THE SHARK-MONSTER IN OLMEC ICONOGRAPHY - Imaginary Year

PHILIP J. ARNOLD III, “The Shark-Monster in Olmec Iconography”
Mesoamerican Voices, 2 (2005)
Figure 6. Wooden scepter from El Manatí with shark tooth embedded in one end. Redrawn from Ortiz C. et al. 1997:Foto
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the Temple of the Cross, the Temple of the
Foliated Cross, and Temple V, North Group
(de Borhegyi 1961:Table 1; Ruz-Lhuillier
1958).
Another relevant example of the association
between shark teeth and ideological
contexts comes from the Early Formative
site of El Manatí, located just to the
east of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán and southwest
of La Venta (Ortiz C. et al. 1997).
The El Manatí locale apparently served as
a sacred location, a place where ritual objects
including wooden busts, greenstone
celts, and rubber balls were placed as offerings.
The waterlogged conditions of El
Manatí provide a preservation-friendly context,
yielding unparalleled information on
Olmec artifacts made from organic materials.
Among the items recovered from the
sacred spring is a cylindrical wooden baton
or scepter more than three feet long
(110 cm) (Ortiz C. et al. 1997:89). A
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shark’s tooth was embedded into one end
of the baton; this end is ovoid and bulbous,
recalling the characteristic nose of many
Formative shark images (Figure 6). The
baton was covered with red paint and may
have been purposefully interred between
two separate groups of wooden busts
(Ortiz C. and Rodríguez 1999:243-244;
Ortiz C. et al. 1997:89). The tooth-tipped
scepter straddled strata X and IX, a position
that dates the baton to the site’s Manatí
phase (pre-1200 BC).
The El Manatí finding, again under
controlled excavation conditions, confirms
that Olmec staffs were occasionally sanctified
through their association with the
shark-monster. The placement of the tooth
on the end of a three-foot long pole also
suggests that these batons were overt symbols
of power and prestige, rather than everyday
bloodletters. The fact that Olmec
staffs were tipped with shark teeth also has
implications for conventional identifica-