Out of the Past: Ancient Clothing in Contemporary Indian Villages

Patricia Anawalt

In a rugged, mountainous area of eastern Central Mexico there exists a unique and fascinating region known as the Sierra Norte de Puebla (Figure 1) where a portion of the state of Puebla pushes north to touch the state of Hidalgo to the west and-to the east-the state of Veracruz stretches down to the Gulf Coast. The Sierra is unusual in several respects, including the juxtaposition of four different indigenous peoples living in artificially close proximity within a small radius. This strange distribution came about as the result of a tragic catastrophe that occurred almost half a millennium ago.

Within less than a hundred years after the Spanish Conquest, the impact of European diseases on the Mexican Indians brought about the most devastating population drop in recorded history: in 1521 there were between 10 and 15 million inhabitants in Central Mexico; by 1600 only about one million were left. Faced with this rapidly collapsing native population, the Spanish instigated a new settlement policy, congregacion: the relocating of surviving ethnic groups "...within the sound of the bell," the better for missionary conversion and control.

The effects of this resettlement were still evident centuries later. Frederick Starr,1 the American anthropologist who worked in the Sierra during the late 19th century, noted "strange interminglings" among the region's diverse peoples. This was still true a century later when I worked in the Sierra from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. In fact, I deliberately chose the Sierra Norte de Puebla for research into clothing acculturation precisely because it was home to four distinct language groups, speakers of Highland Totonac, Tepehua, Otomi and Nahuatl, the tongue of the Aztec empire that is still spoken by almost a million people in Central Mexico. All four of these groups live very near one another yet maintain autonomy in language and dress; all are still producing and wearing clothing styles that reflect varying aspects of their 500-year acculturation process.

The Sierra Norte de Puebla--a rugged region of impressively deep barrancas--is a location whose remoteness not only spared the area the full impact of the Spanish conquest but also the arrival of "modern ways" well into the 20th century. Despite the present incursion of roads, the Sierra often still resembles a landscape out of the past, a land where time does not always move logically into succeeding years and decades. Even centuries sometimes get out of place and reappear like some old man, staff in hand, shuffling uneasily through the backcountry (Figure 2) as though he had just wandered out of a colonial codex (Figure 3).

Indeed, the Sierra truly is a Land of the Old Ways where prehispanic foods are prepared in prehispanic ways, using prehispanic condiments to produce prehispanic treats. The Sierra also has retained old textile practices: not only are women still weaving on prehispanic-style, back-strap looms (Figure 4) , they are also still producing prehispanic-style garments almost identical to those that repeatedly appear on Aztec sculpture and in Aztec codices. For example, a stone sculpture displayed in the Royal Academy's Aztec exhibit depicts the Aztec fertility goddess Chalchiuhlticue wearing a quechquemitl (Figure 5) , the diagnostic apparel of Aztec female deities. So far as my colleagues and I have been able to discover, this simply-constructed garment (Figure 6) is unique to Mesoamerica.

The quechquemitl also appears on female deities in the codices. The pulque goddess Mayahuel (Figure 7) appears in Codex Magliabechiano wearing a quechquemitl. In Codex Barbonicus, the corn deity Chicomecoatl (Figure 8) is beautifully depicted wearing both a quechquemitl and the magnificent, towering amacalli paper headdress. Today, in the Sierra, native women still wear quechquemitl; one example is a Nahuatl-speaker (Figure 9) who displays both a quechquemitl and a prehispanic-style headdress, topped by a second quechquemitl.

Prehispanic-style male garments are also still produced in the Sierra, as evidence this sleeveless jacket (Figure 10) , which is a descendant of the xicolli, the prehispanic sacred jacket worn by the Aztec god Xiuhtecuhtle (Figure 11) , a sculpture that appeared in the Royal Academy's Aztec exhibition. This ancient garment lives on, but the postmodern version has now added a zipper, faux-fur collar, faux-ivory buttons and a macromed hem (Figure 12) .

