas 1996:226).

Ceremonies involving birth and death rites also afforded personhood to architecture by animating or terminating the vitality of buildings (Brown and Emery 2008; Greenberg 1981; Stross 1998).

Greenberg (1981) shows, for example, how “houses” and “doors” are metaphors for bonds among humans, deities, and nature in the Chatino belief system. Acts of provisioning structures or landforms with sustenance to maintain their animacy have also been documented across Mesoamerica (Christenson 2008; Durán 1971:368, 463; Stross 1998). In many highland Maya towns, images of saints like Hermano San Simón are said to eat, drink, and smoke the offerings that are left for them (Polk et al. 2005). For the Tzotzil Maya, many components of houses such as daub, thatch, and wood posts are endowed with vitality by the animate earth and forest prior to manipulation by humans (Brown and Emery 2008).

Not everything was a person, however. We must be cautious to avoid indiscriminately applying to the past an ontology that was historically, geographically, and situationally contextual (Fowles 2013). One way to navigate through this potential trap is to explore the relationships that stitch together humans and other-than-humans to highlight animacy and the qualities that constitute identities. Archaeologists inspired by the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) of Bruno Latour (1993, 1999, 2005) have argued that agency emerges from the relations that arrange an entity’s components (Olsen 2007; Webmoor 2007; Webmoor and Witmore 2008). In referring to “relations,” I draw on Pauketat and Alt’s (2018:73) definition:

Relations are the physical properties, experiential qualities, and other flows or movements of substances, materials, and phenomena that become attached to, entangled, or associated with others and, in the process, define not only people but other organisms, things, places, and the like.

Conceptualizing relationality in this way highlights the properties, qualities, and movements of things “out in the world” that are foundational to the human condition. For example, an experiential quality such as “heat” requires connecting an encountered substance with the degree to which that substance reacts against the senses. According to Tzotzil Maya philosophy, a human life is a cycle of heat, beginning as a cold fetus and gaining spiritual heat as the individual moves through life (Gasco et al. 2016). Physical properties such as the “brittleness” of obsidian or the “compactness” of clayey sediments need not be filtered through human perception, but nonetheless facilitate acts like bloodletting and mound construction, respectively.

An ontological approach to identity acknowledges that people and things are the outcomes of affective relations. “Affect” refers to the way bodies—not just human bodies, but organic and inorganic bodies of all kinds—may encounter one another, alter the capacities of other bodies to act, and subsequently transform themselves (Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Deleuze 1988; Spinoza 1996). Affect can also relate to how the senses elicit emotion (Hamilakis 2014). In ancient Mesoamerica, some other-than-human entities facilitated access to the divine realm—an affect that assembled animate beings in unique ways. For example, the fundamental religious principle known as the “sacred covenant” holds that, in return for permission to practice agriculture, which causes deities of the earth, rain, and sky considerable pain, humans must sacrifice their bodies and vitality in death to be consumed by the deities (Hamann 2002; Joyce 2000; Monaghan 1990:562, 1995). Failing to provide sacrifices could result in cosmic calamity (López Austin 1988). The most potent sacrifices involved human blood, but the covenant could also be fulfilled with copal incense, maize dough, jade, quetzal feathers, deity masks, ceramic vessels, figurines, and sherds (Brzezinski et al. 2017; Freidel et al. 1993; Joyce et al. 2016; Joyce and Barber 2015; López Luján 2005; Monaghan 1990). Zedeño (2009:412) defines such items as “index objects,” which were unique in Native American ontologies in their ability to alter, transfer, or reposition vitality in relation to other bodies.

Humans and other animate inhabitants of the ancient Mesoamerican world were infused with the same fundamental vitality, but it was only through processes of signification that one could experience the other. Recent archaeological engagement with the semiosis of American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1958-65) presents a path toward elucidating meaning from relations between seemingly disparate entities (Cipolla 2013; Crossland 2018; Harris 2021; Harris and Cipolla 2017; Preucel 2010; Swenson 2018). Pierce’s semiotic philosophy was grounded in three modalities of being that crosscut the mind-matter divide—categories defined by potential, force, and habit. Potential, elsewhere referred to in Peirce’s esoteric nomenclature as “firstness,” refers to the quality of something that exists independently of anything else. In archaeological terms, potential can be seen in a raw material such as obsidian that exists, with its own qualities, independent of other objects. “Secondness” is reflected in the category of force wherein the potential of the world is actualized, thereby affecting and constraining experiences (Crossland and Bauer 2017). It is the quality of reaction, response, or resistance to something else. For example, considering the way that people used fire to cook food or water to irrigate crops situates actions as responses to the environment. Peirce defined “thirdness,” his third category of being, to reflect the tendency of the world to form habits as part of self-organizing processes that allow us to think about the emergence of life and of other new and emergent patterns in the natural world (Crossland and Bauer 2017).

