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Nastassia Darby

Prof. Cosentino

HAA 244

18 November 2013

Zapotec Urn, Accession #5228: The Fate of Fakes

Traditions that interconnect ideals of nature, spirituality, and art are consistent in

Mesoamerican history despite a three thousand year span between early pre-classic civilizations,

and the classic and post-classic period civilizations. The ability of Mesoamerican art to balance

all active elements of life, is what inspires me the most as a new curator. Equipped with my

newfound knowledge and curiosity for Mesoamerican art history and civilizations after eleven

weeks of extensive research, I traveled to view Mesoamerican art collections in Chicago.

While admiring how that interconnectedness is displayed in pieces found at the Art

Institute of Chicago, I was pleasantly surprised to learn through a colleague that the DePaul

University Art Museum was home to a single interesting artifact with Zapotec origins. Upon

closer examination of Zapotec Urn #5228, I realized the likelihood of its illegitimacy. The only

paperwork documenting the object’s history listed the Urn as being from the vicinity of Oaxaca

City, Mexico dating back circa 700-1000 AD. This left me with an exciting dilemma. In hopes of

sculpting a more powerful context for the falsified artifact, I decided to reflect on my prior

research in art history and cultural landscapes. This report will be an analysis of the formal and

stylistic qualities of Zapotec Urn #5228 as they relate to its supposed origin and will discuss the

place of forged artifacts as active Mesoamerican art.

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The DePaul Art Museum’s Zapotec Urn, #5228 is a clay urn of a seated male figure with

his hands placed on his knees as pictured in Figure 1. The figure adorned in a grand headdress, is

also decorated with ear spools, a necklace, and a bracelet on each wrist; regalia associated with

similar Zapotec pottery. A hollow cylindrical vessel makes up the base of the urn and the

stylized figure is sculpted and attached. The urn is roughly 18 inches in height and 10 inches

wide; the figure’s headdress reaches about 5 inches higher than the cylinder. There are no

stylistic elements visible on the rear of the sculpture (Figure 2). Although #5228 is being

reviewed as a fake, it is important to note the possibility of missing imagery or slight damage due

to natural ruin over time. Even if a legitimate urn was being reviewed, natural damage would be

more likely to occur (opposed to subjected damage) as the burning or destruction of urns during

the classic era at Monte Alban was rare (Miller, 113).

A slab of clay slopes down from the figures chest to the base of his feet. Although it is

most likely a loincloth, this slope is an interesting aspect to note because of its similarity to the

sloped playing surface of Mesoamerican ballcourts, such as Copan’s central ballcourt (Figure, 3).

The city of Copan in Honduras is a late classic Mayan city but, “the first millennium AD

produced the most widespread flowering of culture in Mesoamerican history” and “…it was also

an era of great international contact: just as there was interchange between Teotihuacan and the

Maya, so too was there contact between Oaxaca and Teotihuacan” (Miller, 106-7). Ballcourts

represented intense political and spiritual associations within the city, so we can think about

whether Zapotec Urn #5228 was made with those same associations in mind, despite being a

fake.

The Zapotec culture of Oaxaca in southern Mexico thrived between AD 200 and 800.

Distinct pottery vessels depicting human or zoomorphic forms were produced in this area and

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can now be found in Museum collections worldwide (Craddock, 288). The exact meaning and

historical use of Zapotec urns is somewhat conflicting. Although the urns are intuitively

associated with burials, “…some urns have been found as offerings related to buildings, placed

under stucco floors or in cache boxes near salient features of the structure” and there is no clear

archaeological indication that the Zapotec cremated their dead and placed remnants in the vessels

(Sellon). Similarly noted in the DePaul Art Museum paperwork on Zapotec Urn #5228, urns are

found in tombs and burial sites but they have never been found to contain offerings.

Cocijo, the rain or lightning deity as well as various maize gods dominate Zapotec

religious art. Much like the central Mexican rain-god Tlaloc, Cocijo was the most significant god

among the pre-Columbian Zapotecs because of his association with rainfall, and is commonly

represented on ceramics from Monte Alban by his headdress containing glyph C (Sellen). A

clear example of glyph C can be found in Figure 4 from the Javier Urcid source Zapotec Writing

in Pictures on Desire to Learn (D2L). Artifact #5228 specifically replicates the aesthetic and

stylistic traits of ancient Zapotec sculpture through its precise glyph C imagery and resemblance

to urns that have been tested for authenticity. Figures 5 and 6 are drawings of real Cocijo-

referencing urns and similarities can be found immediately when they are compared to Zapotec

Urn #5228 pictured in Figure 1. Figure 1 shares the same seated position, thin body type,

protruding slope from the figures chest, rope like necklace and the same shape Cocijo headdress

as Figure 4. The actual detail inside the headdress, facial expression, and the depiction of large

eye sockets of Figure 1 is reminiscent of Figure 6. Although these findings allow Artifact #5228

to be placed within it’s suggested context of Monte Alban circa 700-1000 AD, the creative

freedom found in the mixture of past urn variances can also suggest forgery.

