Art and Architecture MARY ELLEN MILLER **m - ,-www.ebook3000.com Boston Public Library .' lei earned I from Yale University, and ih.it time rhe re< ip...
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Art and Architecture MARY ELLEN MILLER
**m
-
www.ebook3000.com
,-
Boston Public Library
.'
lei
earned
from Yale University, and
I
ih.it
numerous awards and honors, she Mesoa?-
th Karl
World
(also in the
reconstruct the
1998 she was named
In
History of Art at Yale.
World
She
is
Maya
wall paintings
Vincent Scully
Jr.
books on
art in all
complete
list
.it
its
aspects.
If
you would
In
the United States please write
500
Fifth
New
York,
Printed
in
to:
INC.
Avenue
New
like
of titles in print please write to:
WC1V7QX
THAMES & HUDSON
I
inda
Bonampak,
also Master of Saybrook College.
THAMES & HUDSON 181AHighHolbom London
with
Professor ot the
This famous series provides the widest available range of illustrated
ipienl ol
Miller is currently din
of Art
to receive a
re<
laube), The Artol Mi I,
Mary
document and
Mexico.
time rhe
theauthoi
of Art), Thi
Scheie, The B> to
is
York 101 10
Singapore
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A
Late Classic trumpeter from
Jaina Island
lifts
and prepares
to
a horn to his lips
sound
a blast.
Mary
Maya
Ellen Miller
Art and
Architecture 207
illustrations,
57
in
color
THAMES & HUDSON
(T&H
v^3 www.ebook3000.com
To the
memory
1942-1998
of Linda Scheie,
BR BR
F1435.3 -A7
M55 1999x
Any copy
of this
book issued by the publisher as
subject to the condition that
be
it
is
consent
in
shall not by
way
a
paperback
sold
is
of trade or otherwise
out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's
lent, resold, hired
prior
it
any form
of binding or cover other than that in
which
published and without a similar condition including these words
being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.
©
1999 Thames & Hudson
First
published
in
paperback
Thames & Hudson
Inc.,
500
Ltd,
in
London
the United States of America
Fifth
Library of Congress Catalog Card
Avenue,
New
York,
New
in
1999 by 10110
York
Number 99-70938
ISBN0-500-20327-X All
Rights Reserved.
transmitted
in
No
any form
part of this publication or by
may be reproduced
any means, electronic
or
or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval
Printed
system, without prior permission
and bound
in
Singapore
in
writing from the publisher.
Contents
6
Preface
Chapter 8
1
Introduction
Chapter 2
22
Maya
72
The Materials
Architecture
Chapter 3 of
Maya
Art
Chapter 4
88
Early Classic Sculpture
Chapter 5
wir
Late Classic Sculpture
Chapter 6
136
Sculpture of the North: the Art of Yucatan and Chichen Itza
150
The Human Form
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
168
Maya Murals and Books
Chapter 9
wo
Maya Ceramics
216
A World
Chapter 10 of
Hand-held Objects
232
Chronological Table
233
Select Bibliography
235
List of Illustrations
238
Index
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—
Preface
I
Cambridge, Massachusetts over
visited Tatiana Proskouriakoffin
twenty years ago. tion topic, the
I
had wanted to talk with her about
Bonampak
their initial study back in 1955.
that
But what she wanted to
November day was not Bonampak.
ing a cigarette off to her
What this
my disserta-
murals, since she had been an author of talk about
"Oh," she said to me, wav-
side, "that subject
has already been writ-
art. What is Maya art? Why is it a great art style? And what is its range?" Coming from the woman who had written the only comprehensive book on Maya art Classic Maya Sculpture (1950) her words made a great impression on me. But I thought at the time that she
ten about.
field
needs
is
a
book about Maya
—
1
.
A
loving couple from Jaina
Island (Late Classic) form an
was not talking about what
elaborate whistle. A similar figurine
(ill.
139) may have had
body made from the same mold
and then finished with heads.
different
a
should do, for
I
I
was
a
complete
me that she was describing what she wished she were working on, rather than the project on Maya history that stranger:
it
seemed
was laid out on
A
to
a table that
day and that became her last book.
decade later Linda Scheie and
together on The Blood of Kings.
such questions as
"What
is
I
spent months working
We were keen to pose and answer
Maya
art?" but
we were limited by
constraints of the exhibition at the Kimbell Art
Museum in
the
terms
And we found ourselves thinking and we sought was to take the fruits of twenty-five years of Maya hieroglyphic decipherment and use them to decode the fundamental meaning of Maya art. Our book refocused Maya studies and brought Maya art to public attention
of the range of
Maya
art.
writing thematically: what
in a
way that it had not previously been known. But
I
art, to
look at so
had not been answered
Maya
my way through the larger many fundamental questions that any overview. What is the nature of
had long wanted to write
corpus of Maya
in
sculptural development?
How
do the regional schools of
sculpture and painting emerge, and what can be
made
of them?
How
hand?
How
Maya
art
So to
Maya
did the
me
artist exploit the materials at
come to focus on
at last little
I
the
human
found myself writing
more than
charted territory.
The
a
figure? a
book that has often seemed
preliminary road
result
is
did
map through
not Tatiana's book, for
barely
it is
less
2.
From the Temple
at
Palenque, the observer gains
an expansive view
of Inscriptions
may have been construction.
Its
Maya
art
and more about the whats than any
book she would have written. Nor is
it
Linda's book: Linda went on
of the Palace,
where buildings were added over a century.
about the whys of
for
signature tower
to co-author three project.
the final
in a
This book seeks to organize
way that will
in the
books on Maya history and ideology
Maya
art afresh
after
our
and to do so
benefit students and those with a general interest
Maya everywhere.
Over the years
Simon
I
my
have learned constantly from
colleagues.
Martin has been an excellent sounding board during the
writing of this book, and I'm grateful for his thoughtful comments
throughout the'process. Steve Houston, Karl Taube, David Stuart, Michael Coe, Justin Kerr,
Magaloni have
all
Adam
Herring, Regan Huff, and Diana
shared their ideas generously. Dorie Reents-
Budet's exhibition, Painting the
to see and think about
Maya
Universe,
in
spring 1995, making
also grateful for the intelligence and insight of
with
came
to the Yale
me Maya vases every day for three months. am
University Art Gallery
it
possible for I
my
Yale students,
whom am always seeing works of art for the first time. I
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Chapter
1:
Introduction
Maya gave names
In their texts, the ancient
to the things they
made. They identified the ceramic vessels they painted, distinguishing a low bowl, or
named
lak,
from
a cylinder vessel, nch'ib.
their buildings, calling, for example, the
They
most sacred royal
palace at Palenque the sak nuk nah, the "white big house," or the
most important funerary pyramid or "burial
They honored
hill."
monument,
stone
Piedras Negras the muknal
at
the day
when they would
set a
new
or banner stone, at Copan, and they
a lakamtun,
called attention to the wealthy royal
woman who commissioned a
series of carved stone lintels at Yaxchilan.
A
painter at Naranjo
signed his pots, adding for emphasis the names of his parents and revealing that he was indeed a painter of high status: his father was the king of the
one
son,
city,
who would
and the painter was apparently the younger not normally take the throne.
The Maya had
names for these ancient artforms, and they knew who had commissioned a
work of art and who
in
turn had
made
it.
The Maya speak
of writing and carving in the surviving texts, but like most ancient civilizations,
they had no single encompassing word for art
their lexicon.
And perhaps
every surface
—whether
they had no need for such
a textile or a thatched
a
in
word, for
—could
roof
be
transformed by paint and stucco and turned into a remarkable thing, cally
ornamented with designs or figures
Maya. These works were
cities,
and many were made to
world of Maya
all
that
were characteristi-
at dozens of Maya The ancient Maya world was a
around them,
last.
art.
For most of the
first
millennium AD, the Maya
built cities
and
sanctuaries in the tropical and subtropical rainforests of southern
Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras,
all
regions where the
Maya had settled centuries before. The art of that era, generally from the Maya lowlands, is the main subject of this book, although both Preclassic and Postclassic materials will
from time even
in
to time, as will
come
works from mountainous
regard to the period from
AD 250
to 900, or
to the fore
terrain.
what
is
Nor
called
the "Classic" period, can this study be comprehensive, for at
dozens of
cities,
large and small,
Maya
art
and architecture
thrived, with local styles and traditions evolving ovei time
book can be little more than aroadmaptothecomplexitj
oi
rhis
Maya
art.
Maya
art and civilization
The Maya of the
millennium were not the
firs!
Mesoamerica, the ancient cultural region
that
firsi
<
i\
ilization of
encompassed mosl
of Mexico and northern Central America: that honor goes to the
Olmecs of the Gulf Coast, who established ceremonial precincts and carved monumental heads and other sculptures
in
the
first
millennium BC. And by the time the Spanish arrived on Mesoamerica's
shore early
sized
up the Aztecs as the most powerful
in
the sixteenth century, the invaders quickly civilization at hand.
Even
during their own apogee, the Maya may well have suffered and military defeats
political
modern-day Mexico
city near
surrounded the Maya on
who
built then- capital
Cultures making complex
City.
art
and the Maya sometimes
sides,
all
more powerful
the hands of
at
neighbors, especially the Teotihuacanos,
adopted the imagery and style of "foreign" forms.
The are
earliest
some works
works of Maya that the
placed an unusual rock
they
may have
were no doubt ephemeral,
art
Maya make today When in a
the ancient
spring or cut flowers for an offering
much art-making
perceived these acts to he as
the carving of a sculpture or the shaping of a ceramic vessel. at least
of
500
Be, the
Maya manipulated
monuments and
it
as
Maya
their
as
From
environment, making
imbuing certain materials,
buildings, and
particularly rare greenstones, and especially jade, with great value.
During the Late
Preclassic,
Maya
populations
exponentially, and by the reign of Caesar Augustus
had
built
one of their largest
El Mirador,
cities,
Peten, but long before Rome's
by AD 250,
fall,
the northern
in
it
grew
Rome, they
in
had
fallen into
disrepair and decline.
Millions of Maya inhabited the
Maya
lowlands,
many of them
some of them
living in or near substantial cities,
quite large,
including Tikal, Copan, Calakmul, and Uaxactun, where settle-
Early Classic (ad 250—550). Others,
up monuments during the among them Palenque, Dos
and Xpuhil, flourished
during the Late Classic (ad
ment was ancient and where they
Pilas,
550—900). Particular
during the Classic stelae,
later,
Maya practices
era, including the
took root almost everywhere
carving of tall stone
shafts, or
and their placement with low cylindrical stones called
altars today.
as
set
The
cessation of this
monument-making
one of the sharpest markers of the Classic Maya
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has served
"collapse," often
posed as one of the great unsolved cultural declines of the past. But for resources, the
of the
first
Maya drew on the rainforest, and over the course
millennium, they may well have harvested most of it, so
that by the eighth century, they probably inhabited a severely
degraded environment, one unable offering
little
to
exchange
in
to support the populations
and
trade with other regions. Yet despite
the obvious collapse of civilization that follows this stressful eighth century, the era
Maya
also the richest source of
is
with large
art,
populations able to lay claim to elegant ceramics, and with kings
eager to record their contentious relationships with neighbors and
competing lineages prior to utter decline and abandonment. Classic
Maya
civilization
was not washed away
wave. During the ninth century, Classic Discovered near Tikal's Temple
3. I
in
the 1990s, Stela
40
depicts a
late fifth-century king. For his
monument, he
which celebrated father,
Siyah
his
Chan
famous
K'awil
(ill.
76).
in a single
culture and art
making continued apace in the north, first in the Puuc region, particularly at
recalled Stela 31,
Maya
Uxmal and
place which in 900
its
neighbors, and then at Chichen Itza, a
was the most powerful
Even with Chichen's decline and the
falter altogether,
after
AD
1000,
city of
Maya
Mesoamerica.
culture did not
books of the Maya that
finely painted
survive were painted within a hundred years or so of the Spanish arrival in
center,
But
in large part,
once Chichen Itza had
a place of pilgrimage, rather
than a vibrant urban
Yucatan
become only
in 1511.
few materials that survive today
grained limestone
—were being given
meaning and life as a work of art can
—jade, bone,
still
shell, fine-
permanent form whose
a
be retrieved.
Maya art is an art of the court and its retinue, in large part celebrating kings, nobles, and wealthy merchants, and the
women,
musicians, and artists
who
Maya elites
and their world was one of both perishable
lived well,
and permanent
art:
lived with
works of
them or served them. The
art could link
them
to the past
recalling the deeds or forms of ancestors or they could
by
make room
in somewhat new formulations. Maya struggled against rot and decay;
and imagination
for innovation
Living in the rainforest, the
new works and
repaintings were constantly called
of what was once
Very
for.
little
made survives, and yet it demonstrates a greater
range of subject matter than any other
New World
tradition.
Accordingly, no one can predict or even anticipate the next work of
Maya
art to be revealed
monument, or
stela,
that
from the ground:
it
could be a stone
makes complete sense within some
existing sequence, like the recently recovered Stela 40 at Tikal, or it
might be
a
painted vessel that offers
iconography and
ritual,
necessarily one previously
such discoveries
10
is
known
in
new
into
insights
—and
not
the world of Maya art. In
two
worked by
a
master hand
revealed the tension between
making
a
work
commaunusual box On the other three
of painte.
n the
'.
the very
same
workshop.
according' to tion: in the
making
traditional recipe and
a
world ofMaya
much Maya
Additionally,
work of imagina-
a
both were possible.
art,
art
is
site-specific,
both
in
the cur-
rent sense of being designed for a particular architectural space,
made within
but also in the sense of being school.
Thus
particular regional
a
the three-dimensional qualities of single-figure
Copan sculptures
last for
generations; Palenque sculptors sorted
out problems of two-dimensional group compositions,
all
the
while designing works for interior rather than exterior display. In
its
innovation,
complexity and subtlety,
Maya
art
is
in
the greatest of
other tradition survived through so
sheer volume and
its
New World
many
art styles.
No
generations or across
such a geographical range, despite the tropical environment and
mindless modern depredations. ancient
New World
And no
Although an Aztec date might indicate to
commemorate a ruler's
provide
ancient
remarkable
tell
their
own
stories.
work had been made
that a
Maya text can Maya have left an
accession to office, only a
narrative.
incomparable wealth, and this
other works of art of the
bear texts that can
The
this
ancient
book attempts
to
frame ways to see
trove.
Discovering Maya art
Modern viewers
often claim that they
or, alternatively,
that
what they
From
like.
know
art
they know nothing of art
when they
see
it,
but that they know
the beginning of the nineteenth century,
explorers of the Mexican rainforest sensed both that they had seen ancient traces that they recognized as art and also that, contrary to experience with
many
other cultures of ancient Mexico,
//
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they liked what they saw.
When
a
colleague sent Alexander von
Humboldt a sketch of a Palenque stucco, he immediately published it
his vast
in
World. in
compendium of
A German
scholar
geological wonders of the New-
who saw
the sketch then republished
human form
the ability of its makers to render the unlike the Aztecs.
—
or baroque
a
With
deeply pejorative term
is
now
in the
the attention of the
Maya art and
Maya
5. Frederick
Catherwood drew
Fat Copan
in
1839. Some
years later he prepared a series of color lithographs
in
London from
his sketches, often embellishing
the luxuriant rainforest as he has
done
here, but without losing the
detail of the
monument that
characterized his careful
draftsmanship.
6.
Remarkably, Frederick
Catherwood was the
made
first
to
have
records of the dress and
habits of nineteenth-century
Maya, even
add focus
Maya here
if
he did so only
to his
to
renderings of
architecture, as he has
for
the
Nunnery
at
done
Uxmal.
Stephens and Catherwood were particularly
engaged by Uxmal's
elaborate facades and
streamlined, low-slung forms.
12
Honduras, Guatemala,
ruins, he
in 1839,
came
commented on
his infectious
to
Stephens' the
enthusiasm leaps
after another.
A man
of his
before Marx, Stephens wasted no time worrying about
whether he should be discussing might an
a Neoclassi-
architecture suddenly
page to charm one generation
man
— with
modern world. At Copan
encounter with ancient
era, a
842
1
and the southern states of Mexico, the
works around him with awe, and off the
in
Maya sculpture.
to the tropical rainforests of
called Belize,
vast range of ancient
first
he saw
the voyages of John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick
Catherwood what
proportionally,
He crankily called the effort ausartung, however,
cal disdain for the detail
Stela
it
the first comprehensive study of world art, and he marveled at
art historian today.
"visual production" or "art," as
By analogy with
the Old World,
where he had traveled extensively and written an important studj \pt.
and
Palestine,
matel} prove to be,
monuments
Stephens called
Petra,
"sculptures" and recognized
Maya writing
for
whal
when deciphered 20 years
would uln
it
later a script that
1
could replicate speech, a writing system that had been used exten sively
on
monuments
public
and "palaces," terminology
that has
sun
and
subject
glorif}
to
Stephens called the architectural wonders
that he
ived attempts at reclassifi-
cation as "structures" or "range-type buildings," and
was right, spotting
royal dwellings
patron.
saw "temples"
in
general he
and shrines for worship of gods
and ancestors long before archaeology could prove them to be so. Furthermore, Stephens tan be seen as the of
Maya
art.
Now
first
serious student
having regional traditions
recognized as
can override time, political factions, or international trade, art
and architecture
of ancient
Maya
is
more
life.
local than not
—
as
were many aspects
Stephens called attention
to
regional
differences, noting the rich, near three-dimensionality of
sculpture, distinct from
all
Maya
other
absence of freestanding sculpture
at
that
Maya
Copan
canons, and the near-
Palenque.
Where Stephens
grasped the individuality and personality of individual subjects
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shaped into three dimensions
at
Copan,
Chichen Itza he saw
at
instead a grey militaristic uniformity that he likened to the Aztecs, a sculptural
expression of his sense of decadent society. But while
he identified such local characteristics, he also saw the unifying
He linked the texts from the Maya book published in 1810 by
parameters of Maya art and writing.
Dresden Codex,
a
Conquest-era
Lord Kingsborough, with the writings he had seen
Maya
region, simultaneously distinguishing
Oaxaca or Central Mexico. By
in
all
across the
them from writings
his identification as well of the
ancient art with the living people, Stephens truly brought focus to ancient
Maya art.
But there were things Stephens could not guess, including the age of Maya antiquities. In a world set topsy-turvy by the writings of Charles Darwin, the age of the planet or
seemed impossible
Not the
until the turn of the
Maya
humans themselves
to determine, let alone the age of
Maya
ruins.
century would scholars figure out that
ruins had preceded the Aztec, rather than co-existed.
Stephens had concerned himself with that could be
Maya
art
and the questions
drawn from the works themselves, but he
also
thought he had put to rest speculations about Amerindian origins asserting the veracity of the sixteenth-century Jesuit Acosta,
in
who had proposed a land crossing from Asia as the explanation for human populations in the New World. Soon nineteenth-century writers and explorers provoked by the ancient
Maya made claims and investigations that ranged from
the frivolous to the scholarly, with
camps. Despite being wild-eyed civilization
was the
intellectual
Atlantis, Brasseur de
in
down by
its
his claims that the
to important decipherments of
Maya
first
Maya
account of Yucatan
suspicious bishop, Diego de Landa, Brasseur
recognized that Landa's "alphabet" of
day hold a useful
straddling both
wreckage of the sunken continent
and writing. In rediscovering the
written
at least
Bourbourg rediscovered and published key
documents that would lead art
some
key.
As an academic
Maya
writing might some
discipline of
any
sort, art
history did not yet exist, but collectors of art abounded, along
with collectors of rocks, gems, and the curious cultural remnant.
Some
Maya
treasures were swept off to foreign
museums, where they fueled
interest in deciphering the mysteries
of the greatest
of this ancient civilization, an interest that in turn
came to support
archaeology both materially and intellectually.
Some
early
anthropologists, in the belief that race constrained the potential for
achievement, could not accept the very idea of civilization
among indigenous Americans, and thought /
/
that at best, the
Maya
were "barbarous" as opposed ihI
to "savage." Ironically, the addlepat
Brasseur's contributions were to beoi greater value than such
sober inquiry into the nature oi Amerindian humanity Bui even before such racist nonsense could altogether, the nature of ancient
Alfred
Maudslay began
fall
Maya art proved
to study
Maya
by the wayside
itsfallai
When
\
art,
he systematically
retraced the steps of Stephens, ultimately (1898
1901) publishing
P.
the art
and architecture roughly
in
the
ordained, beginning with Copan and Ouingua, and
had
moving on
to
Palenque. Like Stephens, he looked for patterns, and he saw them in
iconography and hieroglyphic inscriptions. Laying out the
analogous inscriptions from the various the pursuit of
Maya
Stephens had once prophesied
The presence of such Maya from place the
all
Maya
sites,
set the
stage for
a
for a
complex w
Maya Rosetta Stone was
riting
on.
system distinguished the
New World peoples, and scholars came the apex of New World cultural development.
other at
Maudslay saw the relationships between he was one of the
logographs
he
hieroglyphic decipherment, and the quest
— word
first
art
and writing, and
observers of "full-figure" hieroglyphs,
pictures
— and
phonetic signs converted to
animated figures, interacting with one another
in
the text.
I
le also
began to recognize repeated subject matter across generations
Maya
art, particularly at individual sites,
extraordinary that
is
lintels
in
and he scrutinized the
of Yaxchilan, seeing the richness of detail
limited to a handful of Maya
With Maudslay's
to
monuments.
careful publication of
Maya
texts
in
hand,
other scholars applied themselves to the decipherment of the published texts.
7. Alfred
But decipherment of the content languished while the
Maudslay hired Annie
Hunter, a
young London
artist, to
draw the Maya monuments
that
he had both photographed and
made
casts of
at her
drawings, he discerned
some key writing
in
field.
patterns of
Looking
Maya
and iconography,
including
what he
"Initial Series," first
the
called the
presented
in his
volume. Here, the period
glyphs for the uinal of twenty days
and the day each bear
a
coefficient of zero, indicated by
the hand on the cheek. sign
The day
and a glyph from the
supplementary series
follow.
15
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i
rich calendrical slay,
quickly
Classic
framework, including the texts
came
Maya had
laid
thrived in the
different representation of the
Maud-
millennium AD. Based on
first
human
figure,
New World,
claimed the Greeks of the
its
Chichen Itza was
assigned to a later period. Almost immediately the
ters,
out by
to be understood, providing evidence that the
Maya were pro-
the originators, the mas-
with the Aztecs only recognized as their "Roman" followers!
As an antidote to
studies of calendar and writing
—and wisely —Herbert
sidestepping the bombast of "Greeks" and "Romans"
Spinden wrote
anthropology
A
at
ever since, and a
Maya
art.
work
—
new ways of thinking about
that opened
the serpent and
in
in print
for a unifying reli-
transformation
its
—
in all
Maya
the result was the first systematic study of Maya iconography,
or what
we might think of as the building blocks of religion. Using
Paul Schellhas's study of
Maya god
representations in the same
Dresden Codex that Stephens had pored
over,
names of Maya gods
cally introduced the
Spinden dramati-
to their
monumental
common Schellhas nomenclature is today, including God A, a skeletal death god, or God K, a
counterparts and still
1908 doctorate
for his
book almost continuously
a
Although Spinden was searching
gious principle art,
Maya Art
Study of
Harvard,
used
much
of the
god with one leg that terminates
in a serpent's head.
on the collections of the Peabody
Museum
Spinden drew
and recognized the
value of studying Maya ceramics, even those without provenience.
And
then Spinden did what no previous student of
Maya
art
had done: he argued that both style and evolution were intrinsically
present in
Maya art, and that based on dated monuments, undatmonuments could be convincingly placed in
ed or unprovenanced
sequence. Spinden wrote in the age of Bernard Berenson and
Sigmund Freud: across the
surfaces of carved stones he saw the
traces of an unconscious to be recognized by outsiders, and in so
doing, removed the
Maya from
consideration as a non-western
people whose art would be timeless and unchanging, as Europeans
and Anglo-Americans have often perceived
artistic traditions
they do not understand. In other words, Spinden's work
Maya chronology Wright's
as inexorable
Guggenheim Museum. Spinden's study drew
attention of art critics and the nascent field of art history.
Fry took
made
and inescapable as Frank Lloyd
notice, publishing
Maya
the
Roger
art in the pages of the presti-
gious Burlington Magazine, where no art outside the European tradition had ever appeared.
While World War
I
raged, Spinden tried to use his system to
demonstrate that such monuments
16
in
sequence would have intrin-
.ilyze rt,
in
but
the then
sic
content, and
it
is
probably not coincidental that the content he
thought would be present would be the questions of succession
and warfare. Based on sculptural
program
he proposed that the
his earlier sedations,
Piedras Negras presented
at
first,
accession to the throne, followed, normally five years
of a warrior.
around the
He noted
the isolated groupings that these
and saw
in
Spinden never discussed
his
site,
who had donned
theory
into
in
relation to the politics of his
European kings and
the warrior's armor.
But Spinden's efforts to study ing,
by that
fell
them lineage and dynasty. Although
time, he cannot but have thought about the
princes
an image of
later,
art,
and particularly
its
mean-
were not heard. One way or another, Maya studies have been
driven by pursuit of ancient
Maya
writing, and Spinden, unlike
any other member of his generation,
let
it
simply be a
tool,
an indi-
cator of date, rather than an engine. In general, whatever scholars
have thought about the writing has determined how not only the art but indeed, the entire culture,
was interpreted.
When Stephens
offered his belief that the writing probably proyided the
the kings and queens
who had
names of
ruled Copan, the sculptures were
accordingly thought to represent these kings and queens. But as
time went on, attempts to decipher
Maya
writing yielded only
dates and calculations: reading into the inscriptions the machinations of calendar priests, scholars decided that these calendar priests also
were the subjects of the
art.
Unlike royalty, these cal-
endar priests were thought to be anonymous, uniformly male, even when wearing
skirts.
self-effacing,
Dedicated to
and
a life
of
stargazing, such priests eschewed war. Spinden's identification of
warrior kings
War
I
to
fell
into disrepute, and for a generation,
World War
carefully at
Maya
II,
art, in
order to convince themselves of the truth
of their dogma. Studies of the considerations of Maya
from World
scholars seem to have stopped looking
Maya simply
eliminated most
art.
17
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Which ed,
is
Maya art was not admired and collect-
not to say that
nor the world that had made
Guatemala,
not extolled. Highland
it
Nebaj and Chama, had previously yielded painted
at
ceramics with elegant scenes
at court; at
Uaxactun, archaeologists
pulled painted pots of a caliber previously
unknown from
the
ground, and they puzzled over the imager} and texts before 7
deducing that
had painted
illiterate artisans
Maya
pots, thus
devaluing them for the intellectually elevated glyphic study and
reducing them to
more than potsherds of chronology.
little
Elegant figurines, some from highland Guatemala, and others
from Jaina
Island, in the
Gulf of Mexico, introduced
lively three-
dimensional, hand-held works to the repertory, and quietly raised questions of manufacture, mass production, and the status of those
who might own art.
When
Sylvanus G. Morley, the dean of Maya studies between
the wars, looked at
when he saw the
it.
Maya art, he knew
In his
1
that he recognized great art
946 magnum opus, The Ancient Maya, one of
most interesting books ever
to be written about the
Maya,
Morley unhesitatingly (and undoubtedly to the embarrassment of
some of his more Superlatives,"
intellectual colleagues)
stone sculpture" (Wall Panel beautiful chilan).
named
his "Fifty
3,
Piedras Negras) and (#30) "most
example of sculptured stone door lintel"
(Lintel 24,
A
Study of Classic
Maya
Sculpture (1950), began
with an assault on Morley's unscientific thinking. "In
form ~his~ it is,
thesis maintains that the 'better' a
until the
development reaches
period of decadence sets
in,"
a
9. Lintel 24, Yaxchilan.
Sylvanus
G. Morley designated this "the
most
beautiful
sculptured stone door his
list
of "Fifty
first
she wrote. For the
first
by
its
half of the
meaning. Blinded
their devotion to a belief that
the
time in several
Maya
art care-
term "Classic" to widespread usage, indicating the presence of
human
might be
a "deity, a priest,
bolically portrayed," cal
to the "single
figure... at the center of the composition," a figure that
or ruler, or an abstract conception sym-
and essentially falling within the chronologi-
framework of the
first
millennium AD. Adopted
for
usage to
Maya monuments depicted
calendar priests, they did not recognize the troubling imagery for
the
and ask the works what they could say to the modern viewer.
what she termed the "Classic motif," referring and other
twentieth century could only
puzzle over
is
peak of perfection and a
on
Maya
Superlatives," but he
scholars of the
lintel"
of
crudest
And of Maya art and its nature? Proskouriakoffintroduced the
lintel
example
its
monument
generations, a scholar once again began to look at fully
Yax-
Such enthusiasms irritated Tatiana Proskouriakoff, whose
landmark book,
later
Maya
enumerating (#27) the "most beautiful example of
what
it
is:
a
woman
running a
delineate cultural periods throughout Mesoamerica, the Preclassic-Classic-Postclassic classification carries heavy freight today, in
an era reluctant to privilege the cultural achievements of one era
rope studded with thorns through her tongue, on her knees before a
over another. But the terminology nevertheless persists and will
king with a blazing torch.
be used here.
19
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From 1940 away from the
to 1960,
many American
archaeologists turned
sort of center-city excavations that had yielded fab-
ulous discoveries of sculpture and ceramics. Stung by criticism that the previous lectual
manner of work had been
more than
little
stamp collecting, archaeology gave its attention
and to new techniques of
and the United
States,
But
scientific analysis.
inquiry created an opening for historians of
who began
art,
this shift of
both
in
Mexico
Maya corpus. Like
to look at the
some were drawn
their nineteenth-century predecessors,
intel-
to science,
to the
naturalism and pictorial presentation, particularly on painted ceramics,
and they saw humor, domestic
life,
and
a
lively
engagement with the human form. At the same
time, widespread travel
and amateur archaeology,
as well as the tragedy of looting, allowed for
more
enthusiastic
study of other Precolumbian arts of Mesoamerica, as the region
encompassing northern Central America and most of Mexico
came to be called, and Maya
art could at last be recognized as only
one of several pinnacles of artistic achievement, along with Olmec, Mixtec, and Aztec
arts,
among
others.
Miguel Covarrubias,
a
great student of Precolumbian art and a major figure in Mexican
modern in
art himself,
which Maya
art
was
in fact
uncomfortable with the high estate
was commonly held and preferred the seeming
simplicity of Olmec art; in his writings he successfully deflated the
cant that often surrounded the promotion of the "peaceful"
Maya
and their art.
Although the story of Maya hieroglyphic decipherment since 1960 has been told elsewhere,
it is
worth mentioning here that
Tatiana Proskouriakoff played a key role
pherment and
in
transferring
its
in
terms of both the deci-
Maya art. Prosk-
implications to
ouriakoff recognized that the glyphs she deciphered as verbs indicating "ascension" to office and the "capture" of captives were associated with appropriate subject matter, sweeping
of anonymity that had cloaked
1960 study of Piedras Negras inscriptions, sculptures. In
away the veil
Maya art with the publication of her its
rulers and their
one fell swoop, calendar priests became petty kings
of warring states, promoting their cults for personal aggrandize-
ment. Many of the personages Stephens had once supposed to be women were not robed priests, it turned out, but women indeed. As the decipherment of the writing system transformed Maya studies and invigorated the study of Maya art, so did the personal
energy and drive of Linda Scheie. Her work
in
decipherment led
Maya
art
and
society and to look into the very nature of ritual in ancient
life.
Her
her to frame
20
new questions
to be asked of ancient
work achieved
.1
unknown
recognition
Maya
for
studies since the
daysol Morley, and she also bridged the disciplines
and archaeology, formulating
Maya she
reinvigorated
synthetic histor}
.1
interpretive
oi arl
histon
the ancient
ol
work with the modern
Maya, in whose thought, word, and deeds she found the imprint oi the past.
Her death in 1 998 left Maya studies berefl
One immediate
resull of the
decipher men carefully.
w.is thai scholai
1
When
began
to scrutinize
iconography
down
to study the
range of painted and carved pots
1970s, he realized that they presented religious characters,
world
a
accompanied by texts
Michael Coe in
the early
supernatural,
<>i
were certainly not
thai
the scribbles ofilliterate scribes. The role of ancient religion
and
its
representation
small-scale form, the
kings
in their
came
to the fore: in both
Maya had
in art
monumental and
taken note of their gods, rendering
some of which
guise and illustrating ancient myths,
were recounted centuries
s
sal
later in the sixteenth-century holy took. I
ThePopolVuh. Major
exhibitions. Die Welt der
Maya
Europe, The Blood of
in
Kings and Maya: Treasures of an Ancient Civilization
brought public attention to Maya
States,
in
the United
the flurry of
art, as did
1992—93 that included the Maya
quincentenary exhibitions
in
among
featured subject of a traveling exhibi-
their offerings.
The
tion in 1993-95, Painting the
Maya
Maya
Universe,
vase painting-
place as one of the great ceramic painting traditions
has taken
its
known
mankind. Clearly one of the world's great
art traditions,
Maya art has been receiving its due. The most casual
student of art
to
Maya
history opens most survey studies of world art and finds the at
hand for the first time since Like other
modern
1
S4'2.
readers,
fresh insights, but perhaps his
I
often pore over Stephens for his
most important contribution was
simply to recognize that the indigenous peoples of Chiapas, Yucatan, Guatemala, and Belize were
all
Maya and spoke Maya,
and that they were the descendants of the ancients who had cities,
built
carved sculptures of their gods and kings, and written
script that probably recorded their language.
nineteenth century,
Maya art could
be seen
in
By
in a
the end of the
London, or
Paris, or
Cambridge, Massachusetts. Driven by wars and mobilized by the world economy since the 1970s, the Maya now
live in
New
1
Iaven,
Connecticut; Toronto, Canada; and Bonn, Germany. Like other peoples of the
modern world, they are now
in
diaspora, as
of their ancestors. In this modern world, the ancient
is
the art
Maya need no
longer be thought of as a parallel universe, those "Greeks of the New
World," but simply as the makers of their own world of Maya
art.
21
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Chapter 2:
Maya
Architecture
General considerations
From
the first millennium BC onwards, as the
Maya began
to build
public buildings, they created vast facades against which to stage
great spectacles and plazas
in
which
to congregate. Sixteenth-
century Europeans described the winding processions that had
moved from
and town to shrine
city
across Mesoamerica,
all
brightly adorned warriors and supplicants poised against the
man-made marvels of roads and pyramids. that
We can
today imagine
among the Maya, many travelers would have been en
make
route to
offerings to the Sacred Cenote or great natural sinkhole of
Chichen
one of the natural marvels that focused human
Itza,
ways like architecture itself
attention in
With
its
very emphasis on mass and the relatively small atten-
tion given to interior spaces,
Maya
architecture
composed of a
is
few relatively simple elements: the house, the volume of platform or pyramid, and the path or steps that animated the heart
lies
the one-room
Maya
first
two.
At
house, and the sort of house built
Maya settlement. Maya builders replicated the forms in stone and then mul-
today has been built since the beginning of
Ancient tiplied
them
to
compose great rambling palaces or
atop huge platforms to create temples.
house
is its
vault, in
Most
isolated
them
characteristic of the
hip roof; translated into stone the result
which courses of stone approach each other
is
the corbel
until they can
be spanned by a single stone. Despite being inherently unstable, the vault's relationship to the hip roof gave
it
such value that
never challenged by any other vaulting, although the used
flat,
trabiated roofs using
The mass feat, for
the
wooden beams and
of pyramids and platforms itself
Maya
freshly quarried
it
Maya
was also
stucco.
is
an astounding
builders assembled tons of recycled rubble or
rough limestone
to construct
huge pyramidal
structures or to extend natural land forms. Builders framed off sections to
fill
with rubble; workers carried the rubble up
after tier, often scaling a steep, unfinished staircase that
covered by complete.
a
more
finely finished
tier
was then
one when the structure was
10 Mj.
YUC/ YUCATAN
Uxmal Kiteh
\
Mayapan
\
\.
GULF OF CAMPECHE
•
V\«*--Mulchic
Tulum
Q
Counwll
Mi
Q
Say.l
Chunpott
QUINTANA ROO
CAMPECHE \ Becan
Xpuhll
• Rio Bee
Chicanna
TABASCO
Calakmul
*"
^
E|
Palenque.
Pomona •
^
Dos Altar
g
Naranio
Motuldc'e
• S8
•
Pilas
de Sacrrfiaos
Caracol '
Nebaj
CARIBBEAN SEA
03
031 ,
-^^st*
NajTuntch
» eCancuen
An,,ii^ Aguateca
Chan
GV)*
1
Abaj Takalik
-
NJ
*
T
San Jose T^sal
Bonampak*
CHIAPAS
Uj
#Uaxactun
PETEN
.
Yaxchilane
Tonina •
ibe
#
\
« Usumaant/
• Rio Awl
gM.rador •
Piedras Negras
•s5'u'-"
e Kaminaljuyii # ElBaul
~r--
HONDURAS
.
EL SALVADOR
150 km 100 miles
To
us the
Maya may
mass always appears
to be a solid, but the ancient
well have understood the
hidden voids of one sort or another
rooms
—
plazas,
to be penetrated
by the
caches, tombs, and scaled
that archaeologists uncover.
The counterweight plazas as
mass
—
much
and
so
to
mass
as the volumes.
the
largest
is
void,
and the Maya valued the
Larger buildings demand larger
constructions,
whether
at
Late
PreclassicEl Mirador or Classic-period Tikal. received the grandest attendant spaces.
A huge
plaza like Ouirigua's often seems out
of kilter with the modest volumetric mass. Like the massive constructions, plazas often overlie hidden efforts, usually drains this case that kept the plazas
in
from flooding. At Tikal. gently
sloping plazas delivered water to reservoirs.
To connect platform
these most important aspects
— the Maya depended on two other
—
plaza, house,
and
essential forms, steps
and pathways. Steps move humans vertically whereas pathways connect horizontally, and the
Maya
used
both
with careful
23
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thought. Shallow, high, and steep staircases
movement, although providing steps
may have been most
may have limited
real
visual access; deep and massive
desirable for performances and rituals.
At all periods of time, the Maya built elevated roads they called behs or "white ways,"
from the gleaming plaster
sak
finish of their sur-
At a city like Uaxactun, the path became a ceremonial road
to
connect different clusters of temples and palaces to one another;
in
faces.
other cases, sak behs connected two
cities,
or city to town, as
between Uxmal and Kabah.
From the earliest times,
Maya built a single axial architectural form, the ballcourt, for a game played with a solid rubber ball. In
its
simplest form merely two parallel
sides, the
mounds with sloping
court also evolved more elaborate forms, with steps at
one end or the other
for seating or sacrificial display in
dard variation, or laid out er.
the
in the
shape of a capital letter
Frequently found adjacent to palaces
forms, ballcourts also turn up at
in their
I
one stanin
anoth-
most elaborate
some distance from the hearts of
ceremonial precincts, usually as simple stone-faced mounds.
Sloping sides
at
southern lowland
Uxmal and Chichen Itza before from lowland Maya ceremonial at
1 1
.
Tatiana Proskouriakoff
developed
this
convincing
reconstruction of Groups at
Uaxactun
to
sites
gave way to vertical walls
the courts generally vanished precincts in the Postclassic,
although Postclassic highland Iximche featured multiple courts.
A and B
demonstrate how
What modern
scholars
know
of the play of the
game derives both
from Spanish descriptions and from the representations
the sak behs (elevated roads)
connected the elegant clusters
of
in Classic art.
Opposing sides
fielded
teams of three to
common
five players
buildings separated by ravines
and swamps. She and noted
that
called
much
was "occupied by
it
a city
of the area
residential
buildings and minor plazas and courts," but could not render
lack of archaeological data. resulting
it
for
The
to be
on the court
ball to a goal
—
at
once, and heavily padded players struck the
a ring, a marker, or the
endzone
—without touch-
ing the ball with their hands.
For modern observers, one of the
difficulties in
making sense
of Maya architecture has been simply to see the architectural con-
image probably helped
foster the notion of the so-called
"vacant ceremonial center."
figurations through the sea of forest, whether the scrub jungle that
grows with the 70 cm (28
in)
of annual rainfall in northern
(
.
100 meter,
QL
Temple
IV
M Temple of the L
12. Simplified plan of the city of Tikal,
Yucatan or the high canopy rainforest of Chiapas that results from
Guatemala. The giant
temple-pyramids and open plazas
Inscriptions
J
3
m (10 ft) of rain a year. Accordingly, viewers have often no
nor even
helped orientate the pedestrian on
that there
the ground.
depredations of the forest er,
is
city plan
laid
a city.
hare the
thought
Late twentieth-century
Maya
countryside, ho\\e\
making
for the first time since the eighth century,
it
-
possible to
see the larger context of Maya settlement.
Unlike their counterparts the
Maya found no
at
Teotihuacan
in
Central Mexico,
attraction in rectilinear city streets or the city
grid pattern. Rather, most
Maya
cities
grew
organically,
from the
core outward, and from the bottom up, with accretions that both
expanded the upward.
Maya
city's radius
architecture
and took
highest buildings ever
its
accommodated
took advantage of its features: high,
solid,
served best for massive constructions; low,
turned into urban reservoirs.
local
topography and
limestone outcroppings
swampy areas could be
The Maya very
rarely leveled a
hill
to rationalize topography, but they frequently hauled massive
amounts of fill
A
city
to
expand and accentuate local
without streets has often seemed
ation of structures, but that point of view
the
modern plan or map
finding one's
a
features.
confusing agglomer-
may
be one informed by
reader. In fact, for a pedestrian at Tikal,
way around
the city might well have been quite
straightforward, since the open plazas and huge pyramids created
25
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— both landmarks and vistas for on-the-ground orientation. Despite the ease
its
plan provides for the
modern
viewer, the meticulous
grid of contemporary Teotihuacan in Central
exception of
its
Mexico could have
narrow and congested
streets (with the
single great north-south axis)
monotonous and
seemed labyrinthine,
its
confusing and preventing most long-distance views of the
mids,
Mexican terparts
cities that
—
landmarks.
distinctive
were most closely allied with
Xochicalco, Tula
—
are
those
Strikingly,
their
most Maya-like
—
pyra-
Central
Maya countheir city
in
plan, whereas those that develop without regard to the
Teotihuacan, Tenochtitlan
its
Maya
prefer the grid.