Peirce’s framework accommodates the phenomenology of the other-than-human world by going beyond the purely representationalist model of signification popularized by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, which rested on the binary of “signifier” and “signified.” In Peirce’s model, signs stand in an indivisible triadic relationship, first to themselves, second to an “object,” and third for an “interpretant” (Fig. 1a). Archaeologists have drawn extensively on Peirce’s three sign types—icons, indexes, and symbols. Icons relate two things that share a physical likeness, such as a portrait carved in stone and the ruler it depicts. Indexes demonstrate a cause-and-effect relation that signals the “contextual existence of an entity,” illustrated by the classic example of a weathervane pointing in the direction of the wind (Preucel 2010:68). Finally, symbols create an arbitrary link between a sign and what it indicates, as is the case with most written language. Identities, both personal and communal, are constituted by all three types of signs in Peirce’s model.

The application of Peirce’s semiosis allows us to transcend the Cartesian mind-matter dichotomy by investigating the chains of material signs that constitute identities. The most consequential element in this process is the third component of Peirce’s triad, the interpretant. The interpretant is dynamic in that it is a product or mediation of the initial sign-object relationship that designates responses, feelings, or affective reactions (Swenson 2018:356–357). The temporality of materials is a key component of interpretants as they are strung together. Old objects such as heirlooms often irrupt in the present and point to new material signs that produce further interpretants (Fig. 1b). Temporality for ancient Mesoamericans was not only a linear sequence of events, but was also a complex, multi-dimensional, and continuous process that was enfolded within material objects and their interactions. I use the term "enfolding" time to refer to the ways in which material objects both reflect and shape the cultural contexts in which they are created and used. In doing so, they become imbued with historical and temporal significance. Meanings and functions of objects are constantly changing over time as they are reinterpreted and repurposed by successive generations. Thinking of time as “enfolded” allows us to understand how material objects carry traces of the past and become transformed by the present. In the next section, I examine the animate entities that were linked together spatially and temporally by chains of interpretants embedded in the landscape of coastal Oaxaca.

Animacy in the Natural and Built Landscape

Archaeological research on the later Formative Period in the lower Rio Verde Valley has shed light on the milieu of collective identities in the hinterland surrounding the early political center of Rio Viejo (Barber 2013; Barber et al. 2014; Brzezinski et al. 2022b; Joyce et al. 2016; Joyce and Barber 2015; Workinger 2002). Among these rural communities is Cerro de la Virgen, an archaeological site located on a large hill, 10 km east of the Río Verde and 14 km north of the Pacific Ocean (Fig. 2). The site was occupied as early as the Late Formative (400–150 BCE), reaching its peak size of 72 hectares during the Terminal Formative (Joyce et al. 2009). Recent fieldwork at Cerro de la Virgen has focused on the monumental architecture of the site’s ceremonial center, which consists of a series of terraces that cover over one hectare supporting a plaza, several architectural complexes, and a ballcourt (Fig. 3; Barber 2013; Brzezinski 2019). At the eastern end, a monumental stairway leads to Structure 1—a small, restricted public building that served as a temple. Situated near the top of the hill is Residence 1, an elite household that was occupied during the late Terminal Formative Chacahua phase (Barber 2005). People living at Residence 1 had preferential access to Structure 1 and may have constituted a founding kin-based group. Other residents of the site lived on the dozens of terraces that surround the ceremonial center.

Structure 1

The best evidence for the transfer of life-giving vitality to architecture at Cerro de la Virgen comes from Terrace 10. Immediately preceding the first construction phase of the terrace, residents placed a bundle of stone objects and nine miniature ceramic vessels directly on bedrock (Brzezinski 2019:186–191; Brzezinski et al. 2017). The stone objects were purposefully broken and wrapped with a textile or some other perishable material prior to placement. Included were the mask of a rain deity, a fragment of a second mask, two miniature tabular thrones, and a figurine (Fig. 4). Ritual activities on the terrace culminated with the burning of a perishable wattle-and-daub structure that sealed a deposit of ceramic vessels overlying the bundled offering. One small vessel was placed upside down with a human long bone balanced on the upturned base. Residents then built Structure 1-sub, a low masonry platform with its center point oriented directly above the bundle. Ceramic serving vessels were placed at the base of the building’s earthen fill during construction. The end of Structure 1-sub’s use was marked by a deposit of ceramic vessels placed in a pit near the occupational surface. The final phase of occupation of Terrace 10 witnessed the construction of Structure 1 atop the earlier masonry foundation. Ceramic vessels were deposited within the building’s fill in a similar pattern to Structure 1-sub. A final deposit of ceramic vessels just below the occupational surface in the patio adjacent to Structure 1 coincided with the abandonment of the site at the end of the Formative.

