|
|
Location: The two extant fragments of Stela C were both discovered in the central plaza of Group 3. Fragment 1 (the lower fragment) was discovered by Stirling on January 16, 1939 to the south of Structure 23 (Mound 3A) at the base of Trench 16. Fragment 1 was moved to the national museum in 1942. Fragment 2 (the upper fragment) was discovered by Esteban Santo of Tres Zapotes in 1970 in the plaza to the south of Structure 23. Upon its discovery Fragment 2 was brought to the settlement of Tres Zapotes and deposited in front of the city hall where it was first seen by Beverido. Subsequently the piece was placed in a jail cell inside the city hall. In 1970 Beverido returned with an artist Juan Sanchez Bonilla and made rubbings of both faces of the monument where it remained in the cell (Beverido 1971, 1987:186-187). Fragment 2 was finally moved to the site museum at its dedication in 1975.
Associations: Fragment 1 of Stela C was found set, up sideways, behind Altar 1 and no caches were reported. No associations for Fragment 2 of Stela C are known. Original placement of the complete sculpture remains unknown. Perhaps further exploration will uncover the missing lower portions of the stela still set into a floor. Trench 16 was placed through the center of Structure 23, the largest mound of the northern group, in an effort to locate further pieces of Stela C. Stratigraphy uncovered in the trench suggested an early stepped platform of brown clay underlay the final surface (Drucker 1943:25-27). However, the secondary positioning of Fragment 1 (and Fragment 2?) renders Trench 16 useless as an indicator of ceramic associations for the hieroglyphic date on Stela C.
Condition: Two fragments known, lower third of monument missing, badly chipped and flaked on back of Fragment 1 and front and top of Fragment 2.
Photographs: Present report, Plate 5; Stirling 1939:212, 217, 1940: Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ; Beverido 1971; de la Fuente 1973; Tellenbach 1977: Figures 1, 2, 3; Schau 1983: Plates 194, 195.
Drawings: Present report, Figures 4, 5; Stirling 1940: Figure 7; Covarrubias 1961; Beverido 1971; de la Fuente 1973; Tellenbach 1977: Figures 4, 5, 6; Schau 1983: Figure 196.
References: Stirling 1939, 1940, 1965; Drucker 1952; Coe 1957, 1965a, 1965b, 1968; Covarrubias 1961; Smith 1963; Williams and Heizer 1965; Bernal 1968; Beverido 1971, 1987; Joralemon 1971; Wicke 1971; Prem 1971, 1973; de la Fuente 1973, 1977; Tellenbach 1977; Schau 1983; Justeson et al 1985; Fox 1988.
Carved Areas: Class 2: FB. Front carved with masked face and elaborate headdress, rear carved with two columns of hieroglyphs. Both front and rear carved in low relief with incising and hollow drilled dots.
Material: Heizer and Williams observe that the stone of Stela C is composed of dense intergranular basalt characterized by an abundance of small phenocrysts of olivine and an absence of phenocrysts of augite and plagioclase. They then note that the stone of Stela C is nearly identical to the stone of a box from Matacanela on the southern shore of Lake Catemaco, La Venta Stela 3 and the basalt columns at La Venta and further suggest that "The fact that Tres Zapotes Stela C is not carved from the same stone as most of the other sculptures at [Tres Zapotes] (which came from nearby Cerro el Vigia) but is made of a stone which is more abundantly used at the La Venta site is of especial interest since it raises the possibility that Stela C may have been carried to Tres Zapotes from another site, possibly from La Venta itself, though it seems to date from after the abandonment of the La Venta site." (Heizer and Williams 1965:16). However, the presence of a sculpture carved from the same stone as Stela C at Matacanela, on the southern shore of Lake Catemaco, suggests another possibility: that both Tres Zapotes and La Venta imported the exotic material from a source near Lake Catemaco which also provided the Matacanela stone.
Dimensions: Remaining height 160 cm, Width 100 cm, Depth 30 cm.
Shape: Slabular, tapering from top to bottom.
Description: Stela C is a celtiform Stela with a flat slabular shape that tapers on either side from top to bottom, a face on the front and a hieroglyphic inscription on the back. The front face of Stela C is divided into three horizontal zones. The lower zone is mostly missing, the central zone depicts a face and the upper zone shows the headdress of the central face.
The upper portion of an upright is all that remains in the lower zone of Stela C.
The central zone consists of a face with a complex earflare assemblage to either side. The face is in front view with a buccal mask that covers the face below the nostrils. The upper lip of the mask is a thick double bracket and the lower lip is bow shaped. The downturned corners of the mouth contain raised hollow drilled dots and diagonal bands ascending to the sides of the upper lip. Below the upper lip is a "U" shaped bracket incisor with two scrolls emerging from its lower edge. Winged scrolls flank the upper lip and the side of the mouth. Square brackets emerge from the alae of the nose to frame the sides of the mouth. Each bracket terminates in a winged scroll and encloses a raised dot above a triangle with a "U" element inside.
Above the buccal mask is a broad flat nose with drilled nostrils. The nose flows into the eyebrows in a continuous bifurcated form with four members, two of which curve up at the outer edges, forming a "hand" element. Directly above the eyebrows on a field of drilled circles is an incised rectangular bracket containing a "U" element. Apart from this, the cranium is featureless up to the flat top of the head.