Were these great Maya centers
"cities"?
Not in any twentieth-
century sense of the word, surely, but within the context of the
premodern world and the ancient
New World
they were indeed.
Interestingly enough, John Lloyd Stephens sized up
Palenque as
1839, and although he
cities in
Copan and
was not writing from
the point of view of modern sociology or urban studies, the
com-
own New York City, where the population at that time was about 300,000. To him a city parison he probably had in mind was his
was
a center of social
tecture: a cathedral
extremes and a place of differentiated archi-
and
a palace could be distinguished just
their appearance; subtler differences separated city hall financial markets.
between
by
from the
Stephens himself did not hesitate to distinguish
and temple, and he had reasonable expectations
a palace
of what those terms meant.
Maya cities provided the greatest social differentiation of the Maya world, for they were home to both the richest and
ancient
the poorest of their times, with populations of 1 00,000 or so probably resident at Tikal or
under 20,000
at
of social classes.
The
entire circle of king
cent (and tion.
Calakmul or Caracol. Even
Copan or Yaxchilan allowed rich
were well
off
for
a population of
sharp separation
by any standards and the
and court may have been
as
much
as ten per-
some scholars might hazard more) of the entire popula-
Over
time, architectural
forms differentiated themselves
more and more, perhaps reaching a Maya apogee
at
Chichen
Itza,
where the external forms of architecture are more
distinct
from
one another than also have had the
at
any southern lowland
site.
Chichen Itza may
most heterogeneous population of any Maya city,
and that mix may have enhanced architectural differentiation.
The
earliest
Maya
cities
of the central region established the
pattern of fashioning highly elaborate exteriors of pliable stucco built
over tenoned supports on their buildings. Usually
—and
the
best-known examples today are those from Late Preclassic El
26
—
7j
31:i";4S
•
•
;
',
. •'
•
.
v:>*
\
*
*
••
.
(
y*l
13.
Temple
shown here
I
(left)
Mirador and Uaxactun
atTikal
facing Temple
across the Great Plaza
II
—once had
an elaborately carved roofcomb.
ture
— the facades of the
largest buildings fea-
huge heads of gods, and these may have functioned
idols for adoration
and
By
offering.
facade decoration diminished and
directly as
the Classic period, the scale of
may have been
replaced hy the
use of portable braziers and urns, for example, that would have
been set up on facades as called Classic massive decoration facades.
was
The roofcomb of Temple
of a giant enfthroned ruler,
appears today.
for.
set I
However, during the Late
on the roofcombs or on upper
at
Tikal took on the appearance
more than the skeleton of which
little
The upper facades
at
Uxmal
bear elaborate iconog-
raphy that offers clues to building function.
The rationale for building and
rebuilding
Maya cities was long
linked by scholars to the calendar cycles of Mesoamerica. But were
any buildings year cycles,
really constructed to celebrate the completion of 52-
when
the solar calendars of 365 days and ritual calen-
dars of '260 days intersected unlikely for any
Indeed, such a hypothesis now seems
Mesoamerican
city, for
excavations throughout
the region have demonstrated connections between building
campaigns and the ambitions of individual
rulers.
Because Maya society had no single central authority, individual rulers
problems
and different ruling families solved their architectural differently.
Although
more like one another than they
cities
of the Peten generally look
look like the
Us umacinta cities, no
template explicates either regional variety and scholars have been
stymied
in their
attempts to develop
a
formula that
satisfies
more 27
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than a single center. Yet regional and temporal distinctions can be recognized: Early Classic Piedras Negras clearly resembles the Peten, whereas
eighth-century flowering follows the pattern
its
One might
established at Palenque in the seventh century.
antici-
pate that the relatively similar physical environments of Piedras
Negras and Yaxchilan, the former only a day's canoe trip downriver
on the Usumacinta from the
latter,
lar architectural configurations,
would have resulted
in simi-
but they could hardly be more
different in their architectural solutions.
Among the Maya the agendas of both ruling families and individual lords are sharply reflected in architectural programs.
One
of the most obvious concerns was to honor one's ancestors, to
enshrine their tombs within huge architectural constructions and to
make
shrines at the top of those temples the site of veneration.
At some the
power.
these developed into huge ancestor complexes. At
cities
same
time, the city also served as the seat of visceral, mortal
What may
once have been
fairly small
rooms became potent palace chambers, from the view of the populace, and
in
in
and simple throne
some
cases insulated
others designed to
command
the public's attention.
Around the Peten: Uaxactun,
The
first cities
Tikal, Calakmul,
and Aguateca
of the Classic era arose in the region
as the Peten, in
northern Guatemala, where
known today of the Late
cities
Preclassic had previously flourished, particularly at El Mirador.
Most grew up around swampy
areas,
which may have been more
On most maps
favorable for agriculture than lakes and rivers. today, or even
from the
air,
the Peten looks almost
ken terrain of karst limestone
fact rolling
is in
flat,
but the bro-
and choppy, with
underpinnings of solid stone serving best for supporting massive structures.
The
elevated roads called sak behs often span
swampy
areas to link complexes built on solid ground; for comparison,
need think only of New York
City,
we
where the rock under Midtown
and Lower Manhattan supports massive buildings, connected by the "sak behs" of New York's avenues.
Early
in
the first millennium AD, the lords of
structed a large radial pyramid case flowing
down each
cardinal directions.
Huge
side
The
a stair-
and directed toward one of the
postholes atop the platform
supported symbolic "world tional structure.
Uaxactun con-
known today as EVII, with
trees," rather
lord or priest
who
may have
than any sort of conven-
stood
at the
center of the
platform would then have stood at the earth's navel, the center,
where the
28
fifth
direction of
up-and-down would have come
alive.
14. Archaeologists stripped
away
layer after layer of Structure EVII at Uaxactiin finally
during the 1920s,
reaching an original
was 200 years
construction ("sub") that
completed of the first
in
the
first
millennium.
Although modest
comparison
in
with contemporary efforts at El
Mirador. EVII-sub
important building
(
rod
EVII-sub privileged the stela
would he placed
mid formed
a
east facade,
where
the base of the stairs.
On
m
later
phases
a
the east, the pyra-
particular arrangement with three smaller build-
creating
ings,
at
what
has
nicknamed
been
configuration now widely recognized
at sites
an
with
"E-group," a
a
strong Early
was an
in its
a giant chronographic that confirmed the
Massive plaster ornament featured giant heads of the Maize borne by the upper halves of the heads of great serpents.
day,
marker
movements
of the sun.
Classic presence. Functionally, the Uaxactiin
observatory.
From
a point
on the eastern
E-group
stairs, lines
is
a
simple
of sight can
be drawn to the three small buildings which identify the sunrise on the days of the solstices and equinoxes. Rebuilt time and again
throughout the
millennium, EVII's alignment remained
first
intact.
Excavations 15.
When
observed from
EVII, the
three small structures facing the larger
pyramid marked the
in
giant chronographic marker.
revealed a very different sort of build-
Uaxactiin lords had razed
three-temple complex,
equinoxes and solstices, so that the "E-Group" functioned as a
Group A
ing program that flourished simultaneously. Before AD 250,
that the E-groups.
a
perishable longhouse and built a
a triadic
As kings
grouping even more widespread
died, their successors buried
fancy tombs topped by new temples
in their
honor. But
enth century, a new style of building took over the
in
them
in
the sev-
A-V complex:
long, ranging palaces first blocked off the main stairs and then
proceeded to turn the old cluster into Royal burial moved to new but lesser retainers
members of
—continued
From
sites
a
sequence of private courts.
along with their temple shrines,
the court
— women,
to be buried simply
children, along with
under palace
floors.
Uaxactiin's highest temples, an observer could have
seen the roofcombs of Tikal
some
'24
km
(15 miles) to the south.
29
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many architectural characteristics with Early Classic a much grander scale. The Lost World pyramid forms the focus of an E-group. An adjacent fourth-century strucTikal shares
Uaxactun, but on
ture features the talud-tablero exterior construction characteristic
of distant Teotihuacan, architectural testimony to the political
16. (below) Teotihuacan-style
building at Tikal (Structure 49).
allegiances of the era. Interestingly enough, the
Despite the arrival of
must have been entirely
Teotihuacanos century ad, few
in
workmanship
proportions do not conform
the fourth
Maya
buildings
took on any visibly foreign characteristics.
local, for its
However,
to Teotihuacan standards.
But the interest
ferences between the two reflected
on the small scale
cities'
in
confronting the
architectural
as well, evidenced
dif-
program was
by the three temple
Structure 49, near the Lost World
pyramid, featured balustrades virtually
unknown
in
facades carved onto the surface of a pot cached at Tikal.
Maya
At Tikal, the North Acropolis effectively became a vast ances-
architecture but characteristic at
Teotihuacan, along with unusual proportions for a
Maya
building.
tral shrine
over the 600 years that rulers buried their predecessors
within the complex. For example, early in the
fifth
century,
18. (right) Tikal's Temple
when
I
(foreground) faces Temple
II
across the Great Plaza, with
Temple
IV in the distance; the
North Acropolis
lies to
the
17. (below) At Uaxactun, buildings evolved
in
stages over at least
right.
Group A
eight major
500
years
from a three-temple complex
of
the Early Classic to multi-
chambered Classic.
30
galleries in the Late
tfP^>
t
V;
#¥'/ S
•
•
Wh*M&M
r :
.
I
*~#
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19.
The pot from Problematic
Deposit 52 at Tikal
may show
Siyah Chan K'awil oversaw the interment of his father,
Nun Yax
Ayin, he ordered a bedrock chamber be carved into the front of the
the arrival of Teotihuacanos at Tikal.
Moving
in a
long column,
the foreigners carry tripod cylinders
and Central Mexican
dartthrowersfrom a Teotihuacan-style structure, at far right, to a
Maya
one.
North Acropolis; over the top workmen probably
tempo-
built a
rary structure so that the funerary rituals could proceed. Into the
— —alongside
tomb went the abundance of Tikal namesake caiman, or "ayin" rificed nine
pots, foodstuffs,
perhaps his
the dead king. Priests sac-
young attendants to serve with him in the afterlife, and
workmen constructed the next few
months
a
a corbel vault to seal the tomb.
Then, over
pyramid known today as Structure 34 rose
over the tomb, to be topped by a three-chamber shrine, the rooms linked together from front to back, railroad style. Siyah
Chan
K'awil had then completed the shrine to his father, and the build-
ing personified the late king. Eclipsed politically in the sixth century, Tikal
and
simultaneously experienced sharp economic decline,
for nearly
50 years few buildings went up
1
Freestanding pyramids seem
Nun Yax
to powerful ancestors like
throughout the Maya realm. cessor
when he
at
the
Ayin, not only at Tikal but
A king fulfilled his duty to his prede-
so honored him, but such constructions obviously
When Yik'in Chan
reflected
on the living
his heir
and successor probably entombed him
as well.
excavations have ever pierced the structure
pyramid known today
as
Temple IY the
—although no —within the huge
single
most massive tem-
filial piety,
Yik'in
Chan K'awil had outshone Hasaw Chan had
I
it all
an
or did the heir also wish to demonstrate that
act of
Temple
K'awil had died,
anywhere during the eighth century. Was
ple constructed
ial in
city.
general to have been shrines
in
initiated the passion for
the eighth century?
great that his heir
Or was
felt
the
K'awil,
whose bur-
such constructions
in
power of Yik'in Chan K'awil so
the need to wall him in as thoroughly as any
living person could? Or, in building such a temple, did he also
impress upon the neighboring did he force
them
We may
to deliver
never
know
Tikal kings that led
them
result, at the of
all
Plaza.
own
absolute power, and tribute?
the motivations of eighth-century
to build ever higher
and grander, but the
end of a century of construction, was
massive ancestral temples that
which stood
32
cities his
some of the stone as
in silent
all
I
and
II,
dialogue with one another across the Great
Temple housed Hasaw Chan I
a configuration
addressed Temples
K'awil,
whose death succeed-
I'll
if
that of his wife by just a few years, and
not buried
in
Temple
II
who had been honored by,
(her portrait lintel spans the shrine
doorway, but no tomb was found) Under Hasaw, Tikal had flour ished once again, and Ins successors
.ill
homage
paid
him
to
in
addressing his shrine with their own. Yik'inChan K'awil's Temple IV was the greatest;
Temple
between the father
itself
in
III
may have sought
Temple IV and
Temple I as a member of the third generation from
1
1
tinels,
to interpose
the grandfather
since
in
[asaw Visible
I
islam temple tops, the Tikal family pyramids stood like senever on guard. These pyramids
be likened ulations
to the
way
all
face inward, perhaps to
the triangle of Tikal causeways kept the pop-
12
moving only from one Tikal complex to another, without
ever directing energy outward. Indeed,
turned inward, reflecting on
its
in its art, too, late
During' the eighth century the Tikal lords gathered up
ments from
all
over the city and installed them
North Acropolis, struction.
Tikal
great achievements of the past.
effectively scaling the sector
The heavy rounded moldings of the
tures seemed framed by the clean
in
monu-
front of the
from further con-
Early Classic struc-
lines of Temples
I
and
II,
as
it
in a
triumph of Maya modernism. To the south of the Great Plaza the Tikal lords built
a
vast palace complex,
known today
as the
Central Acropolis, with the structures of later generations directly
on top of some others. Despite their inviting appearance, gal-
leried structures that face the plaza prevent access to private
courtyards within, and the only access was carefully limited by the large eastern palace. Beds and thrones provide evidence that the
king and
a large retinue lived there, with centralized food prepara-
tion facilities set
on the south slope of the acropolis.
Starting in the seventh century, Tikal kings initiated along the
causeways
six
unusual architectural configurations that are
referred to today as
Twin Pyramid Complexes. Unlike any other
known Maya ceremonial
architecture, these
were dedicated
to
20. Tikal's Twin Pyramid
Complexes
replicated aspects of
the Great Plaza
— pyramids
at east
and west ends, an ancestral shrine to the north, building on the
and
a galleried
south— and were
dedicated on katun (twenty-year period) endings.
33
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20
21, 22. DosPilasin (above) and (opposite),
in
its
heyday
the eighth century
when
its
order to throw up hastily
presumably
defense of the
Maya
calendar,
and the radial form of their platforms and the identical radial pyra-
citizens
ripped facings off buildings
walls,
celebrate the katun, or twenty-year period of the
in
in
made
mids along the east-west axis may signal related to that of
EVIL The north
a calendrical orientation
precinct houses a stela
com-
a last-ditch
city's core.
memorating the
king's performance of the katun ending, while
nine plain stelae line up
of the eastern pyramid; the west-
in front
ern one never features stelae.
The
entire
program may seek
to
miniaturize the Great Plaza, with an ancestor shrine on the north,
matched pyramids east and west, and
a simple palace
on the south,
and then to replicate the form along the causeways. Tikal's greatest political rival, Calakmul,
most important of Classic Maya the
modern Mexican
state of
fered terrible depredations
c.
cities.
was
also
one of the
Northwest of Tikal and
Campeche, Calakmul probably 700,
when Tikal won
between the two powers. Perhaps these wars explain
in
suf-
a great clash
why archae-
ologists found little standing architecture at Calakmul, but exca-
vations in the 1990s uncovered acres of massive buildings, palaces,
and shrines. Calakmul lords rebuilt the largest structure at the
sometimes
site,
a late Preclassic building into
Structure
set their stelae several tiers
up
a
II.
The Calakmul
lords
massive structure, and
their positions have been reconstructed in recent years. In the
West Group,
3
l
a
ballcourt neighbors an unusual horizontal rock
Rgfc
•
•:.;/,-.;«,
'
outcropping- that features seven bound, naked captives, perhaps the site of sacrificial rituals to accompany the ballgame.
Probably during the sixth century antithesis, the rightful heirs
—of
a
rogue branch
of the Petexbatun region, with twin capitals at
Aguateca. perate
and
Mich
—and
—or
its
the Tikal family established rule
Dos
Pilas
of the architecture was built hastily, but
—-eighth-century
futile
in
and des-
attempts to fight off battle
siege, residents ripped facings off structures in
order to con-
struct walls. Palisaded walls formed defensible, concentric patterns,
without regard for pre-existing structures. Both
cities fell
to their attackers, but at Aguateca, attackers torched the roofs, set-
ting offa fire storm that
consumed the city. No one returned
through the ashes
Takeshi Inomata began to work through
this
until
Maya equivalent of Pompeii
The Maya
in
the
1
to sift
990s.
west-.Palenque, To?iind, Yaxchildn, andPiedras Negras
During the Late
Classic, the
most dynamic architectural innova-
tions took place in the western
Maya realm, where dynasties grew
quickly wealthy and used their wealth to promote their reigns
with public works. Unlike the all
cities
of the Peten, the western cities
feature obvious strategic siting. Yaxchilan and Piedras
both perch
at
key points along the Usumacinta River;
Negras set into
35
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21,22
— Palenque and Tonina can observe the plains before them
Hillsides,
as far as the eye can see.
Modest towns during the Early
Classic
although some erected stone monuments and other works thrived just as Tikal faltered in the sixth century, as
if they
— they
benefit-
ed economically from Tikal's weakness. Perhaps nowhere was this as clear as at Palenque,
and
where an individual king (Hanab Pakal)
two sons (K'an Balam and K'an Hok' Chitam)
his
most of what
AD 650 to
is
visible
today
in
built
about a hundred years, from
750.
At Palenque we know almost nothing of the previous pro-
gram
23. Plan of Palenque.
36
—except
its
very existence
—
but prior to
Hanab Pakal, engi-
Otulum
neers had canalized the into the Palace.
River, bringing
running water
By the eighth centur) there were no fewer than
three toilets in the Tower court, although thewa} they functioned is
unknown today. Additionally, because of the steep slope down to
the north, engineers had
begun the construction of platforms on
the north, in order to place galleries on roughly similar levels. ., King lanab.,,,,,• Pakal first laid out his plan
complex, looking south f During the seventh century.
...
,
•
,
.
,
I
,
'
-
Houses
r
'
,,
,
. ,
for the Palace with
He ,
Paienque architects constructed
construction
what are today the
older structures that were converted into subterranean passages
colonnades
interior
of the Palace,
E.B, and C, which radiate spokes
of a
wtw
Houses like
m
thls
P hase
ol
-
E, B,
and C, probably
rhe three buildings radiated
imaginary point
at
in thai
spokes from an
like
the northern end of] louse
!•'..
order, atop
I
louse E became
37
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the center of the Palace, and
its
distinctive exterior
to the significance of the building
even when
throne room was superseded within
as a
any other building
in the Palace,
it
a
its
drew attention
principal function
generation, for unlike
was painted white. Stylized
flowers repeat with wallpaper-like regularity across the front facade,
and text inside
it
notes that the building was called the
"white great house," or sak nuk nah. As the
Hanab
Pakal's regime,
ishable architecture:
its
Hanab Pakal
set his
its
relationship to
in
House B may have
at
architec-
House E.
open floor plan and the mat motif on
its
to resemble
humble
main throne here and other lords may
have presided from portable thrones
With
major building of
overhanging eaves are cut
ordinary thatch, emphasizing ture.
first
House E anchored itself in the idiom of per-
one time been
its
upper
story,
nah or council house,
a popol
where Hanab Pakal's lords would have gathered. From House south
side, lords
the back door of
House
E; they could also have witnessed the
actions to the north from their front steps, in 25. Palenque architects both stabilized
and enhanced the
B's
could have easily passed without notice through
became the Northeast
court.
House
what eventually
C's inscribed steps relate the
corbel vault by setting the heavy
humiliating defeat Palenque suffered early in the seventh century;
roofcomb along the central
they remained
load-bearing wall, possible
in situ as
Palenque built the evidence of its own war
in
the parallel corbel constructions
and tribute machine around the painful memory. Perhaps because of the extremely heavy
of the Palace.
rainfall in the region,
Palenque engineers solved the problem of creating interior space.
By building side-by-side lized. Relatively light
corbel vaults, the central wall was stabi-
roofcombs rested over the central load-bear-
ing wall, enhancing stability and allowing both the width and height of interior chambers to grow.
may have
The
also been invented at Palenque,
sloping mansard roof
and
its
profile dimin-
ished the mass at cornice level and above, further enhancing stability.
By the time Hanab Pakal
died, his designers
were cutting out
keyhole niches on the interiors of corbel vaults, diminishing their mass;
in
House
C, they
added
a staircase to the roof,
stargazers could gaze upwards at night and the plain for
in
throne
front of
in
dramatically changed the old open, radial
the eighth century
that created a his
stud)'
movements during the day.
Kan Hok' Chitam palace
where
watchmen could
in
when he commissioned long galleries
rough rectangle around the central spokes. He set up
House AD, commanding the view of the entire
him
to the north.
plain
House AD probably became the main
entrance to the Palace, but despite the open and engaging appear-
ance of the long post-and-lintel arcade, the continuous interior •*> -cT.
\\
all
38
meant
that
no further approach to interior chambers could be
made from around
On
the north side
to the east
Rather, any visitor was channeled
and west sides
the east side of the Palace, the visitor entered through the
plain post-and-lintel entry only to find that the interior to the
Northeast court
was an
courtyard
doorway
and equally invisible from inside the
ogee-trefoil corbel vault elaborated with such
curving finish that modern observers have been inclined to view it as "Moorish."
Reaching to the top of the vault, such
a cross-corbel
construction began to achieve an interior space rare
in
ancient
Mesoamerica. But the 26.
In
the Northeast court of the
in for
Palace. Palenque both
remembered proclaimed
its
its
tragic defeats
and
isitorw ho entered the Northeast court unawares was
Nevertheless, the most striking political declaration
House
runs along
A.
to those chiseled literally
onto the outcropping
One
could
foreheads to emphasize their humiliation. Across the way, along the lower story of
march toward
have been assembled,
inviting
the Palenque victor to walk along
Two dates
sequence on the
at C'alakinul.
where
depicting grossly figured captives
brows.
into
walk along the front of the building, dancing along their
oversize individual slabs
their
down
the courtyard were nine huge, gross sculptures of captives similar
hegemony over
smaller regional polities.
the base of
\
an additional shock: flanking the stairs leading
in
loincloths of the
its
Palenque and pay private courtyard
House
central
C, tribute-paying lords
from Pomona
The message was
clear: yield to
stair.
tribute, or
end up
may have been
a
humiliated captive.
a place to
The
impress neighboring
lords with Palenque's prowess.
captives closest to the steps note that the captives
presumably
were "dressed,"
for sacrifice.
This kind of enclosed architecture became fortress-like without active aggression, guaranteeing privacy to those within
its
39
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26
\\
iconography suggests that court business was devoted to
alls. Its
war, taxation, and political machinations.
was
Palace
Tower,
three-story
the
Mesoamerican architecture (one
away
in
at
The final
building in the
unique
a
the nineteenth century). Its construction
courtyard of House
E
court came to house
toilets.
survival
in
Copan may have been washed
made
the old
nearly unusable, which may be how the
Narrow
winding around
staircases
a
central core take the viewer to an ideal point for observation of the plain to the north, Palenque's vulnerable side.
palace
compounds were
Meanwhile, elegant
built to the northeast,
where the Otulum
River gave way to waterfalls and private pools. Probably the
homes of wealthy family,
nobles, as well as
some members of the
such palaces more effortlessly accommodated
children, dogs and turkeys, and
may
royal
women and
well have been the sites of
weaving, cooking, and an easy domesticity.
Hanab Pakal
we now know
the single king that
is
an extension of his conviction
to have con-
—
own lifetime perhaps as own divine kingship. Some
structed his ancestral shrine during his in his
years before his death in 683, his architects set the nine-level
Temple of
Inscriptions directly into the
natural elevation for
hill
behind
much of the pyramid's height.
archaeologist Alberto
Ruz
lifted
Hanab had
tomb
that
would
Pakal' s at the base of the pyramid,
a clue as to the
using the
the floor slabs at the rear of the
uppermost chambers, cleared the hidden interior 1952, found the remarkable
it,
Until Mexican
staircase, and, in
later be identified as
no modern observer had
motivation that lay behind the building's
construction.
The Temple eternity, in
of Inscriptions tomb chamber was designed for
ways
different
from any known Maya construction:
instead of the usual wood, the cross-ties are stone (a material with-
out the tensile strength
wooden
cross-ties provide)
and
stone tube, or "psychoduct," as archaeologists have called nects the
tomb
a small it,
to the stuccoes at the top, following carefully
con-
along
the staircase edge. Probably for generations after Palenque itself \\
1
as
abandoned,
Maya memory may have
lanab Pakal was hidden within Like Tikal's
distinct levels.
the
Temple
the
retained the notion that
secret compartment.
Temple of Inscriptions
rises in nine
Both pyramids probably refer to the nine levels of
Mesoamerican underworld, where a king would descend
nadir, only to rise
tomb
to the
is
to its
up once again. Most Mesoamerican cosmic
schemes feature thirteen of the earth
/<)
I,
its
levels of the
heavens
in
which the surface
the first layer. Thirteen distinct corbels connect the
upper
galleries, fulfilling
both cosmic schemes
in
the
i
**
')8
T>
27. After archaeologist Alberto
Ruz had located in
the rear
a
single structure. Despite
hidden entry
chamber
at the top of
promulgating
his
Hanab
own persona,
his
Pakal's remarkable success in
son K'an Balam apparently had
the Temple of Inscriptions, he
the last word, for the stuccoes on the front facade
slowly emptied the rubble-filled
been a god even as
a child, his
show him
to have
image united with that of K'awil.
staircase over several years,
Modern viewers have often found the Temple of Inscriptions, among the most sympathetic of
zigging and zagging until he
discovered a great tomb at
its
base, on axis at the base of the exterior stairs.
shows the with
The
tomb,
Pakal's magnificent
sarcophagus
at
its
ancient
Maya
buildings. In large part, their attraction probably
detail (left)
interior of the
Hanab
along with the Palace, to be
lies in
the interior spaces, unusual even discounting their remark-
able preservation. But another characteristic that
makes these
center.
buildings so appealing
is
the proportional system, which promot-
ed the square and rectangle
golden section.
When
golden section has is
a
a
in
proportions Europeans
Did Maya architects
understand the system they were using, or are the results
The
piers
the
square removed from one end of it, the result
a rectangle of the original proportions.
accident?
call
rectangle with the proportions of the
a
happy
and voids of the front facade of the Temple of
//
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Inscriptions
would suggest
that at least at Palenque, they recog-
nized the playful potential of such a system.
Located to the east of the Otulum River, the Group of the
Cross set themselves apart from the rest of Palenque: the top of the
Temple of
appears to have turned
its
Inscriptions, the
back.
Hanab
Balam
when he was
a rela-
c
tle to
Hanab
Pakal's oldest son,
his
own program to have lit-
do visually with the program of his father, since he also seems
to have 28.
man, and perhaps he wished
made
little
contribution to the Palace. In any case, the
Cross Temples feature a design principle also present
K'an Balam, dedicated the Cross
Group
in
692, nine years
after the
death of his father. Each building holds a rear shrine that functioned as a symbolic sweatbath for each of
Palenque's patron deities.
from
Pakal's son K'an
dedicated the three-temple complex in 69 2, tively old
in fact,
Temple of the Sun
in
House
AD of the Palace, where a single high vault intersects parallel ones at a
right angle, creating
huge
interior spaces.
Here the mass of
Maya architecture has been reduced to fabric that envelops void. A small shrine at the rear of each structure forms a symbolic
rj
remple
a
not followed other
Mj
wj\
at
any
.
accompanying texts (and
sweatbath, a pib nak,
in
reading "undergound
pit oven"!),
the
literally
and the iconography of each
temple runs from the sculptured panel of the shrine
and onto the roofcomb, constructed
in
each case as
a
to the facade
lightweight
stone assemblage, finished with stucco ornament.
Palenque
sits
on the
first
substantial rise to break the long
from the Gulf of Mexico. Moving due south, the elevation
plain
climbs, going both uphill and downdale, until one arrives at
Tonina, set
at
about 900
m (2,950 ft) above sea
any other major Classic "lowland" ing terraces rise up from the plaza its
level,
higher than
site.
Seven distinct south-fac-
level,
and the public imagery of
architecture provides ample evidence of the intimidating
Tonina handled fourth to
its
fifth level
enemies.
features a terrifying death
decapitated head of a Palenque lord
in his
the
god who bears the
hand. Dozens of sculp-
tural fragments found on the plaza probably once fifth-level frieze
way
A huge stucco facing rising from
composed
a
of Tonina's most famous victims.
Tonina follows
a
more rigorous geometry than most Maya
cities,
with right-angle relationships between most buildings.
This
especially evident on the plaza level, perhaps following the
is
geometry of the two important
ballcourts.
The larger of these,
emphasizes the theatricality of the Maya ballgame and
its
I
hi,
role in
public sacrifice as a post-war ritual. Protruding from the sloping
43
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30,31
30. Tbnini
walls along
command s
up
m two great
in
of a trussed
its
narrow
allej are
human bod}
much of its
Classic times.
hideous death god.
and "turtle-footed" death
omposed
ronments along the
whose closed
it
also
foi
great artery
.1
probably made some
in
Maya towns
promoted discord and pro\
ided rela-
easy access for uninvited warriors. Given their similar envi
god notes the
holds out the
decapitated head,
<
ma. the archi
between Mexico and Guatemala
Usumacinta River was
The river's traffic
cities wealthy, but
at Tonina" (a
tively efully
length, the
nga
.
'on
tecture served the mission of its warrior kings
fit:
31 A death god
I
-
Todi iy the boundary and
tnai kers, eat h
the
bal
etween the fourth
unusual
attached to a shield Ai
river
and relative proximity, Yax< Inlan and
Piedras Negras might be expected to have developed along simi-
eyes also signify death. The head's luxuriant tresses
him
to the ear of
his elegant profile
that
he
is
may
liken
harvested maize;
may
indicate
lar lines, but in fact the
seems
A
true.
Their main relationship
political orbits.
Yaxchilan planners capitalized on
omega-shaped
cheerful rodent follows
behind. The geometric banding,
punctuated by decapitated heads, is
is
a captive from
Palenque. a victim of Tonina's wars.
opposite
have been antagonistic, and they inhabited different
to
otherwise
unknown
in
Maya
art.
spit of land that
of their main
in front
pla/.a.
a
steep
perched on an
lull
slowed the speed of the water right
Remnants of stone
the river, vestiges of what was once that allowed Yaxchilan's lords to
a pier
pilings remain
—or perhaps
demand payment
in
a tollgate
for safe pas-
sage. Small, independent structures creep up the hillside, so that all
structures above the plaza level hold
commanding views
of the
river to the northeast. Unlike most other Maya cities, few galleried
buildings form palace quadrangles
at
Yaxchilan, nor are there
obvious funerary pyramids.
The as a
entire plaza-level construction
grand
palace. Buildings
traits of female dynasts,
and
Lady Xok commissioned able in
Maya
women's
may
well have functioned
on the southwest side feature the pora sculpture in
Structure 23 notes that
the structure. Although rarely identifi-
architecture, these buildings
may
well have been
palaces, the special preserve of royal wives
and female
attendants.
While women were building
plaza-level
buildings,
the
Yaxchilan kings played king of the mountain, dominating the highest points of the hillside with buildings that announced their
supremacy. Early
in
the eighth century,
Itzamnah Balam
claimed the highest point with Structure 41;
son Yaxun Balam 33.
The
years
II
later, his
commanded control of the plaza from Structure
latter apparently also leveled
whose sculptures he then incorporated jects.
fifty
Early Classic buildings, into
some of his own pro-
Powerful and assuming, these structures tried no Palenque-
style engineering innovations.
Both are narrow, single-chamber
structures; heavy roofcombs over their vault capstones
would
exacerbate the tendency of corbeled constructions to collapse.
Apparently aware of
this
problem, Yaxchilan builders reinforced
/.•;
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—
^mMmmmnm.
32. Elevation of Structure 33 at Yaxchilan.
KingYaxun Balam
demolished some structures
33
their buildings with interior buttresses, leaving even less interior
space. Yet capturing interior space
may not have been
the priority
earlier
when he
built Structure
to celebrate his reign.
The
that capturing the
mountain was:
in front
of Structure 33, Bird
Jaguar also set up a carved stalactite within
a pit, as if to create a
building dominates the plaza.
symbolic cave and this
its
attendant springs beneath his pyramid. In
way he may have expressed the pan-Mesoamerican concept of or "water-mountain," known to us best from Aztec
altepetl
practice, with its
meaning of "civilized place."
Structure 33 also features an architectural element used widehandful of other
Maya
carved steps. Carved steps usually celebrate victory
at the
ly at Yaxchilan, cities:
Dos
Pilas,
Copan, and
a
home site, although they may also have been ed
site,
erected at the defeat-
perhaps to force the movement of heavy stone
—
a practice
known centuries later, among the Aztecs, who insisted that defeated towns deliver heavy rock to their capital. Yaxchilan's Structure
44
offers the single
most dynamic record of carved
steps,
defeated captives deployed on treads like doormats that
repeatedly stepped upon.
The
risers,
with
must be
on the other hand, relate
family genealogy, placed where no one can ever step.
Along with Yaxchilan, the other Usumacinta tion with
is
principal
on the
one another. Strategically located between dangerous
rapids and the San Jose
Canyon
—
the
damming of which
planned jointly by Mexico and Guatemala Piedras Negras retains
western
city
Piedras Negras, and the two were in keen competi-
cities,
more Early
in
has been
recent years
Classic structures than
most
and may have been the unchallenged authority on
the river until late in the seventh century
when Yaxchilan's
fortunes rose.
Having- started with complexes of palaces integrated with
what are probably funerary pyramids toward the southern reach of the site
to
— and marked by sequences of monuments—construe-
tion ot
many
later palaces
and temples moved northward
buildings were rebuilt time and again,
Tikal than Palenque, theeighth-centun an
O-IS, the largest single structure
at
in
Although
a fashion
hite< tural
more like
push
\\ .is .it
Piedras Negras, and
in
the
West Acropolis. The greatest of all Piedras Negras compounds, as West Acropolis
well a> the northernmost, the
framed by two large pyramids whose counted from the plaza
In
floor.
levels
is
a
\ast palace
number nine when
the construction of galleries,
Piedras Negras architects adopted the engineering techniques 33. The West Acropolis. Piedras
By the end century, the
completely
of the eighth
West Acropolis was
built up. a
complex
came to be
ritual.
the center of royal
Within the
first
first
Palenque designers
in
the use of parallel corbels, to
have
of stairs separates the palace from the plaza
floor,
hern used.
A
\
ast flight
and as at Palenque, what seems
to
be an inviting galleried building
main
courtyard of the galleried palace, kings set
l>v
of
palaces and funerary pyramids that
pioneered
although the cross-corbel concept does not appear ever
one throne and
then another shortly before the
was abandoned and the throne smashed on the palace
instead blocks easy entry to the courts behind and above
it.
In
Tatiana ProskouriakofF's reconstruction drawing, the principal
throne
in a
formal receiving room can just be glimpsed through
city
steps.
and
Sweatbaths
right of the
may have
to both left
the colonnade on the north side of the rituals
would have transpired
palace buildings
serviced separate
lineages or genders.
inaccessible
manding
from the
first.
From
panorama of the river
first
court. Far
more
private
the court behind, almost entirely
in
the structures
came
at
the top,
a
com-
into view, but the buildings
INHIOfl 17
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34. Tatiana Proskouriakoff reconstructed at Piedras
how
the sweatbaths
Negras functioned,
under a roof
of timbers.
all
A
spacious dressing room surrounds a small
steam chamber, reached
only by a narrow passageway.
themselves
all
face
away from the
water. Archaeologists found
what was probably the tomb of Lady K'atun Ahaw, an early eighthcentury queen, under the floors of
a
palace building, and like
may have had
Yaxchilan, Piedras Negras
specialized
women's
structures.
Each
side of the
West Acropolis
features a sweatbath, perhaps
accommodate separate lineages or
to
women. Although found from time
to
men from Maya centers,
separate
to time at other
these Piedras Negras sweatbaths were the grandest ever constructed, and
no
less
accommodate the
than eight have been explored to date.
special needs of a structure that
To
had a vaulted
steam room, complete with firebox, the builders sprung half a corbel vault from the steam a
chamber and then met the corbel with
huge span of timbers, creating
a capacious interior space.
surrounding chamber, then, could serve bathers, for purification,
/;/
whom and
the baths probably
met medicinal,
ritual
social needs.
the southeast: Caracol,
To
The
a large population of
Copdn, and Quirigud
the far east and south
Maya
settlements developed farther
apart than in the heavily populated Peten and Usumacinta regions.
Topography probably played
a role,
with the
Maya Mountains
of
southwestern Belize providing both isolation and resources for Caracol,
whose
role has
come
to light only in recent years.
primarily as the site that successfully sixth century, Caracol birds,
K
was
Known
made war on Tikal
in the
also adjacent to valuable wildlife
minerals and materials of use to the Maya,
all
and
readily
'
Bnd shrine function,
exploited
in
the nearby
Maya Mountains. Caracol used
its
result-
ing wealth to build vast structures and to connect them with
web
a
of sak behs.
At the center of the web
lies
a group known as Caana,
and
in its
massive principal structures, palace and funerary structures were integrated in a program specific to Caracol. Palace buildings
begin about halfway up the platform, as
along the central
axis.
Then,
at
if
to
monitor movement
the top, completely cut off from
any public view, an entire complex opens
up, so that
members
of
the court could have remained separated from the rest of the population.
Almost 200 km Guatemala;
a
( 1
25 miles) due south of Caracol
lies
Quirigua,
hard day's journey further south of some 50
km
(.'30
miles) brings one to Copan, Honduras, the southernmost of
Maya
cities.
these
two southern
Somewhat
isolated
cities
from the
rest of the
Maya
shared history, sculptural
architectural practice, and the
world,
styles,
Copan lineage may have
all
and
originally
founded both of them. The answers to some questions about
Copan may
lie
under the modern town, which rests on
tion of the ancient settlement.
a
key sec-
Other answers were surely washed
away when the Copan River edged
close to the Acropolis and
destroyed elegant palace structures that had remained
in situ as
recently as the nineteenth century.
The
rolling terrain of the
Copan Valley provided superb
opportunities for the dramatic siting of architecture, and planners
considered both views of and alignments with the peaks and the
dramatic saddle
in
the hills to the north.
As
a result,
the Principal
W
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36. The so-called Principal Group at
Copan. The long narrow plan
of
the site replicates the long narrow
which Copan
valley in
lies.
22
Structure
Structure
37. The Ballcourt, Copan. Rebuilt three times by Ballcourt
the
ritual
center of
Copan
lies at
kings, the
both the center of
precinct and at the
Copan
ritual life.
Three
markers down the court's central alley created metaphorical
openings
to the
Underworld.
•
'
16
—
a in /eral
.-..is
•*.
i
buried, probal
:
was
the
carefully
ginning
-mow oftheU: shows a replica constructed theCopan museum
(J
roup has the quality of being a microcosm, with the surrounding
man-made
landscape channeled and condensed into the
Within
man-made complex,
that
reading of the landscape, as parallel structures
Maya
if the
entire site could be reduced to
its
and sculptures. One of the most beautiful of all
Copan Ballcourt
courts, the
world.
the Ballcourt intensifies the
Group, placing the ballgame
lies at
the heart of the Principal
as well at the heart of royal ritual.
In recent years, archaeologists have tunneled deeper into the
Copan Acropolis than has ever been attempted
From
before.
far
below Structure
come evidence of what may be early fifth century,
when
a
at a
16, a nine-level
Maya
the Founder's tomb, interred
new
site-
pyramid, has
lineage began to direct
in
the
Copan
to
great heights. Archaeologists have nicknamed the early buildings that overlie
one another
like
onion skins deep underground
Rosalila and Margarita, and they retain
much
were carefully buried so
as to
of their elaborate ornament. Subsequently, fueled by
wealth and powerful leadership, Copan grew rapidly, and the Acropolis became a huge bureaucratic palace, Classic period
—and
remained an ancestral shrine Structure 22
at its
heart in
the eighth century.
Its
mountain, with the doorway
mountain like the
later.
tomb
the rebuildings.
royal receiving
room
its
cave; maize
Huge Wits heads
—display long noses
at
gods flourished
when
at its
the building col-
indicating the symbolic
the structure's corners,
god heads of Puuc architecture
in
much
far-away northern
Yucatan. Next door and obviously less important and less ble
—
it is
set
in
exterior was conceived to be a symbolic
cornices, only to be scattered like chaff
lapsed years
all
may have been a principal
Late
at least in the
the structure over the Founder's
back from 22 and off the central axis of the court
visi-
—
is
a
51
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39. One of Copan's greatest builders, King
Waxaklahun Ubah
K'awil, constructed Structure
22
as a principal palace at the
beginning of the eighth century.
The Wits doorway configures the structure as a symbolic mountain;
maize gods flourished cornices, as
if
to
abundance and by the king. recessed at of the
A
fertility
Popol
left.
at the
prove the
In
conferred
Nah
is
the foreground
Jaguar Stairs
is
a
symbolic
ballcourt.
40. Whereas
many
hieroglyphic
steps enunciate a particular victory, the
Copan Hieroglyphic
Stairway proclaims the victory of
Copan throughout
all
time.
An
ascending supplicant goes back through time, following the
and must address kings
whose
Ubah
texts,
Copan
oversize
representations the stairs
five great
sit in full relief
on
— including Waxaklahun
K'awil,
who died
ignominiously at Quirigua.
Fopol Nah, or council house, indicated by the prominenl mat motil
on
Family emblems appear on the sides
its frieze.
perhaps indicating the prominent lineages is
a
the structure,
of
Cop£n on the south
oi
probably the same ruling Fish family who built a huge res
fish,
To
idential palace just to the south ot the Acropolis,
now-lost graceful tower
the east,
.1
may have surveyed movements alone the
n\e Between the Ballcourt and the Acropolis stands the great 1
lieroglyphic Stairway,
a
large pyramid w hose steps are inscribed
with 2,200 glyphs that relate the history of the Copan dynasty.