The stone objects of the bundled offering index a variety of animate properties. The ergonomic features of the rain deity mask, particularly the strapping holes, chin rest, and sensorial openings for the mouth, eyes, and nostrils, indicate that it was worn by a ritual specialist (Hepp et al. 2020). The miniature thrones indexed the political authority of rulers or powerful nobles that sat upon them, but they also iconically referenced life-sized thrones as the stage on which offerings were transferred to the divine realm (Miller and Martin 2004:105). Similarly, the figurine is simultaneously an icon that physically resembles a deceased ancestor and an index that points to the presence of the ancestor’s life force in the building, like a fingerprint indexing a person’s presence at a crime scene (Crossland and Bauer 2017). The inclusion of pottery encircling the bundle may point to its personhood as an entity that required sustenance, as ceramic vessels had the capacity to transfer vital material elements such as the earth from which they were made and the food and drink they may have held (Joyce 2020a; Overholtzer 2021). My colleagues and I have suggested that the bundled offering was a petition to the rain deity for agricultural fertility, mediated by a revered ancestor and consecrated through the gathering of the objects (Brzezinski et al. 2017:524–525).

Breaking the objects released their vitality and established the associated architecture as an animate intermediary through which petitions to the divine realm could be witnessed. The phenomenon of fragmentation in ancient Mesoamerica was part of a complex social matrix concerned with expressions of personhood and its inherent divisibility (Guernsey 2020). For example, body parts that were disassociated from whole bodies were powerful and often deposited in monuments as an act of commemoration or placemaking (Fitzsimmons 2009; Geller 2012). Transferring or releasing life forces through fragmentation also extended to the world of objects and the environment (Freidel et al. 1998; Harrison-Buck et al. 2007; Stanton et al. 2008; Stross 1998; Zedeño 2008). Pieces of each mask were missing from the bundled offering, which suggests that the life force that inhabited the objects could be distributed amongst its constituent parts. Even when objects are physically complete, their potential to be part of other assemblages emphasizes the “inherent partibility of existence, from the scale of the individual body to the scale of the settlement” (R. Joyce 2018:42).

The archaeology of Structure 1 overlying the bundled offering reveals the life cycles of other-than-humans such as sacred buildings that were actualized through a complex semiosis involving ritual practices, the unique properties of things, and multiple temporalities. Builders of Structure 1 combined ceramic vessels and unconsolidated sediment to form the construction fill of the low platform. Both elements index the animate landscape. Pottery affords the capacity to hold and transfer matter in a receptacle made purely from vital elements like earth, water, and fire. Sediment forms the medium through which life-sustaining maize and other flora grow and mature. At present, it is unclear what types of substances, if any, were included in the vessels. A preliminary analysis of microbotanical residues extracted from a small sample of vessels suggested that they were not filled with plant-based ingredients such as maize kernels or fermented liquids. Broader chemical analyses of residues may shed light on the substances that were included in the vessels. Within the sandy, loamy matrix of the unconsolidated sediment of the platform fill, builders also included pieces of burned daub, likely recovered from the charred remains of perishable superstructures. These small bits of debris highlight the multiple, overlapping temporalities of construction, occupation, and destruction that characterize earthen architecture in coastal Oaxaca. Just as buildings were “ensouled” through the incorporation of index objects, they could also be ritually terminated (Joyce and Barber 2015; Stross 2008). Structure 1-sub was terminated through an offering of vessels placed in a shallow pit and sealed by the construction fill of the subsequent version of the building. Subsequently, Structure 1 was animated by an offering of vessels during construction and terminated later as the site was abandoned at the beginning of the Early Classic period (250–600 CE).

Complex A

Public architecture adjacent to Structure 1 was subject to a wider range of practices reflecting the relational ontology of animate buildings. Complex A consists of two modular building foundations oriented at a right angle, flanked to the north and south by patios. In the north patio, people placed a deposit of 260 ceramic vessels and more than 600 thin stone slabs over an extended period spanning the Terminal Formative period (Fig. 5). The offering covered 62 m², an area rivalled only by some of the lower Verde’s largest communal cemeteries of the later Formative (Barber et al. 2013). The ceramic assemblage was comprised primarily of cylindrical vessels and globular jars, both of which were not typically associated with cooking or storage (Joyce 1991). Some had eccentric forms, including square-walled vessels, “quincunx” vessels with four lobes, and cylindrical vessels with anthropomorphic appliques. The thin stone slabs were composed of granitic rock mined from the many outcrops that dotted the surrounding piedmont landscape. Occasionally they were arranged in triangular or square compartments that housed one or more vessels, but more often were placed vertically in parallel groups (Fig. 6). Many vessels and slabs were placed directly on top of previous deposits and the surrounding sediment was loosely packed and mottled with organic material, suggesting the cache may have been periodically reopened after its initial installation (Clark and Colman 2013:23). To maintain the integrity of the north patio and prevent erosion, residents built a stone drain running beneath Structure 2 that carried water off Terrace 11 to the southwest.