One might assume that the back-strap weaving of such ancient clothing styles would be the textile focus of the Sierra, but there is another emphasis that receives far more attention. The region's most ubiquitous and widely-discussed clothing item-at least by the woman--is a blouse (Figure 13) descended from the European chemise. An early example of the chemise is visible on a 15th-century depiction of Queen Isabella of Portugal (Figure 14) . All traditional Sierran females wear this same colonial-style blouse: Highland Totonac, Tepehua, Otomi, and the Nauha, direct descendants of the Aztecs. The most unusual aspect of these colonial-style blouses is the time, effort and consideration that goes into decorating the colorful panels that adorn the neck and sleeves (Figure 15) the craft emphasis of the Sierra is embroidery (Figure 16) . When these embroidered panels are completed they are taken to be stitched up into a Sierran-style blouse by one of the few local women owning a sewing machine (Figure 17) .

In the early 90s, when the last of my five fieldwork seasons ended, I found I was still puzzled by several things about the Sierran blouses (see Figure 13). One aspect had to do with the never-deviating location of those embroidery designs. Why were decorations only located around the neck and sleeves? Why did embroideries not also appear on the body of the blouse? A further question concerned the meaning of a certain scene that kept reappearing on some of the embroidery panels from one small group of villages; more on that enigma below.

I came away from my Sierran fieldwork with those puzzles unsolved, but never entirely forgotten. As always, one moves on to other things. In this case, the writing of a huge book, The Worldwide History of Dress: The Origin of Fashion from the Paleolithic to the Present. In the course of that enterprise, I came to realize that one of the most interesting features of European folk costumes (Figure 18) are the embroidered motifs they display: their positioning, meaning and longevity.

European folk costume is often described as being non-Western because it developed outside the dictates of Western European fashion. These "non-fashionable" peasant garments tend to be richly colored, painstakingly crafted and often densely embroidered. Indeed, embroidery is a featured aspect of European folk dress. The esoteric embroidery designs often embody multiple layers of meaning, particularly in more remote agrarian communities where ancient, magical-religious beliefs are still deeply-rooted. Such embroidered clothing not only dresses the body but also helps to negotiate the invisible forces in a world infested with threatening beings and haunted by wandering souls. Every nuance of those protective designs is important, including their positioning on a garment.

The correct placement of a protective motif was important because evil spirits were prone to attack the body at clothing's every opening and edge. Particularly vulnerable regions of the body warrant heavy embroidery: the front of the bodice and the sleeves. Note that on the Sierran blouses (see Figure 13) embroidery panels encircle the neck and sleeves, just as they do in Eastern Europe.

In addition to similarities in the placement of embroideries between European folk costumes and those of the Sierra, there is also a similarity in the meaning of certain designs---specifically in one particular tableau that often appears on Sierran blouse panels from a group of small, adjacent, Nahuatl-speaking villages. There is an intriguing likeness between a frequently-occurring Sierran embroidered scene (Figure 19) of a female figure accompanied by flowers, dogs, birds and deer. All my informants would say about this grouping (Figure 20) was that it depicts a nina, a girl, out on the monte, the uncultivated mountains-still replete with birds and flowers-with her wild animales. Such sparse information was often accompanied by embarrassed giggles and knowing glances exchanged between friends. I had the definite impression that the scene had sexual overtones.

Let us compare these Sierran Nahua embroideries with a type of Eastern European tableau that often appears on Russian ritual cloths (Figure 21) . Could the central figure in these scenes be the same female? If so, who precisely might she be? To answer this question, it is helpful to re-examine the scene of Slovakian folk costumes (see Figure 18); note that the women hold aloft an effigy of a faceless female. This is a version of the Slavic fertility goddess Berehinia (Figure 22) , an earth mother depicted in a variety of modes in Eastern Europe.

In the most easily-read depictions of this goddess, she appears as a single, erect image presented frontally with her full skirt and/or feet firmly attached at the base, and her arms either raised in invocation (see Figure 22) or lowered in blessing (Figure 23) . Some of the earliest images of the goddess appear on Neolithic pottery (Figure 24) . However, the origin of this deity probably harks back to Mankind's earliest sculptures-the so-called Venus figures--carved from mammoth ivory and dating from the Upper Paleolithic, ca. 30,000 BC. Such cult figurines as the Venus of Lespugue (Figure 25) -who wears a fiber-string backapron--are believed to represent the earliest depictions of the overarching female principal: earth mother, life source, fertility symbol.