The text starts at the top and runs to the bottom, so that a suppli rant beginning
the pyramid base would have the experience of
at
walking back through time. Five three-dimensional rulers of
Copan (some atop two-dimensional from the
staircase, ancestors
through time,
travel
at last
captives)
entering
sacred antiquity
a
The Hieroglyphic Stairway was
mit.
century, after the king of
Usually
Ouirigua.
acknowledge Stairway
at
Copan
always been
Copan
hieroglyphic
defeat:
in
on projections
sit
w ho accompany participants
erected
an
as they
sum-
the
the mid-eighth
captive to the king of
fell
proclaim
stairs
unusual
in
at
the
twist,
victory
or
Hieroglyphic
visually and textually demonstrates that
it
has
a victor, as if to state that its particular historical cir-
cumstances were no more than
a blip
on
its
radar.
While the Acropolis went higher and higher over
Main Plaza retained
its
integrity as a
huge open
time, the
matched
space,
to
the Acropolis very closely in terms of square meters of area and an effective visual
counterweight to
odically, the level
when
tury,
older
was
its
mass. Although rebuilt peri-
raised only slightly in the early eighth cen-
monuments were removed
to the margins.
prominent king of the early eighth century deployed
gram
of
monuments
his
own
A
pro-
across the northern end of the plaza, each
manifesting a different deified aspect of his persona.
By
the late eighth century, local lineages
were vying than
in
for status
the Sepulturas
and
a role at court.
in
this tice
Copan Valley is
this clearer
compound, where the House of the Bacabs
was the central building of a palace compound
homes of widely varying
cent
the
Nowhere
quality.
that included adja-
Presumably the lineage
compound had gained wealth and prestige through and
skill
as extraordinary artists
through some of the most texts
known
—
to
in
their prac-
which they
testify
artistically elaborated hieroglyphic
today.
Neighboring Quirigua River Valley, today
little
lies in
the exceptionally
more than an
flat
Motagua
island of forest amidst
53
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banana plantations. The Quirigua lords may have gained exclusive control of the trade in uncut jade, most of which
was found
in
the
middle Motagua Valley. After Quirigua's surprise victory over
Copan
in 738,
King Cauac Sky
image. Accordingly lie at
rebuilt the
the south end of the Great Plaza.
nent architecture
main group
in
Copan's
acropolis and palace, as well as ballcourt,
its
in their
With
little
previous perma-
way, builders conceived of a plaza far
grander than Copan's. Without the counterweight of an equally large acropolis, and without Copan's defining plaza boundaries, the effect pales.
The visitor is left to ponder the stelae set up on
Great Plaza, the
tallest
proportion
small
at the
ones ever erected: they,
too,
the
seem out of
site.
Rio Bee and Chenes architecture 4 1 Great towers dominate the .
Xpuhil skyline, none with a
Short
shrift
Chenes
is
sites,
often given to the architecture of the Rio Bee and
the best
known among them
Becan, Xpuhil, and
functioning stairway but rather
with stucco sculpture that only imitates a stairway a false
chamber
and then forms
at the
summit.
Despite this remarkable deception, the pyramids probably hold
tombs
at their bases.
Chicanna
in the
former region and Hochob
in the latter,
although
any distinction between the two styles has depended on the presence of towers (Rio Bee) and their absence (Chenes). In large part, these cities are often overlooked because their few
monuments
have yielded almost no legible texts. So while art historians can
hang the architectural
54
—and of course
sculptural
—developments
42. Both ranging and pyramidal structures at Chicanna
all
feature
monster mouth doorways, turning
most
elite
buildings at the site into
symbolic mountains.
at
Copan and Quirigua on the armature of their known
internecine
warfare, no such narrative can be constructed for Rio Bee and
Chenes programs. Even though architecture, there
good reason
is
this
hook emphasizes
art
over
to look at these sites closely.
For
one thing, their buildings are among the most sculptural constructions of Classic.
Maya
architecture, particularly during the Late
For another, from the tombs and caches of these cities have
come exceptionally
fine small-scale works.
And
the nearly
plete absence of monumental sculpture is in itself a question
com-
worth
asking of this region, for although the architectural tradition
seems distinct from that of the region's nearest powerhouse, Calakmul,
on the
it
may
stela, in
Calakmul had dictated
well be that
which
a king's
a
prohibition
very essence would be present.
Like Structure 2 2 at Copan, most Rio Bee and Chenes strucC
L
tures feature great monster
mouths
as their central
their relatively flat landscape, these buildings
mountains,
or
Wits,
making architecture
Chicanna's monster mouths deliver the bers, often with a second, dark
at the back.
doorways.
into
topography.
visitor into single
—and
in
solid
towering masses
cham-
the sort
possibly for tribute
At nearby Xpuhil and Becan, palace
are anchored by great
In
become symbolic
chamber directly behind,
of configuration for royal reception storage
all
— which
galleries
are just false
.;.;
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43. Captives stand atop the heads of
one another, three
high, in the unusual
the
main building
at
tiers
roofcomb
of
Hochob.
pyramids, for despite the appearance of steps and shrine, both are created by simple stucco adornment, and the steps cannot be
ascended. These towers
tombs
at their base,
may
well be funerary
prohibited in this region, along with the public
Hochob, more than 1 00 km (60 miles)
Wits doorways, but no towers,
What
is
form
its
at least
monument.
to the north, features the
in characteristic
most striking about Hochob
preserved building, for tives
monuments with
but perhaps the true pyramidal shrine was also
is
Chenes
the roofcomb of
best-
two courses of standing bound cap-
framework. The symbolic mountain, then,
by chains of human
fashion. its
sacrificial victims,
power and practice of the Maya
is
capped
testimony both to the
in this region.
Puuc architecture
A band of hills known
simply as the Puuc
("hills" in
Maya) run
in a
large circumflex-shaped form in western Yucatan and northern
Campeche. Although receiving little rainfall (less than 50 cm or 20 in
annually) and with neither surface streams and lakes nor under-
ground sinkholes, the Puuc was home almost
all
far larger
.John
to dozens of
Maya
sites,
of which flourished in the ninth century supporting a
population than lives there today
Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood spent months
documenting the architecture of the region (and fighting malaria; the disease
would eventually
and grandest of the
panorama they
cities,
kill
Stephens); Uxmal, the largest
was the featured subject of the now-lost
installed in
New
York City
to great acclaim in
1
8
But once the famous travelers had brought Puuc archite<
i.;
ture to
modern
and
the
in
attention, these buildings' presence
was
890s, casts of the facades were installed
i
Worlds Columbian Exhibition
Chicago.
in
insistent,
the
at
B93
i
The young Frank
Lloyd Wright walked past these buildings every day, absorbing
he would build Hollyhock House and
their formal qualities: later
other remarkable signature structures that made formal reference to
Puuc architecture. Like Piedras Negras or Palenque,
quadrangles
Uxmal juxtaposes palace some of \\ hich we may
freestanding pyramids,
ith
\\
suppose were funerary
nature.
in
Even the account
told
Stephens about the Pyramid of the Magician would suggest
some pyramids went up hag-
quickly.
According
so
could build the largest structure overnight; the top of the
With two
of the dwarf's
when
two phases. On
west
its
a far gentler slope
Puuc chamber
mosaic ornament conforming to
a
that contest.
quadran-
monster-mouth
to a
on the east leads to
the very top, with
at
who
must have been
side, facing the
dangerously steep staircase leads
Chenes-style shrine;
a series of
to see
the dwarf av oke
Pyramid of the Magician, he had won
distinctive profiles, the Magician
built in at least
typical
dwarf. Both of
one round, the king challenged the dwarf
contests. In
gles, a
a
much
she had him challenge the city's king to
abilities that
at
to the legend, an old
nurtured an egg, from which then hatched
them held magical powers. She thought
t<>
that
its
a
characteristic
compressed facade above the
doorway.
The Magician
looks out over the
Nunnery Quadrangle,
palace that was conceived as a quadrangle from the
opposed to eventually ending up
first,
a
as
as a quadrangle, as at Palenque.
The Nunnery, like many Puuc buildings, demonstrates some of the characteristics that
makes Puuc architecture both
visually satisfy-
ing and an engineering marvel. First, Puuc designers invented the "boot" stone, and they used
shaped
like a
it
to stabilize the corbel vault. Literally
high-topped shoe, the boot stone functioned as an
internal tenon, anchoring the final course of stonework to the pre-
vious one.
The greater stability meant that they could
begin to use
the corbel vault easily as a doorway, a practice that had only ever
been used
rarely,
notably
in
the
Twin Pyramid Complexes
Tikal. Additionally, they developed an efficient struction, in
In this way,
the fine fitted
which thinly cut veneer stones overlaid
much
less
at
method of cona
rubble core.
volume of finished stone was required, and
workmanship of
the veneer stones allowed
them
to be
together with almost seamless precision.
57
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Mi
v
te
I
The North Building compound
of the
to be completed,
load-bearing wall,
Nunnery was
and
its
the
first
part of the
roofcomb runs over
like a false storefront
its
front
of nineteenth-century
America. Although one might expect such constructions to be
58
unstable, keeping the weight off the vault stones
in fa<
i
anchored
the structure, and the walls bearing these "flying facades" are
sometimes the onl} ones
standing
left
al
some Puu< buildings
Later buildings of the Nunnery gave up this feature. Finally, from the
Puuc architects recognized the monotony of regularly
spaced doorways of equal
size.
ferent solution to spacing
and
Each Nunnery building finds a size,
culminating
Building, \a hose central corbel doorway
in
dif-
the great South
becomes the quadrangle's
gatevs ay.
The builders of the House of the Governor took all the lessons of the Nunnery and used them
what may be the single most
The
huge recessed corbel
exceed the height of the wall up \
(left,
below) The Nunnery
functioned as a palace at Uxmal. with a restricted entrance through
single structure,
composing
plan of the building suggests three individual structures,
linked together by
45.
in a
beautiful building of ancient America.
aults
vaults.
Vaults rarely
to the springline, but these sloping
springfrom the base of the overhanging facade and arc thus
unusually high, visually driving the building upward as
were arrow
the central corbel vault of the
if
they
points.
Only the central doorway of the Governor
is
a
square, and
south building. The north building (on the right) features a roofcomb,
probably indicating that the
first
to
be
it
was
built.
46. (below) The
last
king of
in
previous
constructions at the site find
consummation
in
—makes
the building
of the
Governor. The subtle visual
may be
predecessor. This feature makes the
its
outward lean of the upper facade ter"
commissioned the House
their
measure farther from
building seem to flatten out. Simultaneously, however, the slight
Uxmal, KingChaak,
refinements initiated
each pair of the Hanking" rectangular entries stands yet another
after
all,
whittle waists and effects are
what
the single most
remarkable Maya building.
yields the
facade,
same
seem effect
—
or what
tall
and
is
called "negative hat-
light.
Modern
clothing,
with shoulder pads that visually
make the wearer look taller! Furthermore, both
countered by the heavy slightly overhanging upper
which presses down on the doorways and casts sharp shad-
ows. As
if
to
compress the
full
complement of ornament from
a
59
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8
"flying facade," the elaboration of the upper facade rich, yet
is
dense and
focused on the seated ruler over the central doorway
who
surveys his realm.
Given the huge platform of the Governor, there could have been a plan for
a
quadrangle, a project dropped at the beginning of
the tenth century,
when Uxmal was apparently abandoned. On the
other hand, any additional construction would have eliminated the
powerful view that the ruler would have had, particularly when seated on the double-headed jaguar throne the building. Perhaps
when
still in situ in
King Chan Chaak may simply have found the that not another stone
( 1
1
miles)
results so satisfying
was moved.
Sak behs connected the small Puuc
km
front of
the builders were completed, Uxmal's
cities to
from Uxmal, Kabah marked
one another: just
arrival at its center
1
by
passage through the single greatest freestanding arch that the
Maya
ever
built.
At Labna, just
somewhat smaller arch palace.
The two
km
(9 miles) farther south, a its
elaborate
sides of the arch present completely different
mosaic adornments, with the interior.
15
defines entry and exit from
far richer facade
reserved for the
Small house forms flanking the arched opening probably
held god images.
The mosaic ornament
of Puuc buildings has long suggested
the motifs of textiles, particularly given the sorts of repeating geo-
metric patterning that covers facades like tapestries.
Many build-
ings have dark, private rear chambers that cannot easily be seen
from the front of the structure. The Puuc Maya may well have used these private chambers for the storage of tribute, particularly
47. The principal palace
Kabah. the House
of
at
Masks,
features hundreds of heads of
Maya may
Itzamnah, the paramount god. His repeated visage indicate that the palace
governed divine communication
and may have been home
to
his chief priests.
60
48. The Arch entry
and
exit
compound
at
Labna denotes
from the palace
may have been
wealth, and the very subject
textile
publicly
promulgated from building facades.
at the site.
Most Puuc buildings times
also feature stacks of deity heads,
some-
at the corners of buildings, other times at cornices, and
nowhere
so overwhelmingly as
at
where these deity heads carpet the
the
House of Masks
at
Kabah,
entire facade. Their great pro-
truding snouts have long baffled Mesoamericanists: while early twentieth-century travelers wanted to read them as elephant trunks, scholars did not progress beyond calling
them
or rain-god masks. Recently Linda Scheie and Peter
all
Chaak,
Mathews have
identified many of these heads as different aspects of Itzamnah, the
principal creator god,
who was
often
known
version. Buildings guarded by Itzamnah
in his
powerful avian
were places of divination
and priestly power: the House of Masks once proclaimed cy with
its
its
poten-
dazzling facade.
61
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49. The Caracol at Chichen
Itza
seems
its
to
be ever
in
motion,
doorways and windows from
its
it
takes
its
Chichen Itza
col'/apse
to
Tulurru northern lowland architecture after the
ofClassic cities
off axis
stairs, circling like
the
volute of a conch shell, from
which
From
modern name.
For about
2.30 years,
from Chichen
Itza.
probably ending about AD 1000, the Itza ruled
making of it
city of all time, but with
its
the single
most powerful Maya
power concentrated
lower timespan than most southern lowland
into a
cities.
much
shal-
Additionally,
the rise of Chichen Itza accompanied the decline of the south, and it
seems
likely that
constructed
a
Chichen warriors broke up the old order as they
new one
in the
north. But the result
may
been much more ethnically mixed than any previous
well have
Maya
city.
resulting in greater architectural diversity. Accordingly although
many buildings recapitulate types known elsewhere, there are also a
number of new ones
fertile
that
seem
to ha\e taken root in Chichen's
mix. Several new elements were added to the architectural
inventory, including the round building plan, clusters of piers and
columns, and serpent columns, along with new built-in sculptural forms, chacmools and thrones supported by the raised
sculptured
human forms ("atlanteans"),
The southern
treated in Chapter
arms of 5.
part of the city retained the most traditional
forms of Maya architecture. The Red House, for example, features parallel corbel vaults
62
and
a
roofcomb running over the central
—
a
load-bearing wall, a lesson learned from either Piedras Negras or Palenque. The Temple of the Three Lintels is a Puuc-style building in its
proportions, design, and ornament, but
made without Puuc
technology— boot stones and veneer masonry— or Puuc refinements.
Within with
a
this
southern quadrant builders erected
remarkable plan: the Caracol, so-called for
plan of concentric circles which rest 50, 51.
On
the two annual
been nicknamed)
it
has
—top—cast
seven-segment serpent
turn on
a
central
structure
conch-like
small trapezoid
doorway of the
Caracol does not align with the platform steps, so that the building
equinoxes, the nine distinct
setbacks of the Castillo (as
in
The
atop a large trapezoidal platform.
a
its
visually
seems
to be ever circling in motion.
Entering the
interior,
a
of light
the ancient user of the building
would have ascended
to the
Much
second
of the upper
against the north staircase.
story by ladder, then taken tiny steps to the top.
The
story has collapsed, but three small openings that seem to focus on
visible Castillo contains a
hidden pyramid within (above),
whose
royal furnishings
throne and chacmool
have remained
—
(ill.
126)
in situ for a
thousand years.
the observation of the synodic periods of Venus survive. This
round structure, then, would seem
to be dedicated to the cult of
Ehecatl/Quetzalcoatl, paired aspects of
Central Mexican deity
a
associated with round buildings and whirlwinds, as well as Venus.
Among the Maya and
this building
The
he was
was
great Castillo
of the city as
it is
known
as
his principal lies at
known
Kukulcan, Feathered Serpent,
temple
at
Chichen.
the center of the northern quadrant
today.
Even
in
the sixteenth century this
63
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52. PlanofChichen
dominant
city of
Itza,
the
the Postclassic
Maya. Sacred Cenote
100 meters
structure was
Diego on
tie
all sides,
ruin
in
1
some use, for when
the first Bishop of Merida,
he was
able to count the 91 steps
site,
whereas Stephens found the structure an overgrown
8 K).
turies, the
64
still in
Landa, visited the
Although Chichen
Maya
of the region
Itza
still
had been abandoned for cen-
visited its Sacred
Cenote (the
Maya
dxonot has become cenote
sinkhole connected
l>\
.1
modern
in
sah beh to
parlance), the great
the plaza, to
make offerings; the
entire sector of the Castillo, plaza shrines, and the all
have been maintained
as
certain
buildings
may have been maintained
Tikal
at
Cenote may
abandonment, mu<
for centuries after
li
for
pilgrims,
Those 9 steps on each side of the radial Castillo total 364, and 1
365
if
one counts the additional serpent heads on
a step.
Furthermore,
at
the north side as
the time of the seini-annu.il equinoxes,
seven-segment serpent of light
northern face of the pyramid when viewed from the west. words, along' with EVII-sub
Complexes both
at
year
other
In
Uaxactun or the Twin Pyramid
at
Tikal, the Castillo
summing up the solar
a
appears against the
brilliantly
is
giant chronographic marker,
a
in its
numerology and marking
its
passage. Additionally, the Castillo
might suppose
a
is
pyramid, which one
a nine-level
is
funerary pyramid. Mexican archaeologists
pierced the north staircase
in
1936 and found
complete smaller
a
version of the same building buried within, with the exception that it
had only
a
northern stairway.
unexcavated pyramid holds
a
It
may
well be that this earlier,
tomb. Bishop Landa called the
Castillo the "Kukulcan"; perhaps the bearer of the title Feathered
Serpent
still
rests within.
Linda Scheie and Peter Mathews have proposed that the
may have been thought
Castillo
Coatepec
of
Central
Mesoamerican creation
Mexican beliefs.
of as Snake Mountain, the legend,
place
a
central
to
This may well explain the stone
vessels with turquoise offerings interred in the north stairwell.
and the assemblage of three jades back
in
laid
out atop
ated with foundations and creation beliefs. radial buildings,
turquoise mirror
One of the oldest
of the
EVII-sub of Uaxactun, shares the iconography of
Snake Mountain, culture
a
the "fossil" Castillo building, for both offerings are associ-
a
concept that
may
be
more ancient than Maya
itself.
To the west of the Castillo lies the Great Ballcourt, the largest of ancient Mesoamerica. The reliefs and paintings that artic-
in all
ulate both the court itself and the associated buildings describe the
sacred
founding of the city
and
its
supernatural
Furthermore, the Great Ballcourt was seen
charter.
as the crevice
from
which the Maize Gods could be renewed and resurrected time after time.
Asdarge
as a U.S. football field, the
Great Ballcourt may
not have been designed for mere mortal play: making contact with its
rings, 8
m (26 ft) straight up from the playing field, would
have
65
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53
53. As large as an American football field, the Great Ballcourt at
Chichen
Itza
dwarfs
whom
participants, for ball
through
rings
its
human
defied typical play. In fact, the use of the structure
The
driving a
high and small
feature scenes of victory sacrifice
and
along each of the sloping
well have
its
facade of
adjacent Skullrack (Tzompantli), with
repeating
human
crania,
may
well have been for the display of
would have been nearly
impossible. Three huge panels
may
been symbolic.
The Platform of
decapitated sacrificial victims from the Ballcourt.
the Eagles features alternating jaguars and eagles
human
hearts.
Such imagery
is
consuming
similar to that of theToltec capital
walls at eye level.
at distant
sacrifice
and cannibalism
was consumed during human transformation
54. Just to the northeast of the
flesh
Great Ballcourt
animal companions.
of
which a
lies
detail
is
the Skullrack,
shown
here.
may well refer to practices of human common to both cities, in which human
Tula, Hidalgo, and
To the east series of
stands the
Temple of the Warriors,
into their
the largest of a
colonnaded buildings that feature serpent columns,
monolithic benches, and chacmools (altars
in the
form of reclining
captives). In fact, as archaeologists discovered to their
amaze-
ment, the Temple of the Warriors subsumes a nearly identical version of itself; the later building
was simply enlarged and
built over
the earlier one, so that the front
chamber of the Warriors
directly over the corbel vaults of
its
predecessor.
pent columns frame the doorway, with large throne in the rear
a
chacmool
chamber may have been
At the in
rests
top, ser-
between.
The
for gatherings of
powerful lords from distinct lineages, perhaps indicated by the indi\
(dualized attire ofthemini-atlanteans who support the throne.
The dozens of columns
in
front of the
Temple of the Warriors
feature both warriors and tribute bearers;
66
some of
the latter are
55. The Temple of the Warriors.
Chichen
Dozens
Itza.
populate the west
of
columns
(front)
and
female.
These columns supported
temple, one had to walk among the
gloom one keenly
a roof" in
this
antiquity; to enter the
grove of guardians, and surely
looming presence. By the time
felt their
south facades, probably once
in
supporting a perishable roof over
the visitor's eyes had adjusted to the darkness, he or she was
a
chamber for
visitors to the
careful screening of
temple's summit.
suddenly plunged into the
brilliant light of the staircase.
The
building, then, manipulated and controlled the observer, Leaving
room
little
for deviation
from the practice spelled out by the
iconography.
We can only wonder at the circumstances that led Chichen Itza to make so many buildings
the lords of
the template of the
in
Temple of the Warriors. Some must have gone up simultaneously; others, as evidenced by the Warriors'
expanded an
tion,
own
Were
earlier version.
sequential construc-
these buildings council
houses for the powerful lineages that came together Itza?
Each lineage may have been responsible
ute and payments, buildings:
more
when
all
delivered and stored
the family of the
for
in
Temple of
at
Chichen
garnering
trib-
these remarkable
the Warriors grew
wealthy, they built the largest of these structures, an archi-
tectural rival to the Castillo.
The Temple Tula, Hidalgo,
of the Warriors
in
is
very similar to Temple
B
at
both the way columns frame the front of the
building and also the
way they formed contiguous
plaza-level
buildings. In fact, the entire plan of Tula relates closely to the main
plaza at Chichen, not just reversed but rotated as well. Before the
year
AD ,900, when
the Toltecs were fully
in
power and reaping the
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mUL;ITBI
ffiEESffi
56. Spanish for market, the
— seen here
Mercado
elevation
market
plan and
—was probably no
at
Chichen
in
all
but rather one of
Itza's
ffifiS
benefits of the trade routes that
brought American Southwest
turquoise to Chichen Itza, Tula and Chichen had established a spe-
The
cial relationship.
nature of that relationship
one can only imagine that when Chichen
most private
fell,
is
unknown, but
Tula may have led
palaces. Created rather hastily
the attack.
with recycled columns, the building also features uneven
numbers
of
columns along
a side.
The
large,
somewhat enclosed space south of the Temple of
the Warriors and behind the
Group
of the 1000
Columns could
have functioned as a public market, as some have supposed. south side of this plaza there building.
With
lies
unique floor plan
a
among Maya
buildings,
sort of function did this structure really have? Like
Classic
Maya
Mercado
On
the
the so-called Mercado, or Market
what
many Late
palaces of the southern lowlands and the Puuc, the
—
offered an appealing stoa-like facade
in this case,
of
columns with sloping benches carved with parading warriors behind
— but
like
keenly limited,
those palaces, in
in
behind the facade
is
this case, a single,
um, while the outer wall tions or banquets.
might have been
is
fact,
through
entry beyond the facade a single door.
grand atrium. Columns
solid,
What
is
lies
line the atri-
ensuring privacy for royal recep-
George Kubler long ago suggested
a tribunal, given the unusual floor plan.
that
it
What tri-
bunals would have looked lmt the
Mercado ma)
function,
like, if indeed
will have been
one not represented
a!
other
they existed,
is
not known,
building for
.1
spe< ialized
.1
sites Vi\ id
representations
of autosacrifice might suggesl that it was a building for ritual penitence.
Whatever
Men
function, the
its
cled columns, and
seems
it
ado was
built
using
have been thrown together
to
ret
\
hastily,
with uneven numbers of piers along east and west sides of the
Unlike most
patio.
Mercado had the building
a
Maya
public buildings
thatched roof, and
some
at
Chichen
at
It/.i.
point, attackers
down, leaving the abandoned mess
the
burned
modern
for
archaeology.
Abandoned though
it
was. Chichen was not forgotten, not by
pilgrims, nor by those w ho kept the records of
been.
Nowhere was
than
at
Mavapan. founded
Chichen, Mavapan was ulation
memory
the
in.
pyramid,
as well as to
a pale but
the
after
walled
a
how the
past had
of Chichen It/a kept more alive
city,
fall
of Chichen.
Unlike
both perhaps to keep
keep others out. At
center w as
its
its
pop-
a radial
important shadow of Chichen. Mavapan lords
ordered pieces of Puuc facades dragged to their city, perhaps delivered punitively, perhaps brought as trophies. Dozens of small
colonnaded buildings, mostly facing the pyramid, were sloppily made, using columns and stucco. Finallv.
some of the
Maya
last
architecture went up along the
Caribbean coast, where Spanish invaders would spot the
Tulum
in
thri\ ing
1518, and where, once abandoned by the Maya, the
pirates of the Caribbean found shrines and palaces to use as occa-
sional bases of operation. The greatest of these coastal sites, Tulum was little more than a large town. Protected by the coral reef offshore, Tulum was an ideal way station for the ocean-going canoes of Maya traders. Freshwater
springs right at the edge of the sea provided water. at
Once beached
Tulum, traders with valuable cargo may well have
security as well, for sides,
Tulum was walled on
safe.
were probably brought these traders.
Many
Two to
Tulum
some
Although beautifully
as gifts or tribute
who made
a
the walled precinct.
sited
less for the sea, orienting its
The
the site
by some of
living associated
—and Structure
1- .">
might have been an ancient lighthouse
backs to the water.
at
outside the walls, unlike Mavapan, but
commerce took place within
if it
Classic-era stelae found
of the people
Tulum probably lived
sea as
felt
three land-facing
with watchtowers built into the corners, and the landing-
was protected and
with
its
ga/.es out at the
—Tulum
cared
diminutive buildings inward, their
largest structure at the
site,
known
as the
69
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Castillo,
earlier
was nevertheless exceptionally small by the standards of
Maya
buildings, and
Tulum's builders worked
its
rooms were quite
hastily
and
casually,
tiny. In
coats of stucco to even out shabby workmanship.
batter that
made Uxmal's
buildings light
general,
depending on thick
is
The
negative
so exaggerated
at'
Tulum that buildings appear ready to keel over. Far from Uxmal,
in
and Cakchiquel Maya
the highlands of Guatemala, rival Quiche
built
independent
cities in the last
century
before the Spanish conquest. Badly sacked by the invaders, Quiche
Utatlan remains rubble today, but Cakchiquel Iximche became the first
Spanish capital of Guatemala
in
1524, and Bernal Diaz
ample chambers. Founded between 1470 and
1485 on
surrounded by defensive ravines, Iximche pro-
a plateau
vided separate compounds for
its
ruling lineages, each with ele-
gant living chambers, temples, dance platforms, and
Such programs were 57. The white towers of the Castillo at
Tulum make the
building visible from the
Caribbean Sea, but the structure itself
turns
its
back
to the sea,
addressing instead the other palaces and temples of the small walled
was
later to recall its
city.
70
common among
highland
a ballcourt.
Maya
towns.
Shortly after the Spanish moved
in
Cakchiquels
guerrilla
fled
and fought
.1
and demanded hea>
taxes, the
\
war against
their
new
o\ erlords for se> eral years.
Man} Spaniards commented than
unfortunateh rareh more on the extraordinary architecture and lifeol the
passing
in
people they fought doggedly againsl for a generation
When
Francisco deMontejo at
last
subjugated
^ u<
in
Yucatan
.nan toSpanish
540s, Maya lords were still carried in palanquins and Maya hieroglyphic writing was a commonplace. The one late and
rule IM the
fine
Maya
became
l
city
of which we know almost nothing
the site of modern-day Merida, founded
n> Mocks can be found
today
Montejo's house, both along the
in
yet
in
the Cathedral
mam
T'ho, which
15
1-2.
Someol
walls,
or
Maya must have
nevertheless found
it
part
of
familiar pattern.
71
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in
square of Merida. Greal
recyclers of ancient buildings themselves, the
lamented the destruction
is
a
Chapter 3:
The Materials
Maya
of
Art
For most of the twentieth century, when archaeologists looked the material basis for
Maya
at
civilization they despaired of its
resources in every respect. Seeing in the jungle the potential only
and burn agriculture, they even doubted
for shifting slash
the underpinnings of civilization. est
it
held
We know now that the rainfor-
—and even the term suggests bounty rather than the mass of — world of
tangle one might read into "jungle"
initially offered a
From the sea to the forest canopy, wild out of the ground or grown and harvested by humans, the natural environment of the Maya offered a wealth of materials to fashion into permanent works of fine quality. Classic Maya cities clustered in the Maya lowlands, with the modern Guatemala department of Peten abundance.
at the center, a
dation, cut
and
region of stable, non-volcanic karst limestone foun-
by only
its tributaries,
Hondo, which
New River,
rises in the
few large
a
rivers, primarily the
the Pasion and Lacanha,
and Belize River
Usumacinta
in
the west, the Rio
in the east,
and the Motagua,
Guatemala highlands and courses
from the Guatemala-Honduras border.
east,
not far
In the north, the lime-
stone yields to sinkholes, which open to reveal underground water.
them
Many of these
as
we have
cenotes were holy places to the Maya,
among
seen the Sacred Cenote at Chichen Itza, and val-
ued objects were given to the water. In other places, natural caves formed, particularly in eastern
Peten and Belize, but elsewhere as well, in Yucatan and Chiapas.
The Maya inside
treated caves with reverence, carving and painting
some of them,
removing
a
Yaxchilan.
When
particularly Naj Tunich, and occasionally
stalactite for
frequently did
in
the
is
world.
They
may have Maya and every cave, or black hole, may well
a cave.
"black hole,"
have been perceived as an
at
into bedrock themselves, as they
making vaulted
had the sense of making
underworld
carving elsewhere, as they did
Maya dug
burial chambers, they
The very hieroglyph
orifice, a place
for the
of entry into another
collected meteorites that crashed to earth
from out-
side the
atmosphere during seasonal meteor showers and offered
them
sacred caches.
in
7
s
58. Draped with stalactites,
Jade and turquoise
the entrance hall of Naj Tunich,
To the south, both Quirigua and Copan
a grand natural formation,
illuminated by natural
light.
Most paintings are found deep within the cave.
near the rich sources of
lie
is
and offerings that date to 900 BC
jade,
exploitation of the precious material.
America next
Copan
reveal early
hardest rock of North
form
to emery, jadeite occurs in rock and boulder
and near the middle Motagua River, and with jade
at
The
tools, string saws,
jadeite are true jades,
it
was worked
in
in
antiquity
and leather strops. Both nephrite and
and both depend
for their
names on
the fact
that the Aztecs told the Spanish that the stone cured ailments of
the liver (Spanish higado, corrupted to jade) and kidney Latin, nephrus, eventually leading to the
Asian
jade).
The Maya most admired
term nephrite
(or,
for
an apple-green jade
in
most
whose
precise source has never been found, and carvers frequently adapt-
ed their imagery to the veins of color
in
the stone, which could
7:i
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f
W3 X
t^afs
?»'/
-^i-
.I
*
>
'
Hr
k^w 59. Using string saws, the
Maya
cut thin slabs of jade to form
plaques, onto which they then
range from white to black. The Maya preferred things green and
may have
blue-green over other colors, and
—
green tropical bird
things
representations of lords, the Maize
maize sprouting from the stalk
a
seen them as like
feather, a jade bead, a
carved two-dimensional
—-and they used
young
a single
ear of
word
to
God, dwarfs, or a combination thereof, as
on
this
plaque from
express the colors Europeans distinguish as blue and green.
may
connoted antiquity,
Nebaj. Archaeologists recovered
Sacred to earlier cultures, jade
numerous
and the Maya certainly collected ancient treasures. Devoted atten-
ceramics
fine jades
at this
Guatemala
site,
and painted
also have
highland
which may well
have been a center
for fine
dants placed a jade bead in the
mouth of a dead loved
one, either to
serve as a receptacle for the soul, or perhaps to function as an end-
craftsmen.
lessly replenished kernel of maize.
To the Maya, ajade bead was
the symbol of preciousness
itself,
but objects in jade could range from the thinnest tessera to a 4.4 2C
kg
(9.75 lb) head.
the
Maya
And, contrary
to
what we might expect
to find,
primarily identified the sun with jade, with the god they
called K'inich
Ahaw, or Ahaw K'in
—Lord Sun
in
any lexicon.
Squint-eyed, the sun apparently took on the squinty features that a
human looking
at
the sun
would have, within
squared eve frame. For reasons
had
a
a
front tooth in the shape of a capital T,
and
very non-human
K'inich
Ahaw also
a fashion
took hold.
we do not know,
59,
USUvl
God
.
or the
Sun G
To
indicate both wealth and prestige,
teeth filed into the T-form; others had a concept of
human beauty
The
small
lords had their
inlaid with bitsofjade,
that surprises us today.
Hanab Pakal of Palenque died, his face.
some Maya them
his heirs
assembled
When King
a jade
jade pieces for the nose and mouth; shell and obsidian
With
eyes.
mask on
jade tesserae yielded to large, specialized
flat
the T-shaped tooth, the dead, masked
formed
his
Hanab Pakal
must have taken on both the guise of the Sun God and the Maize God, two divine images of renewal, forever young and firm of face, even though he was
a
man
During the Classic
of eighty years of age.
period, the
Maya
used other greenstones,
including fuchsite and serpentine, along with jade. Then, during the ninth century and into the Postclassic era, Toltec traders a
new
material, turquoise, available to the Maya. Turquoise
made
comes
from modern-day New Mexico, and the Toltecs, Mixtecs, and Aztecs
found
all
in
treasured
the
Maya
it
for their mosaics.
then imported to the Maya, but the the material
when
Most turquoise mosaics
area were probably assembled elsewhere, and
it
was
a\ ailable to
Maya
certainly incorporated
them.
7.7
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Gold
Gold made only
a late
entry into Mesoamerica from South
America, where metallurgy had begun
broken a
legs, hollow,
Lower Central American
H
Stela
731,
at
Peru by 3000
in
figure,
were found
it
Two
cache under
in a
Copan, which could not have been sealed
making
BC.
and therefore cast by the lost-wax method, of
later than
AD
the earliest securely dated gold of Mesoamerica.
Well into the early Postclassic
era, Central
America remained the
main source of finished and partly-finished metals. By no
later
than AD 900, the ability to manipulate raw lumps of gold had arrived in Mesoamerica, and gold began to be identified with the sun.
the time of the Spanish Conquest of
Still, at
Mexico and
Central America, most indigenous peoples favored greenstones
over gold, a preference quickly exploited by greedy Spaniards, but
more than
little
a
among the Maya gold went
few gold beads and bells turned up
Maya of that period. Spanish conquerors
seeking
away empty-handed.
By
the apogee of Chichen Itza, and surely no later than
Maya
the tenth century,
lords
there imported quantities of
metal from Lower Central America, particularly sheet gold. Little
Maya goldwork
has survived other than what divers have
dredged from the Sacred Cenote. Some sheet gold may have been
Maya then worked using a The hammered imagery reveals sophisticated
delivered in disk form, which the
repousse technique.
compositions, usually featuring the actions of Chichen
Itza
lords in the middle zone, framed by sky gods above and under-
world
gods
below.
Slightly
convex,
the
gold
were
disks
probably affixed to wooden backing and worn by victorious warriors. In the last few
know and work
Precolumbian centuries, the Maya came to
other metals, including
Mexico. The
wax
Maya
at
and copper,
tin, silver,
although most of these were imported,
many from
Central
Santa Rita made ornaments using the lost-
process, like the sophisticated craftsmen of Central Mexico.
The Chichen bowls,
all
Itza cenote yielded a
covered with gold
table setting
fit
foil,
matching
set of six
copper
or what truly would have been a
for a king. In the sixteenth century,
would write of the cenote that "they also threw into
Bishop Landa
it
a
great
many
other things, like precious stones and things which they prized.
And
so
if this
country had possessed gold,
would have the greater part of inspired divers and dredgers to
muck of the cenote
floor,
it..."
it
would be this well
Needless to
say,
dream of what might
and by 1904, Edward
that
such lines lie in
the
Thompson had
— managed
to find the first indications
retrieve from the
of the rich offerings he would
murk} sinkhole, including
the pret ious metals
Landa had predicted.
Fruits ofthe sea
Elsewhere,
Maya
across the
all
onward, the Maya collected matt
realm, and rials
from early nines
from the n\^-
the sea,
oi
seeking shells and pearls, as well as the host of animals
who
depended ow the sea
The
for their survival, particularly turtles.
Maya
prized two shells over
oliva.
Found
at
all
others: the spondylus and the
depths which tax the him is of the unaided diver,
the spondylus. or thorny oyster, yields a delicious high-protein
food as
lirst
its
prize,
and the occasional pearl as
Although only occasionally found
in
second.
its
archaeological contexts
(King Hanah Pakal of Palenque's tomb contained jade jewelry studded with pearls), the Maya prized
On
themselves with them.
and adorned
pearls,
Yaxchilan Lintel 24, Lady Xok's
dress billows and drapes, revealing tiny sewn pearls on selvage. Furthermore, the shell itself,
Maya valued
scraping off exterior spines and interior white nacre,
reducing the weight by up to two-thirds, and revealing
orange
the
the heavy and bulky
interior.
So worked, the spondylus
shell
a brilliant
trimmed the
mantles of lords, formed a headdress ornament, or girded the loins of
women. Workers
become
cut other spondylus shells to
mosaic tesserae.
By comparison, other costume
Chan
for
On
dance or war.
K'ciwil has
donned
Tikal Stela
olivas,
that
may
the
symbol of the Shell
5,
at
Mexico introduced
Tikal's
noisy
a
King Yik'in
rendered with cross-hatching
company
oil
when
turned
— held
into
to
trumpets,
We
their
greatest
foreigners from Central
their fashionability
conchs
then carved and adorned them.
the Maya. Simple
although
Maya
the
can well imagine that the
iridescent fishes of the Caribbean fascinated the a
the hip,
indicate a shiny surface or black paint. Pecten shells
value during the Early Classic,
surgery
Maya
shells received simple treatment.
wore multiple strands of single-valve oliva
lords
Maya, but only
few traces confirm their exploration of the coral reefs
example, the widespread easiest to spot in reefs.
presence of stingray spines,
—
a
for
fish
At the time of the Conquest, the Aztecs
had collected vast quantities of brain and other corals and interred
them
in
their principal temple; the
sea material and added
it
Maya,
too,
valued unusual
to cache deposits, and occasionally to
tombs.
77
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— Bone Artists carved and
At Tikal,
in
worked bones of all
the early eighth century,
departed the mortal world with a
with brilliant vermilion.
human and
animal.
K'awil (Ruler A)
bag of some ninety carved bones,
a
number of them worked with
sorts,
Hasaw Chan
delicate incision
and then rubbed
Some human bones may have been
relics,
or trophies. Just a glance at the pattern of burial at Early Classic
Tikal reveals opportunities for both: the primary skeleton of the
king
in Burial
48 lacked femurs,
companions, presumably
a
hand, and a skull, whereas his
sacrificial victims,
were interred with
may have happened to this king's secondary burial, made after the flesh had
skeletons intact. Several things
they formed a
bones:
if
rotted
away or been boiled
off,
may have claimed
the heirs
Or, if the lord had been captured and killed by hostile
some
parts of the body or bones
Excavators
an
retrieved
Kaminaljuyu grave;
a
may have been carved
elaborately
relics.
forces, only
returned home. skull
from
a
Chichen Itza skull had been converted to
a
might well have been
a
cup, reliquary, or incense burner. Either
trophy or prize. In distant Peru, shortly before the Conquest,
enemies gloated that they would drink from the skulls of their
The Maya may well have done the same thing.
enemies.
100
61. Mourners buried nearly
human and animal bones tomb of Hasaw Chan
carved in
the
K'awil, at the Tikal.
A
base
of a tiny spatula:
surface
in
hand
an
of
of
Temple
artist,
this exquisite
or "stone tree," for the nearly universal upright prismatic
is
shafts, or stelae,
its
cept, for
it
found
seemed
at
Maya
sites.
to incorporate in
it
This was an appealing conthe idea that stone sculpture
the
had evolved from woodcarving. Other such evolutionary relation-
painting
perhaps the very hand of the
who made
tun,
I,
rendered on
the finest of lines
few years ago, the epigrapher David Stuart proposed a reading
of te
bone took the form
single
Stone stelae and otherforms
A
man
drawing.
ships between the perishable and the
Maya
permanent can be seen
material evidence: the stone roof of
trimmed with stone
that has been cut to resemble
other parts of the world such evolution
example,
in
House E
is
at
Palenque
palm
in is
thatch. In
also specific, as, for
ancient Greece, where the great Doric columns
evolved from tree-trunk predecessors, the very entasis (swelling) of their form related to the oak tree. Furthermore,
Maya
stone
sculpture emerges as a well-developed tradition, without a lot of hesitant early efforts extant. 62. With the cranium cut open
and
a
wooden
opening, this
lid fitted
human
even a cup,
of the skull
sealed with fittings.
for the
only imagine that the grand
began with the sculpture
into the
skull
may
of wood.
