thumb|upright=1.4|Maya chacmool from [[Chichen Itza, excavated by Le Plongeon in 1875, now displayed at the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City]]

A chacmool (also spelled chac-mool or Chac Mool) is a form of pre-Columbian Mesoamerican sculpture depicting a reclining figure with its head facing 90 degrees from the front, supporting itself on its elbows and supporting a bowl or a disk upon its stomach. These figures possibly symbolised slain warriors carrying offerings to the gods; the bowl upon the chest was used to hold sacrificial offerings, including pulque, tamales, tortillas, tobacco, turkeys, feathers, and incense. In Aztec examples, the receptacle is a cuauhxicalli (a stone bowl to receive sacrificed human hearts). Chacmools were often associated with sacrificial stones or thrones. The chacmool form of sculpture first appeared around the 9th century AD in the Valley of Mexico and the northern Yucatán Peninsula.

Aztec chacmools bore water imagery and were associated with Tlaloc, the rain god. Their symbolism placed them on the frontier between the physical and supernatural realms, as intermediaries with the gods.

Form

The chacmool is a distinctive form of Mesoamerican sculpture representing a reclining figure with its head facing 90 degrees from the front, leaning on its elbows and supporting a bowl or a disk upon its chest.

The chacmools of Chichen Itza and Tula depict young men with warrior attributes, while the chacmools of Michoacán depict elderly men with wrinkled faces and erect penises. The face of the figure looks upwards and the bowl was apparently used to grind foodstuffs.

A wide variety of materials were used to sculpt chacmools, including limestone and hard metamorphic and igneous rock types. Other materials employed include ceramic and cement. Le Plongeon believed the statue, which he had found buried beneath the Platform of the Eagles and the Jaguars, depicted a former ruler of Chichen Itza. Le Plongeon's sponsor, Stephen Salisbury of Worcester, Massachusetts, published Le Plongeon's find, but revised the spelling to "Chac-Mool."

Le Plongeon sought permission from Mexico's president to display the statue at the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876, a request that was denied. In 1877 the Yucatecan government seized the statue and brought it to Mérida. Weeks later Yucatán turned over the statue to the federal government, which brought it to Mexico City to the National Museum of Anthropology. Museum worker Jesús Sanchez realised that the Chichen Itza sculpture was stylistically similar to two sculptures from central Mexico and the wide occurrence of the form within Mesoamerica was first recognised. The 19th century discovery of chacmools in both central Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula helped to promote the idea of a Toltec empire although the chacmool sculptures may have originated in the Maya region.

Although the name chacmool was inappropriately applied, it has become a useful label to link stylistically similar sculptures from different regions and periods without imposing a unified interpretation.

Distribution

thumb|upright=1.2|A Chacmool in the Regional Museum of [[Tlaxcala]]

Examples of chacmool sculptures have been found widely across Mesoamerica from Michoacán in Mexico down to El Salvador. The earliest examples date from the Terminal Classic period of Mesoamerican chronology (c. AD 800–900). Fourteen chacmools are known from Chichen Itza and twelve from Tula. Further examples are known from Acolman, Cempoala, Michoacán, Querétaro and Tlaxcala.

In Chichen Itza, only five of the fourteen chacmools were securely confirmed in architectural contexts, those in the Castillo, the Chacmool Temple, the North Colonnade, the Temple of the Little Tables and the Temple of the Warriors. The rest were found interred in or near important structures. The chacmools in Tula also had an association with thrones or raised seating platforms, either in front of the throne or at the entrance to a chamber containing a throne.

Two chacmools have been recovered that were associated with the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital. The first was discovered in 1943, on the junction of Venustiano Carranza and Pino Suarez, about two blocks south of the temple itself. The second chacmool was excavated in the sacred precinct. This is the only fully polychrome chacmool that has been recovered anywhere; This latter sculpture is by far the older of the two. The Quiriguá chacmool most likely dated to the Postclassic period and is stylistically similar to those of Tula rather than Chichen Itza. A chacmool was excavated at Las Mercedes in Guácimo, Costa Rica.

The positioning and context of the chacmool form do have antecedents in Classic Maya art and art historian Mary Ellen Miller has argued that the chacmool developed out of Classic period Maya imagery. No central Mexican chacmool has been found that clearly predates the Chichen Itza examples. However, Tula and Chichen Itza may have developed simultaneously with rapid communication of the chacmool form from one city to the other.