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Due to the mass circulation of similar Zapotec-style vessels, it was long suspected and

has now been confirmed that many Zapotec vessels are fake. Museums have been developing

scientific dating method techniques for detecting fakes since the mid-twentieth century.

Radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, and more specifically (during the 1970s at the British

Museum) thermoluminescence have been used to test large collections of supposed Zapotec

pottery that does not date back to the pre-classic period (Craddock, 288).

I do not have access to dating technologies, but after a careful review of legitimate examples

of Zapotec urns, I agree that Zapotec Urn #5228 of the DePaul Art Museum is indeed a replica,

rather than an ancient work of art. It is difficult to determine a fake solely through visual

observation, but some distinguishing features to look for include, “…quality of the paste, the

overall workmanship, the presence or absence of root imprints on the surface, and the general

iconographic congruency of all the elements” (Sellen). When comparing Artifact #5228 shown

in Figure 1 with the Yale Museum Urn picture in Figure 7, there is a drastic difference in detail.

Figure 7 contains intricate detail and glyphs from the headdress of the sculpture, down to its

base. There is a definite dwindling of detail as you move down Zapotec Urn #5228 (Figure 1).

The Cocijo entity in Figure 7 appears to be sitting on a talud-tablero, judging from the stacked,

geometric line carvings. This detail reflects the importance of architectural workmanship found

in ancient Mesoamerican culture and delineates sacred building space (Miller, 81). Such a

structure may have been overlooked in the crafting of Figure 1 because it is no longer important

to culture. This lack of detail dates the sculpture as modern and therefore a replica. The general

iconographic lack of congruency in stylistic detail is what singles Artifact #5228 as a fake.

Art history scholars have deemed illegitimate artifacts null and void of contextual

meaning but on the contrary, “…it turns out that replicas, and the people who make and sell

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them, offer an astute account of this transformation, one perhaps un-anticipated by their critics”

(Brulotte, xiii). In addition, Zapotec Urn #5228 had to come from somewhere relevant to it’s

mimicked context, presumably, from a native artist who has inherited a specific and stylized

sculpture trade and makes a living for performing his or her trade. Does this make artifacts

crafted in Mesoamerican regions by possible modern day Zapotec people less fake? What would

stylistic differences between these types of sculptures and original artifacts consist of besides the

age of materials or tools used? It seems that our chemical and materialistic data would suffer the

most from the study of fakes.

Ultimately, “The value of the whole is considerably greater than the sum of the parts, as

far as the antiquities market is concerned” (Craddock, 276). We have and will continue to learn

from replicated artifacts as originals begin to fall apart or become increasingly harder to find.

Both archaeological artifacts and fakes, such as DePaul Art Museum’s Zapotec Urn #5228,

enshrined in museums provide social, political, and economic clues about life of past

civilizations (Brulotte, xiii). I argue that the presence of fakes in Mesoamerican art history

should begin to be “sensed through other modes of perception or signs that announced [the]

continued presence and action” (O’Neil, 133) of the subjects represented. Who are art scholars of

western civilization to say that replicated ancient artifacts of Mesoamerica are outliers of art

history when they continue to illuminate the same issues as they pertain to the region today?

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Figure 1:Zapotec Urn, #5228 (Front)Unknown provenance (Monte Alban?) Vicinity of Oaxaca City, Mexico(Circa 700-1000AD) [20th century?]Personal Photograph

Figure 2: Zapotec Urn, #5228 (Back)Personal Photograph

Figure 3:Copan Ballcourt, 738Classic Period Maya

Copan, HondurasMiller

Figure 4:Glyph C “Cociyo” imagery

Headdress from Zapotec Writing in Pictures

“Figure 7.9- Representations of ‘lightning’

in Zapotec material culture”

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Figure 7: Zapotec UrnCermaicYale MuseumPaper #2 Related PowerPoint (Miller)

Figure 5: KRIEG 1, Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca., Tani 200 - 350 ADDenver, Colorado, U.S.FAMSI

Figure 6: DIA 77.99Pitao 350 - 500 ADDetroit Institute of the Arts, Detroit, United StatesFAMSI

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Bibliography

Brulotte, Ronda L., “Preface” and Ch.4, “Crafting the Past in the Present,” in Between Art and Artifact: Archaeological Replicas and Cultural Production in Oaxaca, Mexico, University of Texas Press, 2012: ix-xiii and 81-107

Craddock, Paul and Sheridan Bowman, “The scientific detection of fakes and forgeries,” in Fake? |The Art of Deception, ed. Mark Jones, British Museum Publications, 1990: 275-289

FAMSI Catalogue of Zapotec Effigy Vessels. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.

Miller, Mary Ellen. The Art of Mesoamerica from Olmec to Aztec. Fifth Edition. Thames & Hudson, 2012.

O'Neil, Megan. "Ancient Maya Sculptures of Tikal, Seen and Unseen." RES 55/56(2009): 119-34. Web. 16 Nov. 2013.

Sellen, Adam T., Ph.D. "Catalogue of Zapotec Effigy Vessels." FAMSI: Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2013.