The Maya
have formed an incense burner or
One can
tradition of Maya freestanding sculpture
apertures
seem to have been wood and stucco
cal
woods
fortunately had a
to carve,
many
number of extremely hard
of them more
stone but unfortunately biodegradable
body of Maya ~-
art largely lost to us.
tropi-
resistant to carving than
— and
thus constitute a
Undoubtedly mahogany and
B
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— rosewood
(the latter with
its
pungent, sweet smell) played a role in
Maya wooden sculpture. Although only the tiniest sample remains, three-dimensional sculptures in wood were probably common throughout the history of Maya
come from
Surviving examples
civilization.
caves and cenotes; in one case, complete imprints of
wooden sculpture survived
where a tomb had been flood-
at Tikal,
ed hundreds of years ago, encasing works that subsequently rotted away. Additionally,
Maya sculptors carved hewn boards of some of
the hardest tropical
and hieroglyphic
woods
lintels.
(particularly sapodilla) to
ing temples, as at Tikal, these lintels have survived
David Stuart subsequently came stela
form
figural
Where these span the doorways of towerto
in situ.
argue that the
Maya word
was not "stone tree" but rather lakamtun, or "banner stone"
which nevertheless does not exclude wood
Maya
banners
set these stone
in
of a well-planted orchard at the
like trees
as the model.
The
striking configurations, arrayed
Main Plaza of Copan
or
like a
receiving line of ancestors along the North Acropolis of
Tikal.
At Piedras Negras, each
king initiated
installation of a
a
new lineup of stelae, but never exceeding eight, and not in chronological
sequence from the
occasions, bases, as
Some
sites
whose
inscriptions, as
do
The
altars at
some
resultant imagery
suggests tree rings.
On
favored stela-altar pairings, generally efforts at
in
other stone
Classic, as at Tikal or Caracol. Scholars
to replace the
term
altar in the
these round, low stones set
in
sacrifice; at Tikal, for
Maya
was
have occasionally sought
lexicon, but in fact
most of
front of stelae feature imagery of
example, altar after altar illustrates
the sacrificial victim. altar
among
stonecarving went back to the Early
Yaxchilan bear concentric
other cities.
or vice versa.
would appear to have been the case at Tonina.
dynasties 63. The surfaces of altars at
left to right,
wooden banners or posts may have been placed
likely the
The wooden model stump or the
sliced
for the
drum of a
tree trunk. Particularly in the Early Classic,
stumps of felled rainforest giants must have been ever-present, their concentric circles the model for concentric inscriptions
mon
to altars,
shed
human blood.
com-
weeping sap the analogue to
Despite the general prevalence of the stela, the
Maya adopted
other sculptural
forms. Palenque artisans assembled thin individual panels of limestone for large interi-
or
installations
- and
Palenque
sculptors
•hewed the stela form nearly altogether. At Yaxchilan and the Petexbatun
sites,
carved steps formed
.
galleries for public intimidation. Piedras
Negras builders incorpo and although we
rated carved panels into building facades well think ol
them
iml.i\
.is
m.i\
"outdoor" sculptures, awnings and
canopies ma) well have made their positioning far more like thai
oi
"indoor" sculptures.
Limestone and other stone At most
sites,
the
Maya quarried limestone
chisels,
men ken
freed blocks of stone on off, lea\
some
Institute of
ingonly
stelae butts.
to site: 64. A small panel at the Art
some of which have been found
;ii
seashells,
monumental
stones, ranging
of the ballcourt
playing figures.
The
behind the
victor
prism could be bro-
\
aried drastically from site full
is
of fossilized
fairly quickly, lea\ ing a nearly unintelligi-
his legs tangled, the ball
fallen,
a
ide variety oflime-
\\
Early Classic stelae to the porous rock of Stela -
1
1
In general, limestone yields easily to the chisel
quarried, hardening over time, and
in
the
Maya
when
freshly
west, sculptors
heading
head, rather than his
padded body.
record. Tikal had access to
from the fine-grained stone of Stela 31 and most
stands
identified by his skull
adornments: the loser has
for his
sides until the
Chicago features a
ble
left,
Using stone
small "quarry stump" of the sort visible on
The quality of stone
which erode
cut to suggest the architectural
at
all
in si in.
ancient quarries, work-
Coba, the grey-white limestone
fine-grained buttery limestone,
space
a
in
monuments,
For their
and at Calakmul, partly quarried shafts remain
carved fine-grained limestone as fluently as
www.ebook3000.com
it
if
Particularly at Palenque (where the stone has
a
were
butter.
lovely golden
worked almost
tone), the chisel
relief or incision.
one and the same,
like a
paintbrush, whether in bas-
Palenque painters and carvers may have been in fact, as the sort
of whiplash and pushed paint-
brush lines were transformed to the chiseled surface.
On
Maya realm,
the southern margins of the
The
limestone dominated sculpture.
Copan ranges from brown
to pink to
stone other than
volcanic tuff quarried at
green
and was
in tonality
particularly malleable before hardening after exposure to the
Not only
ality characteristic of
Copanec sculpture, but
material for massive mosaic facades. least a thin ful
air.
did the stone lend itself to the greater three-dimensionit
also provided
Most were covered with
at
wash of stucco, unifying tonalities, but today the color-
and varied underlying stone once again
harder chert naturally occur
in
the
tuff,
prevails. Balls of much
occasionally deforming
sculpture, but on other occasions providing opportunity for innovation,
and perhaps humor:
Waxaklahun Ubah K'awil chert," perhaps nize.
Copan
Quirigua
and builders
worked with
tuff,
a volcanic rock
in
one circumstance, the name
transformed to Waxaklahun
a particularly
"ball of
pun we can no longer recog-
sort of visual
At both Tonina and Quirigua the
65. A detail of Stela D, Copan. sculptors
some
is
local stone
is
sandstone, at
hard and resistant red rock that defied
attempts to transpose the three-dimensionality of Copan, try
that often has balls of chert
embedded
in
it.
On
the rear face
of Stela D, sculptors
worked the
as
Quirigua sculptors might to achieve
has great strength, however, with
it.
little
This red sandstone
predilection to shear
full-figure hieroglyphic inscription
so that a
ball of
part of King K'awil's
chert appeared as
Waxaklahun Ubah
name.
and the Quirigua lords used
off or fracture,
advantage, erecting the tallest freestanding
this
to
great
monuments of
the
New World. Local stone was the rule, but exceptions occurred. Eighth-
century Calakmul saw the erection of an anomalous stela of a black slate probably
imported from the Maya Mountains,
(200 miles) away
—and perhaps evidence of
at least
political fealty
320 km
conced-
ed to the distant powerhouse. In the early sixth century, a problematic carved staircase began a series of long and improbable
movements. believe that
In the first place, Nikolai
Grube and Simon Martin
Calakmul forced Caracol lords to construct a staircase
acknowedging fealty; later, defeated Naranjo rulers were forced accept these
same heavy blocks
Two centuries later,
as evidence of their
own
to
demise.
the lords of Naranjo shipped a block- or per-
haps more accurately, ordered the imposition - of the hated
stair-
case to Ucanal, then their underling. Such
movements of rock may
become more apparent
to understand quarries
and their sources
as scholars
come
better, but long-distance
movement
of heavy
rock occurs elsewhere in Mesoamerica both from desire to import a
material unavailable locally, as
was the case
for the
Gulf Coast
Olmecs of
the
millennium
first
BC, or to
burden, as was the case with the Aztecs
at
impose
brutal tribute
a
the time oi the Spanish
im\ asion.
Flint and chert Flint
and chert, the main materials
Maya
occur throughout the
Maya ning. 66. An eccentric techniques today,
flint.
Maya
flint
humans. Such placed
in
saw use as
flints
aim-.
and
tools.
Maya made thousands of flints
Tin-
that never
Artisans knapped Hint into unusual shapes, rang-
ing from actual weapon forms to simple dogs and turtles, and
to release the
delicate forms of gods
\
Using
specialists
knapped the stone
where the
in hills,
rock that sparks w hen struck, Hint held both practical and
ceremonial
difficult to replicate
stone tools and weapons,
was deposited during strikes of light-
believed the material
A
for
lowlands, usuall}
their
most prized, human forms. Archaeologists
at
these odd
(all
Hints "eccentrics."
were usually
dedicatory caches.
The knapping
of stones was
a
specialized
some artists who made eccentrics were able subtlest detail of a pouty
Eccentric Hints
in
may
mouth or pronounced
il,
signal that he
K'aw
whose
il
characteristic
may have been
car-
scepters or tucked into a head-
some may have been
dress;
wooden
chin.
was the patron god of
the material. Such Hints ried as
and
anthropomorphic form usually
personify the god K'aw torch
skill,
to achieve the
hafted
into
handles. Other eccentric Hints could
worn nor
neither have been
may have been made
carried,
and they
explicitly for architectural
dedication caches, where they are often found, perhaps to channel the
power of lightning
sprout multiple
into architecture. Eccentric flint figures
human
heads,
some personifying body
parts,
particularly the penis.
Obsidian, cinnabar,
and hematite
Other valuable materials came from farther away, from the
Guatemala highlands, or the Maya Mountains of southern Belize. Volcanic flows
provided obsidian,
sidered the "steel" of the
New World,
variety of blades and projectile points, but art forms,
a
material often con-
used as it
it
was
was
also
for a
wide
worked into
and sometimes incised. The Maya found cinnabar, or
vermilion, a brilliant red ore, as well. vert the soft ore to quicksilver
—
tered from time to time
The Maya knew how
— which they may
first
also have
to con-
encoun-
heating the ore to yield the volatile
and poisonous gas mercuric oxide, and then cooling the gas to yield
liquid
mercury,
dangerous enough
but
stable,
which
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archaeologists
come
caches and burials.
across today in intact vessels, interred
More
preferred the red ore, and they applied
prepared
bodies
with
interment
for
it.
and
to sculptures
it
in
Maya
characteristically, however, the
Mountains yielded
hematite, a red iron ore, which found similar uses, particularly
specular hematite flecked with mica, and which played an important role as a
pigment in
paint.
Stucco
Sculptors also shaped reliefs from stucco: the largest of
Maya
all
sculptures are architectural facades, like those at El Mirador that
represent massive heads of deities. Merle Greene Robertson's years of study
at
Palenque provide the best guide to the materials
used: sculptors sketched imagery directly on plainly finished plas-
Over
tered walls, before building up an armature of small stones.
these stones they built up layers of stucco, completely modeling
human body forms sculpture
before layering on their costumes.
may have been
A
single
repeatedly painted to preserve fresh
imagery. Stucco, of course,
is
made from cement, and cement
as essential to the builder as to the sculptor
depended on stucco
—or the
for clean surfaces to paint on.
itself was
who To make a good painter,
quality cement that will in turn form a supple plaster or stucco,
limestone must be burned, and
it
usually takes at least
two days of
steady burning to reduce limestone to powdered cement.
process of production 67. A stucco glyph from Tonina. Particularly at
Tonina,
Maya
Palenque and artisans
shaped
skilled scribes
The very
than the forest could
and the widespread conversion from modeled
itself,
have been driven by the disappearance of local supplies of wood for fuel.
Stucco ornament flourished longer
in
areas of richer forest,
some cases
worked the stucco text.
may
soft
armatures, usually forming
forms into an elegant
fuel faster
stucco ornament to cut stone, particularly as seen at Copan,
pliable stucco over stone
sculptural facades; in
replenish
demanded
notably at Tonina and Palenque. In the Late Preclassic, the
had millions of hectares of virgin forest end of the Classic period, they
may
at their disposal.
Maya
By
the
well have suffered desperate
scarcity of both fuel and construction materials, yet they probably
kept right on burning wood to
make cement.
The materials ofpainting
Smooth, plastered walls made do not know the
full
ideal surfaces for painting, but
Buildings of perishable materials
may have had
painted facades, as well as roofs and roofcombs,
depicted
in
Maya
we
extent of the monumental painting tradition.
art.
clues to a lost tradition.
stuccoed and
some of which
are
At Rio Azul, Tikal,
and Caracol, archaeologists have found Early Classic painted
34
tombs, man} worked
rhe extent the
ol lull
in
.1
limited palette
cream, ml. and black,
o\
polychrome paintings ma} never
anomalous preservation
ol
full
murals
scale
!><•
known, but
.11
Bonampak,
painted at the end of the Late Classic era, raises the possibility that
such powerful works ma} have existed elsewhere as well. materials of monumental painting were expensive ones, and
had
imported, including the azurite
to be
tli.u
Bonampak
The
man}
artists
blended with attapulgite to make the powerful blue pigmenl that
dominates the paintings. So valuable and rare was this ancient pig-
ment
that
looked
at
anyone looking
at
the walls of
Bonampak may have
them with the awe of someone seeing the golden mosaics
of Ravenna,
here lapis lazuli
\\
— the azurite of the
(
World
)ld
also studded the walls.
Maya codices Small-scale painting inside codices,
was
a
fig
bark or deerhide screenfolds, or
constant endeavor of the
Maya
scribe, right
up
to the
Spanish Conquest, although the heyday was probably during the Classic era. In
contemporaneous Dark Ages Europe, paper was
unknown and vellum
an expensive commodity: even
at
the time of
the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, the Spaniards marveled
Aztec profligacy with paper, for although they wrote on also used
it
to
of it a steady burnt offering on the
Maya,
too,
first
With
we
all
fig
it
and made
bark so readily a relatively
can only guess what
millennium might have looked
books tha* survive
Conquest
altar.
must have considered paper
inexpensive commodity. Although
from the
the
they
adorn themselves, their headdresses, and the
mannequins of their gods; they both made offerings on
available, the
at
it,
like
—
a
book
since the four
date from the centuries just prior to the
—we can imagine
that every Maya book
was an
illustrat-
ed book, with both pictures and text, every one the work of a trained scribe,
and every one what we would today consider
a
work of art. Fragile and perishable,
some of those
Classic books
may
still
have been around when Bishop Landa conducted his auto dafe, or test of faith in sixteenth-century Yucatan, in a single
burning dozens of them
conflagration. Pour Postclassic books survive, and
they provide important clues to the writing and image-making of the
Maya
of earlier times as well, for the Maya, the book
may have been one Maya kings were
of the most important and precious works:
buried surrounded by luxurious goods, but
on the chest was often its
a
book, although archaeologists find only
stucco coating.
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Clay and ceramics
Almost every Maya stream bank provides today, potters
a source of clay
Even
guard good clay mines jealously, and a painter of
pots keeps a kit of pigments to blend into clay benefit of a potter's wheel, like
all
slip.
Mesoamerican
Made without pottery, Maya
pots were hand-built, almost universally constructed by coiling rolled strips onto a base,
then receive
feet,
Although often
forming the essential chassis that might
a lid, or
glossy,
whatever the potter had
no Maya pot was ever glazed:
pots were painted with clay
slips,
in
rather,
mind.
Maya
blended with colored clays and
minerals to yield a range of pigments, which were able to bond
permanently to the pot itself, and burnishing may have brought up the sheen of the surface. the results of ancient
No modern
Maya
attempt has ever replicated
we
potters and painters using what
think are the ancient techniques, in part because of unanswered
questions about ancient firing techniques:
how did the Maya solve
the problem of the fire clouds that usually attend open-pit low-
temperature firing conditions? Did they ever engage
in
multiple
firings? Regardless of the means, the resulting ceramic vessels
became als
prime repository of elite imagery, and one of the materi-
a
most successfully manipulated by the Maya artist.
Textiles If we
were to look
at the living
Maya today as our guide to the past,
we would easily see that textiles dominate all
other traditional art
forms, with the possible exception of the domestic architecture tradition.
From town
to town, all across highland
Guatemala and
Chiapas, in patterns and materials about which one can generalize, traditional
weaving has not only survived, but
thrives, focusing
both ethnic and local identity
and adapting to new materials. Wool and introduced in the Conquest era
silk
—have played
in
many
in color
cases
and motif,
—both materials
a key role in twenti-
eth-century textiles, as have more recent introductions of rayon, acrylic,
and polyester,
The role of cloth
wealth has not received
Maya
area, there
is
interwoven with native cottons.
all
as both an art
good evidence of the
exchange values
specific
form and
as a
in the
latter: units
Codex Mendoza,
book documenting tribute paid to the Aztecs; the it
is
the
of cloth bear
a Postconquest
a significant part of
Codex Magliabechiano depicts mantle patterns. What's more, not as though painted pottery or jade beads are given equal
weight
know 86
means of storing
much study from Mayanists. Outside
in
it
the notations:
were
if
the Precolumbian material record as
to vanish, leaving only manuscripts behind,
we
one
might well conclude that textiles were the most valuable product, as
we Know them
What
to
have been throughout the ancient
different in the Andes, however,
is
thanks to one of the driest deserts ancient textiles are known, from
all
For the Maya, we have only
a
cenotes, cloth impressions
in
left
in
there,
the world, thousands of
periods oi lew
Vndes,
preservation
is
Andean
scraps
<
ilization
i\
fragments from
Archaeologists have
burials.
described seeing w hat appeared to them to be bolts of fabrics that
turned to dust
tombs deep
\\
in
trout of their very eyes
ithin ancient
role of ancient textiles as an art
both painted pots and the
Bonampak
sumptuous
in
form
is
when opening
murals, the
Maya
elite
their representation.
wrapped themselves
in
deer hides and jaguar
straw, and in feathered brocade.
dress, with bordered selvages
The
68. The elegant costumes of these
window on
lost textile arts of
Classic era. At far
woman's dotted
left,
skirt
upper body garment
is
akin
a
medium
far
more
at least
know
most scholars have thought.
lost textile arts
from documents
to have
and the
lost
books we can
once existed: wooden sculpture remains
the
far
the
probably
more
elusive,
and assemblages of dough, of corn husks, of
feathers and furs, or resins cannot even be imagined in most cases.
indicates a tie-dye technique; her
a painted textile.
pelts, in
The patterning of
and painted ceramics, and,
ancient as textile design might he, perhaps influential than
in
woven
and continuous design,
to the patterns of painted architecture
On
chiefly in
clothes, generally fine cottons with elaborate
woven mats and
dancing Maya couples provide a
the dry
only real guide to the
monumental representations,
and painted designs, but also
Maya
The
pyramids.
may well
be
These materials remain beyond our
ken, a mirage that
we know
was once real.
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Chapter 4:
Early Classic Sculpture
Background
By
virtue of the range and
number of surviving monuments,
Tikal, in central Peten, offers the clearest picture of the artistic
development that took place during the Early Classic, from ad 250 to 550.
Even before the University of Pennsylvania project of the
1960s recovered tombs and stone monuments, including the earliest dated stela ever to be
found
in situ, a
number of important
sculptures were known, providing evidence of the
beginning
the
of
Early
the
Guatemalan archaeologists
Classic.
in the
making of art at
Additional
work by
1980s yielded startlingly
differ-
ent stone sculptures that stand outside the ordered world of stela-
making, particularly during the fourth century. Recent work by Spanish archaeologists has uncovered yet another well-preserved Early Classic
stela,
so the picture of Tikal sculpture
is
more
informed than for any other Maya city.
What we
Maya
is
always determined by the
difficult is to
be prepared for discoveries
think about
sample, of course: what
is
art
undermine what scholars have come to accept as truths and
to
recognize that even what seems to be exhaustive archaeology
is
that
never complete. Although this problem always ical art, in
afflicts
archaeolog-
Maya art the problem is most acute for the Early Classic Maya were often reinter-
period: during subsequent centuries, the
preting the past in ways that called for the movement, hiding, or destruction of the earlier works, or they were simply planning new
building programs that encased old ones. the Late Classic era the public
monuments were
Maya
By contrast, at the end of
simply abandoned their
left intact,
creeping liana or the towering
subject to
little
cities
,
more than
and the
mahogany for over a thousand
years.
Additionally, because production of cities, there
was limited
to only a handful
have never been great numbers of Early Classic
sculptures, nor did
many distinct regional styles emerge until the loci of Maya political power began to be
end of the period, as the
more
dispersed. At the beginning of the era, political
concentrated
38
at
two
cities,
power was
Tikal and Calakmul, both near the cen-
Maya heartland. Hie balance of power tipped
terofthe
the end ol
when Teotihuacan
the fourth century,
Central Mexico both fought and married their throne. In the mid-sixth century, as
from the old centers of power, the
Maya Mountains seem
to
(
to
1'iK.il at
lords from
Hkal
to the
\\.i\
new cities began to develop far from the
!aracol lords
foothills oi
have teamed up with Calakmul
to
crush renegade Tikal, bringing the Early Classic era to an end.
Weakened
h\ years
of warfare, most of the Maya region suffered
works of an were made
an economic collapse, and few
generation or
for a
t\\ o.
During the Early
Classic,
\\
orks
honor kings and gods, but also
ol art
were made not only
to
to negotiate the relationships
between men and the powerful supernatural forces embodied by deities.
adopting
In
representations
—
permanent
particularly
the
successful solutions that could,
widening gyre. At
first
materials stela
in
limited
to
and
— the
standardized
Maya developed
turn, be used
by an ever-
Maya
IVten-area centers,
sculpture began to appear toward the end of the Early Classic
Copan and Ouirigua to the east,
to the south,
Oxkintok
to the north,
and Yaxchilan to the west.
Late Preclassicto Early
C 'lassie
Massive architectural facades of the Late Preclassic era
Maya lowlands had gods 69. This precious greenstone
head took the place
human cranium (Burial
in
of a
missing
an early burial
85) on the Tikal North
Acropolis.
A
at
Caracol
in
featured stucco representations of
— sometimes with
individual heads of gods
Stucco adheres and endures best when applied
n'
in
m
('20 ft)
the
Maya high.
rounded curvi-
linear courses supported by an architectural framework, especially tenons.
The result was a program that eschewed
the right angle
stylized portrait, the
head wears a
distinctive
of rulershipon his head.
emblem
altogether Central frontal representations were often matched
with flanking profile heads, and few bodies were represented. Scrolled details
fill
in
backgrounds and borders.
In the
Guatemala
highlands, emerging dynasties adopted this curvilinear style to
formulate standing representations of rulers on the front faces of stelae, particularly at
The
AbajTakalik and Kaminaljuyu.
cultural flowering
known
as the Early Classic period of
the Maya, however, only takes off when this impetus to render the
human agent and tecture,
lands.
his deeds, in association
During the Late
perceived
in
Preclassic, the role of the king can be
Maya lowlands, and when it does,
the
rarely survives,
stone head from Tikal Burial 85 scale.
with monumental archi-
becomes part of the permanent pattern of the Maya low-
With
but his actual representation as, for (r.
50
example, on the green-
BC),
the
work
the advent of full-figure representations
is
m
small
in
the third
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70.
One
of the earliest
freestanding
monuments from
the
lowlands, the Hauberg Stela portrays a
Maya
king as an
embodiment of Chaak, the rain god, whose mask he wears.
monuments that feature a single Maya kings proclaimed their right to rule. Early Classic Maya artwork shares many formal characteris-
century, generally on stone figure,
tics that
span the primary media of sculpture, ceramics, and archi-
tectural
ornament,
and
it
may have been
limitations of Late Preclassic architectural
the
curvilinear
ornament
that estab-
many of the formal qualities at the beginning of the era. The monuments not only retained many of the formal properties that
lished
had previously been developed to represent
were also rendered as the
Hauberg
an extremely early
Stela,
the second century
The rendering torso,
to
tin-
90
is
evident on the
that
that unfortunately has
in profile is typical
may
be from
no provenience.
of early sculpture.
With
the
lowland stone sculpture, both kings and gods
acquire bodies, but the gods
m
monument
of parallel but separated legs in profile, frontal
and head
movement
AD but
deities but the rulers
deities themselves, as
become diminutive and
hand of larger, active kings.
are often held
71. Stela 29. Tikal. depicts a
late
third-century king. Facing to the right,
the king holds out the head
of the
Jaguar God of the
Underworld, a patron deity of Tikal;
ment, Stela 29, would be a hesitant effort, any developmental quality is
evinced
in
the workmanship, not in content.
With
a date in
an ancestor faces
downward from of the stela. R.
Early Classic sculpture at Tikal
Although one might anticipate that the earliest dated Tikal monu-
Coe.
the upper margin
Drawing by William
the
Maya calendar that can
first
dated
be correlated to AD 292, Stela 29
Maya monument found in context. Probably in
violence during the sixth century or
later,
the
is
an act of
the shaft of Stela 29 was
smashed, and the large fragment known today was dragged
garbage dump, where archaeologists found
it
in
1959.
As
a
to a
stone
prepared for carving, Stela 29 has qualities associated with the Early Classic shaft
from
in
general: stoneworkers quarried a fairly
smooth
The One would
local rock that nevertheless bore imperfections.
sculptor was then
imagine that
a
left to
cope with an uneven surface.
heavy charcoal
line
drawing was made
first.
In
order to accommodate the demands of the uneven rock, the glyphic
cartouches adjust to
its
surface, listing slightly to the
left,
and
including substantial gaps between the glyphs where the stone
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features a natural recess.
of the quarried rock relief,
There
itself.
is
no border other than the edges
All carved surfaces bear the same,
the background carved
away
particularly along the bar-and-dot
glyphs. Carved lines adhere to the surfaces are equally finished
but the grain of the stone
—no
is still
low
to leave the finished surface,
numbers
same
chisel
that are prefixed to
thickness, and
marks remain
in
all
carved
evidence,
visible as well.
We think of the figural portion of a sculpture as the front, and so did the
Maya: sculptures
in situ
always feature the figure looking
at the plaza or public space. For most stelae, the reader of the text
must address the
sides or rear of the
monument, moving away
from the human representation. The text and the image carry equal weight, and were assigned equal space on Stela 29. ure on the front of Stela 29 probably plete early figures
—the
seated figure on a
Uaxactun
72. Preserved for over a thousand years of
in a
wood
dry cave, a seated figure
displays a conventional
Early Classic posture, with fists
pressed to chest. Probably a royal possession, the sculpture
once have held a
may
pyrite mirror.
92
sat, as
seated king on Stela altar, a
The
fig-
do the surviving com4, for
example, or the
monument that may well have
been cut from
.1
sentations also
stela
en sculpture, the
I
I
[ombre de Tikal," and
Uthough
Hkal lords
feature
three dimensional sculptural repre
.ul\
including the unprovenanced
sit,
*
New York wood
erami< m ulptures thai
powerful
the representation ol
figures at Tikal during the Late Classi< favors the standing figure,
ma} have
the seated one
predominated during the Karh
initially
Classic, embodying the very concept of "enthroned
After
KX), figures
\i>
universally look
although
the
to
on the fronts left,
Stela 29 figure
tlit'
Maya
oi
sculpture almost
figures
especially
profile
in
But
seems particularly anomalous, look-
ing to the right as he does, during the fourth and late third centuries
were more- open, and
possibilities
the
monuments from
oilier
early
the central Peten, from Xultun, or Uolantun,
feature lords that face right. Stela 29 might once ha\ e formed part
of a pair of facing monuments, or
from
fig
charcoal drawing transferred
a
paper might also have resulted
rendering
Karl\- Classic
is
the hand,
clutching an angled serpent bar that
token of their power tor most of the
To
modern
the uninitiated
in a
shown
reversal. Typical of
simple mitten,
as a
Maya kings would
first
millennium
carry as
a
\D.
viewer, the multiple heads arrayed
across Stela 29's surface present
confusing muddle clarified only
a
by the greater open space surrounding the king's own masked 73. An Aztec star
demon from
the
face. In
three forms
—from
the
mouth of
the serpent bar, at the
Codex Magliabechiano, or tzitzimitl,
features a spiky hairstyle
studded with bones
like that
worn
waist of the king, and held out on draped cloth, perhaps as an
opened bundle or perhaps head of the Jaguar
God
to
show
it
as a headdress
—
god of Tikal. The very image of the dormant sun Jaguar
God
of the Underworld wears the Tikal
headdress, as
show
if to
is
the profile
of the Underworld, apparently the patron at
night, the
toponym
as his
that the sun rises and sets at Tikal.
The Tikal king on Stela 129 wears abundant insignia, including a shark-like Jester God on his forehead and what may be the mask of Chaak
- god of
rendered onto
his face, but, interestingly
no headdress of
Underworld
lightning, rain, and decapitation - directly
in
his
own, although
the king's
enough, no feathers, and
the Jaguar
God
hand with cloth ties
left
of the
may
be
a
headdress not vet worn. Rather, the crown of the king's head, from his forehead back to his fontanel, features a spiky cut,
studded
Aztecs wore
at
lord. Like other
the time of the Conquest. At the top of the
heads of this
now-eroded glyph it
hair-
with bones, a hairstyle that terrifying deities of the
monument, a disembodied head
and
"mohawk"
may well
in
floats,
ilk
facing
down
on Early Classic
at
the standing
monuments,
the headdress may have named
a
the figure,
be the lord's father.
93
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In the century following the
went
radical political upheaval.
series of conquests,
making of Stela
Most
29, Tikal under-
dramatically, in 378, in a
Teotihuacan lords systematically attacked
number of independent Maya kingdoms, culminating
The usurper who took
quest of Tikal.
the throne,
in the
a
con-
Nun Yax Ayin
(known elsewhere as Curl Snout), introduced new technology and a
new ideology
that resulted in fresh
works of art, many of which
were looked upon with disdain within took and hid the defeated King
other Peten ally
"Hombre de
Chak Tok
sites,
Several
few generations. Loyalists
Ich'ak, later
adding
women became featured
on the back or side of
Zapote Stela
a
Tikal," probably a portrait of the
a
monument,
its
incised text.
At
subjects, although usuas for example,
on El
5.
monuments connected to the fourth-century conquest
stand out at Tikal: Stela 4 of ad 396, and the Ballcourt Marker of 378; and at Uaxactun, Stela 5 of 396.
the form of a sculptural type
The
Ballcourt
Marker
takes
known from Teotihuacan, where
similar stone representation of a feather standard
Teotihuacan paintings show such feather standards
in
use in a
field-hockey-like game. Featured in the Ballcourt Marker's text a
Maya
hieroglyph making
its initial
a
was recovered.
is
appearance, a small-eared
screech owl holding a Teotihuacan-style dart thrower, or
atlatl.
Uaxactiin Stela 5 features a striding warrior with such a dart thrower.
from
74. With
its
depiction of a striding
warrior with Teotihuacan garb
and
arms, Stela 5, Uaxactun, introduced a new, active form of representation to
monuments. Of
Maya
particular note are
the Teotihuacan-style headdress
with bird and the
weapon
in
hand, as well as the burning
toponym
at the lord's feet.
94
The warrior
later
also bears a spiked club of the sort
Aztec combat, the macana. In
its
known
spare depiction and
75. Ni
power
Teotihi.
monurti
both
Maya •n
the
tworeligu-
active posture, the Stela 5 figure expresses a keen hostility, and at
the warrior's feet, the Uaxactun
Aztee imagery of temples
toponym
ablaze, presaging
is
afire to indicate conquest.
Stela 4 celebrates the installation of the probable usurper
at
Tikal. Seated on a throne, the king holds the familiar Jaguar God of
the
Underworld Tikal patron
in
one hand,
at left, but the
Central
Mexican god Tlaloc in the crook of the other arm; he wears pecten shells
around
feathers that
his
is
neck and
a great frontal
in fact a simplified
Teotihuacan god of war.
helmet with attached
image of the
seems an unshaped boulder, clumsily prepared text that follows the surface up is
usually seen as
Yax Ayin
its
hill
and down
human
Serpent, the
most unusual feature
is
for carving,
dale.
1
with
a
lowever, what
the frontal face of Nun
himself, seemingly an adaptation of the Teotihuacan
preference for frontal protagonists to the the
War
More than any other stela at Tikal, Stela 4
Maya
representation of
form.
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In
963, archaeologists opened the richest Early Classic
1
ed by
and
a
tomb
Nun Yax Ayin lav surroundnine other individuals, what may have been his faithful dog, host of lavish offerings, including what may have been his
ever to be found atTikal. In Burial
animal
spirit
companion,
rendered on Stela
4,
a
10,
caiman or
Pecten shells,
ayin.
like
edged the collar around the principal
those lord's
neck. Elegant painted and stuccoed pots held the tomb's provisions,
and many exhibit
styles.
Gods from
Maya and
blending of
a fluent
foreign
distant Teotihuacan were featured on the paint-
ed surfaces of ring-stand vessels and tripod cylinders, both new-
formats
the
in
Maya ceramic inventory, but their vessel lids Maya figures. Nearly identical to a
tured three-dimensional
tomb from Kaminaljuvu, king
rialized a
styles to
who had
in
fearich
memoMaya and Teotihuacan art
highland Guatemala, Burial 10
caused the
acknowledge the other's strengths.
In 451,
King Siyah Chan K'awil memorialized himself and
lineage at Tikal with a new monument,
known
model of both innovation and conservatism,
today as Stela 3 it
was carved on
four sides, unlike any surviving predecessor. In
ments that had immediately preceded ent that they almost seem to have
it
his 1
fact,
.
A
all
monu-
the
were so dramatically differ-
come out of a
For the front of Stela 31, Siyah Chan K'aw
il
distinct tradition.
returned to the format
used on Tikal Stela 29, a stela that was by then
1
Chan K'awil anchored himself to that early king,
50 years
old.
Siyah
his divine patrons,
and probably reasserted the lineage that linked them.
Although Early Classic monuments would continue ated for another hundred years after
its
to be cre-
recognized as the single greatest achievement of the era,
ment for
that both
to
Perhaps because of the monument's
later.
make visceral the troubled
ture's butt
can be
monu-
sums up what had gone before and cleared the path
what would come
power
1
a
dedication. Stela 3
was smashed
off
hauled to the top of Temple
politics of its times, the sculp-
and the larger upper fragment was
'33
during later times, when
it
was then
systematically buried with burnt offerings.
By begun
the mid-fifth century to
Stela 3
1
was carved, Tikal had less vulnerable to pit-
masons w orked the
slab into a nearly per-
ting. Prior to sculpting, fect prismatic shaft. skill:
when
quarry limestone of a finer grade,
The
sculptors
now worked with
far greater
they carved away the background, throwing the relief onto
another plane,
in
what we can
call
"cameo"
style; the sculptors
then worked with exacting tools so that the level of detail achieved
on 29 seems that of 3
96
1.
little
more than what would have been an outline
Like the Stela 29 figure. Siyah
Chan K'awil
is
for
masked.
»
'
r *!<
e .i^' I
"
.-.
5
r<
-
-* .*.
--
i
76. The greatest Early Classic sculpture to survive, Stela depicts Siyah front face
Chan
(second
K'awil
left),
indicated by both the face paint and the cut-away nose piece; both
31 on
wear
rope indicating power as
a thick twisted
a
shaman
priest
its
along the side of the
with
representations of his father
m,
Nun
face, the Jester
forehead adornment, and
despite the agglomeration of head ornament, both are
shown
Yax Ayin on the flanking side panels
(far left,
Despite
its
second
right).
fragmentary nature,
the text on the
monument's
reverse (far right)
is
and most complex Early Classic.
without headdress, tionally
wears
his
in their
"mohawks." Siyah Chan K'awil addi-
name, and the
scrolls of that
glyph reach right
up to the down-facing figure of the upper margin, the representa-
the longest
to survive the
tion of ancestry, and here
and explicitly named as
shown
as the
Sun God, or K'inich Ahaw,
Nun Yax Ayin, his father.
Unlike the Stela 29 figure, however, Siyah Chan K'awil stands,
and unlike previous representations of Tikal kings, he takes an active,
even aggressive stance, holding up his headdress with his
right hand.
dress
is
With
its
powerful earflares and chin strap, the head-
the very image of those
worn by Maya
mental stucco facades, of the sort uncovered Mirador, and so Siyah Chan K'awil leled status, like the
is
at
in
on monuEl
showing offhis own unparal-
young Napoleon who took
from the hands of the pope
deities
Uaxactun and
order to place
it
the imperial
on
his
crown
head himself.
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So, at first pass, the
monument's imagery seems
to be a technical
and iconographic finesse of the earlier iteration.
A
consideration of the entire
program of
thickens the plot. Unlike any stela
at Tikal, all
The narrower
sides feature
four faces of the stela were carved.
standing figures
in profile
who
Stela 31, however,
made previously
turn toward Siyah Chan K'awil;
above them are nearly identical glyphic passages. Broken as the
monument is, the text on the back of the stela begins with an initial date of 445 and follows not only with the longest Early Classic text
known
but also with the single most informative statement
about the Tikal family from
its
founding
until that date. In other
words, just as the nature of the representation on the front of the
monument ments
returns to Stela 29, and quite likely other lost
as well, so the text also
makes
And, although every Early Classic monument dense iconography layered over the Tikal lords of ritual and paraphernalia that function litany than
monu-
a reconnaissance of the past.
any sort of literal portrait
—
more
Stela 3
complex, with
is
—demonstrations 1
like a religious is
the most
com-
may well have been recogmaking. The visual complexity is
plex of any surviving monument, and nized as such at the time of
its
matched by textual complexity
at
every step.
In leapfrogging over the style
and imagery of Stela 4 and
asserting a seamless sequence of rule in the text, Siyah K'awil's
monument seems designed
in
Chan
to refute charges of usurpa-
tion.
But tying Stela 3 1 to the war monuments of the fourth centu-
ry
the central motif of Siyah
is
Chan
K'awil's raised-up headdress:
an owl with the spearthrower, a motif from the Ballcourt Marker
of 378. Furthermore, the sides of Stela 31 would seem to depict
Teotihuacan warriors. Rendered with open space surrounding the
human
representation in Teotihuacan fashion, but with the lanki-
er proportions characteristic of Tikal, even the Teotihuacan warriors feature a blended style of foreign
and
local.
When
the two
profile warriors are seen simultaneously, a single
Teotihuacan
warrior appears, seemingly holding a shield
left
atlatl
in
the
hand, an
(spear-thrower) in the right, and with mirrored helmet, coy-
ote-tail waist
ornament and pecten-trimmed
tion reveals that the
result
is
collar.
two images are not exact
that a single
Close inspec-
reflections, but the
Teotihuacan warrior seems to materialize
behind Siyah Chan K'awil, guarding him and quietly enforcing his position. Yet the text identifies the single father. its
Nun Yax
Ayin. Stela 3
1
Teotihuacano to be
his
points the direction to the future, in
rock and refined surfaces, and
in its
flanking representations of
simpler figures less burdened by ritual paraphernalia.
.
Stela 3
probably took
i
Stelae 29 and that the
\
its
place on the North A< ropolis, where
must also have been properh
i
set,
isual narrative o\ Tikal's royal Family
demonstrating
could grow and
change. Even the active stance of the king on Stela 31 may have derived from more active representations su< I
axactun Stela
The impetus
5.
pushed the inclusion of more
columns The
linear
Siyah Chan K'aw the
monument
plexities.
ils
to narrate
text,
as the
more
warrior on
of the story
formatted into clear and
recently discovered Stela
K)
the actions of
war and
working its
in
new com
iconography over-
took the late fourth-century .sculptures, on Stela 31 incorporated; on Stela story of these few
whether
ture,
at
recti-
was made by
successor to emulate the powerful father, but
simplifies Stela 31 without
Whereas
li
they are
they are watered down. Ultimately, the
10,
monuments
is the-
Tikal or elsewhere,
story of Early Classic sculpin
w huh the ideology of war
joined rulership as public presentation. Absorbed into the canon, its
iconography would he henceforth present, but never again with
when
the shock value such imagery had
Early
( 'lassie
new.
sculpture beyond Tikal
Although one might turn
Calakmul
to
as an artistic foil to Tikal,
few Early Classic monuments survive
in
any condition
Made of porous rock, the known fragments offer few clues tic
there.
to artis-
development. Mexican archaeologists have recently unearthed
Early Classic tombs that attest to Calakmul's wealth hut also
its
conservatism, for without the stimulation of war and foreigners,
Calakmul
art
By AD
was slow
500,
human
nalia, resulting in
to change.
figures carried
tance. Tikal Stelae 6, 7, 8,
centuries
much
less ritual
parapher-
forms that are much easier to read from
and 9 of the
late fifth
a dis-
and early sixth
feature relatively lanky lords in simple costume, with-
all
out any background scrollwork and cut that background, as
if
based
in
in fairly
high relief from
part on the side figures of Stela 3
At Tikal and elsewhere, the front of the monument gained
a
1
frame
by the sixth century, enhancing the sense that these human representations were constructed pictures rather than organic shapes
emerging from the At other
ritual practice,
jaguar
first
rock.
sites, local features,
took hold
—
for
usually focused on local gods or
example, the hand-held foliated
appeared on Xultun stelae
in
the fourth century and
then continued into the ninth. Far from the central Peten, as new cities
began to make stone monuments, they often came to
differ-
ent solutions, although the key elements of standing king and
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100
77.
(left)
Stela
27
at Yaxchifan
features a bearded lord
performs the scattering
who
1%
The
n
mmenl
features the "scatterinj
pose SO
related text remained a constant.
from Yaxchilan, Stria 27 of 51
first
figura]
ritual.
typical of later Yaxchilan works. In 78. (above) As recorded on Wall
showing his ability
to cast this
precious flow from his body, this early kino' presents himself as the
Panel 12, Piedras Negras kings exercised
power over
their
particularly Yaxchilan, lords
regenerative force of his community. Wall Panel 12 of Piedras
Negras, also from
Usumacinta neighbors,
whose
so that the
half,
Monument
26,
Quirigua, provides evidence that
the characteristic frontality of
is
Quirigua and
present
first
developed multifigural composi-
were rendered as captives.
79. (below)
later
.514, is a fully
tion with an extensive hieroglyphic text that divides the scene in
Copan
in at least
one
stelae
of the
model
two
sides face each other like pages of a book.
for such representation
may well have been
a
Maya
The
book, or
perhaps a tripod cylinder vessel. Surviving ceramics of the
fifth
and sixth centuries began to feature multifigural compositions, and such small-scale works may have been the inspiration
for
more
works.
monumental ones, particularly as the central Peten fine
cities
exported
wares to regional towns.
