Diphrastic Kennings on the Cascajal Block and the Emergence of Mesoamerican Writing

Abstract

This article examines a potential ‘throne–mat’ kenning in the Middle Formative period Olmec writing on the Cascajal Block, an incised serpentine slab dated to c. 900 bc. It is suggested that signs on the Cascajal Block are divorced from the Formative period representational canons in which they are usually contextualized. The organization of signs on the Cascajal Block thus de-emphasizes the connection between a depicted object and its iconographic frame of reference. Instead, the signs are recontextualized within a linguistic framework wherein they leverage their iconicity to denote a word, rather than functioning primarily as an iconographic element within a pictorial composition. It is argued that the throne–mat kenning explored here is one instance of such abstraction from ‘normative’ iconographic contexts and therefore offers potentially significant insights into the origin and development of writing in Mesoamerica.