Pre-Hispanic Art Background
Pre-Hispanic works are largely unrecognized as art; rather they tend to be categorized as archeological relics. That’s why most of the pre-Hispanic art treasures in Mexico are housed in museums of history and anthropology, rather than gracing the walls of art galleries alongside modern greats like Rufino Tamayo and Diego Rivera. In fact, both of these famous artists drew inspiration from pre-Hispanic art and prized their personal collections. Tamayo (1899-1991) a Zapotec from Oaxaca, was adamant that his collection be preserved as art, not science (Barto, 2006). That’s why upon his death he donated it to National Institute of Fine Art instead of the National Institute of Anthropology. The result is the Rufino Tamayo Museum, the only place in Mexico where you can see pre-Hispanic works on display as art for art’s sake.
Some of the most significant humanistic pieces come not from celebrated city states like Teotihuacán or Chichen Itza, but from the civilizations of the west coast, from what is today Guerrero, Colima, Jalisco, Nayarit and Sinaloa. For the most part, these cultures remain an enigma. “To some extent this is due to geographic isolations,” Pesqueira explains, “but mostly it is because they left no great ceremonial centers like Teotihuacán and Monte Albán.” The art of occidental Mexico mostly differs from that of other regions in its secular nature (Barto, 2006). Rather than depicting idealized images of priests and warriors, their sculpture shows real human beings engaged in everyday activities: washing clothes, playing ball, and informal gatherings. “The Aztecs were very influenced by the question of religion and warfare,” says Pesqueira. “But in the cultures of the west coast the form of life is much more human, less rigid.” But neither were the Aztec and Maya wholly concerned with warfare and human sacrifice. The Maya, for example, had a highly developed tradition of music, which is depicted in statuettes of musicians and fine crafted flutes of clay and conch shell. Aztec sculptors also achieved realistic detail in their human subjects. Like most of the great achievements of pre-Columbian art, these works were created while most of Europe was still populated by nomadic hunters (Barto, 2006). “In the entire pre-Columbian chronology, the age of splendor, the classic period, was the first thousand years of the Christian era,” says Pesqueira. “When the Spanish arrive in the fifteenth century they meet the Aztecs, a people who no longer had that splendor.” The oldest pre-Columbian civilization, contrary to popular belief, was not that of the Olmecs, but rather the Zapotecs who ruled all of southern Mesoamerica from their capital, Monte Alban, on a hill overlooking modern day Oaxaca, between 500 BC and 750 AD. In contemporary Mexican art, as in most aspects of modern Mexican life, the pre-Hispanic tradition endures, be it in a masked form. The pre-Hispanic influence manifests itself not only in the imagery of death and sacrifice, but in the Mexican addiction to color – the bright oranges, pinks and turquoises they paint their walls. The Maya invested these colors with symbolic meaning. For example, turquoise represented the harmonious meeting of heaven (blue) and earth (green). The mural painting made famous in the twentieth century by Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros are also the continuation of a pre-Hispanic tradition. So you may already be appreciating pre-Hispanic art without even realizing it! Two pieces of pre-hispnaic art/art periods that will be compared in this assignment are Leiden Plaque and Kunz Axe.
Kunz Axe/Middle Formative
The most striking legacy of the Olmec civilization must be the colossal stone heads they produced. These were carved in basalt and all display unique facial features so that they may be considered portraits of actual rulers. The heads can be nearly 3 m high and 8 tons in weight and the stone from which they were worked was, in some cases, transported 80 km or more, presumably using huge balsa river rafts. 17 have been discovered, 10 of which are from San Lorenzo (Cartwright, 2013). The ruler often wears a protective helmet (from war or the ballgame) and sometimes show the subject with jaguar paws hanging over the forehead, perhaps representing a jaguar pelt worn as a symbol of political and religious power. The fact that these giant sculptures depict only the head may be explained by the belief in Mesoamerican culture that it was the head alone which bore the soul.