One
early
Copan fragment,
Stela
.'35,
shows the
side view of
separated, parallel legs of a standing figure, rendered
much like monu-
legs of a fifth-century Tikal stela. But a comparably early
Monument 26 from Quirigua, reveals a different visual soluThe characteristic frontal face omnipresent in Late Classic
ment, tion.
sculpture at both 500, and the
So
Copan and Quirigua probably caught on before
two communities may have had joint
rule in that era.
exceptional in Early Classic sculpture, this frontal face seems
not to have
come
directly
from Teotihuacan-inspired works, such
as Tikal Stela 4, but rather
from the frontal faces of architectural
facades and the incensarios
— large
often comprised architecture in
vessels for offerings
—
that
miniature. Widely exported,
incensarios featured beads at the vd^v of the face, like the face on
Monument
26.
The
result
was an improvised, roughly
incised
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.
80. Incensarios (vessels for offerings)
made
in
the Peten,
featuring frontal, three-
dimensional faces of both gods
and humans, may have spread religious cults
and provided the
model
for frontal representations
when
they were exported to more
remote locations. Here Chaak
is
featured on the main, lower vessel.
body and
The
a
more
polished, nearly three-dimensional, frontal face.
sorts of rock available at
Copan and Quirigua made good use
of the frontal format and helped assert a regional style. Regional styles to both the
when
a
west and the south
new round
all
seemed
to be set in place
of warfare sent shock waves across the
Maya
realm that ended the Early Classic.
According
to Caracol Altar 21,
found
at
the site in 1986, the
went
lords of Caracol (probably in league with Calakmul)
with Tikal twice,
in
556 and 56 2, claiming c
the latter date, or what scholars have
a "Star
come
War"
to think
to
war
victory on
is
conquest
warfare, resulting in local devastation, destruction of monuments,
and probably backbreaking
tribute.
The altar features a long text,
the very interest in details of names, dates, and places demonstrat-
ing a near obsessive concern with expressing a point of view and
underscoring Tikal Stela 3
its
importance,
like the
long text on the back of
1
At Tikal, the Early Classic narrative of the
city,
so elegantly
out on the North Acropolis in the sequence of Stelae 29,
laid
40,
and others, was dismantled by enemies,
31,
and
who
probably reset Stela 4 upside down, the powerful
frontal face buried
stumpy legs and
monument
and removed from view, with
feet left
on public
display.
just the pathetic
How did
the conquest
of the fourth century end up so humiliated?
did this desecration take place?
102
4, 31,
who smashed 29 and
And when
the 1990s, the discover} ol a carved throne
Iii
steps oi the Palace
imagined
that an
bringing
a
at
Piedras Negras chilled
angr}
mob
s<
smashed on
holars' bones
Hun
had risen up against
peaceful civilization to
sudden (lose
.1
But
they smashed their
monuments, took
them. Tikal
in
demise
a
was hacked
1
a city,
its
own
its
artistic
At
style.
apart, the top
fragment
small round altar, perhaps to celebrate the city's
king's head destroyed altogether.
With
Teotihuacano usurper, Tikal's Stela violently reset upside do\\ n
more
fact,
in
ballgame as well as war, and the section featuring the
in
1
vivid portrayal of the
its
may
not only have been
the aftermath of the 562 battle but,
in
never righted until archaeologists reset
strikingly,
sculpture
\
god images captive or
their
terms of subject matter, material, and
neighboring Uolantun, Stela carved into
u
had wreaked such destruction on
neighbors, with results that reverberated into
production,
the 1
priests,
w henever enemy Maya lords claimed victor} and entered
destroyed
1
Such attacks had profound impact on the Emulation and imitation, new attempts
at
artistic
self-promoting grandeur are
all
more
record.
imaginative works,
even sheer economic wherewithal to take on
abundance.
the
the twentieth century.
in
likely
a
campaign of
during times of
The fourth-century conquest of Tikal, for example, new types of sculpture and new imagery in the
yielded both
short run;
at
the
same
time, a stone-age
economic cycle may have
yielded prosperity that supported the complexity of a project like Stela 3
1
in
the one generation and gone bust by the time of the
next. In a
world context, the complexities of warfare almost always
leave their a
new
mark on the artistic record, whether
art in
in
the formation of
France following the French Revolution or the
destruction of old art forms
quently forces the
same
in that
movement of art:
the victors; as refugees, artists
may
conflict.
as booty, art
infuse a
is
Warfare
new region with
works; as the victims of the colonial enterprise, artists theless resist the
new
master. Victory
may enhance
zation or political repression, both of which
the artistic record. All across the it
may
fre-
hauled off by
may
their
never-
social organi-
yield a
change
in
Maya area, the wars that wracked
sent stress fractures through the artistic enterprise,
making of
art not a slave of time's inexorable, steady progression but an
expression keenly tied to local phenomena, developing starts.
that
Behind every work of Maya art
work of art's ultimate
lie
in fits
and
both makers and patrons;
survival depends on both accident and
historical circumstance.
103
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—
Chapter
5:
Late Classic Sculpture
The Late Classic era
The idea of the Late Classic period modern
of course a
that runs
from AD 550 to 900
is
one, and at the beginning of the period the
Maya themselves could not imagine the extraordinary works that they would come to make within a century. At the end of the 6th century the Maya were still reeling from warfare that had wracked the Peten, although the cities around the region's periphery
from Copan
Palenque to Piedras Negras
to
devastation than Tikal and
seventh century
Maya
lived in the lowlands,
cities
— had
suffered less
neighbors. But by the end of the
its
were thriving everywhere the Maya
and most Late Classic
art
was made between
680 and 800. The Maya experienced fabulous wealth rainforest society in this era, and they used their
for a tropical
economic wellbe-
ing to support the making of art and architecture. At literally
dozens of
sites, local styles
center of the
Maya world
took hold, and the large
cities at the
—Tikal and Calakmul—no longer pro-
vided the only barometers by which to gauge the developments of
Maya
art.
Abandoned
southern lowland
in the
Maya
ninth century and not reoccupied,
cities
preserve the Late Classic slice of
ancient life and art better than any other slice is preserved.
Accordingly, the texts that
tell
the history of the Late Classic
also survive in great abundance. This chapter will look closely at
monumental sculpture rather than the texts
may
suggest, but the paths to
political intrigue that its
war and peace
spelled out in
those texts often had repercussions in the visual record. Although victories
on the
more making of monuments than Maya art is not just shorthand for the his-
battlefield led to
did defeats, Late Classic
tory of the victorious. For one thing,
some powerful
cities
carved
monuments proclaiming their success on porous limestone, as was the case at Calakmul or Coba, leaving only pitted and fragmentary efforts
for
modern
consideration
—and
Furthermore, when victors forced the defeated
in
war
to
make works of art
104
oblivion.
had
the results were sometimes
new and imaginative ones that incorporated the triumph of victory.
effective
artists of a place they
the pathos of loss into
Remarkable works turn up
in
surprising
no equivalence exists between
plait's:
and the power
ol
w orks
During the Earl} out above
all
pi
'Inn
one single historical event stands
Classic,
others: the \D
378 arrival
ol
Teotihuacanos
Maya
site.
dling
military
seemed
force
in
al
direct residence
long-distance itself
Or had
trade?
begun
the
climate
political
to deteriorate? In
Maya ui\ was dominated
any
century, no
ship,
and the central part of Teotihuacan had been burned
ground by AD 700. But Teotihuacan
Maya
life,
Maya
and Teotihuacan
ritual
attire
by
.1
foreign relation-
and gods played
was donned
lords usually preferred traditional
formal portraiture on the occasion of installation
at
case, by the se\
(.•nth
elite
any
at
Were they driven out? Did they settle into a role of han
Teotihuacan
occasions.
Tikal.
no active leotihuacan
B3 the time oi the Late Classic florescence,
community or
and military power
al
ol art
a
to the
role in
for certain
Maya
dress for
in office,
but for-
mal war portraiture almost always featured Teotihuacan war attire.
Andrea Stone has proposed
that the
sent an organic, local
Maya ideology
and
Teotihuacan ideology
a foreign, hostile
warfare
in
Maya came
to repre-
the iconography of lineage in
the iconography of
order to enforce social separation. Even though the
in
Maya were
war with other Maya, they
at
called up the specter of
"foreignness" and manipulated the power of Teotihuacan gods of
war and real
sacrifice to
power waned,
enhance its
local prowess.
Even
as Teotihuacan's
value as political currency took on greater
significance.
The Late
Classic period, and particularly the eighth century,
represents the highest achievement of many aspects of Maya civilization.
The Maya wrote many long
texts with unprecedented
complexities, relating the deeds of both gods and men, and
demon-
strating skill
of both astronomical observation and
Some
numbers recorded during the time period go from
of the
hundreds to thousands to
billions,
ish us today. In this respect, the
its
recording.
orders of magnitude that aston-
Maya
sense of time ever expanded,
with a yet larger cycle always lying behind the largest stated
one
— and
in
this
expressing
reached their peak as well, and sioned works of
art.
a
sense of
many more
infinity.
noble
Populations
Maya commis-
Thatch palaces of the previous era were
replaced with stone ones during the Late Classic, and the built
most of their towering temples
But art
at
the
same time
that
Maya
in this period.
some of the Maya's
finest
works of
were coming into existence, archaeologists have discovered
that the quality of life diminished radically, even for the individuals, during the eighth century.
We
most
elite
might imagine the
105
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cultural backdrop against which the visual narrative
B
onDosP
the course
B
Maya experienced what iscommonl)
ern lowland
what the term des<
lapse." But contrar) to
gradual, from the date ad 735.
of this
a
monument.
until ttx
region in the ninth century
in
over
set
the eighth century, and during the ninth, the south-
ol
slov erosion of all aspects
Simph
decline and subtle recover}
ol life,
called the "col
ribes, the
demise was
pun< tuated by
and
put, population
\
its
iolent
atten
dant demands outstripped the environment, which could no
longer pro\ ide enough food,
fuel,
or matcn.il for shelter Without
wood to cook
adequate supplies of maize and beans, without
more importantly,
to
to effect the nixtamalization of
nutritional value)
little
and
reduce limestone to the quicklime ne< essary
— the
maize
ithout
(\\
Maya were
hich maize
\\
lias
driven to pursue any
route to feed themselves.
Warfare ravaged many
Dos
Pilas.
monuments
that featured
Teotihuacan
War
Seibal, they
place like
kings
their king in a
—or the population
rich
a city that
a
variant of the
decade. Eventually
might never be
rebuilt, for
come from? Not from
story of Late Classic sculpture
archaeology. Late Classic
is
reduced to
of the physical
first
not
a
substitute for the
the civilization's its
own
at city after city the
tales. In
Maya used
the format of the stela, the lintel, or the wall panel to present
who
imagination and achievement of the set in at another.
necessarily to
the
a pic-
ruled and their achievements for posterity. But
whereas the sculptural trajectory
might
fell
a city
spiritual.
—
works
—
An environment
Maya nor for Maya sculpture tells
series of monumental stone
a
ground,
where would the
a rainforest
fields.
world of the Maya and ultimately even the
written history of the ancient
to the-
some security Hut
destroyed must have led to utter degradation,
ture of those
at
ad 735 with
fleeing before- the fire
patchy scrub bordering tare-choked
The
in
neighbor Aguateca was burned
that had given the city
thatch or timbers
captive or hostage:
victory
Serpent reigning- over the devastated king of
Pilas"
chasm
burned was
fell
a
found the tables turned within
Dos
even as invaders into the
sites;
where they had celebrated
To know
in
one
artist,
the
city
might promote
stubborn conservatism
work of one Maya
city
is
not
know the work of another. To know Maya sculpture
modern viewer must look
carefully and city by city to see the
paths follow ed by individual royal families.
Looking at Late Classic sculpture
Xo amount
of historical reconstruction of Calakmul's political
impact can compensate for the near-absence of
legible, figural
sculpture, although major archaeology at the site
may
yield
new 107
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—
works
for consideration in the future.
However, even the fragmen-
tary record offers a few insights into the program there of the Late Classic: ly
Calakmul offered large, wide monuments, many apparent-
male-female pairs that celebrated united lineages, a practice
Naranjo
as well,
and one that may have been compressed into
at a
one-stela format at Piedras Negras, with a male subject on one face
of the
monument and
at El Peril
a female
on the other. Calakmul's neighbors
adopted the male-female format, and the pair of monu-
ments looted from that
site
and now divided between the Kimbell
Art Museum and the Cleveland acterize the
Museum of Art may serve to char-
dominant sculptural forms of Calakmul. Erected
at
the end of the seventh century in 692 to dedicate the widely cele-
brated ending of 1 3 periods of 20 years, the El Peru sculptures are
worked
in
very low
relief,
with
many
additional small texts
probably naming the members of the atelier
who carved
this set
incised onto the female representation but, tellingly, not onto the
108
m. iK' Such
ill
83.
ttH
grounds
83. The companion
monument
carvings, or on the bodies
figure dominates
Museum of Art. portwoman who was probal -signed s
to
shown
raised the inner
back se<
and posture, the male
tin- set
Neither the most stunning nor the most pedestrian
be seen side-by-
each
Maya
KimbelM K\ eland
examining the nature of sculpture
a lens tor
artist
pair
Late
oi
ides
|>r<>\
The
the period.
in
could plan' another figure, such as the dwarf,
fronl
in
of the woman, hut could also choose not to do so with the man.
hand and lowered
the outer one, with a subtle alternation of ritual paraphernalia. tiny inscriptions
the sculptors
on
ill.
83
who worked
on both monuments; notably, only the female
thai the}
the
in
captives or othei
oi
their equal size
Classic nionimirnt.il efforts, the
here, so that
inscribed
to
•^Cleveland
name
were usually
ondarv figures So despite
mosa
The
ol
some have argued
signatures (although
artist
indicate patronage
iiki\
was so
inscribed.
Around both
background opens up
figures the
as
clear expanse,
,i
with ritual paraphernalia rendered snug to the body.
The
lessons
ofTikal Stela S 1 would seem to still be in the air: like its paired side figures, these paired figures
and
hands yet alternate
left
wrist and hand straps
hand
—
a
their position.
So the
ith its
evidence, as well as the palm of the
—
is
held
down by
woman, and up by
the
in
the man,
likewise invert the cloth banners or "flapstaffs" that they
carry.
And
wears
a
despite the obvious differences
longheaded dress belted
vanishing from view once tied
—
Drapery
is
attempted,
in
in attire
the waist,
at
their
from the feathers of the headdress chests.
its
musical instruments are
in
the
to the
woman age
sel\
shrunken heads on their
the revealing squeeze the in
the
dw
woman
art
\\
front of the prominent figure.
may
leaps across the picture plane and
now-lost carved
—
patterned
costumes are also paired,
gives her flapstatT, and depth suggested as well,
hose
Text
well have begun on the
sides.
Many monuments
similar
Calakmul, Naranjo, Coba, and
to
these
at sites in
Quintana Roo that feature scanty
texts.
two were made
and Aguateca,
as well as
The man's masked
some of
mask was
at
the cities of
their satellites,
Piedras Xegras. Simplified and reduced to front of the nose, the
at
southern Campeche and
tume occurs across the Petexbatun region, Pilas
right
in
w
shield,
self-conscious display of sculptural accomplishment
the Late Classic
who
m
grasp nearly identical objects
a
cutaway
cos-
Dos
and
at
feature- in
also a part of formal portraiture
at
Tikal. Such successful conventions could be repeated time and again, across a century or more, part of the
conservative tradition of Maya
most
stable-
and
art.
Palenque In everv respect, Palenque sculptors traditional and conservative solutions.
As
a result, at
Maya
Palenque
in
examined the
art
qualities of
and sought alternative
the seventh and early eighth
109
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84. The Oval Palace Tablet only Classic stone
eschew lines,
shape
a
is
monument
the to
form created by straight
probably
in
order to take the
of the jaguar throne
cushion, an attribute of both kings
and the Maize God. King Hanab Pakal
is
also depicted seated on a
double-headed jaguar throne,
to
underscore his supernatural powers.
centuries,
Maya sculpture achieved some of its greatest complexi-
ty as well as technical finesse, almost as
planned to trump the sort of work made
the sculptors there
if
in the Peten.
They even
discarded the conventional format of Maya sculpture, the stela, in favor of new types of wall panels.
Imaginative sculptors worked the the
site,
the Oval Palace Tablet, into
first
its
surviving wall panel
form the back of an elaborate throne, no doubt a jaguar-covered cushion.
When
at
characteristic oval shape to to be in the shape of
sculptors of subsequent genera-
tions carved an oval behind the king, they
were invoking both
real
jaguar pelt cushions of this shape and the by-now-ancient Oval Palace Tablet, which was always on view. Probably carved
in
the
mid-seventh century, the Oval Palace Tablet celebrates the young
king Hanab Pakal's accession to the throne twelve.
Although
a
in 615,
few Early Classic monuments feature women,
the representation on the Oval Palace Tablet
may be the first Late
Classic one, and the first "group" composition with a
Sak K'uk',
when he was
in profile at left,
woman. Lady
hands her son the Jester God-studded
headdress of rulership; with his torso turned to the front while the rest of his
body
is
in profile,
Hanab Pakal
sits
on
jaguar throne. Remarkably, this representation carving (and granted,
view
in
10
a
in
double-headed the
first
public
throne back, and so was not on public
the plaza) of a ruler so simply attired, as
embedded
1
it is
a
is
the man, not the trappings of office.
if
to
show power
YA
85. 86.
In
a reclining posture
normally reserved victims.
above)
From
Hanab
falls into
his belly
for sacrificial
Pakal (detail,
the
maw of death.
emerges a new
World Tree, indicating the fresh centering of the earth that takes
place through death.
Hanab
Pakal's
The king himself wears the
costume
of both K'awil
and the
Maize God.
^
mwmmsWMMm Made
shortly before
on the sarcophagus
Hanab
Pakal's death
We
in
683, the carving
of his tomb reveals both elaborate composi-
and hasty execution, with rough
tional skill
evidence.
lid
might wish
chisel
marks
still in
to see this as a sign of the speed with
which the tomb was prepared, or
as recognition
on the part of the
sculptors that the funerary sculpture was not going to be studied
by casual viewers
— but
in fact,
other Palenque sculptures show
similar workmanship, including the newly excavated large-scale
wall panel on display at the Palenque Museum and the
Oaks
Panel,
tom, ending up with roughed-out
toes.
mark remained,
as
a single chisel
was often the case. Palenque sculptors put
greatest energy into finishing representations of at
to bot-
Dense and fine-grained,
Palenque limestone could be polished so that not
sometimes
Dumbarton
where the quality of finish diminishes from top
human
their faces,
the cost of other areas.
///
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85.
In his eighties at the time of his death,
Hanab Pakal may have
indeed seemed immortal to his subjects, and the complex burial
program he probably helped design conspired notion.
known
On
of a glorified king on his back (for otherwise this
ture of the fallen and defeated),
God
—
promote the
to
the surface of the sarcophagus, in the only rendering
presumably
the open
maws
Hanab
moment
at the
of death or rebirth
of death, whose image
glyph for "black hole."
From
his
body
is
On
sprout from earth that
the pos-
—
Maize
falls into
conflated with the very
arises the
central axis of the earth that every king
taining in position.
is
Pakal, dressed as the
World Tree, the
was responsible
for sus-
the sides of the sarcophagus, ancestors lias
cracked to
let
them grow,
vivid evi-
dence that Hanab Pakal's death has brought forth renewal
for the
entire earth.
Hanab
Pakal's
tomb was
a sort
of sculptural assemblage, or
what one might consider today an
many
different
"installation,"
components. Key to the assemblage
including
is its
story-
87. Each of the Cross Group
temples
an
at
Palenque features
interior shrine that
takes the
form of a perishable dwelling.
telling ability, for
Hanab
it
constantly narrates the death and rebirth of
Pakal. Inside the uterus-shaped sarcophagus, the dead
body was dressed
Stucco ornament above the
Maize God, jade jewelry by the pound
as the
— an unusual twist — without any elaborate painted or carved ceramics.
cornice frames limestone panels
adorning the remains but
below; the large limestone
of this sort
panels
(e.g. Tablet of
the Cross,
Tablet of the Sun) are set within
the shrine
itself.
Hanab
for a state burial
in
Pakal's food for the journey
jade bead in his mouth,
like
seems only
many
a
to have been the
more common
burial of
the time. Yet his death and rebirth as a maize plant renews the entire range of
human
agricultural endeavor, for each of the
ancestors emerges with a specific plant
and so
forth.
The
constant guides. Hanab Pakal's
from
a sculpture
and
wedged
"killing" life
— the nance, the avocado,
stucco figures along the wall serve as ever-
own
stucco portrait was wrenched
AD
in the Palace)
itself,
ceremonially
elsewhere (probably House
under
Hanab Pakal
the
sarcophagus
of his transformation to
in life as part
immemorial. In 692,
magnum
Hanab Pakal's oldest son K'an Balam dedicated his own
opus, the
Group of
carved panels of the Cross
have been
at
the Cross. At the time
Group were
the height of its
when
dedicated, Palenque
the
must
economic powers, plowing economic
wherewithal into capital construction. Each massive Cross panel is
composed of three huge
slabs built into a small shrine at the rear
of the temple, forming what Stephen Houston has identified as
symbolic sw eatbaths, with
a sculptural
program that extends onto
the front panels of the building and right up onto the roofcomb of
each structure.
112
88. An adult K'an Balam,
self
as a child,
left,
Designed
right,
faces a representation of his
own
as a group, the
iconography and
text.
unified
a
supernatural history
in
at left
across a large
King K'an Balam' s
World Tree, on the Tablet of the
pair with events in
Cross (ad 692). The adult K'an
tures both the pouty-faced K'an
Balam holds out
Cross tablets feature
Dates deep
K'awil; the child
bears the rear head of the Bicephalic Monster,
who
supports the World Tree.
also
dled figure of what
may
be his
life at
right; each panel tea-
be
Balam and the diminutive, bun-
own
self as a child.
On
each panel,
K'an Balam displays the images of the gods: held out on cloth, and
roughly the size of the actual god images discovered figures probably offer a clue to the handling and deities received.
The imagery
iconographic subject lid;
Tikal, these
of the Tablet of the Cross takes
— the World Tree—from
191
its
the sarcophagus
the Foliated Cross features the renewal of maize, and even the
sacred mountain from which maize
enigmatic Tablet of the Sun that the
at
wrapping such
may have come;
may provide an
but
it
is
insight into
the
how
program may have come about. Unlike works of art from other places that celebrate conquests,
making
possible to imagine resultant wealth, the sculpture of
it
Palenque
resists action,
emphasizing
stasis
and calm.
as the
and
no records of destruction and
sacrifice,
Cross
effort includes
heart of the Tablet of the Sun
lies
An elaborate
no imagery of capture
program such
pillage.
the Jaguar
But
God
at
the
of the
113
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89
89. The Tablet of the Sun,
Underworld,
Palenque. An adult K'an Balam, holding K'awil at
left.
frontal face of the
The
large
Jaguar God
of war and
night,
god, the
fire,
during
and also the deity who
Underworld journey.
its
modern nickname of the building undermines
of
characteristics: the Jaguar
God
supported by gods of trade and
rulers
his other
of the Underworld's visage char-
acterizes shield iconography. This
dominates the representation,
The two
at
Nevertheless, in emphasizing the solar aspect of this powerful
the Underworld, a war god,
tribute.
Maya god
paired
right, is
with his representation as a child, with a war god,
a
embodies the sun
would cover their faces with
is
the god, then, that
as they
charged into
Maya
battle.
But
floating
hieroglyphs with coefficients of
furthermore, two crouching, aged gods support the great shield
seven and nine probably
itself.
refer to
sacred, supernatural toponyms.
91. (opposite) K'an Hok' Chitam initiated
720. Although probably
in a
in
ad
and
is
L, an
aged deity
who presides over the
the patron of merchants and traders; the to the right
may be another view of him,
that recalls the similar but different sides of Stela 31
metaphor
We
Pakal,
left),
that
can see this as
metaphor, and
a visual
underpinned Aztec trade and warfare as
supports war, and war crowns and leads commerce.
a
it
is
a
text
monument was completed names the successor who was called to the
enth century
at
Palenque,
at the
time the
they paid for
throne
in his
stead.
picture plane as does the Jaguar
In
//
/
marvel
in
at
the sev-
we need only look to this panel to see how
added
it,
well: trade
If we
wondrous architecture and sculpture that flourished
the
his parents
Hanab
manner
from Tikal.
representation of K'an Hok' II
God
its
completion and dedication
(including
clearly
unknown but similar god
but had probably been sacrificed
Chitam
left is
II
work on the Palace Tablet
atTonina long before
At
Underworld and who
with both war and trade, presented emblematically.
no other work does the image of
God
a
god so dominate the
of the Underworld on the
Tablel of the Sun For
Maya works
the compositions of the
ol art,
Cross panels are outrageously novel, without .i\
ant-garde that
failed to attract a
One other sculpture on that the question
rendering. In the sort o\
materia]
is
the Cross
ol
features K'an
it
fact, in its
Group ma)
in
three-dimensional
.1
sculpture seen generally
.it
it
is
very
much
like
Toning, although the
not the sandstone used there. But
to
indirectly insist
An anomalous and
the Cross
Balam
style and proportions,
may well have been
it
payment by Tonina\ one
sent to Palenque as a gift or
comeback
an
of warfare be asked: Palenque's onl) stela came
from the side of the Temple unusual work,
successors,
response other than rejection.
that
would
haunt Palenque.
Palenque low-relief sculpture seems
follow
to
a
seamless
stream: the two-figured Oval Palace Tablet leads to the Cross
Group monuments, where exhausted, followed
h\'
the two-figured repertory
Tablet of the Slaves and the Palace Tablet. panels, the Palace Tablet
is
Kan
successor to K'an Balam. Carved roughly
the
H, with the figural portion set
workmanship
is
perhaps,
Of
the three-figured
more important, having formed
back of the new, monumental throne of
letter
is,
the three-figured panels, particularly the
in
in
I
[ok'
Chitam
the shape of
a
II,
the
the
capital
the upper, central, portion,
of high and even quality: elaborate full-figure
hieroglyphs initiate the text, and finely wrought details right
down
90. (above) An anomalous
monument
at
Palenque, Stela
1 is
the only freestanding stela at the site.
It
once stood on the steps
the Temple of the Cross.
of
to eyelashes
and toenails only
a
few millimeters long. Yet
what we know about the monument gives us pause, subject,
King K'an Hok' Chitam
II,
for its chief
was taken captive when the city
of Ton in a, to the south, claimed to have
come and made Palenque
US
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— "fall
down"
in 711,
an event not acknowledged at Palenque
For nine years, work ceased on the monument (and
down"
after
all),
and only
text in the final columns at the
in
720 did
naming a new
time of the disastrous battle
artists
were
efforts
—and
at
work on
the
sculpture draped in cloth, as
Chitam
II?
Whatever the
if
"fall
successor. In other words,
are a Palenque partisan!),
monument, and then abandoned
—
itself.
didn't
pick up again, with an odd
(if you
the in situ carving
no trace of this
it
it
for nearly a decade.
their
Was
the
the very shroud of K'an Hok'
case, the
subsequent workmanship
left
hiatus.
The recent discovery of a small panel fragment in the rubble to Temple of Inscriptions may shed some light on
the west of the
sculptural practices at this time. Against a backdrop of steps
92. From the rubble of Group 16
has
come
this
stunning fragment,
possibly depicting the tribute
literal
burden placed upon
Palenque's lords by Tonina early in
the eighth century. Staircase
representations usually indicate explicit hierarchies.
7/6'
often
.1
clue to
vy
arfare, ballgame,
and
sa< rifit e
\\
aPalenque lord carries a huge sack on a tumpline small wall panel, with steps is
might well represent oppressors
and
smashed and
buried.
\\
a
seems to be
The
tribute
Maya
cities,
subject
payment
is
b)
perhaps Piedras
not obvious, but
Palenque
to
it
outside
hich might also explain w hy years later
The final chapter ofPalenque sculpture is, quite literally, ten, for the last
.1
as well as its fine carving, the panel
characteristic 6f other western
Negras, or possibly Tonina*
hat
Initsformat
it
vt
as
writ
works not only emphasize text but derive from the
Two monuments from the reign ofK'uk' Balam II at mid-eighth century characterize the late sculpture. Small in scale, each was probably executed by a single mast,.,sculptor, and Quite scribal arts.
93. Using a flowing, calligraphic line,
the Palenque sculptor
Chaak
flexing his
his axe, as
if
arm and
shows lifting
ready to hurl a
thunderbolt, on the Creation Tablet.
The panel was once
probably part of a throne
assemblage.
//
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94.
On
96
the Tablet of the
possibly the
Glyphs, Palenque sculptors fluidly
many
inscribed text, adopting
of
the characteristics of the painted
word
to the
carved limestone.
same
one: the large-scale projects of earlier regimes
had vanished, yet the energy concentrated into small works yielded
new
results.
calligraphy at
The Tablet its
of the 96 Glyphs demonstrates
most remarkable,
Maya
for the sorts of lines
one
95. (opposite, above) Tonina
achieves with a brush have been transposed to stone, where they
sculptors developed a three-
flow like a silken thread, denying the inherent stoniness of the
dimensional
art to
complement
matrix.
the two-dimensional low-relief
sculpture at the
site,
perhaps
taking advantage of the softer
sandstone used
for
many
today, this Tonina stela
still
commands
presence
with
its
stately
in its
96. (opposite, below) at
Chitam
in
attire.
Monument
Tonina depicts K'an Hok' II,
the unfortunate
Palenque king foes
calmly
featured inlay
and perhaps perishable
22
711.
the Creation Tablet,
Chaak the
god
rain
The
flexes his
static,
action typical of earlier Palenque sculpture yielded to a
arm
completed
and pregnant action just before sculpture
at
more fluid
Palenque vanished
altogether.
demeanor. The
monument once
1
On
anticipation of the blow he will strike.
of the
carvings. Although headless
those
in
felled
Tonina After
Toninas abandonment, many of
clown
its
steep
its
finest sculptures fell
embankment, whether pushed or moved through
the forces of nature. In recent years archaeologists have rediscov-
ered
a
wealth of monuments, from the Giant
Ahaw
altars, large
by his Tonina
short cylinders marked by a
a
huge Ahaw glyph marking the end of
twenty-year period, that lay alongside the ballcourt, to finely
118
carved three-dimensional renderings, to pained representations ol captives.
Most
stelae stood in three dimensions, text frequently run-
down
ning
the figure's spine.
Although
probably represents an eighth-century
ill.
95 bears no
ruler,
text,
it
one hand gently
folded across the other; precious inlay once studded neck and chest. tives
Three-dimensional rulers dominated two-dimensional capon the Fifth Terrace, where
K'an Hok'Chitam
II
in
a
depiction of Palenque King
bondage was once set. Strikingly, although
the panel consists of local sandstone, the fluid Style belongs to
Palenque, suggesting that Tonina lords captured Palenque artists
along w
ith their king.
Piedras Negras
At the end of the Early
Classic, Piedras
Negras had seen the most
complex multi-figural compositions of the period, but apparently had confined such configurations to small, exterior or interior wall panels. Set like pages of a hook across the fronts of monumental,
freestanding pyramids, such wall panels remained the locus of
figural IS,
complexity during the Late Classic. Across the front of CD-
the largest pyramid ever constructed at Piedras Negras, three
such wall panels were set
in
about AD 800,
at
the end of the city's
119
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them
by analogy
97. (above) Wall Panel 2, Piedras
florescence. (Early explorers called
Negras (ad 667), depicts
with Yaxchilan practice, but not a single carved stone was placed
a
"lintels,"
victorious Ruler 2, right, flanked
by an
heir. In front of
the king
kneel five subjugated lords from
Bonampak
over a doorway
at
Piedras Negras, to
modern knowledge.
the small-scale carved panels at Piedras
Negras were
Rather,
set into the
with a sixth, the
smallest (second from
exteriors of pyramidal platforms.) left),
from Yaxchilan. For most of the seventh century, Piedras Negras
Wall Panel 2, tury
later, recalls
with
its
at the center, a
seventh-century panel reset a cen-
both the program and subject of Wall Panel
12,
dominated the Usumacinta River
and
and the
its
cities
tributaries.
along
it
portrayal of the king as victorious warrior.
The two panels
framing it offer scenes of courtly life, executed to enhance the sense of visual space and to accommodate large numbers of individuals.
rhe great Mayanist Sylvanus Morley considered Wall Pane]
98. (oppose
Maya
to be the finest
when Balam
Maya
of 100
list
sculpture
Superlatives
might agree with him even
Made
disco\ ery.
us 99. (below) Stela 14 at Piedras
1946, and the
in
9
his
modern viewer more
recent
the very end of the eighth century, the sculp-
.it
was
it
an earlier generation,
in
individuals rarely seen
damage wrought upon
monumental
in
the stone,
one can
art.
still
I
>u
t
among
the rendering of ongoing interactions
a liveliness in
many
when he made up
after considering every
ture portrays the royal court as
with
existence
in
Despite the
see
the
that
Negras features the young Ruler 4,
who has taken
his place inside
enthroned king reaches out
and
the niche of rulership
monuments
ment of carving ceased altogether.
son's high
relief
relief; at
against her
lower right a
down
in yet
lower
relief.
Piedras Negras follow
stelae at
particular formulae, as Herbert Spinden pointed out early
twentieth century, featuring
few years later by city,
a
posi-
Piedras Negras, which shortly thereafter
at
Monumental freestanding
sacrificed captive lies upside-
in
cap the develop-
to
at the site. At hrs feet
low
in
at his feet
themselves, and even fidget
Such rendering of action would appear
tion.
stands his mother, strikingly rendered
among
they chat
side, as
characteristic of accession
igorously to address those
\
the
in
an enthroned king, followed
first,
w arrior monument. Set
in
a
clusters around the
the stelae celebrate rulership reign by reign, with almost no
evidence of hostile destruction or systematic relocation of Late Classic works.
A
"niche"
monument
ing the king seated within ladder, at the
moment
standing
front
in
a
initiates
every
deep rectangular space,
series, featurat
the top of a
of his inauguration, often with his mother
Mesoamerican peoples generally
of him.
believed that the soul dwelt in the head, and at Piedras Negras, the
head receives three-dimensional emphasis
mary
individual.
On
Stela 14,
front of him, her role
is
two dimensions, on what
and hands
On
in
high
is in
armed and
new
own
frontal representation, his
wear simple courtly dress and
rulers
fertility,
in the additional
stelae,
and growth,
concept
on the contrary, offer up an image of a heavily
much
of the imagery of the
The imagery
of
Serpent dominates victory monuments
at
Early Classic warriors expanded and elaborated.
War
Piedras Negras, particularly
god represented
a
representation of the mother.
outfitted aggressor, with
the Teotihuacan
in
relief.
the niche stelae,
The warrior
the pri-
mother stands
another plane of sculpture, as
fact
bear the iconography of maize,
even embedded
4's
reduced visually by her compression into
well as by the very strength of his face
— but only of
where Ruler
at a scale
in
the seventh century, with that
larger than humans.
ary ritual featured on Stela 40,
in
which
garb scatters offerings down into
a
a
The unusual
kneeling lord
war
funer-
in priestly
tomb, depicts the head and
shoulders of a dead king wearing the last
known
representation of
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— the plated headdress of the
War Serpent at the site.
Captive repre-
100
sentations have a grisly realism, especially in the emaciated soul
kneeling at the feet of Ruler 3 on Stela
own
8,
birth and death dates (indicating a
may well be his
with what
man
in his eighties) at his
side.
The imagery of rulership and warfare undergoes some expansion in Late Classic Piedras Negras.
of a nearby lineage,
is
Lady K'atun Ahaw,
featured on Stelae
1
and
her
3,
representation analogous to the representation of
parable only to the prominence of Lady
same
era and of the
woman on
Xok
a princess
men and com-
Yaxchilan
at
—and
—
in
public
life
that
the
in
the Cleveland stela. Such featured
female protagonists offer some clues to the role
power
101
full frontal
women
possibly
most such
achieved. Strikingly,
representations cluster between 680 and 720, at a time of great political consolidation,
when marriage may have played
as great a
role as warfare. In the era of Wall Panel 3, ry,
and
ing
just at a
time
when
from 780
end of the centu-
until the
the sculptural traditions were languish-
across the southern lowlands, the sculpture of Piedras
all
Negras reached
its
greatest heights, with
new
formats, sophisti-
cated views of past events, as in the wall panel, and even the creation of extraordinary royal furnishings such as
monument
that
was ripped from
its
housing and
Throne
left
1,
a
smashed on
the steps of the principal palace at the time of Piedras Negras's
demise
c.
800. In the last king's reign, the old "niche" and warrior
standards were replaced by a ure gave 100. On Piedras Negras Stela 8, a larger-than-life Ruler
Maya
kings, he adopts
standing figure, Stela 12 featured a seated warrior, presiding over the heap of captives offered below. Stela 12
including Tlaloc, a Teotihuacan
—when depicted
costume.
15); in
place of the conventional warrior stela, previously always with a
Central Mexican motifs
god
seated niche fig-
3 stands
flanked by diminutive captives. Like other
new program. The
way to a standing representation of the ruler (Stela
in
warrior
may have been
Piedras Negras: the victory
must have been
a
the last major it
monument made
celebrates over
its
demise.
With
position at the
its
top of Structure 0-13, only the upper portion of the could have been seen from the ground
—and
extremely complicated
monument had he or she monument as a whole was an
affair,
compressing into
the message of the entire north wall of so, the sculptors devised
new
Room
its
narrow format
2,
122
sits in a
Bonampak.
In
solutions to visual problems,
including the incorporation of architectural space. top
monument
so the viewer could
missed the lower half of the
not climbed the temple. But the
doing
102
hollow celebration, for one can only presume that
Piedras Negras itself soon met
easily have
at
Pomona, however,
The
victor at
three-quarters position, his body dramatically fore-
153
— 1 to
mm
v
1
Rule
portrait
m
on tho
nument.
In
relief
on Stela
l
.
she
is
i to
ted as
if
she
ruling male.
102. One of the most complex monuments ever carved by the ancient Maya. Piedras Negras Stela
12 depicts thirteen
different
individuals: the city's last king, at top:
two
loyal lords,
captive at center; captives the stela.
in
a
who flank the
and
heap
eight
at the
more
bottom
of
The nine captives may
have been symbolic, as several
Maya tombs
also held nine
sacrificial victims.
shortened; his two war captains stand to either side, registers that
—on
shown
is
—
a staircase for captive sacrifice,
to drape.
Between them
sits
down
several
covered with cloth
an elegantly attired cap-
tive
texts often note that captives are "dressed for sacrifice"
who,
like
the captive atop the steps at
rendered with face
him
sit
in profile
Bonampak, has been
but his back to the viewer. Beneath
eight other captives, naked, bound, and tied together.
These eight captives are among the most striking
Maya
sculpture, for they reveal emotions.
collapses in resignation; the figure beside
The
figures of
figure at far right
him scowls up
at
of the warrior atop him. Despite their bonds, they engage
the feet in
ener-
among themselves, and their faces present the degree of Maya beauty. From top to bottom of the monu-
getic conversation
highest
ment, the depth of carving diminishes, until the captives seem only slightly
more than drawings on
stone, almost as
transcending the limitations of sculpture. Over
a
if
they were
dozen small
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inscriptions run across or near their bodies, presumably sculptors'
signatures
—and
identifying these very captives as the
in fact,
sculptors themselves.
When
the lords of Piedras Negras conquered Pomona, they
must have demanded artists would
die
on the
in tribute, artists
sacrificial staircase.
who knew
they
When those artists arrived at
Piedras Negras, they worked on Stela
whose hybrid forms
12,
include both the higher relief of the ruler on top and the extremely
low relief of the elegant figures
bottom that is more characteris-
at
Pomona style itself. Yet in its own way, despite the demise they predicted for themselves, the monument allows for the surtic
of the
vival of
Pomona: the viewer today glances only casually
at the
seated victor, choosing instead to focus on the tangled bodies
capture attention
at the
who
bottom of the stone.
Yaxchilan
Most
scholars agree that the end of the eighth and beginning of
the ninth centuries were troubled times, as the collapse eventually
caught up with every Classic city of the southern lowlands. But the artistic response to the situation
After
all,
was by no means uniform.
Piedras Negras sculpture ceased
achievement, and unlike Palenque, that
exuberant one, with abundant and large-scale predictable path might be the one
we can
moment of peak moment was an works. The more
at its
final
identify for Yaxchilan,
where the sheer number of stone sculptures made between 723 and 770 outstrips any other
city,
and where
a
Spenglerian curve
that notes rise, flourish, and decline can easily be charted.
From lintel
the establishment of the city in the Early Classic the
was the dominant format of Yaxchilan
sculpture, and
architectural positioning spanning a door frame saved
long-term exposure to damaging elements. With private location, the lintel
may have been
its
it
its
from
slightly
seen as a locus for
more
varied subject matter. Originally purely textual, the lintels in
general
Maya
may have adapted
ance of
25
103. Yaxchilan
Lintel
as she witnesses
right,
her ancestor vision
in
depicts
she has conjured following
bloodletting. Drapery piles at her feet
and drapes over her
attire.
II
lintels, as
(also
known
later, at
sudden appear-
was the case
first in
the
as Shield Jaguar), early in
when Lady Xok claimed
and
from the now-lost
also explain the
to be the patron of a
mid-century, during the reign of
Itzamnah Balam IPs son Yaxun Balam (the famous Bird Jaguar),
who introduced a wide retinue to royal representation.
belt,
drawing the viewer's attention her elegant
Balam
the eighth century, series of lintels,
the serpentine
may
new and imaginative
reign of Itzamnah Lady Xok,
texts and images
books. Such an origin
Dumbfounded by
to
the extraordinary quality of Lintels 24, 25,
and 26, Sylvanus Morley could not believe that they had arrived
124
103.9
125
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104. A generation after
on Yaxchilan
Lintel
15
ill.
103,
a wife of
Yaxun Balam repeats the serpent ritual
depicted on Lintel 25,
where the complexity
of the
composition has been simplified,
making the woman's visually clear.
the vision
in
role
more
She leans toward
the serpent's
maw
while the vision and serpent
seem unaware
of her gaze.
