It is not strange that from time to time archaeologists surprise us with fascinating finds. A bone that tells us about shows with wild animals in Roman Britannia, a stalactite that reveals to what extent the Mayans suffered from the droughts, a 16th century wreck sunk with part of the menu of its crew members… The list is long, but in it it is difficult to find milestones like the one left 90 years ago an excavation at the site of Tecaxic-Calixtlahuacain Mexico.
While studying a pre-Columbian tomb, historians located what appears to be part of a Roman sculpture, a figure that some experts date to the AD. 2nd and 3rd centuries AD The question is obvious: How the hell did it get there?
First jump back: 1933. To understand the enigma we have to jump back 90 years, to 1933, when a team led by José García Payón He was excavating in the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca site, 65 kilometers northwest of the capital of Mexico. There the experts located a funeral offering which included pieces of gold, copper, turquoise, rock crystal, jet, ceramic… and something much less common in a pre-Columbian funerary trousseau: a terracotta head.
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Two big unknowns. The bust in question shows a bearded face, with a style, features and even a hairstyle that fit more in ancient Rome than in pre-Hispanic America. The piece is so curious that in recent decades it has fascinated archaeologists and led to several investigations that try to answer two big questions: Where did the figure come from? And how the hell did it end up among the offerings in a tomb from the late 15th century?
The scope of the mystery is better understood when we know a fundamental piece of information from the 1933 excavation. The ringleader did not appear in an open (and manipulable) space, but among offerings buried under three intact floors of a pyramidal structure. That is to say, everything indicates that no one altered the trousseau since the date of the burial, which experts date between 1476 and 1510.
If that small bearded bust that looked like something out of ancient Rome was there, it was, in theory, because someone deposited it before sealing the tomb.
Second jump back: II AD The leader of Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca continued to be involved in unknowns until early 60’swhen Ernst Boehringer, the president of the German Institute of Archaeology, suggested that it was probably of Roman origin and had been made between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. He is not the only one who thinks this way. Bernad Andreae, another eminent archaeologist, shares the hypothesis and even has gone one step further: “The hairstyle and the shape of the beard present the typical features of the period of the Severan emperors (193-235 AD).”
In case there were any doubts, in the mid-90s the University of Heidelberg, in Germany, subjected the figurine to a thermoluminescence dating test. The time frame he provided is much broader, but it clears up the mystery: he concluded that the head had to be manufactured between the centuries IX BC and XIII AD Some sources even limit that window between the II BC and VI AD
If we take into account that the rest of the items of the funerary trousseau were from the Aztec-Matlatzinca era (15th-16th centuries AD) the question was repeated again: How do you explain that an ancient Roman figurine ended up buried there?
And what is the answer? The reality is that experts only handle hypotheses, not certainties. Some are fascinating. Others not so much. Among the latter there is one that has been on the table for a while and explains that for decades the academic world viewed the Calixtlahuaca figurine with certain suspicion.
We can accept that the bust is Roman, even that it was made at the beginning of our era and ended up in a pre-Columbian tomb that remained sealed until the 1930s; but that does not mean that we have to accept that the figure had been buried there at the end of the 15th century. How is that possible? Very easy. Perhaps someone placed it there 90 years ago, during the García Payón excavation.
“It could be a hoax, it could be a Roman figurine placed at the site or laboratory,” slides Michael E. Smithprofessor at Arizona State University. It is not a theory just thrown into the air. The same expert recalls that in the academic world it is rumored that the famous ringleader was snuck in by a student to play a prank. There is even a suspect. “Many archaeologists in Mexico have heard the story and tend to believe it.”
The great unknown. When Smith tried to delve deeper into this possible explanation, he encountered a seemingly insurmountable wall. He couldn’t confirm it. Nor deny it. It also doesn’t help that his protagonists have died and that Payón was not especially exhaustive with his notes.
In fact there are those who assure that the collection of artifacts extracted from Calixtlahuaca exhibited in the Museum of Anthropology of Toluca includes ceramics that come from other sites. Another plausible possibility is that the ringleader was associated with the trousseau for a mistakenot intentionally.
Strange yes, impossible no. It is not the only hypothesis that archaeologists have raised. Smith himself acknowledges that there are others on the table, equally plausible, such as the fact that the figure was brought with him by a Spaniard at the beginning of the colonial period and for some reason ended up included in the trousseau along with other pieces whose origin can actually be delayed until the beginning of the 16th century.
After all, the Calixtlahuaca burial occurred prior to prolonged contact with indigenous people, but it coincides with the first years of exploration. As notes Arkeo News That leaves out a remote possibility: What if, for a historical twist, a Roman antiquity traveled in the first colonial expeditions and then moved around America until it joined the funerary trousseau?
“It is not possible to determine, from the content or context, whether the offering dates from the period before the Spanish conquest of Mexico or from the early Spanish colonial period,” confirm Smith, who points out the need to delve into the study of the head to better understand both its origin and antiquity.
Add and continue explanations. Nor does that theory exhaust the long list of hypotheses with which archaeologists have worked in recent decades. There is another, more complicated one: that the bust is indeed a vestige of ancient Rome and arrived in what is now Mexico before the first Spaniards.
That does not mean that the Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca head is evidence of solid contacts between the Old and New Worlds before Columbus. The piece may be related to supposed pre-Hispanic transoceanic contacts, but it may also have reached the American shores after the shipwreck of a Roman, Phoenician or Berber ship dragged by the currents of the Atlantic.
The Olmec track. If the bust is an ancient Roman figure it would be a fascinating discovery, but in reality it would not be the first test that during the Classic (III-IX AD) and Postclassic (X-XV) periods, artifacts that were already centuries old were used. Even to include them in tombs. In the Mexico-Tenochtitlán temple, archaeologists discovered, for example, a very early Olmec mask that someone decided to add to a funerary offering from the 15th century AD. What if the same thing happened with the bearded head with Western features located by García Payón’s team in 1933?
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