by Stephen Houston (Brown University)
Alabaster was a rarity among the Classic Maya, reserved for fine bowls in elite settings, especially tombs or palaces (Houston 2014:258; Kubler 1977:5n1). Known as xix, a spelling attested in at least two glyphic texts, it appeared to refer to rocks affected by water (Houston et al. 2018; Luin et al. 2022:907, fig. 4). Geologically, xix is a white sedimentary calcite (CaCO3) mined in, among other places, a source near Zinacantan, Chiapas (Berlin 1946:27; for other quarries, see Urcid 2010:fig. 56). A comparable term, tecali, named after a community of that name, was applied to banded stone of similar composition in Mexico (Diehl and Stroh 1978:74). The Maya evidently prized the translucency, crystalline texture, and hard, white surface of alabaster, the better to highlight delicate incisions that could be filled in with red pigment.
An unusual find of two alabaster effigies comes from Burial 195, under Structure 5D-32 in the North Acropolis at Tikal, Guatemala (Figure 1, Coe 1990:565-568, 920, figs. 198-199, 330; Coggins 1975:344; Moholy-Nagy 2008:55, fig. 138). The tomb almost certainly belonged to a ruler of Tikal, ‘Animal Skull’, who died around AD 600.[1] The product of a tumultuous phase in Tikal’s history, Animal Skull does not clearly descend from earlier rulers of the city. His reign took place after a “rupture [that] follows hard on the heels of a major military defeat” at Tikal, leading to a “130-year monument hiatus and an interruption to its dynastic line” (Martin 2020:104, 247, 345).
Despite the gap in monuments, there is no textual hiatus at Tikal. A suprisingly large number of pots belonged to Animal Skull, a pattern seen also with his near-contemporary, “Aj Numsaaj/Aj Nunsaaj” at Naranjo (Zender 2019:35, for discussion of the ruler’s name; see also Houston 2018:71-74). Prestige ceramics must have flowed in special abundance at this time. Perhaps it was a way to reconstitute frayed relationships and build new ones by means of gifted pots. In Animal Skull’s tomb, there was also a quite literal flow of silt that washed into the tomb some years after its completion and sealing. Surrounding perishable objects, it left cavities when offerings in the tomb rotted away, preserving original shapes and coverings of painted stucco. Among the finds was a covered wooden bowl with a remnant text (Martin 2008). It referred to a ruler from the antagonistic kingdom of Caracol, Belize, from which the bowl may have arrived as a gift or as war booty. Apparently, Animal Skull had other broad connections, including ties to the dynasty of Altar de Sacrificios, a royal seat some 100 km southwest of Tikal (Martin 2020:412n16).
Said to be “somewhat eroded,” the alabaster effigies measure ca. 28 cm long, 12 cm wide, and 15 cm high (Moholy-Nagy 2008:55, fig. 138). They occur side-by-side but otherwise alone in a quadrant of Burial 195. One carving is blockier, less curved than the other. Poised on their front legs and haunches, almost ready to jump, they were intended, it seems, to stare eternally at the head of Animal Skull. He lay flat on his back nearby. What sort of animals were they? Some scholars see them as agoutis or sereques (Dasyprocta punctata), but the fuller, rather alert tails point to another identification (Coe 1990:566; Moholy-Nagy 2008:fig. 138): they are rabbits, perhaps cottontails in particular. The small ears cue that mammal rather than hares. Famously procreative as a genus, the rabbits were placed in the tomb as a pair, suggesting a buck and his doe.
It is highly likely these carvings were non-local, deriving instead from the metropolis of Teotihuacan, which was largely in ruins when these alabaster–tecali–pieces were placed in Burial 195. Excavations at the apartment compound of Oztoyahualco found just such a carving, also, probably, of a rabbit, in the center of courtyard (Figure 2a). The dimensions, style of carving, and disposition of limbs are quite close to those of the alabasters at Tikal. Other such finds include a piece in a photographic archive, head gone but with similar limbs (Figure 2b), and two very different creatures, felines both (Figure 2c), including a calcite or tecali example that entered the collection of the British Museum in 1926 (Figures 2d). Two appear to have receptables on their backs for offerings, and the evident dyad of predators (felines) and prey (rabbits) may not be a coincidence. The rabbit at Oztoyahualco dates to the Xolalpan phase, ca. AD 350-550), the shattered mammal (supposedly) to the subsequent Metepec period (AD 550-660), at the time of Teotihuacan’s decisive decline (Beramendi-Orosco 2009:106-107).
Study of animal bones at Oztoyahualco reveal a notable preponderence of rabbit, with other evidence in the form of possible pens, hide-preparing tools, and osteological signs of butchering (Somerville et al. 2016:3; see also Somerville and Sugiyama 2021:63-64). This evidence indicates that these animals were a key resource for the apartment compound and for Teotihuacan in general. The rabbit effigy itself appears to have been placed on top of a small temple platform in the middle of a courtyard at Oztoyahualco (Figure 3a). Whether this was in homage to a succulent rabbit god is speculative, but it does suggest that such platforms displayed the effigies for local ritual, that these were central, if portable, votive carvings. Indeed, an example of a temple “maquette,” with the same portability as the carvings from Oztoyahualco–and marked by the distinctive talud-tablero (slope-panel) feature of Teotihuacan–has its own super-structure, with a chamber large enough to accommodate such effigies (Figure 3b). Courtyard temples of similar sort have been found at Tikal (Figure 3c), including, not far away, to the east, a recent find in Group 6C-XV (Román et al. 2023)–the latter being part of the city that was abandoned at the end of the Early Classic period, ca. AD 500-600.[2] Perhaps such a temple, with now missing chambers, contained the effigies, which might be switched out for votive need or removal and use in intermittent displays or processions.
The calcite rabbits in Burial 195 have not been linked before to Teotihuacan. Yet they correspond to a type of carving attested at that site, in a material employed for at least one animal effigy of comparable size. Calcite carvings of this nature and scale are not otherwise known in the Maya region. As tomb furniture, this may reflect the need of an upstart ruler, Animal Skull, to find roots in more distant pasts and places…or perhaps in ritual effigies taken from a part of his city abandoned prior to his death and burial.
Acknowledgements I thank Joshua Kwoka for sharing the image in Figure 2b and Mary Miller for reminding me that we are, as of this writing, in the Year of the Rabbit!
[1] As an epithet, “Animal Skull” is an ersatz place-holder. The actual name remains a puzzle, for it includes a turtle head and, at times, a feline ear, along with a suite of other titles and affixes or infixes that come and go.
[2] Oztoyahualco does not only offer a parallel to Tikal (Taube and Zender 2009:188-189, fig. 7.15). A manopla or boxing cudgel from Caracol, Belize, bears a striking resemblance to an object found in the apartment complex (left below, Oztoyohualco Burial 13, Teotihuacan: Ortiz Díaz 1993:527, 533, 536, figs. 389, 391; right below, Caracol, Belize: Royal Ontario Museum, 971.466, Anderson 1959, mislabeled as a “monkey skull” but correctly noted to be Early Classic in date). Note the “dead” or discolored incisor on the skull, an idiosyncratic hint that it matches an actual person with this injury or decay.
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