105. Yaxun Balam dominates Lintel 16, his staff visually
piercing the very face of his captive,
who admits
pressing his hand to
and
in
fealty in
mouth
touching the broken
parasol on the ground.
Cut cloth drapes across the captive's
left
arm, additional
evidence of captive status.
126
on the scene without precedent, and so misdated Lintels and
it
to
make them
the visual forebears
We
15,
16,
now know how
wrong Morley was in constructing a curve along which sculpture might
and
rise
fall,
propel innovation
astounding
quality,
and
for in fact, invention
erratic beats.
in 1
>u
with
gram i
i.
Ins success in a
that
encompassed both in a
lintels
26 of
subject
to the
in
Maya
and Itzamnah Balam
II
southwest.
equally innovative pro-
all
previous monumental
matter was shown
progress, rather than completed or anticipated, the
moments represented
i
and carved stepson Structure
departure from
representation, this new
vision,
2
tzamnahBalam II
I
war that had raged
Bonampak and other cities, with an
Furthermore,
genius can
they also raptured subject matter never
t
before executed on stone. And, simultaneously,
memorialized
artistic
Not only were Lintels
sculpture:
to
in
Lady Kok conjures her
grasps his captives by the
hack leg showing the effort of throwing
be
more standard
his entire
hair, his
body into the
action. In the
subsequent generation, Yaxun Balam took these same
subjects, as well as others,
sculptures to
and ordered more buildings and more
commemorate
his reign.
Where one
or two
ments might have been carved under Itzamnah Balam
Balam commissioned up the process,
new
to a
dozen
II.
monuYaxun
to celebrate a single event. In
representations of human form were introduced,
but the actual quality of carving dropped off so significantly that
106. Yaxchilan carved
in
perhaps
Lintel
8 was
exceptionally low
in
relief,
a style introduced
through the war represented on the
monument
composition at the
itself.
—two
The
victorious lords
margins, the captives at
center— also presented
a
composition not previously used.
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107. The
last
dated
Yaxchilan, Lintel
monument
at
10 enumerates
the endless battles and claimed victories at the
beginning of the
ninth century, including
what may
be the demise of Piedras Negras. Increasingly at right
who
may
cramped
inscriptions
indicate a patron
insisted that the artist
incorporate
new
information,
without regard to the planned format of the monument.
—
many key monuments from the era especially the famous Lintel 8 are known almost exclusively in line drawing, the actual stone
—
surface so poorly graven that photography barely captures sense.
One might want
tion," in
to consider this a
form of
its
artistic "infla-
which the increased coinage has actually reduced the
value of any single image.
By
final result: Lintel
purely textual monument, where the
10, a
the year 810, such practice yielded a
clumsy framing of the text suggests that the carver must have had to cope with
new information
he reached the simply
final
jammed
in
as
it
was presented
to him, so that as
area to carve, the lower right-hand corner, he
more words, without regard
to the sort of
thought-out configuration of a century before. So, if one
wanted to see
a visual record that "reflects" in
some
way what archaeologists think Maya life of the eighth century may have been
like,
one would probably propose Yaxchilan. Here, con-
centrated wealth and power at century's beginning did not hold for long. tive
Yaxun Balam turned
to new,
forms of government, resulting
somewhat more collabora-
in a visual
explosion
in
he shared the public record with his lieutenants. Ironically, latter-day Gorbachev, even as he his efforts
undermined
his
own
increasing power and began to
128
amended
which like a
the political structure,
polity, for the
regional lords took
make works of art that outstripped
his own i
leading, ultimately, to the demise of Yaxchil&n, a sad
hat can be read in the
testimony of a Lintel
end
10.
Tikal
Although pre-eminent 108. Diminul
kal
monument
:
to
be erected
—
—
or to survive
the city's long struggle with
neighbors
in
the its
its
in
were able
to erect (Stela SO)
firsl
worked
is
the style and with the iconography of their oppressors
Caracol. Ultimately, the Tikal kings developed in
the eighth century, characterized
Chan
K'awil's Stela 16 (711); Yik'in
l>v
Chan
a
at
strong local style
the sequence of K'awil's Stelae 2
Hasaw i
(736)
With Tikal and.") (7 M-);
Stela 16. the Late Classic
sculptural template at the site
established. Both text
were confined
the Tikal lords
draws on
it
monuments of Caracol. one of
right)
to recover
from external attack. At the end of the seventh century, the
monument
principal enemies.
109. (below,
the Early Classic, Tikal lagged desper-
after
the sixth and seventh
centuries. In format,
in
during the Late Classic, apparently struggling
ately
and
was
figure
set
withm
and Nun Yax Ayin
II's
Stelae 22 (771) and 19(790). AH
the specialized architectural
Pyramid Complexes, the
precincts called
stelae carefully follow the
Twin
model estab-
to the front surface
monument, and both were concise. Hasaw Chan K'awil of the
lished by Stela L6: a laconic text, limited to the front of the
monu-
ment, names the protagonist and one or two events. Presented
celebrates the completion of
fourteen katuns (noted
over his head)
in
711.
in
the text
with frontal body and profile head on Stela tation
became one completely
1
in profile after
(>',
the royal represen-
Hasaw Chan
K'awil's
129
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109
— 110. The surface of Altar 8 depicts a prone, tied ballplayer, his lower legs
and
feet in the
The rope runs from the tied
arms
stone, to
to the
make
air.
captive's
perimeter of the
the observer read
the entire surface as
if it
were
a
great ball.
death.
As depicted from
7
1
uniform
to 790, the king's royal
1
including cutaway mask, feather backrack, hipcloth with crossed
bones and death-eye trim served to be ation,
—must have been meticulously
worn by one generation after another.
one can see that the hipcloth has been folded
handkerchief
— and
like
pre-
In the final iterlike
a
those of Toltec lords in Central Mexico
but the costume's consistency only emphasizes the similarity in size, scale,
and style of rendering, such that any attempt to develop
style dates results in a chart of remarkable stasis.
At the same time
other
Maya
most public monuments
that the
change, Tikal experienced
city-state of the era,
resisted
much political ferment as any
at least as
if
not more, for
dynasty
its
suffered an apparent schism in the seventh century, resulting in a rival capital at
Dos
Pilas, in the
Petexbatun.
x\t
two sculp-
Tikal,
tural formats thrived in the eighth century, infused
success:
political
altars
and
lintels.
On
altars,
by fresh
round stones
consistently placed in front of stelae, Tikal lords rendered their
hapless captives in humiliating postures, taking liberties with the captives' representations that rulers.
On
Altar
8,
were not taken with those of the
the unfortunate
probably to indicate his death captive
is
bound
to a
is
in a
trussed up like a
Maya
ballgame; on Altar
heavy scaffold and rendered over
ball,
10, the
a quatrefoil
cartouche, indicating an opening to the Underworld.
Although many Maya tropical
130
hardwood
sites
trees, the
used wooden
lintels
most elaborate ones
hewn from
to survive
come
111. Most great
as
if
litter
lintels at Tikal
their very
lintels
from Tikal, where beams of sapodilla spanned the inner doorways
feature
or palanquin scenes,
required
them
to
effigies
be read
as images that would be carried
on high. Depicted
in
K'awil,
military victory in ad
Temple
condition
and the novelty of these
Yik'in
it
nineteenth century.
at their
Tikal
imagery would have been stelae.
Lintel
3
We may
graffiti,
a rare privilege, offers a
The
themselves
effigies
were among the most precious invocations of divinity
IV was in nearly perfect when was taken to
Basel, Switzerland, in the
peek
in
high places where even a
lintels, set in
counterpoint to the repetitious
a
743.
Carved of sapodilla wood, of
is
who celebrates
featured giant god
and their litters, of the sort also scratched
an unusual
frontal sitting presentation
Chan
Many
of temples sacred to ancestor worship.
placement as
in
Maya life.
suppose them to have been made entirely of perishable
materials, perhaps papier-mache or
wood
or cloth. Inscriptions
intimate that these images were warfare's most treasured booty,
and their isolated naming
at
Calakmul and representation
Piedras Negras (Stela 10)
may
gained them from rivals
some point.
Tikal and
its
at
"suburbs"
alive into the ninth century, last
monuments of
Seibal.
at
indicate that Tikal lost them to or
managed and Stela
to keep the stela tradition 1
1,
from AD 869,
typifies the
the Peten, with the exception of those from
Ninth-century monuments
flare at the top,
motifs frame the edge of the pictorial
field,
and decorative
abruptly truncating
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112. The
stela tradition survived
well into the ninth century at Tikal; Stela 1 1
dedicated
in
,
shown
here,
was
879. Floating figures
and articulated frames became
common
on ninth-century
monuments.
feathers and scrolls. Spindly legs support
human
figures in the
ninth century leaving them weightless and ungrounded; torsos
frequently do not quite align with legs below, as 11. In scrolls
above that
may
is
the case on Stela
signify clouds, the gods
known
as
God
to
"Paddlers" hover. But even the gods that canoe the Maize the
Underworld
although that
for his
annual renewal cannot renew Tikal,
may have been
the message.
To
a
degree unknown
elsewhere, Tikal remained a place that the occasional
encountered through the centuries, but by 900, a place for
(
'opan
it
Maya visitor
had ceased to be
new Maya sculpture.
and Quirzgud
At both Copan and Quirigua, Maya sculptors worked with idiosyncratic rock, which
may have
led
them
to
local,
experiment with
the two-dimensional format established in the Peten. Ultimately
although perhaps
132
hit
upon originally bv experimentation with the
113. Powerful
in
the s
un Ubah
Miown
my Maya "e
monuments K
of
,iwil
emphasize and enhance the face
itself,
with overall stocky
proportions.
presentation on incensarios, a format of low-relief representation
enhanced by an isolated three-dimensional face became the
dominant one
at
Quirigua. Slightly more yielding than
the
limestone of the Peten, the red sandstone of Quirigua provided
a
medium that allowed this enhancement of the human face. At nearby Copan, workers discovered that the volcanic they quarried from the
hills
when
yielded easily to the chisel
taken from the ground but then hardened
in
the
air.
tuff first
With such
easily shaped rock, they carved elaborate programs of architectural
ornament while nevertheless preserving the
stela tradition.
By
the sixth century they were carving massive, disproportionately
leggy sculptures, with three-dimensional yet
still
relief of
head and arms,
held fast by the prismatic shaft of the stone
itself.
By the
eighth century the prism melted away as the sculptors instead freed profoundly lifelike sculptures.
kings had just been frozen
in
Many
time on the
appeal- as pla/.a,
if
oversized
formally posed.
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114.
When Cauac Sky captured
Waxaklahun Ubah Copan, he sought
K'awil of
to replicate his
enemy's great plaza. The Quirigua
was
result at
a powerful plaza,
occupied by towering stelae (here Stela D, erected in ad
depict the king
in
766)
that
the guise of
various gods.
with fully-formed feet obliquely planted to support the full regalia.
Copan achieved sculptural glory with the production of the stelae that celebrate
Waxaklahun Ubah
eighth century, and that
still
738, the king of Quirigua took
and then, back
at
K'awil's reign in the early
dot the principal plaza today. But
Waxaklahun Ubah K'awil
Quirigua, beheaded him. At mid-century, fueled
by their prowess, Quirigua erected a potent in
place the tallest
Maya
—and
that
stela
woven mat,
for
program, setting
group of sculptures ever made by the Classic
still
form
a
Quirigua "skyline" today. So
Quirigua stelae mimic the subjects of Copan a
in
captive,
—
example
that
—
many
a text presented as
one wonders whether the Copan
sculptors themselves weren't captured along with the king and
i:n
forced to create the program.
Only
later in the eighth
century
1
would Quirigua sculptors bring an original format form
in
the
ars have
can
ing of several-ton river boulders into
what schol-
dubbed "zoomorphs," characterized by Zoomorph
example, w here one of the last kings a
to its fullest
sits within the open
for
I*.
mouth of
great turtle-like creature.
The
usual artistic response to defeal on the field
is
Palenque or Tikal, foreign wars brought production still.
So, too, at Copan.
Kami's demise, all
silence: at
to a stand-
But within a feu years ol Waxaklahun Ubah had commissioned the grandest of
lus successor
sculptural programs, the
lieroglyphic Stairway, featuring over
1
2000 carved glyph blocks and
six seated lords, all in celebration
the very stability and order of Copan.
The
effort
was an
Maya
visual erasure of the Quirigua attack. Across the
of
effective
realm.
hieroglyphic stairways celebrate defeat and subjugation, often
executed by freshly captured slaves and
Copan Stairway so unusual
is
artists.
What makes
that the architectural
the
metaphor of
115. Quirigua sculptors must
have ordered great boulders
to
be moved from the Motagua River to Quirigua,
carved
where they were
in situ.
Zoomorph P
the staircase for
is
turned on
its
head,
becoming
a
statement instead
freedom and continuity. The recent decipherment of the
Stairway and
its
excavation
let
us see that the
Maya
could take old
depicts one of the city's last kings,
sculptural forms and formats, and particularly during the eighth
emerging from the mouth
century, manipulate
great turtle, perhaps
of a
reenactment of the rebirth of the Maize God.
them for new meaning.
In this re-invention
we
in
can also see some clues to the innovation that takes place north, particularly at Chichen Itza. beginning
in
in
the
the eighth century.
135
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—
Chapter 6:
Sculpture of the North: the Art of
Yucatan and Chichen
Maya
Yucatan
art of
— and
Itza
Chichen
that of
Itza in particular
developed along a somewhat different trajectory from the art of the southern lowlands and with a distinctly different timeline.
Although Maya
art ceased to be
made
altogether, the end of the millennium
the north, and the
making of Maya
to the south after
was
a rich
and
AD 900 time in
art continued unabated until
the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. in
fruitful
It
was, after
all,
Yucatan that Bishop Lancia met with local elders to record their
writing system.
The
sculptural media of the south
standing stela especially north,
—adapted
—and the
free-
to local conditions in
the
where the raw materials were of a different order and where
the very environment of scrub tropical rainforest differs from the
high-canopy deep rainforest of the south. Time and ethnicity also played a role, so that continuities with the south can be seen
widespread carving of stone stelae Yucatec Maya), the discontinuity
in far
The study
hilly
of,
Puuc
in
the
(literally "hills" in
region to the west, with innovation and
greater evidence
at
Chichen
Itza.
of the art of Yucatan has also differed from that of
the southern lowlands.
sculpture
in the
say,
Whereas recent
investigations of the
Palenque have been driven by hieroglyphic
decipherment, the northern monuments bear laconic texts,
if
any.
This makes the sort of personal and local historical interpretation that has fueled the study of southern lowland art difficult, if not
impossible.
And Yucatan
sculptors
century to the years
—from the
fifth
had
a different quality of limestone available to
just before the
rock they worked on both resisted fine detail then gave
it
up
to the
elements
in
earliest efforts in
Spanish invasion
the
in
them. the
The porous
first
place and
the second. Best preserved are
those sculptures that were three-dimensional
in
their format.
conceived as architectural ornament, or planned for an interior location
—
a description that in fact describes
many of the works at
Chic-hen Itza. Additionally, whereas the high-canopy rainforest long shield-
— and thus — the
ed the southern lowland architecture from scrutiny focused attention on the freestanding sculptures
136
architec-
ture of the north has always stood out against the scrub forest. The
a
role in the
Exposition sored
a
of the north early on began toplaj
but not the art
architecture
modern imagination: for the 1893 Worlds Columbian in
Chicago, the meat-packing magnate
Armour
spon-
campaign of great cast-making of architectural facades of
Yucatan and they played
a
prominent role at the
fair.
So while architectural studies of the north flourished, studies of its sculpture have often foundered. Northern sculpture operates
on different terms from Classic sculpture of the south.
Some of its
characteristics include flamboyant and exaggerated poses thai
enhance
when viewed from
legibility, particularly
a
distance. Its
impulse to three-dimensionality infused new energy into sculp-
programs. Processional
tural
m\
ite
the viewer to
scribed paths. sculpture,
jambs,
become
More
a
friezes,
and
at
Chichen
Itza,
move along
specifically architectural than other
Campeche and Yucatecan
lintels,
common
participant and to
pre-
Maya
sculptures occur as door
built-in wall panels, both making- the buildings
permanently populated and emphasizing particular ideologies.
The dating of northern sculpture has long been problematic, Kow alski on Puuc architecture and sculp-
but recent work by Jeff
ture makes a convincing case for dating most of it to the eighth and
ninth centuries.
Chichen
Itza,
More
controversial are renewed efforts to redate
and to interpret
one, rather than extending for first
the
its
entire time frame as a shallow
many
centuries. Charles Lincoln
posited Chichen Itza's overlap with the Late Classic period
in
Puuc and among the southern lowlands, rather than seeing the
Chichen florescence as
a unique, early Postclassic
phenomenon,
and recent Maya hieroglyphic decipherment bolsters the case
for
the earlier dating. For the purposes of this chapter, the apogee of
Chichen
will
be assigned to the ninth and tenth centuries.
Although sometimes
called the
Terminal
Classic, that
term
is
too
redolent of both the forgotten train station and a certain deca-
dence for use here. Simple century assignments
Wars of conquest during the eighth and
will be preferred.
ninth centuries fueled
the economic success of the north at the expense of the south.
Populations flowed toward the north, perhaps as the result of direct enslavement, but also possibly for economic opportunity, for
surely the construction of such remarkable centers required vast
amounts of skilled
labor.
Uxmal's ceremonial precinct draws on
city like Palenque's for its plan, but its galleries
elaborate mosaic
ornament would appear
precedents of distant Copan.
a
and palaces with
to have
drawn on the
They may have developed
their low-
slung architectural styles simultaneously, but even the wide-
1H7
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— Maya —personified mountain —masks would appear
spread use of curly-nosed Chaak
Wits
prototype
new
in early
the
god
rain
—and
to have its
eighth-century Copan architecture. Because of
patterns of migration, the greatest influences on the north
come from
seem
to have
south
—Copan —or
cities.
The impulse
west
the
—
Maya
peripheries,
to three-dimensionality seen at
other sites to a lesser degree achieves
Chichen
Itza.
whether
to the
from the Usumacinta
particularly
Copan and
richest florescence at
its
The leggy proportions that take hold at Chichen and
elsewhere last appeared
in the
south on monumental sculpture
in
seventh-century Copan, and the frontality that the north so fluidly
experiments with also characterizes much Copanec sculpture.
Sculpture ofthe Puuc region
At Uxraal,
a
well-developed sculptural tradition dovetails with
that of the late eighth century in the
Usumacinta lowlands.
Standing figures hold copal bags, engage
in scattering
A
kling rituals, or stand atop hapless captives.
demarcates the scenes of most monuments, a
in
or sprin-
border clearly
many cases forming
roof over the protagonists. About 900, the lords of Stela
14 both adopt huge feather adornments,
more
hat-like than
headdresses, and on Stela 14, the hat includes a cutaway
Maya rain
Chaak, the
Although
little
1 1
and
most
mask of
god, which hangs in front of the king's face.
remains today, such be-hatted figures worked
in
three dimensions were once featured on the front facades of some principal palace buildings, the
West Building of the Nunnery and
on the House of the Governor among them. But whereas the
Nunnery
The
figures once sat, the stela figures are generally active.
ruler on Stela 14
bringing it In
in front
some
his
respects Stela 14
dizes the ruler, setting in
lifts
weapon high with
his left hand,
of his headdress, in a daring pose. is
a
conventional
effort:
it
aggran-
him atop a two-headed jaguar throne which
turn rests above two mirror-like captives (with yet a third
tucked behind), their genitalia explicitly exposed
But with a complexity of composition rare
in
in humiliation.
monumental
art,
it
also reveals the ideology that this powerful local lord sought to
promote.
Up
above him, an ancestor's deified head gazes down,
framed by two diminutive, floating Paddlers, the gods
of
life
to another,
figures.
These
floaters are the
who ferry the Maya Maize God from one stage and who occur on Maya ceramics and in the
upper margins of very
late Classic stelae at
Tikal and elsewhere.
Here the Paddlers may well carry the ancestor as harvested maize. But what renews the Maize
138
God
is
human
sacrifice: at the
base of
ii6
116
SI
Uvmal. decked out of
Chj.
adouL-
The Paddler
guar throne. c
.• .
ttv
humiliated car'
the
monument, the humiliated
captives provide that sacrifice to
the Underworld, rendered here as the "black hole," and inscribed like a giant
glyph around their naked bodies.
So embedded tional stela
is
in
course be the case
Maya much
what seems
to be a florid version of a conven-
— which
actually a suppressed narrative in
other instances as well.
A
may
of
knowledgeable
audience needed only a few cues to see the entire narrative, as a crucifix can initiate the story of Jesus in a Christian
viewer's mind. For the Maya, the story of the Maize
God was
the
heart of their religion, and his growth, flourishing, and decapitation followed the agricultural cycle. His sons, the
Hero Twins,
139
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bring him back to
life
from the Underworld, whereupon the
Paddlers convey him to the 117, 118. Maya sculptures,
such as Tzum Stela
1 (left) of
Yucatan, emphasize the ideology of the
—
constant renewal
117
and recreation, from which the cycle begins once again. The base
118
site
from nearby Tzum,
of Stela
1
features
young Maize Gods,
of creation
like that
this
a
of Stela
1,
Bonampak,
also
time springing out of the Wits
Maize God and frequently
depict the king as
young maize
reborn from the stony earth, a subject
more elaborately
portrayed at
Bonampak,
southern lowlands
monster, indicating personified rock. At Xkulok, three lintels featuring Maize
in
Sculptured Columns, frontal
Maize Gods that face downwards invisible until
re-creation of their apotheosis.
warrior dress:
prowess that releases the Maize Gods and
Northern sculpture often bears only do figures
in
it
may be
sets
them
21;
Edzna
registers.
140
a vivid sense of narrative.
general take active postures
one steps
in a vivid
in
overhead.
warriors support carved lintels of
doorway,
Columns
doorway are two sculptured
columns, each featuring a frontal lord their
119. At Xkulok's Building of the
into the
the doorways of the Sculptured
the
(right).
and are
Gods span
Building. Supporting the principal
Stela 6), but
many
(e.g.
Not
Oxkintok Stela
stelae are laid out with three specific
Compositions featuring registers also occur
in
the
119
southern lowlands, but generally onl} tury and into the ninth,
The
just
register, ol course,
gram
like that
is
at
the end oi the eighth cen-
when they also take hold
an essentia] feature
ol
of the Bonampak murals (Chapter
in
the north.
complex pro-
.1
s
With
three
separate frames, often separated by text, such compositions on
northern stelae are keenly similar hooks,
like,
for
registers on most, although not
may
all,
present a king at top, with his individual
that
because
lie
is
10 the
pages of surviving Maya
example, the Dresden Codex which features three
is
the
most
of its pages. Oxkintok Stela 2
war captain at
prominent
the local lord represented.
Piedras Negras Stela
12,
]
(enter, although
perhaps
individual
The composition of
probably from the same period, includes
some of the same elements,
102
hut successfully integrates them, uni-
fying the war captains helow their lord
in a
single scene, w ithout
the presentation of three separate registers. \V\ ertheless, one can easily
imagine the wholeofthe Piedras Negras
such
compartmentalized framework.
a
One of the most Masks of Kabah, interior room.
stela
den\ ingfrom
elaborate buildings of the north, the
also features elaborate
Each jamb presents two
I
louse of
47
door jambs that frame an
scenes: above, apparently a
121
dance between victorious warriors, and below, their domination of an abject captive.
One
protagonist wears an elaborate woven
(Chapter
7)
and distinctive face markings, indicating
mosaic mask or perhaps the sort of tattooing found on
120. Stela 21
at
Oxkintok
a
gold or
at least
two
is
divided into three separate registers but
bound together by
a
twisted cord frame that unites the
scenes. top
may
An
ancestral figure on
sprinkle offerings onto
the central register figure, a striding warrior, while
perform a dynastic
two
ritual
lords
on a
throne, at bottom.
121. Door jambs from Kabah present a sequence of warfare
and dance. Following success in
taking captives, rendered on
the lower half of the
monument,
the victors dance on the upper half. Distinctive scarification,
face paint, and jewelry
mark
the protagonists, indicating that the in
same
victors
appear
each scene.
141
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138
w arriors
sleeveless jerkin, often characteristic of Jaina figurine
206
122. One of two nearly identical stone heads, about
50 cm
high,
features the tattooed or scarified lord of
ill.
121. The eyes once
held shell or obsidian inlay.
great heads from Kabah, probably portraits of this same man.
Unlike any other Puuc sculptures, the figures overlie elaborate
background scrollwork and heads, similar to the device used Great Ballcourt sculpture
The widespread
at
Chichen
use of the column in the north lent itself to
processions and continuous compositions, and
from the formats
in the
Itza.
common
to ceramic vessels.
some
With
surely derive its
bejeweled
dwarf, elegant musicians, and attendant lord, the column of
Champoton,
for
example, suggests the luxury of courtly
life.
Like
many painted vessels, the column's composition is closed, with figures
142
who all
face
toward the dancing dwarf, and not continuous.
.
Champoton. Cam| reminis.
painted Sitting
i.
anenthv •pets.
«?
/
v-..
-rirrisu
~
••••
x -.
".
,
^-
•..
;
feJ
tasi
IgfX &J
W%m*
Chicken Itza
While ed
their neighbors to the west
monuments
lowlands, the Itza sacred
city.
and south
built cities
and erect-
that emulated the sacred practices of the southern
The
Maya at Chichen
Itza
probably not the dominant Unfortunately, most
Itza constructed a
came from the
Maya
new kind of
south, although they were
of the older southern
cities.
modern knowledge of this period depends on
Colonial sources from Yucatan, rather than epigraphy or archaeology, and so
it
has been hard to sort out just what the Itza were
doing prior to arriving
at
Chichen. In Yucatan, the Itza married
into local lineages; after the
fall
of Chichen, the Itza were to go
back to the Peten, where they remained free of Spanish domination into the seventeenth century.
Chichen Itza was perceived
to be a capital without rival, a
Tollan, or a "place of cattail reeds."
The concept was
widely held
in
Mesoamerica, and may also have been of great antiquity: the Aztecs considered their capital the Toltecs before
Until
AD TOO or
Teotihuacan,
in
city,
them believed
so,
Tenochtitlan to be Tollan, and
their capital, Tula, to be Tollan.
the reigning Tollan of Mesoamerica was
at
Central Mexico. In their day, both Tikal and
143
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Copan may have been known
as Tollans, but their
by AD 800. With the demise of Teotihuacan the weakening of southern
Chichen, and
Maya
in
cities,
day was setting
Central Mexico and
new
came
lords
one of the most elaborate programs of
in
art
to
and
architecture ever devised in Mesoamerica, described the divine
charter that gave them right to rule. Simultaneously, the Toltecs built their capital at Tula, Hidalgo,
to share art
and architectural
and the two powerhouses came
Whether Tula was
styles.
the domi-
nant partner remains unknown.
Although the Chichen lords may have manipulated the jade and gold trades, providing themselves with an unprecedented eco-
nomic
base, the story of public art
speaks only of divine charter.
The
and architecture
to seamlessly incorporate the ideology of Central
Maya, making their city one of the greatest
tural narratives
Chichen
in all
Mexico and the
Mesoamerica.
Lower and Upper Temple of
In detailed registers in the
Jaguars, as well as the
at
lords of Chichen were the first
the
North Temple of the Great Ballcourt, sculp-
engaging vast numbers of individuals would seem
to tell the tale of the city's divine charter, with the
complex and
dense paintings of the Upper Temple spelling out the sacred wars that put
lords in power.
its
The
story told would seem to be a cos-
mic one, the vast numbers of the defeated recalling both the mass interment
at the
mass slaughter
Temple of Quetzalcoatl would take place
that
at
Teotihuacan and the
late in the fifteenth-century
dedicationof the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan.
Very low
Temple of
relief
carvings line the interior walls of the Lower
the Jaguars and the
North Temple. Individual
were assembled and then probably carved light coat of paint. In the
in situ,
slabs
before receiving a
Lower Temple of the Jaguars, the
sculp-
tors relate the creation story once again, with the role of the Itza
Maya
evident.
At the North Temple, elaborate
rituals
accompany
the seating of the Itza rulers, including auto-sacrifice, ballgame,
and hunting.
The
six
massive sculptural panels lining the Great Ballcourt
recount the aftermath of victories of Chichen lords:
it is
this suc-
cess in warfare that leads to the reenactment of the narrative and that
would seem
to resurrect the
time and again, right at the
site
door jambs from Kabah, scrolls ing
at
Maize Gods from the crevice
of the ballcourt. Like the warrior fill
the background, but suggest-
Chichen swirls of blood and smoke, or moisture-laden
clouds, like those ofYaxchilan Lintel 25.
Contrary
World Wars
/
//
modern myth
to the I
and
II
that
was established between
and promulgated by generations of on-site
guides and guidebooks, losers," the e> idence
who
\\
the "w inners" were sacrificed
greal ball,
a
may
the center
o\'
give
is
that
is
it
is
l>\
the losers
no progression here, only
a
inventor} of six greal sacrifices. Each sacrifice takes place
skull halls
it
gaping skull described on the surface. These
a
us that the
tell
Maya
some bounce. Other
such racks
in
recycled the
human
skull to
the rubber ball, thus forming a hollow that
Tzompantli, or Skull rack,
skulls
would
m
were deposited
just outside the court,
the
one of the earliest
Mesoamcrica.
Although scholars have construction phases that
huh
these grisly panels
suffer decapitation. l>ut there
statu-
over
in
in
any time depth
at is
tried to develop credible
Chichen
Itza, the best
more than two
limited to no
sequences for
answer currently
that differences in artistic style can be explained by the
subjects, or by multi-ethnic populations at
Linnea
Wrenn and
rificial
stone, imaginatively
the
Peter Schmidt rediscovered
formed
a
is
centuries, and
city.
varying
Recently,
huge carved sac-
as a ball lodged in a ballcourt
ring. Its indisputable date records 864,
and the imagery has con-
firmed the stylistic coincidence of the lanky lords inside S-shaped rattlesnakes during the ninth century. This sculpture anchors the
imagery that has long seemed very "late" (some scholars have even
wanted
to read
Chichen
Itza as an
immediate prelude
to the
Aztecs) to specific first-millennium dates.
Yet
if
we think of Chichen
Itza as the effort of less than ten gen-
erations, then the concentrated
energy of the
quite astonishing, for eyerywhere the city 124.
On each
of the Great
Ballcourt panels of Chichen
program
is
or both. All Chichen Itza sculptures were carved
in situ,
and the
Itza,
victorious players face their
defeated foes. At center, a single loser
artistic
was carved or painted,
very process of production must have skilled laborers.
filled
the city every day with
Across the main plaza from the ballcourt, dozens
has been decapitated;
the oversized
human
skull.
ball
features a
of columns and piers were caryed, forming the colonnade of the
Temple of the Warriors and
in front
the so-called Mercado. Carved
145
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benches establish the format that would be replicated time and again, right
up
Spanish Conquest of the Aztec capital.
until the
Three-dimensional sculptures
An
impulse to three dimensions thrived
in the north. In the
Puuc
region, figures in flayed skins wield star-shaped maces (Oxkintok)
or
may have supported thrones (Xkulok); enormous erect phallus-
es projected
from walls or were set up in courtyards. But the great-
est success in this regard
categories of sculpture
simultaneously
at
was
seem
at
Chichen
Itza,
where
to have been invented.
entirely
new
Many appear
Tula, Hidalgo.
Chief among the new sculptural forms
at
Chichen are the chac-
mools, serpent columns, mini-atlanteans, and standard bearers,
of which become omnipresent
chacmool
—
literally "great
in
the buildings of rulership.
or red jaguar"
—was
all
The
so dubbed in the
workmen of adventurer Augustus Le Plongeon, and the term has come to mean all sculptures of reclining figures with the head at 90 degrees, who hold a vessel for offering on the belly. The local workers who coined the term may have
nineteenth century by the
retained
some ancient
lore of a buried red jaguar, although surely
one could not have mistaken the reclining chacmool figure jaguar. Nevertheless, at least
Chichen Peniche's
Itza,
men
and
it
came
for a
one red jaguar throne was buried to light in
1936,
stepped into the chamber
at
when
at
Jose Erosa
the top of the "fossil"
temple buried so pristinely within the Castillo, where the visible temple of today encases a hidden one. In
had been sealed 125.
(right)
With their consistent
reclining postures faces, the
Chichen
and
frontal
chacmool sculptures
Itza recall
some
of
captive
Maya stelae, and they may symbolize fallen warriors. panels of
126. (opposite) Archaeologists found a completely preserved earlier building,
chacmool Castillo.
its
throne and
intact, buried within the
The chacmool holds
a
disk for offerings; a ruler would
have presided from the red jaguar throne
on
its
in
the background, sitting
turquoise-studded
tezcatcuitlapilli, a Toltec mirror
back known from Central Mexico.
/
W
in place
with
its
fact,
the red jaguar throne
accompanying chacmool, and the
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two sculptural forms usually function together, the throne the seat of rulership and the chacmool the place of offerings to rulership. Eventually, chacmools would be found in
many places, not sur-
prisingly at Tula and even farther to the north; and in recherche
versions created for the Aztec sacred precinct, where Tlaloc (Central Mexican rain god) imagery
is
layered onto the forms.
Consistently, through time and across cultures, the chacmool
seems to function as a locus for offering, the receptacle on the belly for
human
offerings, in all likelihood.
At the same
time, these
chacmools bear the iconography of the Mesoamerican warrior, and the disk they hold up on their
Maize Gods, where
bellies
is
akin to the disk held by
the point of renewal and self-replication.
it is
Jade plaques hurled into the Sacred Cenote depict Maize
who
hold just such disks.
Maize Gods
is
The out
spelled
Gods
relationship between warriors and at
Xkulok:
the
chacmool may
concentrate such ideology into the body of a single figure,
furthermore making of
it
indicates ritual function to
After the decline of Chicken
Chichen
the sort of liturgical furniture that
all
comers.
Itzii
world of so many high-status individuals suffered
Itza's
such cataclysm around the end of the millennium that, after that
nothing was
point, almost
scarce ceramics fired.
grimage
built,
few sculptures made, and only
With Chichen
Itza only surviving as a pil-
point, if new theories are correct, both the southern
the northern lowlands supported
developments
in the
200 years before the
little elite activity,
Guatemala highlands lagged arrival of the Spaniards.
and
and even the
until the final
When
works made
after such cultural collapse are called "decadent," the observer
bound
to deprecate the efforts. In fact,
archaeologists
century
is
if
the pause
is
as
is
long as
now think it was, then the renewal in the thirteenth
remarkable, a revival of ancient traditions that survived
some very grim times
indeed. In the thirteenth century cities like
Mayapan, Tulum, and even Santa Rita sprang
to
life,
supporting
the lively culture that Bishop Landa witnessed and described in the mid-sixteenth century.
An
exploratory mission under the leadership of Juan de
Grijalva spotted coastal
Tulum
in
1517 and identified
it
as a trad-
ing hub. Prevented by the massive coral reef from venturing close to shore,
he nevertheless waxed eloquent over what he saw.
comparing
it
to far-off Seville.
Tulum
is
best
known today
for its
diminutive architecture and elaborate paintings, both described
in
other chapters; two seventh-century stelae probably came there as
/
is
.
•\irking
128. Stela
1
at
260
\
Mayapan
depicts
a pair of figures inside a thatched shrine. This concept of stela as
"house"
may have been
present
—Copan's
generations before J
Stela
also had a stone thatch "roof."
tribute or perhaps as booty
Tulum
lords
may have
from
insisted on
sought to stop and drink from In their
Mayapan
a Classic site
its
—
exactly what the
from the passing traders who
freshwater springs.
prominent town west of Chichen
Itza, the lords
of
systematically sought to draw on the past. At their
order, laborers hauled pieces of sculptural facades from the
Puuc
region; radial pyramids replicated Chichen's Castillo. In forging their
own
tradition,
dimensional forms, tradition.
sculptors turned to both three-
and stone, as well as
a
renewed
stela
Large and small ceramic sculptures present single
many
deities,
Mayapan
in clay
associated
with agricultural
and
fertility,
the
widespread "diving" gods from the period offer tamales or corn
Mayapan
masa. Stone turtles at
register the count of katuns, the
twenty-year periods celebrated on
UJ^l
J-J~-[_JL
southern lowlands, particularly
human
sacrifice
may have been
at
the
round
altars
of the
Tonina and Caracol: poles
fitted into their backs.
The
for
stelae
configure the carved face as a house or shrine, the text forming the roof,
and with gods within.
presented a standing
ruler,
A
single standing stela
may have
but the sculpture has taken such a
battering over the years that no other detail can be determined. Little
Spanish
Maya
sculpture can be attributed to the time of the
invasion,
some
but
Chichen's Sacred Cenote -
/—
fiber,
mm m
cloth and resins
all
may
perishable
materials
well belong to the era.
offer
offered
to
Wood and
testimony of both practices and
*
i-^—
J----J.*-
art-making that may have lingered into the Colonial period.
Under Spanish
rule, particularly in
wrought remarkable wooden textiles.
Throughout
the
Guatemala, Maya carvers
saints and
Maya
region,
adorned them with native
wood carving remains an
important tradition today.
149
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—
Chapter
7:
The Human Form
Maya art, the human form is omnipresent, whether in represenhumans. What makes that human form so appealing to the modern eye is the seeming naturalism of Maya In
tations of gods or of
representation. Figures
another
in
on people,
sit,
kneel, hold objects, or touch one
ways that are astonishingly
lifelike.
as well as the things people do, has
And
the emphasis
made Maya art seem
approachable.
The main
subject of monumental
most featured representation
is
Maya art is the king, and the person so much so that
—
his royal
many Maya stelae depict only the king and narrate only his deeds. Even when the featured representation on a monument is not the king himself, either the nature of the depiction or the text relates that individual to the king. sibilities
to
it,
When one goes beyond the limited pos-
of stone sculpture and the sort of weight that was given
however,
many
other
elite individuals
—
surely
the royal family but also merchants, priests, and
were able
129. Often rendered as
Monkey Scribes shown hard at work,
grotesques, the are usually
writing, painting, or carving.
an
artist
may
Here
with a quick and free line
indicate that the
writing could have
like a great spatula,
exaggerated
left
hand
for
been bound; an
hand supports
a jaguar-covered book.
150
to
commission
their
own
depiction in
many from
war captains art.
One might
130.
0'-
cups withe*' body;
pelav;
id
Hunj
vnjng
and handson
the with
Maize God.
think this
is
logical, if
economic wherewithal
only because they were the ones with the to
do
so.
I
lowever,
among
the Aztecs
many
representations of rulers survive, but essentially no representations of Other nobles, so the
same
situation did not
emerge among
that later civilization.
Additionally,
had human of the
form.
some of the most powerful Maya supernaturals
Human
perfection was
Maya Maize God, whose
summed up
in
the shape
representation as full-grown male
youth included a strong, taut body, smooth
skin,
and luxuriant
The Hero Twins, demigods who could exert their powers a plane with mortals and among the gods, also took idealized young male form. Their half-brothers, the Monkey Scribes, took grotesque but recognizable human form in most cases. Many tresses.
130
both on
/.;/
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129
—
the Maya pantheon Itzamnah, Chaak, and K'inich among them were anthropomorphic, but with specialized nonhuman facial features: Itzamnah and K'inich always feature square
members of
—
eyes,
and the latter's are always crossed; even K'awil, whose face
based on a serpent and one of whose legs ends features a
in a
is
serpent head,
human torso and arms.
Over the period of a few hundred years, the Maya mastered the skills to
poses. ural
render these divine and
The Maya came
poses
human forms for a number of pur-
to represent both
—overlapping
gods and humans
in nat-
one another, reaching out to one
another's bodies, and in a variety of positions, from sitting and
standing to playing the drums or playing the rubber ballgame.
Mastering such representation was no small matter: no other civi-
131.
On
artist
wrapped the two-
Stela 1, the fifth-century
dimensional carving of a Tikal king around three sides of the
monument. While the posture remains figures
static,
king's
small
on the sides are animated.
152
lization in
Maya
Mesoamerica came close
modern world were art to be seen
and only
respect,
this
in
achievement
to the
few
.1
the
oi
civilizations of the pre-
works
their equals. In fact, the firsl
Maya
oi
by Europeans so astonished them thai they quickly
Maya
led to the appellation of the ancient
the
.is
"(
.inks of the
New World." Representing the body
Many
i>\'
perfected
the in
Maya
skills
representation seem to have been
in
the seventh and eighth centuries
development began centuries
their
During
Classic.
that
Maya
period, the
highly conventionalized rendering, as
it
is
known by the mind
in
\\
but the story of
\i>,
during the Early
earlier,
artist
to be, resulting in
completely shown. For example. Stela
(fifth
I
Chan
features the standing king Siyah
made
typically
hich the body a
a
was carved
human form
century) from Tikal
K'awil: in order to include
131
the entire body, the artist renders both legs, parallel but separated
with the slightest of overlap the
the feet; the torso faces front, and
at
arms adopt an almost impossible
upper and lower arms, as well
The head
mittens.
one other than the point
is
as
if
show
they were
in
side, in profile.
Of course no
can actually stand
like this, but
then faces to the
a contortionist
position, in order to
hands drawn as
that the features of the
human body
are complete,
at
least in profile.
But
if
one looks closely
at
the
monument,
the seeds of repre-
sentational change have already been sown. The small figures scale the ritual staves at the
rendered far more
fluidly.
A
seams of the front and jaguar
at
lower
left
who
sides are
Chan
of Siyah
K'awil flexes a lower limb and reveals the inside of a paw, providing
an early signal of foreshortening.
The
paired figure at right rests
languidly on a shiny disk; above, coming out of serpent mouths, small god figures on both
left
and right sides feature legs and arms
almost completely overlapping and torsos resentation.
century,
By
the time this
three-quarters rep-
The presence in
1
for
most conservative style for the
of less conventional representations
minor figures on Stela
the
in
new modes of representation had been adopted
figures, while retaining the
ments
in
monument was made
may have been
fifth
minor
ruler.
among
the
stimulated by develop-
other media that had fewer technical limitations than
stone sculpture. At Rio Azul, during the Early Classic, the art of
making
clay figurines flourished. Their bodies
modeled entirely
by hand, the figures sometimes featured mold-made heads. Delicate hands applied clothing layer by layer and hair
in
strands,
153
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133
yielding life-like figures that adopted natural poses. Even with their standardized faces, the figurines are
engaging
little
humans,
lively in their aspect.