The extraordinary scale of the offering in Complex A suggests that groups of people may have gathered in the plaza of the ceremonial center to engage in communal rituals, including object caching, feasting, playing the ballgame, and mortuary ceremonialism. Early in the construction of the plaza, residents placed a small ceramic effigy vessel of a human foot directly on bedrock. The vessel was found in pieces, but it is unclear whether it was smashed intentionally (Fig. 7). Given its placement at the base of a layer of construction fill, and its resemblance to the anthropomorphic contents of the bundled offering beneath Structure 1, the smashed effigy vessel likely indexed the transfer of vitality to the surrounding architecture. Further, the prevalence of anthropomorphic characteristics may suggest that index objects with human features were imbued with an especially potent degree of vitality (Grove and Gillespie 1984; May et al. 2018; Stanton et al. 2008:235). In subsequent phases of construction, residents placed several series of objects that may have sustained the animacy of (or, “fed”) the plaza, including five large ceramic vessels and at least three dense deposits of thin stone slabs. The stone slabs were identical in form to those found in other offerings at the site.

While the cached deposits may have constituted a collective ritual resource located in a central, accessible place, their stratigraphic position beneath an occupational surface suggests that they were offerings. Witnessing the placement of the slabs and vessels may have accompanied commensal feasts that were prepared in an expansive earth oven located in the nearby patio of Complex C. The refuse of the earth oven was distributed across an area of estimated 5.5 m in diameter and utilized granite stones as heating elements. Residents also cooked in at least six small hearths that were interspersed among the vessels and slabs of the Complex A offering, as well as larger hearths in the south patio of Complex A and the interior patio of Complex B.

Complex B

Complex B is situated centrally along the northern edge of the ceremonial plaza, immediately adjacent to Complex A. During the early construction episodes of the complex’s supporting terrace, people may have imbued the architecture with vitality through the placement of human remains as well as caches of objects. Of the four burials recorded at Cerro de la Virgen to date, three were discovered within the earliest fill layers of Terrace 12. The earliest was Burial 2–Individual 2, a primary interment of an adult female placed in a flexed position facing east (Brzezinski 2019:247). Stratigraphic evidence indicates that residents placed B2–I2 within the construction fill as the terrace was built. During subsequent building phases, the disarticulated remains of two adults—Burial 1–Individual 1 and Burial 3–Individual 3—were interred in separate layers of fill. B1–I1 and B3–I3 were secondarily deposited, but it is unclear whether the remains were purposely moved from their original locations or were haphazardly redeposited with the fill. None of the burials in Complex B were accompanied by grave goods, suggesting that the bodies constituted offerings to the associated architecture (Joyce and Barber 2015). Like offerings of objects, burials constituted sacrifices that fulfilled the obligations of the sacred covenant and imparted vitality to other-than-human beings such as architecture (Joyce and Barber 2015:824). In return, buildings embodied the social relations that constituted communities by acting as “receptacles” for the sharing or transference of animacy that accompanied death (Hendon 2000:42). The close association of Complex B with the site’s ballcourt suggests that the placement of human remains during construction may have been coupled with ballgame rituals.

Many ontological principles are referenced in Mesoamerican ballgames, including agricultural fertility, the (re)generation of life, and the maintenance of cosmic order (Blomster and Salazar Chavez 2020; Schele and Miller 1986; Whittington 2001). The gathering of human burials, ballgame players and observers, and cached objects may have established Complex B and the ballcourt as animate beings that witnessed petitions to the Underworld. Though the characteristics of the ballgame as it was experienced at Cerro de la Virgen are unknown, the rituals associated with the game likely brought together broader groups of people, some of whom may have traveled from neighboring communities. Some participants may have watched the ballgame activities from Structure 5–a low platform built at the western edge of Terrace 12 that overlooked the playing lane. People placed objects just beneath the occupational surface of Structure 5, including a deposit of smashed ceramic vessels that may have animated the structure. The patio adjacent to the east of Structure 5 was the locus of an offering of at least 42 ceramic vessels, over 100 thin stone slabs, and several ground stone tools. Stratigraphic evidence is unclear as to whether the offering was placed during one event or several, but the similarity between the feature and the larger offering in Complex A suggests the former was placed sequentially over time to bestow sustenance on the associated architecture.

