October Issue 2001
Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, NC, Gives View of the Mesoamerican Ballgame
The Sport of Life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame will be on view at the Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte, NC, through Dec. 30, 2001.
To Hernán Cortés and his Spanish army, the first glimpse of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan must have seemed an incredible hallucination. There was no base of comparison in 16th century Europe for the monumental structures before them in a city of 250,000 inhabitants, built on a lake island. Tenochtitlan's great plaza was a stunning architectural representation of the Mesoamerican universe. Its temple-pyramid symbolized the celestial world, the palace and plaza the terrestrial world, and its two ballcourts - the "Tezcatlachco" and "Teotlachco" - the Underworld.
For hundreds of years, explorers and scholars have speculated on why a team sport played with a rubber ball held such a prominent role in Mesoamerican culture and history. Throughout its 3,000 years of play, the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame was a ritual sport in which a human team was symbolically pitted against the gods and the frightening powers of the natural world. Through the re-enactment of myths, cyclical rituals and human sacrifice, ancient Mesoamerican peoples battled to influence the universe and control the cosmic forces.
The ballgames of ancient Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras have long fascinated scholars and the general public alike. An astounding 1,560 ballcourts at 1,275 archaeological sites have been identified. The Sport of Life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame is the first traveling exhibition on this fundamental topic to be organized in the United States. Included in the masterworks gathered for this groundbreaking exhibition are tiny jade carvings depicting Olmec ballplayer kings (ca. 900 B.C.), to ring-shaped stone goals that once stood in Aztec courts over 2,000 years later. The Sport of Life and Death illuminates some of the greatest triumphs and tragedies in early Mesoamerican history.
"The commitment of the most prestigious museums in the United States and Mexico as lenders combined with the sponsorship the exhibition has received is a testimony of its historic importance," said Michael Whittington, organizer of the exhibit and Curator of Pre-Columbian Art at the Mint Museum of Art. Through the collaboration of The Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes and the Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Historia, the Museo Nacional de Antropología and the Museo del Templo Mayor in Mexico City will be loaning artistic splendors depicting the ancient games and its players.
Additionally, the Museo de Antropología, Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa will be contributing important works from their collection. The exhibition is made possible through the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation. The exhibition will open and be on display in Charlotte, NC, through Dec. 30. It then travels to the New Orleans Museum of Art, Feb. 16 - Apr. 28, 2002; the Joslyn Art Museum, June 8 - Sept. 1, 2002; and the Newark Museum Oct. 1 - Dec. 1,2002.
The catalogue is 270 pages in length with 200 color illustrations. Written by an international team of scholars, the essays provide an overview of the Mesoamerican games and the environmental and cultural framework that created them. Authors are Douglas Bradley, Jane Day, Dorothy Hosler, Ted Leyenaar, Mary Miller, Laura Filloy Nadal, John Scott, Eric Taladoire, Michael Tarkanian, Maria Theresa Uriarte and Michael Whittington, who also served as volume editor. This important contribution to the field is a joint publication of the Mint Museum of Art/Thames & Hudson, inc., New York, and will be distributed internationally.
The exhibition website may be found at (http://www.ballgame.org), featuring information about works of art in the exhibition and detailed cultural history of ancient Mesoamerica. "Interactive technology permits us to transport our visitors to the actual locations where ancient athletes once competed," stated Whittington. "Visitors to the website may take virtual tours of Maya ballcourts, watch a video of actual teams competing and try their hand at playing the ballgame themselves." Additionally, users can learn about rubber cultivation and printable activity sheets for children will be provided.
What is the ballgame, its significance and its players? Visitors to the exhibition will begin their exploration of the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame with the earliest known "Rubber Ball", (ca. 1200 B.C.) from the Olmec site of El Manatí. Archaeologists consider the Olmec the mother culture of Mesoamerica. They developed number and writing systems, ceremonial architecture, blood sacrifice by rulers to pacify a pantheon of gods, and the ritual ballgame. Several centuries before the birth of Christ, cultures in Western Mexico developed their own lively ballgame traditions. A Model of a Ballcourt (Nayarit, Late Formative Period, 300 B.C-A.D. 200) presents a court packed with spectators, musicians, ballplayers and a referee-a moment forever frozen in time.
Archaeological investigations of the past 150 years and early Spanish eyewitness accounts have provided a great deal of information on this uniquely Mesoamerican phenomenon. Relief carvings on the immense ballcourt at Chichén Itzá illustrate decapitation rites related to fertility of the earth. At sites in central Mexico and the Yucatan, tzompantli (skull racks) were placed in the plaza outside the courts as a constant reminder of the basic significance of the ballgame a dramatic debt offering to the gods of a human life in exchange for an orderly universe. Human sacrifice was connected with the ritual ballgame from the earliest times. The most dramatic artworks depicting ballgame sacrifice were created during the Late Classic Period (A.D. 700-900) on Mexico's gulf coast. On display will be two Classic Veracruz Stone Monuments from the ballcourt at the site of El Aparicio. These show decapitated ballplayers sitting on temple platforms. As the blood spurts from their severed necks, it is transformed into serpents - creatures linked with fertility and resurrection throughout Mesoamerica.
