Fine Veracruz Greenstone Yoke Late Classic, ca. A.D. 550-950

the ceremonial and commemorative yoke elaborately carved with dramatic images of three skulls resembling the heads of nocturnal bats, each with triangular nose, grinning mouth, sunken closely-set eyes and thick curled 'brows', with tripartite fronds perhaps representing the maguey plant sprouting from the central head, with bony skeletal arms with hands upraised on each side, fingers tightly clenching a ritual implement, perhaps the vaporous scrolls connected to the knotted rattlesnakes lying above the heads on each long side, a profile serpent head facing each end, and scrollwork carved on the flat ends; in deep green stone.

A discussion with images by Hasso von Winning, dated October 26, 1971, accompanies this lot.

Acquired in 1971

Stanford, Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Arts Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University, 1998-2001

Overall excellent, appears intact, fine coloring and carving details. Some small areas show remains of red pigment.
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This yoke is one of the most masterfully designed ceremonial accoutrements of the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame. Few yokes feature such dramatic imagery of the cosmic forces, deities and animals associated with the sacred ballgame ritual.

The ballgame, which started as early as the second millennium BC, is among the defining and enduring cultural features of the ancient Mesoamerican world. Over 1500 ballcourts of varying size are known to exist in various parts of southern Mexico, Guatemala and Central America. Versions of the ballgame were witnessed by the Spaniards in the 16^th century, who were so impressed that they brought back ballgame players to the court of Charles V.

Known as ollamaliztli in Nahuatl, the ballgame ritual was, essentially, a quasi-religious re-enactment of combatting cosmic forces by heroic team opponents. Specific rules varied by geographic location but the game, in general, consisted of small teams of players hitting a dense rubber ball onto stone markers placed on the sides of the masonry ballcourts. They used their hips and elbows to prevent the ball from touching the ground.

The stone yokes are the trophy versions of the thick protective padding originally made of leather, skin or wood (the misnomer given due to the similar shape of yokes worn around the necks of oxen). Scott theorizes that yokes would have been worn as players entered the ballcourt and could even have been worn during the game in some instances. Finely carved yokes became a form of sacred and cult attire as symbols of the ‘prerogative of participation’ (Wilkerson 2010:239). While the shape of a yoke serves as a protective belt, it also imitates the concept of the mouth of the underworld, and symbolically places a wearer at the junction of two worlds.

Many interpret the trajectory of the ball as the daily cosmic ‘battle’ (between death and rebirth) of the sun and its relative, Venus, as they travel across the sky – ‘sacrificed’ by underworld nocturnal forces, only to be resurrected as the reborn solar maize God. The masonry ballcourts were considered sacred portals to the underworld and the construction and renovation of these courts were important elements of royal accession ceremonies. The Classic era of the Gulf Coast coincided with the florescence of the ballgame cult and the accompanying production of accoutrements of yokes, hachas and palmas.
Wilkerson wrote that the ballgame was “a true collective obsession rarely seen in the ancient societies of the Americas. It was thought to be a rite of chance and divine inspiration performed by the principal deities in the underworld and imitated by mortals. When performed in formats of the ruling elite, it could lead, as it did in mythological lore, to sacrificial death…” (ibid). 

 

Comments by John F. Scott

This yoke is one of several Epiclassic (AD 650-1000) examples which have skeletal faces incorporated into their iconography, clearly expressing a connection with the underworld. Large reliefs carved into the vertical walls of one of the most famous ballcourts, the South Ballcourt at El Tajín, Veracruz, show skeletal half-torsos emerging from large vessels used to brew the maguey wine known to the Aztecs as pulque, while the main panel of the northeast relief shows the execution of a ballplayer. The central skull on this yoke wears perforated disk-shaped earspools and has a three-pronged plant emerging from its forehead, equivalent to maguey spines in other yokes.  This central skull lifts both its hands facing forward, with thumbs inside and four curled fingers flanking them. An Epiclassic yoke in Minneapolis (Accession no. 41.72)  renders hands in this same position. Below, the paired bones of the forearms are rendered much like those of the skeletal pulque god on the El Tajín reliefs. As on several other yokes, two additional skulls face out from the sides of this yoke. Each skull has a small, knotted rattlesnake above it, referencing the earth, and is hemmed in by scrolls. Interlaced scrolls represent vapor or liquid in Mesoamerican iconography, and their position below the ground register in the El Tajín South Ballcourt scenes, express the watery underworld of Mesoamerican belief. The scrolls wrap around the rear of this yoke, suggesting by their voids the eyes and mouth of human heads carved on the rear ends of other yokes.  Those heads probably represent the mythical Hero Twins summoned to play ball by the Lords of the Underworld in the Maya epic Popul Vuh.  The first set of twins was sacrificed, and the head of one was displayed on a tree.  The second set of twins, sons of one of the first set, fooled the Lords to appear beheaded before defeating them and ascending into the sky as the sun and the moon. Perhaps the skulls on this yoke represent three of these twins, who seem very alert, much like modern indigenous depictions of skeletons during Mexico’s Day of the Dead.

John F. Scott, Professor Emeritus, University of Florida

For closely related yokes featuring skeletal heads, see Michelet (2014: cat. no. 264), and Easby and Scott (1970: Figs. 145, 146). For yokes featuring the raised arms and hands with ritual elements or serpents, see Leyenaar and Parsons (1988: Fig. 61) for a yoke in the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde, Leiden; Whittington ed. ( 2001: Pl. 87) for the yoke in The Art Museum, Princeton University; see also Wilkerson (1970: 41-44); and Proskouriakoff (1954: Fig. 1, yoke 5 and Fig. 3, yoke 22). For the yoke in the Cleveland Museum of Art featuring similar skeletal heads, see Deletaille ed. (1992:Fig. 98A/B).