To either side of the nose are recessed eye sockets with complex outlines and concentric circles incised for pupils. The outer edges of the eyes turn up to meet the top of the bony orbit. The upturned outer edges of the eyes create a raised area enclosed by the eye which suggests a peculiar type of upper eyelid. Below each eye are three lozenge shapes with drilled circles at both the upper and the lower ends.
Vertical rectangles on either side of the head represent the earflare assemblage. There were probably circular earflares at eye level, but only the lower edge of the left earflare remains. Below the earflares are subfixes with complex angular incision and banded tassels hanging below.
The headgear consists of a wide headband with a square medallion in the center of the front and upright features at the temples. In the center of the medallion is a squared cartouche containing an incised "U" element. A long bead with a final element radiates from each of the four rounded corners of this central cartouche. A triangular tab is attached to each of the upper and lower edges of the cartouche. A square tab is attached to each of the right and left sides of the cartouche.
Upright features with two horizontal bands below an incised "U" element are attached to the headband at the temples. Around the lower and outer edges of each upright feature are winged scrolls with double tabs on the outer edge. Above the upright feature are winged scrolls with tabs and identical elements are mirrored below the upright feature. Against the outer edge of this complex is a bundle of three vertical bands with two knots above and two knots below. Above the upper knot and below the lower knot are tridents.
Above the central medallion of the headdress is a face in left profile. The oval eye orbit is clearly defined and the eye has an eccentric outline like that of the main face. The nose is broad and flat with a round nose bead. The thick downturned lips surround an undulating tooth band with scrolls at either end. The cranium is high and narrow while the chin is round and beardless. Paired bands pass around the cranium and through a hollow cushion over the forehead to terminate in a winged scroll. On top of the cranium is an eroded cartouche with scrolls to the left and right. Portions of other elements are above the cartouche. To the right of the face is a large squared earflare with central hole. Above and below the earflare are a superfix and a subfix, above the superfix is an undulant tail(?). The hair of the main face on Stela C curves gracefully upward around this subsidiary face.
Back: The back of Stela C bears an eroded inscription with a complete Initial Series date with a Tuxtla style text. The text is written in unpaired columns, glyph blocks are not separated (hence they are not numbered here), glyph height is not consistent and elements of Maya writing are used in a non Maya manner. At least three glyphs precede the Initial Series, the initial series introductory glyph superfix is treated as a main sign, comb affixes are absent, the Introductory Glyph main sign is given as two ornamented bars, the day sign is a unique depiction of ets'nab, non-calendric glyphs are incised on the raised surfaces of the unpaired columns and the last two glyphs of column B are portrait glyphs in left profile.
The first glyph of column A is not clear, but the second glyph is an angular version of T544 or T552. The ISIG variable is a feline portrait glyph. The numerical coefficients of the Initial Series are represented by horizontal dot-bar numerals. The day sign is set in a lozenge shaped cartouche with its vertical dot-bar coefficient to the right. The other glyphs are too eroded to merit detailed comment.
The inscription also provides evidence for the contemporaneous carving of both the front and the back. The Initial Series coefficient's dots are hollow drilled with an identical diameter to hollow drill marks on the front of the stela. Chiapa de Corzo Stela 1 is the only other sculpture known with hollow drilled dots. It seems unlikely that the same diameter of hollow drill would have been used for both the front and the back of Stela C if a significant amount of time had passed between the carving of the two sides.
Remarks: Stirling asserted that the Initial Series date on the reverse of Stela C bore witness to a Maya presence at tres zapotes during the first century A.D. (Stirling 1939:183-185). Thompson (1941:14-5), Morley (1946:41), Andrews and others furiously disputed his assertion, claiming the date was too early to be Maya. Coe originally accepted the date of Stela C as 7.16.6.16.18 (31 BC) and declared "The jaguar-monster mask [on the front of Stela C] is indubitably Olmec-La Venta" in style (Coe 1957:599). However, in footnote 3 of the same page he concurs with Thompson, Morley and Andrews by reviving the discredited Spinden correlation so that the date of Stela C will conform with his desire to place the stela at 291 BC. Indeed, Coe continued to be troubled by the implications of Stela C's date for his wishfully early placement of the demise of Olmec civilization. He worried that "if the face mask on the reverse side is really Olmec, then the style must have persisted long after 400 BC at other sites. A careful analysis of this abstract were-jaguar face shows, as Drucker (1952a, pp. 205-09) pointed out, rather evolved characteristics. The presence of the step design within diagonal lines which meet at the apex is a feature of post-Olmec, late Preclassic art of the Veracruz-Tabasco region, as seen in the Alvarado and Tepatlaxco stelae. As will be shown, we have at Tres Zapotes several monuments which are Izapan in style and therefore definitely post-Olmec, belonging to a final Preclassic occupation of the site; Stela C probably is contemporary, but retains more Olmec traits than do the others." (Coe 1965b:769).
The buccal mask on the front of Stela C certainly displays "evolved characteristics", compared with earlier examples of the same theme at La Venta (Monuments 25/26, 27, 58 and 66). However, the obvious implications of Stela C's date are that Olmec style persisted until at least 31 BC in the Gulf region and that hypothetical sculptural sequences based on an earlier end to Olmec style must be seriously questioned.
Beverido also had difficulties interpreting the headdress which forms the front of Fragment 2. He described the headdress with its ornamental head over a headband with a central medallion as "un personaje sentado sobre una piel de tigre, con las piernas cruzados y un atuendo muy complicado, en el pecho ostenta un rectangulo con bandas cruzadas; mira hacia la izquierda y queda aureolado por su gran tocado" (Beverido 1987:187).