Maya painters may have adopted new modes of representation for pots
On Bonampak
132. (below)
Sculptured Stone
two
(yet with only
1,
three lords
visible feet!)
and walls before
mental sculpture. Few
artists considered
Maya wall paintings
using them on monusurvive at
one major example of Early Classic painting
all
and only
known, but the
is
present their king with a royal
headband. The
king's
arm across
his chest helps retain his center
of gravity
mural from Structure B- 1 3
even as he leans toward
tion that
his nobles.
was
possible.
representation of the 133. (opposite) Shapers of figurines
may have found
for
registers: they are in
more body length
accoutrements and
to
balance
what can be towering figurines
one flourished
such as
at Rio Azul,
costume elements were one
Most
in the
interesting for the purposes of the
human form
shown
are the
many
figures on
two
shifting their weight, one foot off the
energetic exchange with one another, and bodies over-
ground,
in
lapping.
The Maya
human
artist
demonstrates the
figure in motion in the
ability to
this
show
the
Uaxactun mural.
Ultimately, by the height of the Late Classic the
headdresses. Elegant hand-
modeled
Uaxactun, probably made late
lankier
proportions more desirable, order to have
at
Early Classic period, provides a window on the sort of representa-
created representations that featured the
human
Maya
figure the
artist
way
it
where
built
layer at a time.
up
is
seen
by the eye, foreshortened and with overlapping parts, rather
than as the body
Mm H
v
164
is
known. For example, on
Bonampak Sculptured
I hi.
'
,.
.
+*&':&;
•'S'4
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Stone
1,
probably dedicated
in 692, the
enthroned king's legs are
rendered with dramatic and confident foreshortening. is
The
effect
so convincing that the eye does not question the rendering.
seated lords at
left
The
are rendered effectively in profile, the limited
views of their crossed arms suggesting the posture of ease. Additionally, the first of these lords reaches up with a proffered
The frame cuts off part of
headdress, revealing his bulging paunch.
the final figure, but the eye sees each body, head to toe, to be complete:
two
only upon careful scrutiny does one realize that there are just
feet
rendered for three men.
It is as if
visual puzzle that the viewer, the brain
A
late
eighth-century panel
the sculpture were
some
and eye conspire to complete.
at the
Kimbell Art
Museum
fur-
ther refines the possibilities of foreshortening, such that the
human
figures
seem
to
occupy space.
A
victorious warrior pre-
sents three captives to a provincial Usumacinta-region lord, sits
cross-legged upon a throne
titles
—or
moves
his
it
named with
may be the king himself who presides. This lord easily
weight
off-center, to
approach
hand presses into his thigh and the left
134. Just as the war captain right
this
at
reaches up and across on
Kimbell Art
Museum
panel,
so does the line of captives slant
downward from
left
to right, as
reading their demise
in
if
the very
layout of the panel.
156
who
the Yaxchilan king's
is
his underling.
deftly turned.
His right
The center
line of the lord
senting
\\
hose body
The
lord Mis under
swag
curtains, inside
lifted fronl
palace space; the
a
warrior approaches fromjusl outside the palace, one loot .in
approaching
status.
The carving
the panel
o\'
ened emotions w
ith their
kiss or lick dirt
raises his
hand
flesh,
dramatic gestures.
from
his
hand
to his forehead in
panel's frame, yet there
artist
frontal faces in
two-dimensional,
linear formats,
he usually reserved
such or
trials for
secondary
the faces of captives figures,
such as the
humble servant smoking what looks like a cigarette here at a painted cylinder vase.
Maya calendar; may seal a tribute
date of the
negotiation,
presumably
Such
other
at night.
skills in
isual
\
metaphor
hat
The captive at far left
submission, the middle one
seems is
no mistaking the
human
to he a
gesture of woe
severely truncated by the artist's
confidence that
figure.
rendering the human figure became convention-
and thus the range of solutions to both the organization
limited.
initial
and Kneel two
of
the composition and the rendering of an individual figure are
on
He stands
flanking a text that notes the
figures
left
is
w
in
far left
the viewer will see the complete
alized,
sil
these three' captives express height-
and resignation. The captive at 135. Although the Maya
on
very shallow, but the
cut and shredded cloth, a
lav ishly in
and shredded
tor cut
occasionally attempted to render
is
still
grading of social
careful
figures occupy the space effectively, conveying depth.
Draped
may
some very
in
it
Outside the palace chamber, the captives
steps below.
human
step, as
pre-
also poised in motion, his rear foot
is
upon the step and then balanced by the gently
flexed toot.
moves in an arc that leaps across the text to the
arrior,
\\
Some attempts never
reached successful solutions: rear
views of bodies rarely convince the eye, although the
do
this
Bonampak murals; frontal faces (as
Maya tried
with the uppermost captive of the north wall of the
opposed to the high
in strictly
relief of a
Copan
to
Room 2,
two-dimensional media stela)
were
tried
on the
mmwmsm.
157
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l;
Maya pots and on some carvings of
occasional secondary figure on
135
captives at Naranjo and elsewhere. In a
few cases an exceptional
view of the body
quarters
Background Vase. More
managed
to suggest the
artist
developed
a fluid
example, on
for
as,
three-
Black
the
typically, the painters of cylinder vessels
body in
of specific techniques. In a
a
three-quarters view by a handful
number of examples,
the painter leads
the viewer's eye from the frontal, foreshortened crossed-legs to the torso.
To
arrive at a convincing portrayal of a face in profile,
one shoulder drops down, and the other rides it
Although the
seems to be
face
is
up, revealing
here that the turned body
expanse of neck:
in profile, its
an
achieved.
is
three-dimensionality
can be suggested by a single stroke projecting the eyelashes or
brow from the hidden
Turning one hand
side of the face.
to reveal
the palm or the wrist to reveal the ties of its bracelet also enhances
the effect that the figure itself is turning. Despite
handling of the 136. On the Black Background Vase, the
body
in
Maya
artist
captures the
three-quarters view, the
human
figure on
Maya
vases,
what is often
Maya
deft
artists could
also exhibit seemingly reckless disregard for right and left hands,
sometimes reversing them and sometimes painting two of the
same on
a single figure.
subtle torsion evident at the belly.
Despite these
skills,
he has
on the
painted a
left
and a
hand on the
left
foot
meaning no longer
right leg
right
although these features a
Throughout the arm,
may have
retrievable.
human body along
a
Classic period,
Maya
artists
portrayed the
narrow proportional range, with the
the head to that of the body from 1:5 to
1:8,
scale of
the lankier proportions
occurring even during the Earlv Classic when the figures seem shorter because of the heavy adornment with ritual costume.
Proportions of
1:7
and
1:8 are
used nearly universally on painted
ceramics of the Late Classic; squatter proportions on carved tels
may
lin-
derive from the compact and compressed format of that
sculptural form. Reflecting their shorter stature,
women
rarely
stand more than seven headlengths to the body
Maya ceramic
sculptors also
came
to use a slightly shorter
proportional system, with most figures standing about six or
seven headlengths. Faces often receive the greatest emphasis,
along with headdress, and some bodies are simply rendered. Proportionally very large feet provided a standing figure with the
means of staying
upright.
Some
figures
were modeled entirely by
hand, with a separate mold-made face often added and then detailed by hand;
Maya
some figures were made entirely in molds.
figurines
made during the Late Classic reveal
a far
more
extensive range of activities and emotions than monumental sculpture.
Most of
the figurines
known come from
the island of
Jaina, a burial island off the coast of Campeche, but fine quality fig-
urines were
158
made
at
Palenque and
at
Rio Azul during the Late
isfi
Classic as well. as
Some portray the nobles of the court, often dressed
warriors or ballplayers; others explicitly depict
Moit' female figures are rendered as figurines than
medium, suggesting
iIi.h
.1
Maya in
gods.
any other
broader clientele m.i\ have commis
sioned or purchased the figures.
137. The Maya considered Chaak Chel to be a old midwife
infants
and brought on destructive
floods at the latter
to the
woman warrior, the who both delivered end
world— the
of the
perhaps thought
of as akin
unstoppable flow
amniotic
fluid.
of
As with many other
Jaina figurines, she retains brilliant
that
tenacious blue pigment
was
applied after
firing.
159
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Arms in motion, this armed for war or the hunt. The deer headdress also characterizes some 138.
(right)
Jaina figure
is
ballplayers, as
he wears on
does the padding
his left
thick feet helped
stand
upon
arm. Large,
such
a figure
a dirt floor.
139. (opposite) Although the joined bodies of this
were formed their faces
in
amorous
pair
a single mold,
and headdresses were
finished with exquisite care by
hand, as was the woman's outstretched arm, her willing
embrace belying her coy
lack of
interest. Substantial feet
helped
keep Jaina figurines upright;
many have their
whistles worked into
backs and shoulders
(ill.
1).
Working
in pliable clay, the artist successfully
mastered the
stooped posture of age in a figurine of Chaak Chel, the old midwife
goddess of the Maya.
A woman warrior, she A male warrior
also prepares to
attack, her shield at her side.
stands poised
movement,
a
Dressed
his
in a
grasping hands once having held
hunter of men. His serene expression
—
is
frozen for
all
time
—perhaps due
to the
molded
A
pair of
belies his aggressive stance.
ballplayers at the National
City
now-lost spear.
deer headdress, this figure may be a hunter as well as a
construction of the face
in
Museum
137
in
138
of Anthropology in Mexico
dramatic postures, an imaginary
ball
between them. But some figurines reveal expressions
—and
actions
—
rarely
Maya art. Probably about a dozen examples feature a young woman and old man embracing or a woman and a rabbit, or other beast! An example at the Detroit Institute of Arts was seen
in
—
160
139
made with three molds, one for each head and one for the
probably
conjoined bodies and then finished with added detail and brilliant
woman si. ins impassively into the distance, man leers directly at her, as if in hope of some reaction as his hand slides along her leg, lifting her skirt above the knee. The very pigments. While the the old
same mold may have been used pair at
Dumbarton Oaks,
t<>
fashion the bodies of a similar
but this tunc the artist used different
heads and oriented them toward one another, so thai the viewer reads a loving sexual intensity in the couple.
Throughout dered
in
ways
seem
But the rendering of the direction
at
and other
human
the Late Classic the
that
to the
modern eye
human form
figure could be ren-
to be truly naturalistic.
takes a sharp turn in another
the end of the period. In the ninth century,
satellites
of Chichen
rendered neither as
it
is
human form
It/a, the
known nor
as
it
the
is scc/i,
at
I
lalakal
started to he
two modes of
representation that had previously informed representation of the body. Artists rendered the three figures on
panel from
a
with legs that do not line up with their upper bodies, as
I
lalakal
if one
team
of artists started carving from the bottom, another team from the
and then
top,
failed to
meet
in
the middle.
Ninth- and tenth-century Chichen Itza sculpture developed highly conventionalized forms of representation for
monumental
sculpture.
—
particularly
These conventions required
that the
legs be in profile, parallel, and overlapping above the knees. All faces are in profile,
and torsos may be represented
frontally. Artists rarely
in profile
ing of arms and legs. Figures often seem weightless and
may
float off their
ings. Postures
groundlines, as they do
vary
or
used foreshortening and show no model-
little
in
Chichen
to figure on
from figure
in fact
Itza paint-
most monu-
ments, creating the sense of corporate identity rather than
human forms.
individual
Physiognomy andportraiture Like other Mesoamerican peoples, the
Maya
idealized youthful
male beauty and particularly the handsome, unblemished face of the
Maize God. For the Maya, Maize God theology was complex:
the Maize
God was
the father of the
Hero Twins and Monkey
Scribes; he also personified the yearly agricultural cycle, the
renewal and death of plants. But
ground maize dough bility
to fashion
of ideal beauty attainable for
Most
in addition,
human all
beings,
other gods took
making
the possi-
noble humans.
human face in Maya art focus on The face of the Maize God was understood to be
representations of the
this ideal beauty.
161
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140. The Maya Maize God
embodied human his tapering
prominent nose tresses,
perfection, from
forehead and
where
to his luxuriant
a thick
also guaranteed an
head
of hair
abundant
maize crop. His hands gently the foliage of the maize
wave,
like
plant.
Once tenoned
into the
cornice of Structure 22, Copan, the Maize
God would have
seemed
grow organically from
to
the building
itself.
growing ear of maize,
the
still
on the
stalk.
The Maize God
has
flawless facial features, but he also has abundant straight hair that
Maya understood
the 141. A staircase
27
at
riser,
Monument
Tonina positions the aged
profile of
the captive to be trod on
time and again.
Few humans
ever
to be like luxuriant corn silk.
On
silk
—or luxuriant
Structure 22,
at
hair
— signaled bounty and
plenty.
At the top of
Copan, Maize Gods were tenoned into the cornice,
feature the telltale signs of aging; that this captive
does may be part
of his visual humiliation.
the maize
plant, every kernel sends out a single strand, so luxuriant corn
vivid symbols of the abundance guaranteed by the king
stand
162
in
the
doorway below.
who would
An ear ofmaize grows long and narrow, tapering to a point. In Maya sought tins same line, a continuous line
their profiles, the
from the nose
forehead and then tapering nearly to
to the
Most noble Maya underwent head deformation infants: strapped to their cradleboards, their
shaped
to
as
still sofl
.1
point
newborn
crania were
give them long, tapering foreheads. Sculptures
Palenque indicate
some Maya
that
bridge of the nose so that the line from forehead would be
heads of both King Itzamnah Balam Yaxchilan Lintel 2
1-,
head through which
tip
of the nose to top of the
continuous and nearly straight
a
and
II
his wife,
The
line.
Lady Xok, on
aspire to tins ideal, as does their hair it
is
.11
lords affixed something to the
threaded
the
the center of the forehead
at
9
God
emulates the Maize God's usual hairstyle. lake the Maize
himself, such portrayals of Maya nobility never indicate aging, hut
only vibrant youth.
At the same time that the Maya idealized the Maize God, they also sought to emulate some aspects of the sun god, K'inich. Unlike
the
Maize God, K'inich never features
a
human
face:
large, squared eyes with the pupils crossed. Additionally, his 142. Maya
artists
pleasure
drawing God L
broadly,
in
took great
emphasizing
his toothless
mouth, sagging face, pointy chin,
and hunched shoulders.
In
the
60
he always has
front teeth are filed into the shape of a capital letter T.
upper
The Maya
incorporated these two aspects of his physiognomy into the noble persona. First of
all, at
the
same time
were
that babies' foreheads
reshaped, mothers often dangled a bead over babies' faces so that
north, artists frequently adapted his
image
to
door jambs and
entryway columns, where he
their eyes
many
would become permanently crossed. And secondly,
adult males filed their four upper front teeth into the shape
wearily supports the building.
This example
is
probably from
Santa Rosa, Xtampak.
of the T. Additionally,
some
lords added jade inlay: an ideal smile
may have featured both cut teeth and dark green spots. In contrast to these ideals, the Maya may well have viewed protruding forehead as one of humanity's most disfiguring tures,
a
fea-
along with the wrinkled lower face that comes from both
aging and tooth loss (we cannot speculate as to whether the Maya tooth filing and inlay led to increased tooth
onto a step riser
at
loss).
A captive carved
Tonina features both, and the profile of his
forms the edge of the step itself;
a
youthful warrior
may have taken
particular pleasure in stepping on his less-than-perfect visage.
A
Bonampak murals has
a
servant in the dressing scene of the
141
face
sharply protruding forehead, perhaps even marking him as
150
a for-
eigner or of low birth. Interestingly enough,
many gods
have
less
than ideal faces,
and some are particularly wizened and wrinkled. While noble lords rarely age (although they do gain weight!),
some gods
just
have old age as an attribute, and so they are aged, wrinkled, and craggy.
The old cigar-smoking God
L, for
example,
is-specifically
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142
1
toothless, his nose bulbous,
and his chin pointy. The Jaina figurines
men who make
of old toothless
love to
young women may
portraying the exploits of gods, perhaps even he, too,
to
well be
God L himself, since
surrounds himself with young female courtiers.
Of all the Maya supernaturals, only the Monkey Scribes aspire the human grotesque. Their half-brothers, the Hero Twins,
take after their shared
the
sire,
Maize God,
scribal
in
many
instances.
entourage includes other members of the court
do not conform to the Maya
known
dwarfs,
ideal,
130
in their beautiful faces
and physiques and so do the Monkey Scribes
The
129
143
who
among them hunchbacks and
to have been the confidants of kings
throughout
Mesoamerica. But some Monkey Scribes are hideous, their faces barely
human
mythology.
monkeys
or turned to
A
Copan evinces pathos from the
Monkey
Maya
altogether, their fate in
sculpture excavated from the Scribal Palace at viewer, for although homely, the
Scribe seems altogether human, but with the sort of face
never seen on a Maya king.
Although
rendered
as
a
divinity
—and
unnamed
—
this
Monkey Scribe from Copan more surely portrays the face of a specific
commemorative
individual than any
from that
stela
city.
Artists frequently include images of themselves and their circle on
Maya vases, but few suggest portraiture. In fact, when portraiture is as idealized as it typically is on Maya vases or monumental sculpture, it barely seems portraiture. Few two-dimensional renderings without shading a description of most Maya formal portraiture can capture a particular physiognomy. Most of the
—
—
world's traditions of portrait-making were, in exploiters of three dimensions, whether in Jaina figurines
would seem
these are mainly captives.
Us monuments but this
is
Rome
fact,
or
to have been specific portraits
One can
distinguish Itzamnah
from Yaxun Balam's monuments
at
A
few
—and Balam
Yaxchilan,
largely because of both identifying texts and the work-
manship, not because the faces of these kings are readily able.
effective
Ife.
Furthermore,
the
principal
figures
on
identifi-
many Maya
monuments have suffered such damage to the face that a particular physiognomy would be hard to recognize in any case. Despite such obstacles to recognizing portraiture art
—
its
linear two-dimensional quality, the pattern of
and what may have been renderings
Palenque
— there
is
a preference for ideal,
one
striking
exception:
a tradition of stucco sculpture
specific
/
6
provenience
at
A
Maya
damage,
Maize-God-like Palenque.
evolved and with
dition of life-like, evocative portraiture.
in
it,
At
a tra-
stucco head without
the site bespeaks a particular individual
144
Copan
Alert
and pensive, homely
but no:
\lasa
scribe, o
then buried
deifiev in
a
compound
gained
its
that
may have
prestige through the
scnba
beyond the
made by an life
artist directly
life,
the head seems to have been
studying his subject, or perhaps from
a
or death mask.
A
head from the rubble of Temple 14
trays K'an Balam,
who
Even conventional carvings
strongly protruding lower lip. as well as a lower face so
chest,
permanently
at
the site clearly por-
ruled at the end of the seventh century. identify K'an Balam's unusual fea-
tures, specifically the six digits or toes
lip,
brooding expression
limits of youth with his deeply
and focused intensity. Larger than
on
all
his extremities,
and
a
The stucco head vividly conveys his
long that
it
would seem
to rest
on the
in a sulk.
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144. (below
left)
Hanab
Pakal, probably once reigned over Palenque
exemplifies the skills local artists
mastered
shaping pliable
in
stucco into
lifelike
forms.
right)
As we have
kings,
from various
when
the great
stucco facades at the
site.
patriarch died, his heirs
wrenched one of these portrait heads from
a wall 145. (below
most famous of Palenque
Finally, the portrait of the
Pensive and
calm, this portrait at Palenque
and jammed
it
seen,
under the sarcophagus. Hanab Pakal wears
This stucco
identical hair
head from Palenque clearly depicts K'an Balam,
whose two-
dimensional renderings also
ornaments on the Oval Palace Tablet,
monument, and optimism,
may
this head,
with
its
his accession
youthful aspect and seeming
date from the earlier years of his long reign.
featured the characteristic
protruding lower
Another portrait was constructed ofjade tesserae directly onto his
lip.
face once he 146. (opposite) Wrenched from a
now-unknown
architectural
setting at Palenque, the stucco portrait
head
of
found interred
Hanab
in his
Pakal
died.
Although each jade rectangle was
the
Maize God
himself, the jade
the old man, with
its
like a
mask converted Hanab Pakal mask was
a
into
powerful portrait of
piercing eyes and narrow jaw.
Even
in the
tomb,
probably completing the "killing" of his
was
had
kernel of maize, and the entire
essence.
ritual
most
recalcitrant of media, jade, the Palenque artist could express
the individual.
166
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Chapter 8:
Maya Murals and Books
From
the end of the first millennium BC
the Spanish invasion, the
painted walls.
Most
until the time of
Maya frequently took brush
in
hand and
paintings are found in tombs, but these were
often hastily painted to
More
onward
accommodate the needs of speedy
rare are the extensive
programs
burial.
in buildings for the living,
and temples, but enough of these survive to
in palaces, caves,
provide evidence of a vibrant tradition. Often called frescoes,
Maya
paintings are never true frescoes in which wet stucco
is
impregnated with pigments, but rather paintings of various sorts
on dry stucco.
Maya
painters also worked in other media. Because of the
remarkable survival of painted ceramics, they form the subject of a separate chapter (Chapter 9) of this volume. But
Maya artists
also
painted books, only four of which survive today, and which will receive brief treatment here with
monumental painting.
Early Classic paintings
The
early paintings are bi- or
monochromatic and rarely feature
mere mortals. Only fragments of the
earliest
works survive:
at
both Uaxactun and Tikal, the heads of figures were effaced, probably in ritual killing. For the walls of Burial 48 at Tikal in
the artist quickly sketched out his
program
in charcoal
AD
445,
on dry
white stucco; then painted over the lines with a black carbon paint, leaving drips and blobs in his haste.
Framing
a
Maya
date that
probably records the date of death, the stylized symbols create the ambiance of sacred essence for the
Maya
the watery world through which the deceased
—
here, apparently,
must travel.
Far more carefully executed are the nearly contemporaneous
tomb paintings
at
Rio Azul, painted
highlights. Richard
1980s, and
some
in
reddish brown with black
Adams excavated several of these tombs in the
feature paintings that
stalactite-like formations; others
cut into the limestone bedrock.
wrap around protruding
limn stucco surfaces carefully
The paintings
of Tomb 12 consist
of eight simple and very large glyphs, two to a wall
—but what
astounded Maya scholars about their discovery was that they
168
'
147.
On
the walls of
Buru
numeral
float to
recorded the cardinal points of the east, south,
then 148. An Early Classic painting at
Uaxactiin features scenes
registers. Here,
members
in
of the
court take sharp spines or bones
and prepare their
own
to
draw blood from
bodies.
at
and west,
like points
Maya
world, indicating north,
of a compass.
The
interred
was
the center of the cosmos, a symbolic pillar of the uni\ erse,
and destined
for resurrection in
Maya cosmology.
Early Classic palace paintings are rare: a single extensive one
was found
at
Uaxactun
in
19:37 flanking
one side of an interior
doorway and was presumably part of a larger program fallen
from the matching
wall.
that had
Stepping through the doorway,
a
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noble would then have stood
in the
throne room of one of the most
important Early Classic palaces of Uaxactun,
program Tikal.
is
Chak Tok
similar to
a building
whose
Ich'ak's Early Classic Palace of
Underneath the paintings was a running 260-day count, the
ritual calendar of divination characteristic of many
books known from the time of the Conquest,
a
Mesoamerican
thousand years
Events are punctuated along the linear day count, and per-
later.
haps to be correlated with the elaborate figural scene above.
Framed by
a
broad red outline, as are
Maya books, Maya book
painting gives us the sense of what a
would have looked
The
figural
of the period
like.
program above
about one-quarter life
have taken
the Uaxactun
place
within
the
Teotihuacan dress receives the stoop of a palace
features vignettes of the court at
and they reenact the rituals that would
size,
A
palace.
a cordial
whose roof
visiting
welcome;
is
in
gather on
decorated with woven mat
signs; lords prepare for bloodletting. Like the
the Uaxactun murals include
warrior
women
Bonampak
murals,
numerous musicians. These musi-
cians demonstrate the great skill of the painters, for the figures
overlap one another, and a single musician turns to the man behind
him, that
in
part of a formula for the representation of musical retinues
would be repeated 300 years
later, at
Bonampak.
Late Classic paintings: Bonampak
made paintings
In the Early Classic, artists
tions.
However, during the Late
became more focused
tion
in spaces for the living
Maya made monumental
and the dead wherever the
Classic, the
to the
construc-
mural painting tradi-
west and north, and a masterful
cave painting tradition took hold at Naj Tunich, in the Peten.
Some
simple tomb paintings of a date or short text were
tomb
Caracol, in Belize, but in general,
ornament,
or, as in
the case of the
made
at
walls remained without
Temple of
Inscriptions at
Palenque, received stucco sculpture. Artists painted
both
in
Classic period. tures;
monumental murals
in dynastic structures
the Yaxchilan region and in Yucatan during the Late
Few murals
survive
in
conventional temple struc-
most were painted on the walls of small palace chambers.
Across the river from Yaxchilan, explorers found fragments of wall paintings at La Pasadita; fragments of stucco paintings also
remain
at
Yaxchilan
itself,
mostly
in
buildings before 750.
finest Classic wall paintings to survive,
Structure
1
at
Bonampak,
a site
translates as "painted walls."
170
however, are
The
in situ within
whose modern name roughly
26km(
Just
16 miles
i
from Yaxchilan, the Bonampak
lore Is
had
themselves with both Yaxchil&n and another smaller
affiliated
nearby town, LacanhA, b} the end of the eighth century, when the paintings
great
relationship
belonged
Structure o\
1
paintings
to the
Room
the
expli< itly states that the building
i
king of Bonampak, Yahavt Chan Muwan.
was painted
inside and out, although
the exterior ornament. Just below
text,
celebrate
these centers and the victory they shared,
although the text of itself
The
made.
were
among
remains
little
the cornice runs
a
long
probably once consisting of nearly a hundred glyphs, framing
the outside of the building the the vessel.
The unusual
way
a
Maya
vase rim text frames
architectural design of the building also
provided for the viewing of the paintings
around
built-in
chambers
— and
benches within
each
including wrap-
!>v
three
of the
separate
also protecting the colorful walls from casual
damage.
The Bonampak murals stand number of reasons.
art for a ly
out from
all
other
Maya works
hundreds of members of the Maya
representations that survive of
nobility, in the
many
rituals
only from texts and laconic representations. As
Maya —from — without regard life
realistic
otherwise-
a result,
the paint-
many aspects
social stratification to
warfare to
for the nature of the paintings
palace
life
selves.
Second, the paintings are scaled
life size,
most
known
ings are frequently the illustration called upon for so
of ancient
at
them-
one-half to two-thirds
so they create a life-like environment for the viewer
ting on the benches.
Few
so experiential for the
of
First of all, the paintings depict literal-
sit-
other ancient Mesoamerican works are
modern viewer as
well. Third, the paintings
reveal emotion, particularly in the rendering of the captives in
Room
2.
Emotion and humor feature
vessels, but
in the
painting of ceramic
no other monumental work so captures the
agony and victory from ancient America. And there are several artists
who worked on
the paintings,
2,
were extraordinary
in their ability to
of
some of the
painters, particularly the masters of the north walls of
and
spirit
although
finally,
Rooms
1
render the contours
and movements of the human body
The
three rooms can be read in sequence, although
the largest and
its
bench the highest, so
it
Room
2
is
would surely have
served as the throne room from which the most important lord
would
preside.
In
sandwiching the room celebrating
battle
between rooms celebrating additional dynastic events, the paintings also provide a united, harmonious narration of
seems simultaneously fractured by war and
a
world that
sacrifice.
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149.
In
Room
1
at
Bonampak
tribute-paying lords speak energetically
among themselves
while a servant presents a child to
upper
right.
Frames
for
captions over their heads were
never
filled in.
Room a
Maya
order.
features the introductory notation ("initial series") for
1
text, indicating this
Above the
explicitly
room's
text, lords in
titled
"ahaw,"
or
likely
primacy
— —approach
white mantles lord
by
a servant.
a
payment
royal
family
who is held up
A bundle to the right of the throne bears a
few glyphs that identify the contents as cacao, in
reading
some of whom are
assembled on a large throne, including a small child to the lords
in the
what would have been
five
8,000-bean counts of
a substantial tribute or tax
world where the cacao bean was one of the few
in a
standard means of exchange.
The
lords, then, are
presumably
paying their taxes and cementing their loyalty to the royal family at the
same
time.
The
text below notes an installation in office,
possibly of the child presented above and under the supervision of
the Yaxchilan royal family, and also notes the dedication of the
building
in 7.9
1
.
Whether a Bonampak or Yaxchilan king is
sitting
on the throne remains unknown: the caption frames overhead
were never
Only
a
filled in.
viewer seated on the built-in bench could have
studied the north wall over the
doorway This wall shows three
principal lords preparing for celebration and dance, which they
172
150. Thep Bonampak
i
stuffev
wall of
Room
1
.
W^
attenda^ positic
subsequently perform on the south wall, once their matching cos-
tumes of jaguar completely
daubs
his
pelt,
in place.
quetzal feathers, and boa constrictors are
A
servant to the right of the lord at center
master with red paint;
servant strains to secure
a
er backrack in the frame of the lord at
raphy unmasks the long-invisible
of the painter,
skill
a feath-
Recent infrared photog-
left.
who
a lively final black outline over the blocked-out colors.
applied
Body con-
tours and the rendering of torsion reveal a deep understanding of
human form and sees
the foreshortened, rounded
rather than what the brain knows.
way
Not only
is
in
which the eye
the rendering of
hands particularly meticulous, but the detail of the
line
on
this wall
also indicates close kinship to the sculptural tradition ofYaxchilan
rather than to the small-scale paintings of Maya vases.
The principal
lords of the dressing scene north wall arc repre-
sented a second time, dancing, on the w into the room.
mance. But
in
The sequence
is
clear:
making such sequences
emphasize the narrative that threads
all
one sees upon stepping
dressing precedes perforspecific, the
its
Maya
way through
Protagonists reappear from scene to scene, providing the story
moves both backward and forward
in
painters
the rooms. a
sense that
time. In this
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150
more
regard, the paintings are
we might
terms,
events
— and
any other
to describe this in linguistic
they differ from the more typically nomina-
Precolumbian works of the only
were
say that the paintings are like a series of verbal
in this,
—
representations of
tive
visually narrative than
If we
Precolumbian work of art.
Maya stelae or The paintings
art.
works of Maya
of almost of
other
all
Bonampak may be
art that visually surpass the narrative
complexity of Maya writing.
On
the lowest register of Room
Maya musicians and regionHere the Maya artist attempts to represent aspects of movement and sound otherwise unknown in Maya art. The maracas players move as if in stop al
governors flank the dancers
1
,
at center.
motion, their arms changing frame by frame; the drummer's
hands were painted with palms turned to viewer, motion.
lv in
The casual examination
his fingers clear-
reveals only the blur. In this,
the painted wall attempts to represent sound itself in the
mer's fluttering hands.
What is
knows here what the eye
remarkable
will see
and brain
is
that the
will believe, a step yet
beyond the problem of what one knows and what one
phenomena
sophisticated
Maya
sees.
are completely unexpected
artists represent aspects of
drum-
Maya artist Such
— but
the
motion that would not be cap-
tured by western artists until Eadweard Muybridge
by-frame photographic records of
made frame-
body movement
in the late
nineteenth century.
The very upon
sensibility of
encompasses
battle scene
his or her
Room
all
2 differs
from
Room
1:
a single
three walls surrounding the viewer
entrance into the space, seemingly drawing any
viewer into the fray. Dozens of combatants charge into battle from the east wall, banners and
weapons held
under a large elbow of text on the south warriors, including
Yahaw Chan Muwan,
where jaguar-attired
strike their
such energy that his body almost seems to ture plane.
high, and converging
wall,
fly right
enemy with
out of the pic-
The text itself offers only an enigmatic date, perhaps to Maya equivalent of AD 790
be located a few years before the inscribed in tect a
Room
wooden
the throne in
may
1
.
In the
upper west vault, defenders try to pro-
box, perhaps the
same one
that then appears under
Room 3. Damage along the join of the wall and bench
conceal concentrated captive-taking and dismemberment.
Unusual dark pigments used
in
the background indicate that the
violence takes place in the dark.
Encoded
into the battle painting
time and duration. ed,
On
is
a different
rendering of
the upper east wall, the battle has just start-
and while some warriors hold weapons high, others
174
let
loose
151. Two victorious lords converge wall of
at the center of the
Room
2,
the blare of trumpets, in prelude to the dominant scene of the south
Bonampak. and seems to fly
the captive they seize
right off the picture plane.
south wall, where Chan
Muwan
movement through time
for the duration of the battle continues
smites his enemy.
onto the west wall and the lower registers, victorious teams of
two or
is
shown
in
is
sense of
as captives are seized
three, with the final scene
the lower east wall, where capture
time
The
by
presumably
complete. In other words,
sequence, with preliminaries followed by the
climax of conflict, and ending with the mopping up of the defeated.
Some
individuals
evidence of the
are
Maya
seen at once but
more than
rendered
once,
ability to create a narrative that
embedded within
simultaneous narrative
in
a
providing
was
sequence— or what
P2uropean art and which
is
is
to be
called
usually
understood to be one of the breakthroughs of fifteenth-century painters in
On
Italy.
the north wall,
Yahaw Chan Muwan, accompanied by war-
riors and female dynasts, including his Yaxchilan wife, receives
presented captives on
a staircase
including the Turtle
seven tiers high, the preferred
Maya
constellations oversee the sacrifice,
at right
(Orion) and the Peccaries, probably
locus for such an event.
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153
indicating that the sacrifice begins at dawn. Elegantly drawn, with
sweeping, continuous lines defining body outline, eyes, hands, and hair,
the captives are
among the most beautiful figures of Maya art.
Captives at right reach out, as
hands of the warrior
Bending
crosstie holes. wrist,
if
to protest their treatment at the
at far left, his figure partly
over, this warrior
truncated by the
grabs a captive by the
and either pulls out the fingernails or trims off the
final fin-
ger joint. Blood arcs and spurts from the hands of captives sitting
most of whom
in a row,
howls
in agony.
appeals to feet, a
A
also
seem
to have lost their teeth,
and one
single captive presented on the upper tier
Yahaw Chan Muwan, who
stares over his head.
dead captive sprawls, cuts visible across
At
his
his body; his foot
leads to a decapitated head, gray brains dribbling from the open
cranium.
the
No figure in Maya art is painted with greater understanding of human anatomy nor with more attention to the inherent sen-
suality of naked flesh than this dead captive of Room ful
line of the diagonal
body both leads
wooden rendering of the king but
see. In
Bonampak pushed sacrifice 2,
making
The power-
also subverts his image: for
individual seated on the bench, the captive's
what one can
2.
to the comparatively
body is
in the
any
center of
this visual statement, the artists of
their skills to the limit,
making
sensuality of
and death: the eroticized body of the dead captive of Room
sprawled on the diagonal, dominates the scene altogether and
undermines the representation of victory. In
Room 3,
for a final
152. Dancers with great feather
wings attached
at the
centers of their bodies perform
on a vast stepped pyramid
Room
3,
in
Bonampak. Copy by
Antonio Tejeda.
176
the lords of Bonampak don great "dancers' wings"
orgy of autosacrifice and captive dismemberment,
all
•
&)!£)
•
• •
•^
tf I
w-ssic.
153. Under constellations arrayed across the highest register, victorious
Bonampak
the captives taken
by Antonio Tejeda.
arrayed against a large pyramid that reaches around east, south,
and west walls. Whirling lords have pierced their penises, and blood
lords survey
in battle.
Copy
collects in
on the white diaper-like cloth
from the side are slaughtered
at
at
the groin w hile captives led
the center of the south w
all.
±M »>*&! 177
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"Microtexts" about 2
many a pot inscription ticularly fine
Yaxchilan 54. A kneeling male servant
hands spines
to the royal
on the throne
in
Room
Bonampak. The babe
may
be the
same
Room 2
shown
high
at
on
a
—
that
is,
the size of
center of the south wall where III,
the end of the eighth century.
What is
it
would eas-
the coeval king of is
that
it
unusual about appears to be
banner that has been unfurled between two lords
in "wings." If
3, in
in
this
arms
child seen in
battle scene.
(0.8 in)
the positioning of this central "microtext"
women
149; the box under the throne probably booty
at the
cm
are painted in several locations, but a par-
be spotted names Itzamnah Balam
ily
1
one
—
the
ill.
is
indeed a large unfurled cloth, then this would be a unique
representation in
Maya
art of the sort of painting
on cloth known
is
as a lienzo in Central
Of course,
775
Mexico
at
the time of the Spanish invasion.
the very presence of large cloth paintings would have
pro\ ided
means
.1
transmission
for the
about which
oi art
modern
scholars have been completely unaware, In the
Maya
upper vault scenes
dance on the pyramid,
that flank the
have rendered other intimate views of palace
artists
bandoi deformed musicans perform on the west be read as mo\ ing
in a circle.
throne room depicted
tongues and instruct featured in
Room
sequence
presumably
child,
little
in the first
may have
heir
little
of events.
perhaps to
vault,
ladies of the court gather in the
1, who holds out a hand for pun
Rendered only
\
the upper east vault, to puree their
in
a
The
life
and
final
same one
the
mil;.
scenes of the program, the
the ostensible motivation
the entire
for
Hut the scale of warfare on this occasion
show an
elite
world out of control:
carried
out
by
if this
battle
Bonampak, and perhaps
is
just
indirectly
Yaxchilan as well, then the Bonampak murals reveal
may
one of many
a
serve
to
world con-
vulsed by war and ehaos, beyond the reach of order and control
human
that
sacrifice
sought
to reinstate.
Perhaps the single greatest achievement of Maya
Bonampak murals indigenous paintings
New World. Over
in
art,
the
are also undoubtedly the finest paintings of the the years since the discovery of the
1946, time has taken
its toll,
and today
the- in situ
paintings are a shadow of their former selves. Fortunately, new
technology, particularly
in digital
ing to the reconstruction of the
infrared imaging,
Bonampak
is
contribut-
murals.
Cacaxtla
At roughly
Maya
the
same time
that artists
were
painters also worked at Cacaxtla,
dreds of miles north of the
works came
Maya
to light starting in
work on Bonampak, acropolis hun-
where these surprising
region,
1.976'.
Cacaxtla cannot be considered
at
a hilltop
Although the paintings of the painters used
in detail here,
both a visual vocabulary and technical expertise similar to that of
Bonampak, and
it
would seem
that these extraordinary expres-
sions in paint took place at about the
same
time, late in the eighth
century.
Most order
in
scholars have considered the Cacaxtla paintings
which
the)'
deserves to be read ings.
on
a
Maya
were found, but probably the first,
that
is,
the Red
latest
Temple
deities
move upward along water
that
is
the
staircase paint-
gods, including the patron of merchants,
Cod
L,
painted stream of water that runs along the edge of the
As the
in
discovery
known
walk
stairs.
to run
downhill, the artist has conveyed one of the contradictions of
quickly
moving
water, in that
it
seems
to be
running
uphill,
an
J 7.9
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154
observation that has fascinated western poets and philosophers.
The presence of both God L and the Maya Maize God further suggests the tension between the
two poles of the Mesoamerican
economy, commerce and agriculture.
The bottom
step itself is painted on both tread and riser with
imagery that articulates the relationship between war and commerce: Central Mexican place names line the ly skeletal captives
riser,
stepped on. These place names must refer to the
by Cacaxtla or paying tribute to
At Cacaxtla, 1
55. The
Maya God
where he has
heavily laden
conquered
the wall representations of
so ironic
this
sites
the captives remind the observ-
quickly.
economic underpinning runs up
to a vast
L stands at
the base of Cacaxtla's Red Temple stairway,
it;
amidst — —awaiting those who do not comply
er of the living death
plenty
while hideous-
sprawl on the tread, where they would be
rested his
merchant pack.
scene of war and dismemberment that dominates the north plaza, a conflated rendering of both the action of battle
and
its sacrificial
aftermath. Like Bonampak's battle painting, the Cacaxtla painting is
sometimes mistaken
fully
for a
snapshot of war rather than the care-
constructed ideological image that
the Cacaxtla battle scene also includes
it is.
room
And
like
Bonampak,
for the aftermath of
warfare, the presentation on steps, with a massive staircase of
seven levels set
at the
center of the battle.
In the battle, Central
Maya
hilate their enemies,
156. Maya victims
overpowered by
fall,
their Central
Mexican enemies
in
the battle
painting that frames a staircase at Cacaxtla.
One
victim holds a
broken spear while he cradles his spilling entrails; a lies in
severed torso
front of him.
180
Mexican warriors with
profiles arrayed in jaguar pelts
distinctive
non-
and simple headbands anni-
reckoned to be Mayas by most scholars, based
physiognomy
largely on
Aggressors have cut oneoi their \ ictims
right in half; another crumples as he cradles his own entrails
they been butchered for a cannibalistic feast
Have
'
Both Maya and Central Mexican lords are rendered with dramatic foreshortening, and the sure mastery of overlapping hands
and
feet tells
of artistic practice that has no1 survived elsewhere.
Strangely enough, the painters have given right
I
many of the Maya two
symbolic of what, we can only
i.mds, surely symbolic, hut
wonder. In the
w
grim toughness of the
tares of the Central
Mexican
one reads the seriousness with which the painters
a rriors,
their hardness. Yet
some of the defeated Maya howl
in
nv.it
agony:
a
standing noble (or perhaps noble woman, based on costume) grasps the arrow stuck
m
his
down
cheek as blood streams
the
Did some eighth-century sensibility favor emotionality, mak-
face.
ing the viewer empathize w
ith
Did Maya painters render
defeated
a
the defeated and prefer their cause.'