In Structure 4, an L-shaped building located on the eastern side of Complex B, locally quarried stones were shaped into formal blocks and slabs to be used in structural foundations and ritual caches, respectively. Excavations carried out in 2016 exposed a dense deposit of large stones with angular breaks and flat faces in the center of Terrace 12, as well as an assemblage of ground stone tools that collectively constituted a stone mason’s “tool kit” (Fig. 8; Brzezinski 2019:442). Included among these were hammerstones, chisels, smoothers, and an edge sharpener, all of which exhibited significant use wear. The thin stone slabs seen in many of the site’s offerings may have also been shaped at Complex B. The ground stone in the offerings of Complex B as a locus for masonry production. At present, the connection between stone working and the mortuary ceremonialism associated with the ballgame is unclear.

Complex E

The animation of other-than-humans through the gathering of index objects also took place in households but on a smaller scale (Barber 2005; Joyce 1991). The earliest residents of Complex E, a three-tiered terrace complex located 150 meters north of the ceremonial center, lived in small, perishable superstructures built on one of two low rectangular platforms. In Structure E1-sub, a modest offering of two cylindrical vessels was placed in the fill beneath the floor and seven ceramic vessels and dozens of thin stone slabs were placed below the occupational surface in an attached patio. It is unclear whether the offering was discrete or placed sequentially, but the distribution of objects follows the pattern seen in Complexes A and B.

Over time, the intensity and scope of communal activities at Complex E increased significantly, likely engaging larger numbers of people. In many ways, Complex E was a microcosm of Cerro de la Virgen’s ceremonial center. Food was prepared in a shallow hearth and an earth oven measuring 2.0 m and 1.2 m in diameter, respectively. Like the earth oven in the courtyard of Complex C, the refuse of the cooking features included burned sherds and fire-cracked rock used as heating elements. While it is possible that the hearth and earth oven were used for day-to-day cooking, they are larger than typical domestic cooking features in the region (Joyce 1991). Adjacent to the cooking features, people placed a deposit of broken ceramics in a shallow pit that included a comal, serving bowls, and storage jars. The vessels collectively indexed cooking, serving, and storing food as part of the broader assemblage of people, places, objects, and features related to feasting.

Index objects used in rituals of animation became more pervasive near the end of the Chacahua phase. Builders expanded and repositioned Structure E1 to match the orientation of buildings in the ceremonial center and added a second terrace to the complex. The first fill layer retained by the terrace’s retaining wall was the locus of the densest cache of objects found at the site to date: an offering of 81 ceramic vessels and dozens of stone slabs in an area of just 4 m² (Fig. 9). Excavations did not expose the entire feature, but it undoubtedly extended in every direction over a larger area. Several vessels and slabs were placed directly over earlier deposits, suggesting that these offerings were placed sequentially over an extended period, to continuously sustain the vitality of Complex E. Lying flat on the surface above the offering was a rectangular monolith that may have served as a ceremonial altar. Three shallow depressions in the dorsal side of the monolith may have facilitated grinding seeds or holding liquids such as water or blood. The monolith is the only one of its kind that dates to the Terminal Formative period, so interpretations of its role are speculative. Similar objects dating to later periods suggest that it was associated with the offering of vessels and slabs. Evidence from a Late Classic offering and an Early Postclassic burial associated with Structure 2 on the Río Viejo acropolis demonstrates that large, plain monoliths were often deposited as offerings at the surface of layers of construction fill (Joyce and Barber 2013; Joyce et al. 2014).

Native American ontologies were enacted situationally. Powerful rulers, such as those who emerged during the Classic period in the Valley of Oaxaca and the southern Maya lowlands, often regulated practices that accessed the divine, leading to pressures for uniformity in their hinterlands (LeCount and Yaeger 2010; Marcus and Flannery 1996; Redmond and Spencer 2008; Yaeger 2003). In other instances, such as the incipient polities that emerged at the end of the Formative in coastal Oaxaca and the Mixteca, religion was a social field through which people of varying positions of power negotiated the terms of political authority (Joyce and Barber 2015; Pérez Rodríguez et al. 2011). The challenge is to determine not only the scale at which gatherings of people, things, places, and ideas coalesced to evoke feelings or emotions, but also the extent to which these assemblages constituted a collective identity that was recognizable and coherent. People intentionally create and disseminate signs that convey identities, but other-than-humans also play a vital role in the interpretive chains that convey complex meanings.

