AIC's 46th Annual Meeting

Kelly Gross, Midwestern Epigraphic Society Editor, 5-year AIC Member. The problem is that historically significant artifacts are being ignored and their cultural heritage lost. This occurs largely because of the difficulty some, but not all, experts have in recognizing the value in something new or undiscovered. The Hidden Codex is a case in point. This artifact is a single work on plaster and fiber mat in vivid color likely by a single artist and measures 122 cm by 30.5cm. It has been well researched. Carbon dated at 1650 C E, the codex pigments were made from all natural materials in the La Mixteca region of Oaxaca in Mexico. Previously unknown, it is not one of the only eight known Mixtec codex artifacts in the world but instead represents the only Mixtec divinatory almanac, referred to as a Tonalamatl, now known to exist. It portrays five deities and is calendrical in nature with borders of the traditional 13- day pictorial sequencing as seen in some of the other 8 known Mixtec codex examples. But unlike the others it portrays the rituals and festivals of the indigenous religion. Normally other researchers would continue to study and duplicate the findings. Instead, what is happening is that a cultural history is being lost in an attempt to enforce a traditional orthodoxy: That no new codex artifacts can be discovered. Any attempts to contradict this thinking are met with claims from the archeology establishment that the authors are promoting reproductions or forgeries. This paper explores the Hidden Codex research on both sides and presents an objective picture including provenance documents of source location and history. Insight is provided into the codex’s pictorial use of calendar-based events and rituals on a cultural basis. Finally, the results of EDS and FTIR analytical testing are presented along with pigment photomicrographs and a discussion of the indigenous construction and its importance historically. The significance of this research is that it presents what could possibly be the only known codex that was never in the hands of the Spanish. This paper also presents the possibility that the indigenous people continued to practice their religion under Spanish occupation, contrary to popular opinion.