It is hard to fathom the extraordinary continuity of such ancient garment traits as the string backskirt. Certain elements of Eastern European folk costume-for example, the continued use of fringed backaprons in the Balkans--appear to derive directly from the Upper Paleolithic. Some present-day embroidery motifs associated with the ancient goddess have an equally impressive longevity. For example, in ancient Sumerian art, ca. 3000 BC, the zaftig Venus figurines metamorphed into a curvy Tree-of-Life image (Figure 26) incorporating the goddess' head and arms in flower form. Note that in this ancient depiction of the fertility deity her attendant animals are antlered deer. The transformation from deer to horses as goddess helpers is believed to have occurred with the domestication of the horse during the Neolithic Revolution. There is an interesting resemblance between these ancient, Sumarian-derived antlered deer and those from the Sierra (Figure 27) .

The obvious next question is when embroidery first appeared in Mesoamerica. Our earliest evidence comes from bits and pieces of carbonized textiles retrieved from Chichen Itza's Cenote of Sacrifice that dates to the Late Post-Classic period, AD 900-1520. Although these fragments are too blackened to make out precise patterns, it has been determined that a form of the running-stitch sewing technique was part of the Mesoamerican prehispanic embroidery repertory. And this is precisely the same counted-stitch technique-now called pepenada in the Sierran highlands-that is used to create the scene of the girl on the monte (see Figures 19, 20). There is also further evidence for prehispanic embroidery in the work of Fray Bernardino de Sahagún, the foremost 16th-century chronicler of the Aztecs. In Sahagún's great work, the Florentine Codex, he mentions embroidery--tlamachtli--8 times.2 In a passage from Book 10-The People-he repeatedly lauds the skill the women displayed in their intricate needlework.

Returning to the puzzle of the meaning encoded in the scene of the nina on the monte with her animales (see Figures 19, 20), these intriguing embroideries come from one specific area of the Sierra Norte de Puebla where animal motifs are particularly prevalent (Figure 28) . For example, on the hand-woven, finger-picked gauze textiles from Nahuatl-speaking villages of this region, a variety of animal images appear: eagles, horses, deer, and also animal-like nahuals, the Mesoamerican spirit companions who often take animal form when venturing forth on adventures, good and ill. It is of interest, however, that these gauze weavings do not include humans. In the nearby Otomi town of San Pablito, animal figures-reputedly nahuals all--are also often featured on blouse embroideries but-here again-no accompanying humans appear. To date, so far as I have been able to ascertain, it is only the aforementioned nina-on-the-monte embroideries from the Nahua villages that combine people with animals.

Could the provocative girl with her animals (Figure 29) , be related to the ancient East European deity--with her animals-who is often embroidered on folk costumes and ritual towels (Figure 30) ? I suggest that-given the aforementioned European/Sierran similarities--it is quite plausible that both female figures represent regional versions of the same ancient fertility goddess in her guise as mistress of animals. But, you may well ask, exactly how could such an image have moved from the Old World to the New, and then ended up in the modern-day embroidery repertory of the Sierra Norte de Puebla (Figure 31) ?

Traditionally, there are five possible ways of explaining similarities that appear at widely-separated points in time and space.

First: Independent Invention; I do not think that is the answer. The similarities discussed above are too close. Second: Convergence; Nor is this explanation the one. Third: Psychic Unity; I doubt it. Fourth: Diffusion. Yes, here I think we have an answer; this image-transfer must have taken place via Diffusion. The scene of the girl on the uncultivated mountainside probably was introduced from Spain, as was the European chemise that evolved into the Sierran blouse. Note that it is only on the colonial-style blouse that the scene of the nina on the monte appears. But we must not stop here in our search for a fuller understanding; there is still one further explanation for widely-separated similarities: Fifth: Archaic Substructure, the transfer of ancient beliefs, via ancient migrations from the Old World to the New, that took place in truly ancient times: in short, archaic diffusion. I suggest that the ancient European image of the fertility goddess was selectively embraced by the Nahuatl-speaking Sierran embroiderers precisely because they, too, still hold an archaic belief in a powerful and protective fertility goddess who is mistress of her familiars, the animales still roaming free out there on the untamed monte.

Notes

1. See Starr 1901 8:102-198 for a discussion of the four Indian groups' "strange interminglings" in the Sierra Norte de Puebla.

2. In Fray Bernardino de Sahagún's Nahuatl-Spanish Florentine Codex, he mentions embroidery, tlamachtlli, 8 times: Book 8: 24, 25, 25; Book 10:180, 180, 180, 188; Book 12:15.

Bibliography

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