QUETZALCOATLAt the south end of the Avenue of the Dead
is the great quadrangle of the Citadel (FIG. 14-5,background). It en-
closes a smaller pyramidal shrine datable to the third century CE, the
Temple of Quetzalcoatl (FIG. 14-6). Quetzalcoatl, the “feathered
serpent,” was a major god in the Mesoamerican pantheon at the time
of the Spanish conquest, hundreds of years after the fall of Teotihua-
can. The later Aztecs associated him with wind, rain clouds, and life.
Beneath the temple, archaeologists found a tomb looted in antiquity,
perhaps that of a Teotihuacan ruler. The discovery has led them to
speculate that not only the Maya but the Teotihuacanos as well
buried their elite in or under pyramids. Surrounding the tomb both
beneath and around the pyramid were the remains of at least a hun-
dred sacrificial victims. Some were adorned with necklaces made of
strings of human jaws, both real and sculpted from shell. Like most
other Mesoamerican groups, the Teotihuacanos invoked and ap-
peased their gods through human sacrifice. The presence of such a
large number of victims also may reflect Teotihuacan’s militaristic
expansion—throughout Mesoamerica, the victors often sacrificed
captured warriors.
The temple’s sculptured panels, which feature projecting stone
heads of Quetzalcoatl alternating with heads of a long-snouted scaly
creature with rings on its forehead, decorate each of the temple’s six
terraces. This is the first unambiguous representation of the feath-
ered serpent in Mesoamerica. The scaly creature’s identity is unclear.
Linking these alternating heads are low-relief carvings of feathered-
serpent bodies and seashells. The latter reflect Teotihuacan contact
with the peoples of the Mexican coasts and also symbolize water, an
essential ingredient for the sustenance of an agricultural economy.
MURAL PAINTING Like those of most ancient Mesoamerican
cities, Teotihuacan’s buildings and streets were once stuccoed over
and brightly painted. Elaborate murals also covered the walls of the
rooms of its elite residential compounds. The paintings chiefly depict
deities, ritual activities, and processions of priests, warriors, and even
animals. Experimenting with a variety of surfaces, materials, and
techniques over the centuries, Teotihuacan muralists finally settled
on applying pigments to a smooth lime-plaster surface coated with
clay. They then polished the surface to a high sheen. Although some
Teotihuacan paintings have a restricted palette of varying tones of red
(largely derived from the mineral hematite), creating subtle contrasts
between figure and ground, most employ vivid hues arranged in flat,
carefully outlined patterns. One mural (FIG. 14-7) depicts an earth
or nature goddess who some scholars think was the city’s principal
deity. Always shown frontally with her face covered by a jade mask,
she is dwarfed by her large feathered headdress and reduced to a bust
placed upon a stylized pyramid. She stretches her hands out to pro-
vide liquid streams filled with bounty, but the stylized human hearts
that flank the frontal bird mask in her headdress reflect her dual
nature. They remind viewers that the ancient Mesoamericans saw
human sacrifice as essential to agricultural renewal.
The influence of Teotihuacan was all-pervasive in Mesoamerica.
The Teotihuacanos established colonies as far away as the southern
borders of Maya civilization, in the highlands of Guatemala, some
800 miles from Teotihuacan.Classic Maya
Strong cultural influences stemming from the Olmec tradition and
from Teotihuacan contributed to the development of Classic Maya
culture. As was true of Teotihuacan, the foundations of Maya civi-
lization were laid in the Preclassic period, perhaps by 600 BCEor
even earlier. At that time, the Maya, who occupied the moist low-
land areas of Belize, southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras,
seem to have abandoned their early, somewhat egalitarian pattern
of village life and adopted a hierarchical autocratic society. This sys-
tem evolved into the typical Maya city-state governed by hereditary370 Chapter 14 NATIVE ARTS OF THE AMERICAS BEFORE 130014-6Partial view of the Temple of
Quetzalcoatl, the Citadel, Teotihuacan,
Mexico, third century CE.
The stone heads of Quetzalcoatl
decorating this pyramid are the
earliest representations of the
feathered-serpent god. Beneath
and around the pyramid excavators
found remains of sacrificial victims.14-7ABlood-
letting rite,
Teotihuacan,
ca. 600–700 CE.