Mound No. 25
Fig. 68.—Incense burner decorated with crude clay figurine from Mound No. 25.
Mound No. 25 was situated in the country of the Icaichè Indians, Quintana Roo, Yucatan. The mound was discovered by the Indians when cutting down virgin bush to make a milpa, or corn plantation. It was a moderate-sized mound, about 10 feet high, and upon its summit, uncovered, lay the objects illustrated in figures [68], [69], and [70]. Figure [68] exhibits a roughly formed clay figurine, nearly 1 foot in height, decorating a small hourglass-shaped incense burner. Both figure and vase are very crudely modeled in rough pottery; most of the prominent characteristics of the carefully modeled and elaborately decorated incense burner represented in plate [20] and figure [67] are still retained. The large round ear plugs, with long flaps from the headdress overlapping them, the horizontally striated breastplate, and even a rudimentary maxtli, together with the extended position of the arms, as if in the act of making an offering, and the background of featherwork are features which may be recognized. There is exhibited, however, a lamentable decadence from the art which fabricated the more elaborate vase. In figure [69] may be seen what probably represents a further stage of degeneration—namely, the substitution of the head for the entire figure on the outside of the incense burner. The last stage of all in the decadence of this branch of Maya art is to be seen in the small crude bowls found by Sapper in the great Christa of the settlement of Izan, and by Charnay in the ruins of Menche Tinamit.[49]
Fig. 69.—Crude clay figurine found in Mound No. 25.
These bowls, each decorated with a roughly modeled human face, are manufactured by the modern Indians and used by them in burning copal gum in the ruins of the temples erected by their ancestors. Figure 70 shows a life-sized hollow head, in rough pottery, with a thin hollow neck, probably used to carry around in processions on the top of a long pole. There can be no doubt that these bowls and hourglass-shaped vessels, each decorated externally with a human figure or face, usually that of a god, were used as incense burners, since a number of them, as already stated, were found in a mound at Santa Rita with half burnt out incense still contained in them. Moreover, their use for this purpose persists to the present day among the Lacandones[50] and even among the Santa Cruz Indians. These incense burners occur most frequently in the central part of the Maya area and are not common in northern Yucatan or southern Guatemala. Three distinct types are found: The first include the large, well-modeled specimens found in and around burial mounds, decorated with the complete figure of the god (usually Cuculcan or Itzamna), having every detail in clothing and ornament carefully executed in high relief. These are all probably pre-Columbian, and such as have been found seem to have been used only as ceremonial mortuary incense burners, to be broken into fragments (which were scattered through or over the burial mound) immediately after use.