Palma with canines

This palma is unusual in depicting its enigmatic narrative scene in an identifiable setting. Two canines are shown joined in battle, or an embrace, atop a staircase leading to a platform with architectural features and details found in northcentral Veracruz where ballgame-related stone sculptures such as this one likely originated. There, at the sites of El Tajín and Paxil Misantla, there are platforms and staircases displaying its inward-sloping base (talud) topped by an outward-sloping band (flying cornice), ornamented with a T-shaped motif also typical of the region. The two animals represented may also be identifiable. The long snout and ears, wrinkled brow, and tuft of hair on the forehead of the smaller one show it to be a Xoloitzcuintli (Mexican hairless dog); the larger may be a tlalchichi, a now-extinct hairless breed (see MMA 2007.345.1, .4). Remaining traces iron oxide suggest that the surface might once have been coated with the red pigment.

Events are sometimes implied by the imagery of stone ballgame sculpture; hachas in the form of human heads and hands, for example (see MMA 1979.206.1042 and .371), likely reference human capture and sacrifice, but the direct depiction of a narrative moment such as this one is extremely rare. The reinterpretation of the base of the palma as a temple platform suggests that the scene shown here is an otherwise unknown mythic event reinterpreted as sacred ritual.

Palmas are one of the categories of stone sculpture that are associated with ballgame regalia, although they would not have been worn while playing the game. The curved base of this example suggests placement over the curved surface of a yoke (see MMA 1979.206.445), but there is no visible means of attachment, and the combined weight of the two pieces would have severely restricted the player’s movements. It is more likely that these are replicas of ballplayer gear made of lighter materials such as leather, wood, and cloth, and that the stone versions were given out as trophies or placed in tombs as offerings.

Patricia J. Sarro, 2024

Further Reading

Blanco Padilla, Alicia, Bernardo Rodríguez Galicia, and Raúl Valadez Azúa. Estudio de los cánidos arqueológicos del México Prehispánico. Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia; Instituto de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2009.

Ceremonial Sculpture of Veracruz. New York: Long Island University, 1987.

Earley, Caitlin C. “Stone Sculpture and Ritual Impersonation in Classic Veracruz.” Metropolitan Museum Journal (2019), pp. 8-25, fig. 5.

Scott, John F. “Dressed to Kill: Stone Regalia of the Mesoamerican Ballgame”. In The Sport of Life and Death, The Mesoamerican Ballgame, E. Michael Whittington, ed, pp. 50-63 New York: Thames and Hudson, 2001.

Shook, Edwin M. and Elayne Marquis. Secrets in Stone: Yokes, Hachas and Palmas from Southern Mesoamerica. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1996.