Another permanent record of the Olmecs is found in rock carvings and paintings. Often made around cave entrances they most typically depict seated rulers, as for example at Oxtotitlan, where a figure wears a green bird suit and at Chalcatzingo where another ruler sits on her throne surrounded by a maize landscape. At other sites there are also paintings of cave rituals, for example, at Cacahuazqui, Juxtlahuaca and Oxtotlan (Cartwright, 2013). Jade and ceramic were other popular materials for sculpture and also wood were typically used. Perhaps the most significant jade carving is the Kunz Axe, a ceremonial axe-head now in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. George Kunz published an article on a jade axe of unknown origin in 1889. The ceremonial jade axe portraying what Stirling called a were-jaguar is now commonly associated with the Olmec culture. Known as the Kunz axe, it is in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History. The jade has been worked to represent a were-jaguar creature using only jade tools and then polished, perhaps using a jade abrasive. Animals were a popular subject, especially those most powerful ones such as jaguars and eagles. Intriguingly, the Olmecs often buried their sculptures, even larger pieces, perhaps in a ritual act of memory.
The Smithsonian Institution and the National Geographic Society co-sponsored eight expeditions to Mexico to explore archaeological sites in Veracruz, Tabasco and Campeche between 1939 and 1946. The expeditions were led by the Smithsonian's Bureau of American Ethnology chief, Matthew W. Stirling, who brought the Olmec culture to light with a series of spectacular finds including several colossal stone heads at the sites of La Venta, San Lorenzo, and Tres Zapotes. Stirling's discoveries created intense discussion among scholars about where the Olmec fit into the chronology of Mesoamerican civilizations, some of which continues to this day. The Smithsonian continued its involvement in Olmec research when it co-sponsored an expedition to La Venta in 1955 with the National Geographic Society and the University of California (Smithsonian Olmec Legacy: Early Reports on the Olmec: George Kunz, 1889). The Institution's early exploration and excavation of Olmec sites laid the groundwork for all subsequent research and archaeological investigation. The Smithsonian retains the field notes, reports, correspondence, slides, prints, films, and artifacts from the eight Stirling expeditions, and the 1955 season as well.
Leiden Plaque/Classic
Archaeologists have divided the entire area occupied by speakers of Mayan languages into three subregions: (1) the Southern Subregion, essentially the highlands and Pacific Coast of Guatemala, (2) the Central Subregion, which includes the department of Petén in northern Guatemala and the immediately adjacent lowlands to the east and west, and (3) the Northern Subregion, consisting of the Yucatán Peninsula north of Petén proper. Between 250 and 900 the most brilliant civilization ever seen in the New World flourished in the forested lowlands of the Central and Northern subregions. Lowland Maya civilization falls into two chronological phases or cultures: Tzakol culture, which is Early Classic and began shortly before ad 250, and the Late Classic Tepeu culture, which saw the full florescence of Maya achievements. Tepeu culture began about 600 and ended with the final downfall and abandonment of the Central Subregion about 900. (These dates, based on the correlation of the Long Count system of the Maya calendar with the Gregorian calendar, are the most generally accepted; but there is a slight chance that a rival correlation espoused by the American archaeologist Herbert J. Spinden may be correct, which would make these dates 260 years earlier.) The Leiden Plaque (sometimes referred to as the Leiden Plate) was discovered in 1864 in Bahia de Graciosa in northern Guatemala and is named for its location in the collection of the in National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden, Netherlands. It is dated from the Early Classic period and is believed to have come originally from the central lowlands Petén Basin of Guatemala, more specifically, the Maya site of Tikal. It is an important artifact to ancient Maya archaeology because it has one of the earliest known Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions (Shook, 1960). Mayans also excelled in the working with jade. Jade was highly prized in Mayan world. The excavation of tombs has yielded large amounts of jade jewelry, effigies, plaques, and mosaics (Maya Art History). Mayan craftsmen also carved in bone, shell, and wood. We have little information about the Mayan perishable arts of feather work and weaving because little has survived. Metal work did not become important until the Post classic period after 900 AD. From the evidence that we have we know that the Mayans mostly worked in copper and gold.
