Temple of the Ascending Goddess

Abstract

In 1932, Mexican archaeologist and ethnohistorian Alfonso Caso announced a discovery that still stands as one of the richest and most famous finds in the Americas. Excavations at Monte Alban, a site in the highlands of southern Mexico's Valley of Oaxaca (pronounced wahha-ka), had yielded a two-chambered tomb containing more than 500 finely crafted artifacts. These included objects of gold, silver, copper, jade, turquoise, rock crystal, obsidian, and pearl. Most striking was a gold pectoral, an expertly worked piece of ceremonial gear consisting of a chest plate connected to an unusual mask of a human head topped by an elaborate headdress. The lower part of the mask shows large teeth set in a skeletal jaw. The burial, dubbed Tomb 7 by its discoverers, contained the skeletal remains of at least nine individuals. The most complete single skeleton, known as Skeleton A, lay at the tomb's western end. Skeleton A and its associated artifacts date to about A.D. 800, a time when either of two regional cultures may have buried their dead in Tomb 7. Monte Alban was first settled around 500 B.C. From 200 B.C. to A.D. 700 it served as the capital of the Zapotec empire. Thereafter, rulers from the Zapotec and Mixtec (pronounced meesh-tek) cultures apparently vied for control of Oaxaca and surrounding areas until the Spanish took over in 1521. Caso and his colleagues published a monograph in 1969 identifying Skeleton A as a 55to 60-year-old man who, along with other individuals, had been buried in a reopened tomb from the Zapotec era. Caso regarded the artifacts near Skeleton A as ritual paraphernalia of an important priest, some of which may have been worn when the holy man dressed up as a deity to perform ceremonial functions. The elegant gold pectoral represented a male god depicted in one of eight Mixtec codices, Caso held. These codices are painted pictorial manuscripts that survived the Spanish conquest of Mexico. Archaeologists generally accept Caso's interpretation and extol his careful excavations and documentation of what he found. There's a problem, though: Caso may have overlooked the real significance of his stunning finds. Skeleton A most likely belonged to a woman who