The Mesoamerican ballgame originated from mythology stories of creation and the activities of the gods and humanity that became inseparable from the game. From the Popol Vuh, the Maya story of creation, we learn the interaction between gods and humans can be treacherous. The Lords of Xibalba - the Maya Underworld - were irritated by the noise of the bouncing rubber ball in a court game played by brothers Hun Hunahpu and Vucub Hunahpu. The Lords invited the brothers to the Underworld for a game, tricking them into defeat. The Xibalba Lords sacrificed the brothers, burying their bodies in the ballcourt. When their progeny - the Hero Twins - came of age, they discovered their ball playing gifts. Aware of their special talents, the Underworld Lords summoned the Twins for a ballgame. The Hero Twins avoided their treachery in defeating the Lords, retrieving their father's and uncle's bodies and placed them in the sky to become the sun and the moon. Illustrating this great epic will be a Ceramic Vessel with Ballplayers (The Pearlman Handball Vase). This Late Classic Maya (A.D. 700-900) masterpiece features the Hero Twins - Xbalanque and Hunahpu - wearing their elaborate uniforms.
As other Mesoamerican cultures came to prominence, variations on the ballgame and on associated rituals evolved. Captured warriors became sacrificial victims in monthly festivals and religious pageantries. Royal players would continue a prominent role, but some cultures would "stage" competitions pitting royalty against weakened captives. The primary elements of the contest remained faithful in the 3,000 year span of play. Teams of two to seven players would fiercely compete, at great risk of injury and even death on the court, until one team either hit the rubber ball through a center court ring or accumulated a designated point total.
Winners were feted as heroes and showered with treasures, honored with special insignias and even given friendship status with the emperor. Losers were sacrificed, their blood shed to ensure rains for the crops. High priests, in slashing seconds, would pull out the losing player's heart as an offer to a god, while the victorious player raises the severed head of his opponent, symbolically capturing his power. Anticipated rebirth awaits the sacrificed victim in the form of the young and virile Maize god, illustrated in Tripod Plate with Maize God Dancer (Late Classic Maya, A.D 700-900).
Great community resources went into building a city's ballcourt. The game became a popular form of exercise and year-round recreation for the general population Most ball courts were I-shaped, enclosed with ornate and handsomely carved eight to eleven-foot walls. The interior floor was stuccoed and finely polished. The surrounding walls were adorned with elaborate sculptures. The ballcourts burst with crowds when the players arrived, accompanied by costumed pageantry, dance, and music.
In most ballgames the rubber ball was struck with the arms, knees or buttocks. Using the hands, feet or head was prohibited. On display will be numerous Ballplayer Figurines that portray players wearing various combinations of ceremonial costumes and protective equipment. Striking examples on display are Classic Veracruz (A.D. 700-900) ballplayers with protective Yokes, Yuguitos (kneepads) Manoplas (handstones) Hachas (worn on the yokes) and Palmas (elaborate sculptures worn around the waist).
Kings would field teams of their kingdom's best players, at times competing against other city-states to settle territory disputes in place of war. The game was also a means of sublimating social violence through sacrifice. The playing of the game promoted human bonding, emphasizing qualities of cooperation and obedience to rules as a means to achieve success.
According to the chronicles of Bernardino de Sahagún, a 16th century Spanish priest, wagering was a major activity of the Aztec games. Wealthy spectators and participants bet jewels, slaves, finely woven cloth, and even their own families. Royalty could well afford the gambling losses, Another class of players, professionals outside the royal ranks, made a meager living playing the game.
"These wretches played for stakes of little value," wrote de Sahagún, "and since the pauper loses quickly, they were forced to gamble their homes, their fields, their corn granaries, their maguey plants. They sold their children in order to bet and even staked themselves and became slaves, to be sacrificed later if they were not ransomed."
By the time of the Spanish arrival in Mesoamerica, the Aztec ballgame had become largely secular, though religious pageantry still surrounded the event. The game lost favor because Spanish priests saw it as a survival of heathen practices, and thus suppressed it. Rubber ballgames have continued uninterrupted in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa to the present day.
An accompanying 270 page, illustrated publication, The Sport of Life and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame, published by the Mint Museum of Art and Thames & Hudson of London, is available at either Mint Museum Shop, or by e-mail at (sfisher@mintmuseum.org) or by calling 704/337-2038. Price: TBA.
For more information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the museum at 704/337-2000, on the web
at (http://www.mintmuseu m.org) or go to The "Sport of Life
and Death: The Mesoamerican Ballgame" website is (http://www.ballgame.org).
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