Stone Yuguito

Yuguitos are stone items generally associated with the rubber ballgame, although their actual use remains obscure, even in terms of how they may have been attached to the human body at the wrist, knee, or hip. The yuguito form generally resembles a turtle carapace, although its underside has a broad and deep groove running end to end. The term yuguito, “little yoke,” derives from its vague resemblance to the padded belts used in the Mesoamerican ballgame. Although yuguitos are not miniature ballgame belts, they do appear to have been an important component of the Early Formative ballgame.

Fashioned of dense basalt, the Dumbarton Oaks yuguito was reportedly discovered at Tlatilco with another plain example, suggesting that it dates to the Early Formative period and is roughly contemporaneous with the great Olmec site of San Lorenzo in southern Veracruz. Both appear to have been ritually broken, or “killed,” as offerings for a burial (Peterson and Horcasitas 1957). This yuguito is composed of five rejoined pieces, with missing portions on the convex upper section and back of the sculpture. The piece was partly carved by pecking, with some of the pecked surface still visible on the convex upper surface and especially in the broad groove running along the underside. The yuguito portrays an anthropomorphic head with a deeply furrowed brow and snarling mouth, facial elements found also on the Olmec rain god (see Figure 0.37; Taube 1995, 2009a, 2018b:fig. 17.1). Remains of red hematite pigment appear in incised portions of the piece.The chemical identification of the hematite was performed by Paul Jett. Portions of white paint adhere to the mouth, and the eyes contain a black tar-like substance probably as glue for now-lost inlays. More than likely this is bitumen, known as chapopote in modern Mexico. This has important implications as to where this object was originally created, as bitumen derives from natural sources of petroleum, squarely located in the Olmec heartland of southern Veracruz and neighboring Tabasco. The tab-like trapezoidal element projecting below the lip may be a beard, with broad crosshatching denoting hair. This same crosshatching encircles the otherwise plain and smooth cranium, as if the figure had a bald pate surrounded by a narrow strip of hair. The figure could well represent the shamanic entity appearing as the Olmec Transformation Figure, who commonly displays a beard and similar tonsure as well as a furrowed brow and snarling mouth, but this face more directly relates to the Olmec rain god, who in a number of instances shares traits with the known corpus of transformation figures (see PC.B.603 and PC.B.008­).

In addition to containing some of the earliest-known ballplayer figurines of ancient Mesoamerica, the Early Formative shaft tombs at El Opeño, Michoacán, yielded a simple basalt yuguito (Flores Villatoro 1992:108–109). The abundant evidence of ballgame imagery at this site suggests that yuguitos were used in the game. Their small and generally consistent size indicates they could have been worn bound to ballplayers’ hands. Moreover, the rims around the concave ends tend to flare out slightly, as if to create surfaces suitable for binding (Coe 1965a:nos. 13–16). Julie Jones has suggested that yuguitos were stone copies of items of leather or wood bound against the back of the hand, thereby creating a mitt-like handpiece for striking the ball. Michael D. Coe (1965a:21) cites an Early Formative Tlatilco figurine representing a belted ballplayer supplied with a kneepad and a thickly bound item covering the right hand (see also Porter 1953:pl. 4d). In addition, roughly contemporaneous figurines from Xochipala, Guerrero, portray ballplayers also with elaborate and heavy wrapping on the right hand (see Gay 1972b:figs. 19–20). In one example, the youthful athlete has his upper right torso twisted back, as if to direct a powerful blow.  A Middle Formative Olmec serpentine statuette portrays a belted ballplayer with his right arm bound by protective wrapping, with cross-lashing over the hand (Princeton University Art Museum 1995:no. 134). A Late Formative stela from Tepatlaxco, Veracruz, portrays another belted player wearing a kneepad with a virtually identical bound right arm and hand (see Covarrubias 1957:pl. XVII). On the ballplayer stelae from Terminal Classic Bilbao, the players have carved objects bound to their padded left hands (see Parsons 1969:pls. 32–33).

While yuguitos were almost surely used in the ballgame, they may well have pertained to delivering blows to the bodies of opponents—in other words, as forms of boxing. There is considerable evidence of boxing in pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica, including at the Late Formative Zapotec site of Dainzú, Oaxaca, as well as in Late Classic Maya figurines from Lubaantun, Belize (Orr 1997, 2003; Taube 2018b; Taube and Zender 2009). Although in modern sport there is a sharp distinction between games involving rubber balls and boxing, it is by no means sure this was the case in ancient Mesoamerica, where there could have been an overlapping gradient between the two in terms of time and place. Considering this is an inherently violent game, it is reasonable to suppose opponents could strike one another with bound stone gloves or in other versions with sticks, in the latter case much like hockey. Along with yuguitos, in later Classic Mesoamerica there are the clearly handheld stone manoplas which do appear to have been used in ritual boxing (Taube 2018b; Taube and Zender 2009). As with the ballgame, ritual boxing is squarely related to jaguars and rain symbolism in both ancient and contemporary Mesoamerica (Orr 1997, 2003; Taube 2018b; Taube and Zender 2009).

Although the yuguito may have served as a handpiece, this is not the only possibility, and others have suggested that they constitute elbow or knee protectors (e.g., Borhegyi 1980:2; Helmke, Jaeger, and Eli 2008:12; Miller 1989:26; Peterson and Horcasitas 1957:365). The yuguito could also have been worn on a belt, with its long groove fitting snugly against the protective padding. One Olmec statuette features an aged ballplayer with a possible yuguito protruding out of the left side of his thick woven belt (see Princeton University Art Museum 1995:no. 134). If this is the case, the yuguito could constitute an ancestral form of the hacha and palma beltpieces of Classic Veracruz and related areas.

Indigenous Art of the Americas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1960–1962

The Jaguar’s Children: Pre-Classic Central Mexico, Museum of Primitive Art, New York, New York, February–May 1965