Peirce’s philosophy of the sign gives us a powerful tool to reconcile representational and phenomenological approaches to understanding “semiotic ideologies”—the institutions that specify what kinds of signs matter, how they relate to other signs, and how to interpret them (Keane 2018). As the product or mediation of the initial sign-object relationship in Peirce’s triad, interpretants are dynamic in that they designate responses, feelings, or affective reactions to sign-object relations (Swenson 2018:357). In fact, any sign can be an interpretant if it transforms an antecedent sign into a consequent sign, or it signifies its object through some other antecedent sign of that object (Savan 1987:43). Let us briefly consider a contemporary example—traffic signals—to sketch out a chain of interpretants. A traffic signal can only constitute a sign in the context of brightness—a quality of firstness that cannot be further reduced to simpler components. The light itself indexes the potential danger of an accident at an intersection. Additional information is conveyed by the color of the light, which arbitrarily represents a command to continue, slow down, or stop. The virtual capacity of the traffic signal to command motorists’ direction and speed is actualized by a change in color (a quality of force, or secondness) that constrains the paths available to the motorist. Yellow and red lights are interpretants in that they instantiate the habit (a quality of thirdness) of transforming an antecedent sign (a green light) into a consequent sign (a red light). The green light also serves as an interpretant, albeit in a different way. It does not transform an antecedent sign into a consequent sign, but rather signifies its object (allowing vehicles to proceed) through an antecedent sign (the green light itself).

Just as traffic lights involve assemblages of humans and things working seamlessly to prevent harm from coming to people and property, architecture in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica sat at the confluence of human and other-than-human affect. In coastal Oaxaca, public buildings were palimpsests of signification that condensed and amplified sign modalities. Let us turn back to the public architecture of Cerro de la Virgen to examine the succession of interacting signs that imbued buildings with not only meaning, but also vitality. Peirce proposed that every sign has the potential for an unlimited number of interpretants, but deconstructing chains of signification requires a starting point, even if it is somewhat arbitrary. Here, we begin with an idea as the object of semiosis: animacy. While we are not privy to most of the intimate ceremonies that imbued objects with animacy, the ontologically “flat” perspective taken in this paper helps to consider the vibrancy of things as a first, independent of humans (Bennett 2010). For example, the inclusion of stone slabs in the offerings of Cerro de la Virgen was more than a stylistic choice. In some contexts, slab-lined compartments may have served an ancillary, utilitarian function of protecting the ceramic vessels they encased, but distinct collections of slabs oriented vertically in rows provided no structural advantage against erosion or bioturbation. In many areas of the ceremonial center, deposits of slabs lacked other cached objects.

The placement of slabs likely has an ontological reasoning related to the animate properties of the surrounding piedmont landscape, particularly the hill on which the site was built. Natural hills, mountains, and volcanoes were places of sustenance for Pre-Columbian Mesoamericans, often imbued with the same sacred, vital force that animated humans, ancestors, deities, and other beings (Harrison-Buck 2012). Ethnographic and ethnohistoric accounts of indigenous communities in southern Mexico indicate that mountains were home to deities responsible for unleashing the power of the skies in the form of wind, rain, and lightning (De la Cruz 2007; Lipp 1991; Monaghan 1995; Parsons 1932; Signorini 1997). Mountains and volcanoes were also thought to contain subterranean waters that played an essential role in agricultural fertility (Albores and Broda 1997; Plunket and Urunuela 2008). The physical properties inherent to stone such as color, texture, formation process, and place of origin had the potential to make visceral the cosmovision perceived and enacted in ceremonial landscapes (Ashmore 2008). The hilly piedmont surrounding Cerro de la Virgen is dotted with granitic outcrops that naturally exfoliate in thin sheets. Their inclusion in offerings may have indexed the animate properties inherent to mountains of creation in this natural geologic process, highlighting stone as an actant in the transference of that vitality. In addition to their role as index objects, the stone slabs may have also indexed which corporate group was responsible for placing constituent parts of larger offerings that were deposited over extended periods (Brzezinski et al. 2022b).

Though stone slabs have been found in nearly every ritual context excavated at Cerro de la Virgen, there is some variation in their positioning and association with other index objects such as ceramic vessels, ground stone tools, and human bodies. Thinking of buildings as settings for the enchainment of interpretants allows us to trace meaningful relations and nested temporalities as they were enfolded in architectural deposits. The succession of offerings associated with Structure 1 gives us insight into the human and other-than-human entities that gathered to imbue the architecture with life. Beginning again with the idea of animacy, the concept was indexed by breaking the bundled objects and placing them on bedrock, ensouling the building through the transfer of vitality. As the interpretant of the initial sign-object relation, this transference stands as a more complex sign indexing the next object—the potential for buildings to be animate beings. The second sign-object relation leads to another interpretant: birth, or the beginning of the structure’s life cycle. As with other animate beings, the life cycle of buildings eventually comes to an end, a process highlighted by termination rituals involving destructive acts such as structural demolition and burning. In the case of Structure 1, this chain of interpretants was repeated twice more in subsequent building phases before the eventual abandonment of the site.