The wider variety of chacmool forms at Chichen Itza has also been used to support the development of the form there; no two possess identical form, dress and proportions. At Tula the chacmools have a standardised form with little variation in position or proportions. The position of this chacmool statue mirrored the position of the sacrificial stone on the Huitzilopochtli (the Aztecs' patron deity, associated with war) side of the temple. Archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma posits that this mirroring confirms his interpretation that the chacmool acted as an "intermediary between the priest and the god, a divine messenger," in the same way the sacrificial stone on the Huitzilopochtli side does. Archaeologists were able to create a reconstruction of the sculpture's original colors, which they then compared to pictographic representations of Tlaloc. Whereas Tlaloc's eyes are generally represented with a round goggle-like frame, the later chacmool, the vessels, and the bench relief feature a rectangular eye frame within which almond eyes are engraved. All three sculptures also include large fangs at the corners of the god's mouth. This chacmool has overt iconographic associations with Tlaloc, wearing his mask and holding a cuauhxicalli vessel whose top is carved with the face of Tlaloc (rather than being concave and able to hold something).

Interpretations

thumb|300px|Chacmool inside the [[El Castillo, Chichen Itza|Castillo pyramid of Chichen Itza.]]

The meaning of the chacmool figures varied across time depending upon the geographical and cultural context. Chacmools do not appear to have been worshipped, since they are never found within inner sanctuary of temples or shrines; it appears to have rather been a piece of religious paraphernalia used by the priesthood in the course of their duties. Three uses have generally been attributed to chacmools.

The first interpretation is that the chacmool is an offering table (or tlamanalco) to receive gifts such as pulque, tamales, tortillas, tobacco, turkeys, feathers and incense. The second is that the chacmool was a cuauhxicalli to receive blood and human hearts; this use is particularly relevant to the Aztecs, who used a cuauhxicalli bowl in place of the usual disc-altar. These bowls may have accepted these blood offerings directly or may have been holders for portable cuauhxicalli bowls that were placed within them. A chacmool from Tlaxcala has a bloodied heart sculpted on the underside, supporting this interpretation. Techcatl were not just used for human sacrifice, they were also used in the yacaxapotlaliztli ceremony, where the nose of a future ruler was pierced. Such rituals may also have been executed upon chacmools, and the presence of small nose jewels sculpted onto various chacmools at Chichen Itza and one at Tula has been used to support this idea.

The backward reclining figure of the chacmool presents a defenceless, passive appearance and has been likened by Miller to the positioning of captives in Classic period Maya sculpture and painting. Bent elbows and knees are common in depictions of Maya captives; the full-frontal view of the face is rare in Maya art except among representations of captives.

The chacmools at Chichen Itza were found in a combination of chacmool, throne and serpent column; this chacmool-throne-serpent complex was associated with rulership during the Early Postclassic period. The chacmools at Tula, with contextual similarity to those at Chichen Itza, probably also represent war captives. Both of the chacmools from the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan were clearly associated with Tlaloc. The chacmool found two blocks south of the temple was sculpted with three images of the deity. These included an elaborate relief image of Tlaloc amongst aquatic symbols on the underside, one on the bowl that the figure grips and the last is the Tlaloc mask with characteristic goggles and fangs that is worn by the chacmool. A man named Filiberto buys a chacmool for his art collection, and discovers that the stone is slowly becoming flesh. The idol eventually becomes fully human, and his plans to escape. According to the author, this short story was inspired by news reports from 1952 when the lending of a representation of the Maya rain deity to a Mexican exhibition in Europe had coincided with wet weather there.thumb|191x191px|Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, "Reclining Figure" by Henry Moore. This is just one of many examples of Henry Moore's monumental "Reclining Figure" works.

In Henry Moore's early examples of monumental reclining figures, the artist relied on the cast of a chacmool sculpture he saw in Paris. Commenting on the major impact chacmool sculpted figures had on his early career, Moore stated that "Its stillness and alertness, a sense of readiness – and the whole presence of it, and the legs coming down like columns" were characteristics that inspired his creations.

References

General references

  • Desmond, Lawrence G. "Chacmool." In Davíd Carrasco (ed). The Oxford Encyclopedia of Mesoamerican Cultures. : Oxford University Press, 2001.

Further reading

  • "Chacmool," by Lawrence G. Desmond, Peabody Museum, Harvard University