Seen from up close, as if it were an independent and meaningful stand-alone piece, this Teotihuacan eagle looks more like a first draft than a finished work, and its expression is caricaturesque. But this impression is the result of isolation from the overall set of which it was part. This very small figure was part of a set in which there were dozens of other pieces. Together, stuck with a little mortar to a also made of clay, they formed the grand plumed ornamental scenario of a brazier.
Braziers for family use, used in patios, or in some restricted religious sites, consisted of two juxtaposed cones at their widest part. The bottom would hold the coals and the top was a cover with ventilation. The that held the scenario was part of the upper cone, and the smoke escaped through the holes provided to curl around the images of the ornamental plumed scenario: quetzal feathers, butterflies, feathered eyes filled with layers of mica or obsidian, some faces with headdresses and nose rings, eagles, flowers and other figures.
In short, our eagle is nothing but a small piece of an ornamental brazier set. Many of the small pieces that formed the plumed brazier sets were made with molds, and it is possible that some forms or parts of the eagle produced with molds would be subsequently detailed by hand.
The feathers around the eyes are very different from the slits in the face of the owls, the way that these feathers open outwards is characteristic of the eagle. The identification of the piece as an owl is unfounded; the same happened with the pictorial representations of a number of birds in one of the rooms of the monastery at Tetitla, Teotihuacan; they were identified owls until further analysis found that they were eagles. Certainly these pictorial representations bear some resemblance to our piece.
We do not know to what extent the Teotihuacan eagle participated in the solar, celestial, warrior, masculine symbolism that came to exist among the Toltecs and Mexicas. The truth is that Teotihuacan seems to have been the first place where the eagle had an important role, although it did not reach the prominence it would throughout the Post-Classic.
Seen from up close, as if it were an independent and meaningful stand-alone piece, this Teotihuacan eagle looks more like a first draft than a finished work, and its expression is caricaturesque. But this impression is the result of isolation from the overall set of which it was part. This very small figure was part of a set in which there were dozens of other pieces. Together, stuck with a little mortar to a also made of clay, they formed the grand plumed ornamental scenario of a brazier.