The archaeology of Complex A reveals a similar chain of interpretants, with a few important distinctions. Some of the earliest ritual deposits at the base of the north patio suggest that the associated architecture was also animated through a deposit of ceramic vessels and stone slabs, but excavations did not uncover evidence of superimposed building foundations that might signify multiple life cycles. Instead, stratigraphic evidence shows that the large offering in the north patio was placed over an extended period, which may reflect the provision of sustenance to the building. These caching ceremonies were likely held in conjunction with feasting events, evidenced by the presence of multiple small hearths interspersed within the north patio’s offering area. Larger hearths were found in the south patio, which may have been used for instances where larger groups of people experienced these ceremonies. Recurring feasts in the ceremonial center indexed the observation of calendrically timed rituals, perhaps relating to the agricultural cycle. Vessels and slabs were interspersed with hearths, indicating seasonal feasting accompanied object caching. We may also be seeing the enfolding of time as an aspect of this assemblage. That there were 260 vessels is likely a reference to the 260-day ritual calendar. While placing the objects probably spanned a period longer than 260 days, the span of 52 years—the time it takes for one full revolution of the calendar round—may not be out of the question. Alternatively, the number may reference the synodic period of Venus, which appears for just over 260 days as the evening and morning star, with eight days of absence in the interim.

Beginning again with “animacy” as the antecedent object, the chain of interpretants highlighted in the ritual deposits of Complex B and the ballcourt indicates that mortuary ceremonialism was also implicated in the transference of vitality to architecture. As an indexical sign, death points to a transformation in an ontological state of being, a change in the flow of animacy. For modern Chatinos, this change would involve the loss of Tyi’i—the vital heat of the body (Bartolome and Barabas 1996). The interment of human bodies iconically represents the underworld, but it is also an index of the “absent presence” of the deceased community member (Swenson 2018). Given that burial practices were crucial in fulfilling obligations to deities, we can think of interred bodies as sacrificial offerings that fulfilled the sacred covenant (Joyce and Barber 2015; Monaghan 1995). Evidence from Complex B shows that primary and secondary burials were placed in unconsolidated construction fill during separate building phases, perhaps demonstrating the periodic renewal of these relations. I would also suggest that if the monolithic “altar” overlying the dense offering of vessels and slabs at Complex E held substances intended to fulfill the obligations of the covenant, then one of these substances may have been human blood. Given the modern Chatino belief that Tyi’i resides in the heart, blood may have indexed its transference to the associated architecture.

Despite the variation in the chains of interpretants that give meaning to the ritual deposits of Cerro de la Virgen, the similar actants assembled among them play a key role in the formation of a unique collective identity. Granite slabs and ceramic vessels iconically referenced stone and earth as vibrant materials, evoking the “mountain-ness” of the site as it was encountered by residents and visitors. By contrast, not a single ritual deposit excavated at a floodplain site to date has been documented to contain thin stone slabs like those at Cerro de la Virgen. While it may be tempting to argue that there was a stylistic dichotomy between religious offerings at floodplain and piedmont sites, there was also considerable variation among sites within the latter category. For example, ritual caches at piedmont sites that contained exotic objects demonstrated little evidence of regional uniformity (Brzezinski et al. 2022b). One of the most opulent assemblages of objects in the lower Verde was placed in the fill of Structure 99F3 at San Francisco de Arriba—a piedmont site located a few kilometers northeast of Cerro de la Virgen that was also occupied during the late Terminal Formative. Included in the offering was a deposit of hundreds of crystal and greenstone beads, pendants, miniature ceramic jars, hematite, pyrite, and animal bone (Workinger 2002). Equally impressive is the cache of broken stone masks, miniature thrones, a figurine, and miniature vessels found below Structure 1 at Cerro de la Virgen. Both assemblages contained imported items, including stone items worn as part of a larger costume during their use life. However, the spatial, stratigraphic, and depositional contexts of the two caches differ markedly. The San Francisco de Arriba cache was placed within a layer of construction fill, perhaps to maintain the building’s animacy. Conversely, the Cerro de la Virgen cache was purposefully bundled, broken, and deposited directly on bedrock as an offering that animated its associated architecture, perhaps indexing the founding of the community. Both caches contained miniature vessels, but even these sub-assemblages were markedly different. The San Francisco de Arriba cache contained finely made miniature gray ware jars, some of which had elaborate plastic decorations on the exterior, while those in the Cerro de la Virgen cache were almost exclusively plain brown wares.