One of the earliest objects inscribed with the fully developed Maya calendar is the Leiden Plate, a jade plaque, now housed in the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, Neth., depicting a richly arrayed Maya lord trampling a captive underfoot. On its reverse side is a Long Count date corresponding to 320. Although it was found in a very late site on the Caribbean coast, stylistic evidence suggests that the Leiden Plate was made at Tikal, in the heart of northern Petén. In the mid-20th century the University of Pennsylvania’s ambitious field program at the Tikal site produced Stela 29, erected 28 years before, in 292 (Pre-Columbian civilizations | Britannica.com). Both objects and, in fact, almost all early Tzakol monuments draw heavily upon a heritage from the older Izapan civilization of the Late Formative, with its highly baroque, narrative stylistic content. Because of the Maya penchant for covering older structures with later ones, Tzakol remains in the Central Subregion have to be laboriously dug out from their towering Late Classic overburdens. Nevertheless, it is clear that at sites like Tikal, Uaxactún, and Holmul, Maya civilization had reached something close to its final form. Enormous ceremonial centres were crowded with masonry temples and “palaces” facing onto spacious plazas covered with white stucco (Pre-Columbian civilizations | Britannica.com). The use of the corbel vault for spanning rooms—a trait unique to the lowland Maya—was by this time universal. Stelae and altars (a legacy from Izapa) are carved with dates and embellished with the figures of men and perhaps gods.
Conclusion
The Maya were the first Mesoamerican civilization, starting around 2600 B.C. They lasted the longest of all and are often viewed as the greatest Mesoamerican civilization. They built most of their great cities between A.D. 250 and A.D. 900. Although they were around first, the Maya only really rose to greatness in those later years after adopting much of their culture from the younger Olmec civilization. The Maya went on to leave behind a longer, more prosperous legacy, encompassing parts of Mexico, Guatamala, El Salvador, Belize, and Honduras (Griffon, 2013). They were ruled by kings and priests and were not wiped out like some of the other cultures, but gradually dissipated. Their exact relationship with the Olmecs remains unclear. So the Olmecs were the first major Mesoamerican culture, despite being younger than the Mayans. The name “Olmec” was almost certainly not what they called themselves but is derived from Aztec writings. The Olmecs established themselves around 1400 B.C. and lasted about 1,000 years, occupying a reasonably large amount of land. They were good farmers, artists, mathematicians, and astronomers (Griffon, 2013). They wrote in hieroglyphics, as did most of the cultures that followed them. They never built any major cities that we know of, but they did leave one pyramid behind before they gradually disappeared. Their most famous legacy is the mystery of the Olmec heads: 3-meter (9 ft) tall heads resembling African warriors made from stone found over 130 kilometers (80 mi) away.

References
Barto, Anna. "Prehispanic Art." Another Day in Paradise 2006 ADIP Web. <http://www.adip.info/2006_2007/dec/07-prehispanic-art.html>.
Cartwright, Mark. "Olmec Civilization - Ancient History Encyclopedia." Ancient History Encyclopedia. 30 Aug 2013. Web. 9 Dec 2015. <http://www.ancient.eu/Olmec_Civilization/>.
Griffon, Simon. "The Difference Between The Aztec, Maya, Inca, And Olmec - KnowledgeNuts." KnowledgeNuts. 22 Oct 2013. Web. 10 Dec 2015. <http://knowledgenuts.com/2013/10/22/the-difference-between-the-aztec-maya-inca-and-olmec/>.
"Maya Art History." Maya Inca Aztec. Web. 10 Dec 2015. <http://mayaincaaztec.com/maarthi.htmlmayaincaaztec.com/maarthi.html>.
"Pre-Columbian civilizations | Britannica.com." Britannica.com. Web. 9 Dec 2015. <http://www.britannica.com/topic/pre-Columbian-civilizations#ref583426>.
Shook, Edwin. "Tikal Stela 29. Expedition." Penn Museum - University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. 1960. Web. 9 Dec 2015. <http://www.penn.museum/documents/publications/expedition/PDFs/2-2/Tikal%20Stela.pdf>.
"Smithsonian Olmec Legacy: Early Reports on the Olmec: George Kunz, 1889." Anthropology Home. Web. 10 Dec 2015. <http://anthropology.si.edu/olmec/english/introduction/earlyReports/kunz.htm>.

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