Alphabe Thursday N is for Zelia Nuttall, purple and snails etc.

Zelia Maria Magdalena Nuttall (1857 – 1933) was an American archaeologist and anthropologist born in San Francisco, who specialised in pre- Columbian, Mesoamerican manuscripts and the pre-Aztec culture in Mexico. The Codex Zouche-Nuttall was made in the 14th century; and reached Spain in the 16th century. It was first identified at the Monastery of San Marco, Florence, in 1854. Nuttall researched Mixtec Codex now called the Codex Zouche-Nuttall and wrote the introduction to its first facsimile published in 1902.

The Codex Zouche-Nuttall is an accordion-folded pre- Columbian piece of Mixtec writing, now in the British Museum It  records the genealogies, alliances and conquests of several 11th- and 12th-century rulers of a small Mixtec city-state in highland Oaxaca,  the Tilantongo kingdom, especially under the leadership of the warrior Lord Eight Deer Jaguar Claw; who died early twelfth century at the age of fifty-two.

It was while Zelia was in Tehuantepec in Mexico, studying the ancient cartoon paintings made by the Mixtec people that she noticed the purple skirts worn by the richer women in the marketplace. Although she was had no real knowledge of textiles.  She saw that design and colour was like those she had seen in the pre Columbian paintings. The codex, was painted on deer skin;  containing information about the peoples, their culture  and their gods.  The skirts where the identical colour to the beautiful pigment in the codex, painted more than 400 years before; not only used on clothes but on their bodies.

Nuttall spoke with a weaver who remembered as child the fisherman obtained the dye from the caracol or sea snail but by the time of Nuttall’s visit the supply had all but dried up so the fishermen were having to sail further to fulfil the demands of the Mexican ladies.  She was concerned that the industry would soon be extinct … I will have to read Colour by Victoria Finlay a bit more to discover whether she was right or not.