Calling attention to the “mountain-ness” of Cerro de la Virgen may suggest a very general set of standardized religious beliefs for the lower Verde that were encoded in ritual deposits. For example, diversity in the contents and positioning of ritual deposits might stem from a shared worldview that local environments afforded particular affects on the built landscape that were inexorable from a community’s cultural milieu. Hints of standardization can also be found in the valley-wide ubiquity of iconographic serving wares with similar religious themes found in contexts indexing communal feasting (Brzezinski et al. 2022a). Themes represented in figurines became quite diverse during the Terminal Formative, but Hepp and Joyce (2013) note some consistencies across the region, including comparable ways of depicting human gender, animals, transformational entities (i.e., beings that are not fully human nor animal), and musical instruments. Drawing attention to difference within ritual deposits likely reflects autonomy over the articulation of identities that carries through to the end of the Formative period and the collapse of the incipient Rio Viejo polity.

Studies of non-Western ontologies have tremendous potential to pull the active and vibrant nature of matter and things into research on the archaeology of identities (Harris 2016). To do so, we must reject the mind-matter dualism that designates humans as the sole agents of social processes and change (Fowler 2013; Hamilakis and Jones 2017; Lucas 2012; Swenson 2018). This perspective provides a richer understanding of how materiality and collective identity are interconnected, which can inform ontological debates about nature of subjectivity and personhood. Even the distinction between “ritual as material” and “religion as ideational” that pervades archaeological research today is part of a purifying project of the modern West that inevitably breaks down when we apply them to non-Western societies, both past and present (Fowles 2013; A. Joyce 2018b).

Utilizing Indigenous knowledge has the potential to work against the modernist tendency to situate non-Western societies within Western interpretive frameworks. However, we must acknowledge the ongoing impacts of colonialism on Indigenous communities and prioritize centering Indigenous voices and perspectives in our research. By recognizing the diverse range of identities across time and space in ancient Mesoamerica, archaeologists may challenge the tendency to universalize ontological claims. In this paper, I proposed a more localized and contingent framework predicated on ethnographic, ethnohistoric, and archaeological research as well as principles of semiosis developed by Charles Sanders Peirce. I argued that public buildings and communal spaces in coastal Oaxaca gathered people, objects, and places that were imbued with the same vital forces that animated the cosmos. Local histories and the unique materialities of nearby landscapes were deeply embedded in the construction of monuments, the caching of objects, the interment of human bodies, and the commensal acts of feasting and drinking at the end of the Formative Period.

By deconstructing the chains of interpretants that draw meaning from object caching, we can articulate the roles that humans and other-than-humans play in the construction of identity. At Cerro de la Virgen, ceramic vessels and stone slabs were the primary means by which people transferred vitality to animate, sustain, and terminate public architecture. The spatial and semiotic patterning of object caches at Cerro de la Virgen differs markedly from other sites in the region, suggesting that religious practices related to the animacy of other-than-human things were crucial in the construction of collective identities throughout the region.

Competing Interests: The author declares that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Funding: The following funding sources were utilized for the research reported in this paper:

2018 Summer Graduate School Dissertation Completion Fellowship, University of Colorado Boulder Graduate School, $6000

2018 Graduate Student Research Grant, Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder, $800

2017 Cartwright Fellowship, Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder, $2000

2017 GPTI (Graduate Part-Time Instructor) Teaching Excellence Award Nominee, Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder

2017 Earl Morris Archaeology Award, Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder, $1000

2017 Graduate Student Research Award, Center to Advance Research and Teaching in the Social Sciences (CARTSS), University of Colorado Boulder, $1500

2017 Museum Student Research Award, University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, $660

2015 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement (DDRI) Grant: “The Río Verde Hinterland Project,” co-PI with advisor, Arthur A. Joyce. (BCS-1551842), $25,195.

2015 Tinker Foundation Grant for Graduate Research, Latin American Studies Center, University of Colorado Boulder, $1000

2013 Department of Anthropology Pre-Dissertation Grant, University of Colorado Boulder, $2,333

2013 Religion and Innovation in Human Affairs Program. The Historical Society with funding from the Templeton Foundation (secured by Arthur Joyce and Sarah Barber): Religion and Political Innovation in Formative Mesoamerica, $230,000

Availability of data and materials: The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the University of Colorado Scholar Repository, available through the following link: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/datasets/sj1393377. The author confirms that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

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No competing interests reported.

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People of Clay and Stone: Indexing Other-than-human Animacy and Collective Identity in Coastal Oaxaca, Mexico

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Abstract

Figures

Introduction

Relating Ontology, Identity, and Semiosis

Animacy in the Natural and Built Landscape

Structure 1

Complex A

Complex B

Complex E

Discussion

Conclusions

Declarations

References

Additional Declarations

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