Maya
in
such
a
way
as to sub-
vert authority and to transcend the victory celebrated
in
this
painting? Ironically, the
what
is
splendid tain
Maya rendered
probably the
Maya
whose
last
as defeated reign
triumphant
of the paintings. Framing
lords in bird and jaguar suits guard
a
in
157
doorway,
158
sacred
outline once continued above the doorway,
concept of Coatepec, or Snake Mountain,
a
moun-
.lust as
the
may have been as ancient
181
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.»
rn^m
XXZUl
157, 158. (above and opposite above)
Maya
Two
kings,
lords,
dressed as
if
frame a doorway
among
the
Maya
Mexico, so too the concept of
as in Central
Tonacatepetl. Sustenance Mountain, from
whom
The Maya
painters at Cacaxtla freely used Central
Cacaxtla. Water flows around
flowed.
them, perhaps suggesting the
Mexican motifs and even concepts, yet worked
Central Mexican concept of a
water mountain, a place of
abundance and
plenty.
bounty
all
at
that spelled
them out
in a
way unfamiliar
to
in a
Maya
fashion
most Central Mexican
audiences.
Paintings
in the
Puuc
In the eighth century
and probably throughout the ninth,
artists
also began to paint the walls and vaults of buildings throughout
Puuc region of Yucatan. As yet unspecified relationships may
the
Puuc
link 1
sites to
Bonampak and
its
painters:
Bonampak Structure
has an unusual vertical facade for a building
Mich facades are
Puuc survive vive,
common
in
the
Puuc region.
intact now. although
many celebrating
in its region,
Few
some painted capstones do
sur-
K'awil, the patron of lineage. Consistently.
for these vault stones, artists used a black or red paint
ground, the color scheme usually associated with ill.
but
paintings in the
159, K'awil empties the
on
Maya
a
cream
books. In
bag of seed corn normally seen
in
the
hands of the Maize God.
At Chacmultun and Mulchic, and used
182
a
artists
painted
in
registers
broad palette to render dozens of figures engaged
159
—
in
some aspect of warfare. On Chacmultun's lower are
litters
hoisted
fragments of red and orange parasols
who
survive, hut those 159. Painted capstones
in
Puuc
buildings usually feature K'awil or
frets at the
register, great
perhaps carrying images of gods;
aloft,
carried
—
like
them do
lower margin are also
like
ofBonampak The running step
those
not.
those lining
bench
a
at
Bonampak.
the Maize God; here a K'awil spills the Maize God's sack of seeds.
More above the
survives at Mulchic, where fray, his
a
knife-wielding lord
sits
posture and headdress similar to the king's on
Stela 12, Piedras Negras. Vietims pile up at his feet,
by stones and others garrotted.
The
some crushed
victorious warriors
all
don
the costume of Chaak, the rain god.
Naj Tunich Drawings, incised petroglyphs, and handprints are all found
Tunich
their seale
using
a
most important works, even
cave, but the
in
a
black paint that
the paintings,
later than 77
1.
The
pose no particular whole;
like a thick ink.
made
in
Naj
artists
Based on
Andrea Stone has determined
nearly one hundred paintings were
and no
was
in
judged only by
and completeness, are the paintings made by
brush and
the texts
if
that the
eighty years or
less,
paintings read as vignettes that com-
many
are purely textual.
Some
include
surprising iconography, including one of the few erotic images of
1h:s
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Maya
art.
One
of the most striking
is
Drawing
21, part of an
important group of paintings. In the painting, Hunahpu, one of the
7
Hero Twins, prepares
down
a flight of stairs.
The
to strike a rubber ball that artist
bounces
demonstrates particular
rendering the line of the shoulder: both
its
skill in
strong contour and the
quick squib drawn as the interior ankle bone provide evidence of
Maya mastery of human form.
am
Chicken Itza
A new style of painting appeared
at
Chichen
probably
Itza,
at the
beginning of the ninth century, when Itza lords tightened their grip on Yucatan.
\
Aware of new
Mexico and
styles of art in Central
along the Gulf Coast, artists gave up their attention to the individual
human form and
the situation of that form in scaled architec-
tural settings. Conventionalized renderings depict
who dwarf
human
their diminutive architectural settings,
beings
and back-
grounds no longer provide convincing definitions of deep
space.
Furthermore, although the paintings of the southern lowlands
and the Puuc had presented
historical scenes that could be inter-
preted in terms of larger religious themes, the paintings at those of the Upper Temple of the Jaguars,
160. Skilled hands rendered the
Chichen
monochrome .,-.,, „
., ,, Drawing 21, Hunahpu,
specifically out a religious matrix, against r J lay J & &
Hero Twins, prepares
interpreted. Artists overlap figures to a limited degree, but essen-
Tunich.
one
In
of the
strike a ball
paintings at Nai
-
to
bearing the coefficient
Itza, especially
n
c
v
i
•
i
they have given up the foreshortening that suggested depth
tially
and have elected, instead, to layer figures there are often no specific
The have
iiu which history J can be
result
little
is
that the
in registers,
even though
ground lines.
Upper Temple of the Jaguars paintings
visual focus, and the even disposition of figures in six of
seven panels has
made
it
difficult to isolate central action
sort that focuses the related battle painting of
of the
Bonampak,
for
example. Nor are there are any inscriptions, which can also
enhance the reading of
a
Maya work
paintings were disposed across
of the
Upper Temple,
temples,
its
Ballcourt. at
of
art.
of the most ornate of Chichen Itza
massive serpent columns poised atop the Great
a city
the
where the mural
most important paintings
tradition thrived in
many
So what did they mean?
Reading order
is
guided by the central panel of the East Wall,
the wall one sees upon entering the chamber. the only one to feature just
one another. At ure's body: he
184
Nevertheless, these
four walls of the inner chamber
They may well have been
Chichen,
locations.
itself one
all
two
figures,
who
The central sit in
right, resplendent yellow rays flare
is
some kind of
solar deity,
panel
is
dialogue with
from the
shown within
fig-
a great
160
161 On the .
central panel of the
East Wall of the
Upper Temple
the Jaguars. Chichen
viewer would
Itza,
figures in dialogue with
left
is
one
mastered green and yellow
at
just the
too, has taken is
Itza
pigments, rather than the blues
used
God,
left, in
is
the
Maize
behind him, yet
he,
dead Maize God, the source of endless
a panel depicting the
renewal, his jade-bead costume the kernels of maize. This wall
would have been illuminated during the mid-August zenith passage of the sun, the anniversary of the day when the
Maya
believed
Bonampak.
In a detail of
set in late Itza
and feathers,
visible
on aspects of the radiant sun. Prostrate beneath both
Creation had taken place 162.
brilliant jade
edge of his jaguar cushion
a solar deity; at
the Maize God. Chichen
artists
feathered serpent; at
a
face two large
first
another. At right
of
the final scene
day or evening, Chichen
warriors scale scaffolding to
overcome an enemy
city.
Here
Chichen painters may document the brutal wars that swept their competition
in
the fourth millennium BC. August
is
the season of green corn celebrations, the time of determination of the viability of the year's crop of maize. All other action flows
around the cycle of these gods of maize and sun, with the repeated motif of the dead Maize God, starting with the panel to the right of
away
from the south.
their portrayals
The
and reading
paintings offer
a
in a
counter-clockwise fashion.
temporal progression, beginning with
move on
scenes of simple preparation and
On one level, the paintings seem day,
from dawn
to dusk; they
to
may
to warfare
also
show the shifting seasons.
Throughout the program, the Maize/Sun God disk; the
and havoc.
show the changes through the
rules from a solar
Feathered Serpent reigns from within the undulating
green snake. Battles take place
in locations
landscapes, including strikingly red victorious warriors
the population,
in a
mount
scaffolds
hills.
defined by specific
In the last painting, the
and climb steps
to slaughter
very different kind of warfare from the one
185
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162
163. Armed with
sacrificial axes,
Chaak impersonators close a seated
in
on
engaged
Bonampak, where the painting depicts capture, not
in at
With
death, on the battlefield.
Maize God. His
decapitation
was understood
be analogous
to the
to
harvesting
the representation of water nearby,
the scene could be the ninth-century demise of one of the
Usumacinta
cities,
would
end up
even Piedras Xegras, whose sacked jades
of the ears of maize.
later
the Sacred Cenote as offerings to the
in
Maize God.
Tulum, Tancah, and Santa Rita
During the
final
florescence of Precolumbian
painters adorned the walls of temples at
Maya
culture,
Maya
Tulum, Tancah, and
other towns along the Caribbean coast of Yucatan, as well as some
The
farther south, such as Santa Rita, Belize.
palette emphasized
dark and intense colors, rather than the lighter values of the color
schemes of Chichen
and Bonampak, with conventionalized
Itza
figures that were nevertheless rendered in a naturalistic proportional scheme.
made
Whereas the Bonampak
visual adjustments, the
Tancah
artist
artist
knew where
the eve
made no such accom-
modation, and thus showed complete renderings of both arms and
both
legs, for
example, of the Chaak impersonators. These Chaak
impersonators converge on the Maize sonator as well
—
in
At nearby Tulum,
scheme was devised
God
—probablv
his
imper-
preparation for his sacrifice. a
dark-background negative painting
for Structures 5
the figural representation
and
1
6.
Such
a
program made
jump out and the ground recede,
heightening legibility and visibility Across multiple registers, highly
conventionalized
approach seated
from the aquatic world top.
at
The Maya adopted
gods
and/or
god
impersonators
some examples the cosmos is configured,
lords. In
the base of the painting to the stars at the
the symbols for the starry heavens from
their contemporaries in Central
Mexico, and they shared with
them many aspects of conventionalized representation. 186
i<
a
\i Sai u.i Rita,
iconographic details reveal close kinship with
manuscript traditions of Central Mexico, especial]) sentation of decaying flesh or the meshing of two
the writing and iconography remain consonant with tions, hi
.1
scene of ecstatic music and dance, the old
has been decapitated
Maya
just as a
new sun
the repre-
in
flint
blades, yet
Maya
tradi-
Maya Sun God
rises
books
Four native books survived the Spanish invasion.
European
libraries
they reside
^1
Three survive in
and they take the names of the
)resden, Madrid, and
Paris).
A
fourth,
cities
where
known
as the
Grolier Codex, apparently came to light in a cave in recent decades
and
is
now
in
Mexico
City. All
were painted within
a
hundred
years of the Spanish Conquest.
Maya books of the Classic like the survivors: taller
period presumably looked quitea
than they were wide and consisting
hit of"
folded fig-hark paper laboriously prepared, beaten, and overlaid to create continuous sheets.
Maya books of the Classic
period usually
appear to have been hound between two wooden hoards covered
164. Various gods carry out sacrifices to propitiate rain in the
Madrid Codex "serpent pages"—
jaguar
pelt.
The hooks themselves
in
are often seen on pots, hut the
organization of the painted imagery
in
Maya hooks
affected the
section characterized by
undulating snakes
from one page
who
continue
to another. At
left,
a death god holds a torch to a deer readied for offering. Days
260-day calendar form band. With
its
in
like
much
of
Maya
art.
The
stela
form retained hook-
proportions and probably adopted hook imagery from time to
time; the continuous folded paper allowed for narrative to
How
the
a central
screen-folded
Maya book can be opened to many pages— and pages, a
even sections
very nature of
—simultaneously.
across the pages, with subjects ideal for transfer to fine-line paint-
ed vessels.
Michael Coe and Justin Kerr have recently provided compelling evidence that the
Madrid Codex was painted
after the
164 165
ted*)
1 STOG »l|oS©4
/#7
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Vr-
fHP III iaiiiMi^^ "QKfti
ItMil 165. The
artist of
the Madrid
Codex probably consulted many
Spanish arrival, perhaps as late as the seventeenth century, and by
almanacs, guides
and
to divination,
star charts. Here,
representations of
upper
Chaak
New and
known
in
most
in the fifteenth century. Its
the
at far right refers to
the constellation,
eral sources.
Dresden Codex, perhaps painted in
register provide auguries.
The scorpion
who hastily absorbed imagery and text from sevOn the other hand, several artists labored over the
a single painter
sources, incorporating agricultural
both
stunning pages deal with
a
sequence of malevolent Venus gods.
Painted with a broad and subtle palette that ranged from red to
orange to
blue, the
Venus gods take shape across
distinctive back-
Old Worlds.
grounds, blue, red, and cream. Coe and Kerr have argued that the artists of
Dresden worked with
rendering con-
quill pens, surely
tour lines to define each character.
Maya manuscript many cases, perhaps and adding new details
Like the painters of medieval manuscripts, painters copied from pre-existing works in
bringing innovations to suit local patrons
where they might be pages distinctively
called for. Different artists laid out their
in the
Dresden,
in part driven
by the character
of earlier works, but probably also to suit new patrons or even their
own
artistic sensibilities.
out his figural panels as
The
if
painter of the Venus pages has laid
they were windows into another world,
a sort of surprising punctuation at irregular intervals, while other
painters worked to lay out every figure in absolute regularity.
There are some ancient
—
gle fine ancient example their existence
us a
art
forms for which we have not
textiles, for
—
example
yet
a sin-
we know
of
from other art forms. The surviving books do offer
glimmer of ancient Maya book
they were once ever-present
among
but
art,
the
little
elite.
more, although
Maya
kings took a
book into the Underworld with them, usually resting on the chest,
where archaeologists
find
clumps of stucco sizing
today.
This
written word was clearly of the greatest value to the Maya:
power
clearly
books to be
up and
/\.s
set
alarmed Bishop Landa,
trivial,
them on
he would have had fire as
he did
in
1
for
little
565.
its
had he thought their reason to round them
I
the
New World. nfluence,
down
darts a nd
upon
all in its
way.
189
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Chapter 9:
Maya Ceramics
Painted the
Maya
vessels are the
most extraordinary ceramic
art of
New World. Although Maya ceramics serve archaeologists in
the usual fashion
sherds
—
—
as evidence of dating, like
most archaeological trivial
their surfaces. In the lively paintings
and carvings
compared with
that encircle their exteriors,
Maya
pots provide a
window on
way
ancient religion, ancient story-telling, and even the to be
when
changing rim shapes are almost
their
art
came
made. They are, perhaps, for the art historian, one of the most
rewarding and
least
analogous tradition
in
studied media of the Maya.
The only
the world was in ancient Greece,
where the
surviving ceramics painted by remarkable artists also provide
wide-ranging picture of religious and
The Maya,
of course, used ceramics every day, small cups for
drinking vessels,
tall
cylinders for storing and pouring ritual
beverages, and plates for
all
sorts of delicious foodstuffs,
tamales to corncakes served up with sauces.
many
a
civic practices.
Among
the
from elite,
of these vessels were finely potted and elaborately painted,
and some of them probably held foodstuffs even that a traveler
in the
tomb, so
through Xibalba, the Maya Underworld, would
have sufficient nourishment. But the
Maya
commemorate important life passages: an
also
made
pots to
accession to kingship, a
victory in battle or the ballgame, or the negotiation of a dowry.
Most of all, when a noble man or woman died, friends and relatives commissioned new ceramics that might accompany the deceased into the tomb.
The
paintings on the vessels
may have been
sacred
themselves. These elite and commemorative vessels formed a
powerful visual tradition for a thousand years.
Techniques
Always working without the wheel, the Maya depended on two 167. At the beginning of the
first
millennium ad, the Maya began
make
basic techniques to
elaborate polychrome
ceramics.
form
pots,
and they sometimes used them
in
to
Many of the first were mammiform legs, a
tandem. Most commonly, artisans built ceramics using the
method, although no trace of that technique survives
coil
in finished
supported by
form out of fashion by the advent of the Early Classic era.
elite vessels.
Sculptural additions needed to be carefully added, in
order that no breakage occur during
790
firing; firing holes
can occur
191
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as the
open mouths of creatures or where they are not particularly
visible.
The
struction,
other basic method for making a pot was slab con-
most obviously used
to
form ceramic boxes. Small slabs
were carved or stamped before being added to cylinders to serve as tripod feet.
Few
show any evidence of
vessels
dark blotches characteristic of vessels
must have been sels
firing
fire
fired in pits
—
clouds
— the
so the
Maya
them inside saggers, protective ceramic ves-
designed to protect polychrome
from carbon
slips
deposits.
Various media were used to finish fine vessels. Despite the
many of these wares still bear today, Maya did not invent glaze or glass: like ancient Greek wares, Maya vessels were painted in clay slips made from tested recipes of deceptively high gloss that the
clays and minerals.
Broad
slip palettes
came
into use in the fourth
century and lasted until the ninth, with results that ranged from
mustard to purple, with shades of red and orange
leaving only lingering grays.
between.
Low
Some schools of Maya ceramic paint-
ing eschewed the broader painters,
in
master blues and greens,
firing temperatures defeated attempts to
notably
palette,
who used only carbon
black, red,
At the end of the fourth century, from Teotihuacan were adopted
for
the
codex-style
and sometimes cream.
post-fire stucco techniques
Maya
use.
Using
a thin, pre-
pared quicklime into which mineral pigments were dissolved, painters developed a broad palette, complete with blues and
greens.
Common
in fifth-century burials,
completely stuccoed
pots became rare during the Late Classic. Applied post-fire, stucco paint
was sometimes used
in
conjunction with other techniques,
particularly carving but also painting.
Sometimes the
slightest
dots of post-fire paint were used to accentuate details; post-fire blue was occasionally applied to rims, as in
ill.
177.
Both deeply carved and lightly incised ceramics were also
Maya artists, more commonly during the Early Classic in many cases to render even more fine detail Maya brushes could create during that era. Maya artists
created by
than later on, and than
carved leather-hard wares, dipped them after the carving, solid glossy
firing,
vessels
lie in
shapes cut from gourds, a
and unbreakable source of containers both
today. Eventually the
in the past
and
Maya began to make these shapes in clay, and
they finished their vessels with rocker stamps or with simple
At the end of the Late
192
or
yielding
dark browns and black tones.
Early Maya ceramics The beginnings of Maya reliable
in slip either before
and then burnished them before
Preclassic, Usulatan
slips.
ware became wide-
spread,
its
distinctive
cream on red stripes produced through the
wax} substance
application of a
Maya invented new shapes tetrapod
mammiform
TaiK
in
the
i
llm m
ceramics with polychrome
standard everywhere, the in
11
in vd,
in
Hie
Bring
and man} had
the Maya begin to finish their
slip paint.
As
this practice
became the
Maya began to evince a greater sense of
what tan be considered one of the mark-
ers that the Early Classic had taken root.
chromes pio\
pots,
supports
first in
cultural homogeneity,
burned ou1
thai
for these earl}
ide e\ idence of the
same
These
earliest
clearlv defined
poly-
Maya gods
w ho appear on Preclassic monumental stucco facades and the earstone sculpture Of the Early Classic. Some of these early mammiform pots are works of fine potting, as well as painting.
liest
Into the fourth century
new form
most important ful
AD
the lidded basal flange howl
,
ritual vessel
hybridization with other forms and have four bulbous
longer
much
mammiform
—
legs.
wear, these vessels
—
a
—
Maya inventory dominated as the shape. Some demonstrate a success-
that had entered the
Large, heavy, and
may have been
rarely
167
168 169
— but no showing
presentation vessels for
dedications or for funerals. Typically, the knob took the sculpted
form of an animal or human head,
its
body then completed by
two-dimensional painting flowing across the surface of the
The
a
lid.
integrated painting and sculptural form suggest that the
painters of these vessels were also their potters. Ancient artists articulated the various surfaces: the
of the bowl
itself,
the large arcing
lid,
Maya
narrow vertical panel
even the handle and the
flange are usually painted.
The most
elaborate examples of the basal flange vessels and
related hybrids provide evidence of shared religious concepts in
works
that
engage the viewer
directly, often
by articulation of
ceramic elements that must be handled. For example, on
bowl with matching at Tikal, the
lid.
from
Tomb
1
of the Lost World
a
small
Complex
head and neck of a water bird form the three-dimen-
sional handle,
of the
lid
its
In its
wings painted
beak
is
in
two-dimensional outline on top
a fish, visibly
being pulled from two dimen-
The basal flange has been worked into the body of three-dimensional turtle who swims through linear undulating
sions into three. a
dotted scrolls, a play between
Maya shorthand
for water.
two and three dimensions
This constant inter-
forces the viewer to con-
front the artificiality of artistic renderings; the experimentation
between sculpture and painting seems surprisingly modern
in its
focus on the liminal interface between those two media. But liminality
is
also the subject: this watery world occupied by fish,
193
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168
168.
(left)
Unusually small and
delicate in scale, this basal flange
bowl from Tikal's Lost World
complex features a water
bird in
turtles,
and
a turtle
swimming
is
one of the porous membranes
itself.
Maya
artists
to articulate sacred narrative across their surfaces. 169.
(right)
Four snout-down
the
Many Early Classic ceramics express such concepts of the cos-
in
mos. But a few lidded bowls try to do more, as
water as the bowl
in
Underworld come in contact with one another.
both two and three dimensions on its lid
and predatory water birds
of the cosmos, where actions of those on earth and those
The
begin
Dallas
Tetrapod features the interplay of the cosmos, but it also shows the
peccaries support this lidded vessel, firing holes
mouths. The on top day,
is
fully
forming their
formed paddler
action of a supernatural figure.
a personification of the
making
indicates earth. its
Each leg is the snout-down head of
a peccary, the wild boar of the tropics,
diurnal journey.
surface
The Maya appear
was supported by peccaries
surfaces of the bowl and lid
show
marked by
a
long curl that
to have believed that the earth's at its four corners.
fish
who swim
The convex
in scrolled water,
so that the Dallas Tetrapod also presents the concepts of the surface of the earth. But atop the lid sits a fully sculptural figure in a
canoe, his oar poised mid-stroke. His monkey-like features are
complemented by the hieroglyph probably indicating that he
is
for
day or sun on
concept of the day, making his diurnal journey.
/.«;/
his head,
the supernatural incarnation of the
1
More
than almost
Maya area
almost certainly
among
am
other introduction from outside the
thai can be identified today, the tripod cylinder vessel a
the Maya.
Teotihuacan invention
w.is an
its
way
into the
Maya repertory
vessels. In the fifth century, the tripod cylinder
important
elite vessel;
still
appeared
of
was the most
by the seventh century, however, the
Maya
made
not a one, although the archaic ves-
among
the inventory of pots depicted on
of the Peten and Chiapas type
hit
on the Tikal throne, thru- characteristic style of pot-
their will
making had already worked
sel
instanl
Even before the leotihuacanos had imposed
other pots and the form still found favor from time to time in Belize.
A
single offering at Becan, Campeche, emphasized the cultural
interaction between local
Maya and
complex meanings we can no longer
made 1
70.
1
7
1
.
A few "screw-top"
known from the Early when the Maya developed pots whose lids would
in
cylinder vessel sat
a
distant Teotihuacan, with retrieve.
Within
a locally-
large two-part Teotihuacan figure
turn held within ten tiny solid figurines and
a
who
host ofjade, shell,
vessels are
Classic period,
stay in place, allowing the
consistent alignment of
iconography on both vessel.
lid
and
The design was probably
invented
in
tripod cylinder as
the vehicle that
had opened the door to
Teotihuacan?
Other vessel types entered the Maya inventory during the apogee of Teotihuacan influence, including ring-stand bowls and
the Central Peten,
where examples have been excavated.
and ceramic adornments. Did the Maya themselves perceive the
two-part
jars
(sometimes called "cookie
been the inventors of the lock-top pot
—
jars");
the
Maya may have
often described as "screw
-
195
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170 17
a
top" jars
—and some of
the other ephemeral forms that
fell
from
The "cookiejars" made especially good god effigies, and their interiors may have held pre-
favor almost as suddenly as they appeared.
An
cious offerings.
tomb
at
Tikal
sits
severed head
human femurs and
holds a
hands, probably indicating that his cavity
human sacrifice. The only archaeological example of a
should hold
it
a stool of crossed
in his
come from Rio Azul, where testing demonstrated
lock-top pot has that
Underworld god from Nun Yax Ayin's
old
on
entered the tomb
of Maya chocolate. Shaped like a very
full
small handbag, the vessel has a handle painted as
if
wrapped with
a
jaguar pelt, a sign of its royal ownership.
Nun Yax
Maya made
local
adaptations of the tripod cylinder that called for or
lids.
Tikal from early
Rio Azul provide the most dramatic
earlier forms,
century
They entirely replaced
and many of the tripods were finished with post-fire
stucco paint that even in
its
palette remained close to
the
to
be used
Some heads were
mass produced,
like
ancient
many Maya Maya anthropomorphic handles. Some ves-
Teotihuacan formulas. Like the Teotihuacan vessels, ones have matching vessels have
lids,
but unlike Teotihuacan ones, most
zoomorphic or
coinage. Postf ire stucco paint retains brilliant blues, greens,
and shades
in the fifth
anthropomorphic
zoomorphic knobs
on the
at at
Ayin's
evidence of the success of tripod cylinders.
172. AtTikal, Rio Azul, and elsewhere, the
tomb
and contemporary tombs
of pink.
The sides
of this vessel, possibly
particularly early fifth-century ones are squat, with propor-
tions akin to
Teotihuacan-made
vessels; others are taller, with a
from Rio
Azul, feature representations of
Pawatun, an aged god.
sels,
mid-vessel tapering "waist" that also makes them anthropomorphic.
An example
away on of the
its
possibly from Rio Azul almost seems to walk
tripod feet, the body of the pot standing in for the
man whose head
is
achieved in basal flange vessels, but the tripod cylinders.
it
became more convincing
With knobs and
sometimes mold-made or stamped easier to
body
the knob. This sort of allusion was also
out, these pots
produce than basal flange
smaller size and lighter weight
in
tripod supports that were
vessels,
were probably
and their relatively
made them
easier to handle
without damage.
The new shape of vessel encouraged new sorts of representaThe taller proportions of the cylinders made complete
tions.
figure representations easier. Teotihuacan stucco style quickly
became the medium
the
for
including the Pawatuns of shells
representation 172, old
tripod
War
while
at Tikal, for
others, swirling
Maya
gods,
deities, especially
Serpent, figure prominently on the surfaces
cylinders,
bleeding skull
of
gods who carry their
around with them. Some Teotihuacan
Tlaloc and the of
ill.
other
Maya
representations
—have no
example
—
real precedent. In
wrap-around designs alternated paired carved
workmanship with stucco ornament, and some continued right onto the vessel
196
lid.
beginmrv music
just to
tK
Previously, no single surface of the basal flange bowl
was
sufficient for
any sort of narrative. But with the advent of the
relatively tall
and straight wall of the cylinder, the Maya narrative
took
off.
On some tripod
cylinders, extremely
complex
spelled out visually, requiring repeated turnings
the unfolding
tale.
A
vessel in Brussels
tion after death, with a trip
shows
stories are
order to grasp
in
transforma-
a lord's
through the Underworld, past the
dormant sun and
to the turtleshell. the surface of the earth,
through which new
life is
channeled
the form of the
in
Maize God.
The impulse to narration
How
can one explain this impulse to
tell
stories that indicated
protagonists, their deeds, and the places these deeds took place?
No
in the New World managed What made the Maya so different?
other society
impulse
in art.
One way medium and software.
A
to think of its
how
message
stela
is
this all
as if they
hardware.
A
happened
is
Maya
pot
is
to think of the
hardware.
hieroglyphic writing
can wreak havoc on hardware, and
this
were computer hardware and
A
hardware. Software programs these media. Software of iconography.
encode
to
is
is
building
is
the system
software. Software
the desire to use
new software
drives the invention or acquisition of new, improved hardware.
Certainly throughout the Early Classic period, the principal
software for conveying the message of ry
— the
writing system
became more
— improved.
Maya
religion and histo-
As the writing system
phonetic and less logographic,
it
more
easily
197
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— handled temporal statements moving both backward and forward
through time;
it
included expansive lateral statements regarding
the gods and their activity.
Even though there
is
some evidence of
early sophisticated phonetic spellings, the preference (perhaps by readers, rather than writers) for logographs proved limiting.
When
what had been short notations
replaced by the
fifth
reproduced not only words,
the
the third century were
in
century with longer, discursive texts, writing facts,
but also nuance and detail. In other
software for representing language and
speech
improved, thus putting pressure on the software for visual representation to improve as well. Apparently
did improve, as
it
ill.
1
73
—
One particular type of hardware the basal flange bowl could not run this new software system and quickly became outmoded. The new form, the tripod cylinder, successfully did handle attests.
it,
securing the vessel shape's survival for more than a century.
al
narrative.
But the tripod cylinder had elements that did not support visu-
The
vessel
knob
lent itself to sculptural forms,
of which were iconic and not narrative; the vessel
lid
space for visual continuity but not narrative continuity. slab feet themselves simply kept the
ground.
What had
The three
body of the vessel
off the
been universally appealing about the tripod
—including strong —no longer held true by AD 600, and
cylinder
power
most
offered a
associations
its
of Teotihuacan
the form
was replaced
by the simple cylinder, with neither lid nor feet.
Late Classic ceramic traditions In the ceramic art of the Late Classic period, the to portray himself
and
king, keeper of accounts,
records.
Maya artist began man to the
his role at court: right-hand
and of course, maker of art and writer of
Reed pens tucked into
his hair or headdress, the artist
depicted himself as ready for any job that might come his way.
And
just as the artist began to include himself in the visual record, so
he did
in
the written record, and
Maya
scribes
began
to sign
their work.
Depictions of scribes often feature them
in
groups, and
it
may
Maya artists worked collaboratively, as did, for examartists who carved the portrait of the last Aztec ruler,
well be that ple,
the
Motecuhzoma, an event
recalled long after the fact in a mid-six-
teenth-century watercolor.
Maya
sculptures that bear signatures
also often bear several of them, so the notion of working in groups,
probably of kinsmen, was probably pan-Mesoamerican.
The best-
known Maya ceramic traditions provide independent evidence of many artists working together. In almost all cases, a single artist 198
painted an entire pot, from background to details to text, but
him
ting right beside nearl}
identical slips
\ii\ similar.
Vi
sil
who mixed
have been another painter,
from shared pigments, and whose style perhaps
third person
.1
Maya ceramic
all
m,i\
facture today
by
is
.1
woman,
women
is
since almost
may have made
the
thin-walled cylinders themselves
Some
Early Classic
Maya
pots hear dedication texts, but dur-
ing the Late Classic period, the rim texts ized. to their
of origin,
place
most Lite Classic vessels
ot
For much of
this century, scholars
Maya ceramics were illiterate scribes.
the inscriptions painted
include a primary standard
sequence: here,
this elegant red-
on-cream cup from the Naranjo
same
the
became highly standardthought
that the painters
Alter
they reasoned,
all,
il
around the rims of Maya vessels repeated
through tune and across geography, regardless of
text
the scene painted below, wasn't that proof enough of their mind-
region begins with two very
standard expressions, the sign"
and Pawatun. The
less quality? "initial
sign need not necessarily appear at the start of a narrative
The head
of K'awil
text
might not he directly related
to consider
to the scene,
was
and when
that the
that liber-
scene.
on an angle
below creates a sense
What, of course, such reasoning failed
initial
of motion.
ating thought daw lied on Mayanists,
a
new period of understand-
ing of Maya artists and art-making was ushered first
Michael Coe's
in.
hypothesis, that this "primary standard" might represent
a
funerary chant, did not hold, hut his attack on received wisdom
opened the door
to
waves of challenges. Individual decipherments
of glyph after glyph that this text 175. Using a strong nevertheless
—
scholars
if
somewhat
—
unremarkable
line,
tion reads
and
fired
it,
and
then finished the vessel with postfire blue paint.
The
characteristic primary standard
sequence begins with the sign"
and continues on
the vessel form,
in
the primary standard have
about the business of
making
made
clear
it
As most
art itself.
interpret the rim texts of Maya cylinders, an inscrip-
something
like this: "It
came
into being,
it
was
blessed,
the artist has
carved the pot at the leather-hard stage, burnished
now
is
in this
to
"initial
the writing on
may go on another ful
to say just to
common
of cases, the
whom
vessel shape
name of the
—
artist
the drinking vessel
The
—or
belongs. Additionally,
in a
text
plate,
hand-
himself appears. In other words,
the long-mysterious text talks about function, patronage, and
name
case, a
authorship, rather than referring directly to imagery, although that
cylinder vase.
his drinking vessel for cacao [or atole"."
may sometimes be implied.
" *
*-
199
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i •;.
:'
v
•*-'
— Regional styles
Such unbridled variation
Maya mate
found
is
among the thousands of known
ceramics that one would be hard pressed to define the
Maya ceramic
limits of
now encompass dozens
styles
of very fine wares, and Dorie
Reents-Budet has juxtaposed clay analysis against siderations,
ulti-
painting style. But the best-known
stylistic
con-
and then aligned those investigations with studies of
workshops and
the hieroglyphic texts, to identify ceramic
their
locations.
The names
of the sites where these workshops flourished do
not sing out as the most prominent of Maya
sites,
and
it
may
turn
out to be the case that these assignments are preliminary. Yet strangely enough, many of the most powerful Maya states, as known from their public art and writing, provide little evidence of high-quality ceramic workshops. Despite years of excavations, neither Palenque nor Yaxchilan has ever yielded a polychrome vessel of fine quality;
many
of the Late Classic wares from Tikal
are workmanlike, particularly
when compared with the extraordi-
nary vessels from the Early
Classic.
most exciting centers or in
some cases no
Nevertheless,
Furthermore, some of the
for ceramic painting
— monumental some
may have had
little
sculpture.
clear regional associations of ceramic
painting styles can be made, and the principal workshops are
known
by identification with excavated examples, or
either
through chemical analysis of
clay,
written into the texts on the pots.
known in is
for its straight-sided
or by identifying place names
A
highland Guatemala style
is
186
low cylinders, painted primarily
187
reds and oranges, with a chevron border and red rim, and
anchored to
its
style probably
A
east.
place by examples excavated at
came from
the
Motagua River
related
isi
drainage, to the
182
—probably
183
northern Peten /southern Campeche style
made throughout "codex-style" for
the greater Calakmul region its
plates.
called the
—both
of Motul
i«
of at
185
the Pink Glyphs and the Altar de
176
of which display a flamboyant use of
177
distinctive styles
Sacrificios styles
is
The emblem glyph
de San Jose (the "Ik" emblem glyph) appears
two
—
characteristic black-on-cream painting of
red-rimmed cylinders and
least
Chama. A
—
in the texts
Both red-on-cream and
ns
black-background styles of painting center on the Naranjo-
4,179
color
and manipulation of
Holmul In
subject.
region.
many
174
of these workshops the continuous surfaces of the
cylinder vessels provided artists with
new
spaces for their work.
Uncluttered and uninterrupted, the vessel walls helped artists
200
iso
achieve ne\* levels
Ami.
narrative and story-telling
o\
just
.is
had exploited the interaction between two and three
artists
dimensions
the Earl)
in
explored the potential turns that force the
some workshops
\
seeming seamlessness, with amusing
iewer to turn the pot nine and again. While
specialized
highland artists may have
many
stone sculpture
their subject matter.
during the Late Classic they
Classic,
oi
in
and the
need created by the absence
ol
turned to the religious world for
artists
Whereas
narratives
historical
filled a
so
much of the Early
Classic reli-
gious ceramic art focused on encapsulating cosmic settings, the
Late Classic vessel frequently provides a window on ancient myth-
making, and some religious stories are familiar only from the ceramic medium.
Ah Maxam qfNaranjo The names and genealogy
Maya
of most
have vanished,
artists
were they ever even recorded. The handful
may
that survive
well
be anomalous. But anomalous or not, they offer us key insights into at least artist to
some
greatest workshops.
name belonged
He
to
side-by-side with the author of
come
notes that he
a tall
to light. His personal
is
one of Maya painting's
painted three striking
belong to Chicago's Art Institute today
recently
may
mother was
a
is
an
itsat,
place," a
Ah Maxam
his: if this
or "sage,"
toponym of here.
One
reading holds up,
178
princess of Yaxha, a city near Naranjo, and his
father the king of Naranjo, a ruler
are well
lias
obscure, although he
is
Maxam
be
pots that
rectangular vessel that
name
the Naranjo region, and so he will be called vessel provides parentage that
Maya
—and probably worked
"of the painting," and that he
but he also called himself "he of the
his
The most important
instances of art making'.
provide his
known. So we gain
a
whose monuments and deeds
snippet of
a
royal artist's
life:
a
member of the court, but not its ruler, the .Maxam painter was one of the most literate of Maya artists, and one of its most adept practitioners.
The
may well have come from the same may have been painted within a very short period
177
twen-
178
three Chicago pots
tomb, and they
of time. Although undated, they can be attributed to the ty years of the eighth century by the rulers they name.
years of artistic and political ferment:
of
Maya
painters
made
the
od; at Palenque, the artists a star painter
Bonampak
may
in
eastern Chiapas,
paintings
well have fled the
made extraordinary
last
These were
in
the
city.
troupe
a
same
peri-
At Naranjo,
paintings and displayed
a
range
of what has seemed to be an almost unmatched talent.
201
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176
First of all, and
Maxam
most stunningly, Ah
styles related to Naranjo, the
worked
in
both
black-background style and the red-
on-cream. His success as a dimorphic painter recalls the achieve-
ments of
a handful of archaic
Greek
painters,
black-figure and red-figure vases. Like the
two Naranjo
who
painted both
Greek examples, these
styles are essentially a positive
and negative: the red-
on-cream created by drawing the figures and painting them black-background requiring that the with contour
line,
then
in
fill
in;
the
artist outline the figures
the background, letting fired clay
function as the color of the anthropomorphic figures and their setting.
The
three cylinders
all
exhibit flamboyant but meticulous
calligraphy that, in addition to the identifying tagged 178,
marks
them
Iconographically,
of
the
as
the
Ah Maxam
red-on-cream
work of an
name on
individual
ill.
painter.
also had great range. In his version
Naranjo/Holmul
region
standardized
imagery of the dancing Maize God (there must be dozens of 176. The Maize God dances with his
dwarf or hunchback three
times around the surface of this
known examples
large cylinder vessel. Despite the
difference
in style
from
ill.
Ah Maxam's handwriting
177, is
readily identifiable: the glyphs
over the third Maize
God
L's
head.
feature
all, all
two Maize Gods around the
painted three. Secondly, his Maize
they truly seem
in
motion.
And
other
known examples
cylinder, but
Gods
Ah Maxam
has
twist their bodies so that
third,
Ah Maxam
has added
are
nearly identical to those over
God
of this "Holmul dancer" from the area), he gives
the old standard a twist. First of
highlights it
in a
charcoal slip
were dark navy
202
blue, like
that painted over the red
few other examples.
slip
reads as
if
176
177.
On
this
gods from hisluxurioi
.
The
related
painter from the
Box of Eleven Gods demonstrates same workshop
to
work
the skill of a
third style, using the
in a
black background, but with figures fully articulated
in
shades of
red and orange. Judging by the patron of the vessel, the box was
probably painted between 755 and 765
been a very young are
known
than
in
Seven Gods, and
Ah Maxam
—and the
himself. Far
could have
in this
style
the black-background style of the Vase of the
many
of them
may
well have
Naranjo sphere. The box probably once had by the wear along
artist
more pots
its
upper surface, and
it
a
come from
vaulted
lid,
the
judging
probably once took the
form of a miniature house or palace: the imagery
is
set
within
a
203
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— and so one has the sense of seeing the
palace,
dwelling, as
if the
Functionally, such a box
may
well have held elements impor-
tant for the personification of God L, and say, his jewelry, his belt,
box, the box became
he may well
tribute,
inside the
life
box were turned inside out.
or his cigar
God
The
L.
have
still
a
when those elements
—were stored once again
presence
in
economic well-being (sometimes
losses)
—and who
is
at the cost
Works such
or the Vase of the Seven
Gods may
as the
its
when not
Box of Eleven Gods
alert us to the
god of wealth had within Naranjo and
guaran-
a
of others'
kept in a vaulted or coffered chest
available for supplication.
the
Guatemala today as the
cigar-smoking supernatural power known as Maximon, tor of
in
commerce and
ancient god of
power
that this
sphere.
In addition to this corpus of extravagant vessels, painters of
work
the Naranjo school could also
Maxam
spare and stark mode.
in a
Ah
painted simple black flowers (perhaps cacao flowers,
perhaps vanilla orchid blossoms) that
creamy
float across the
surface of ill. 10, alternating with blocks of text that record details 1
78.
and
What may be
titles of
the
of this cylinder,
"Ah
names
rim the base
and the nominal
Maxam" appears just
right of center. like
the
artist
Other texts
of royal genealogies. Set at an angle, they recall the dynastic histories rendered in a
to the
and Quirigua.
float
in the
woven mat pattern on the
Copan
Yale Art Gallery.
pages across the surface of
Taken
the vessel.
stelae of
An even more simple vessel by Ah Maxam' s hand is
as a whole, there
no other Maya
is
known
artist
the range of this Naranjo prince. His example makes believe that sharply differing styles could have
hand; his range of patrons also makes
it
it
to have
possible to
come from
a single
likely that there are other
masterpieces by his hand that have yet to
come to light.
Other pa niters near Naranjo
For works that seem
to be highly conventionalized, the
pots of the Naranjo/Holmul style nevertheless took turns.
At Holmul
itself,
Maize God
some strange
an example of the style features the Maize
God dancing within a square drawn within the circle of a plate, as if a manuscript page had landed on the dish. One very large plate (33 cm or 3 in diameter), which features set-in low cups and might be 1
thought of as an ancient "chip and dip" server, integrates the other
common
subject matter of this style, simple cormorants,
single vessel, the pattern and to read its imagery.
At the
—
of Buenavista, Belize
— Maize
move in counterclockwise direction, unearthed
Gods on
still
a part of
several vessels
unlike any other corpus.
one
Buenavista that can be dated to the
20 /
into a
monotonous color making it difficult
site
the Naranjo political sphere
Archaeologists
all
very first
fine
example
at
decade of the eighth
.
inNaranjoc ap 70C court painter and then shir.
oneot
:
s of
Ah
>;reen
Stucco
still
remain on
t
Two Maize Gods dance
a£,
ground.
century, and the circumstances of its location and dedicatory text
provide evidence that the Jauncy Vase
where
it
was interred
— was
Naranjo king, probably tall
a
— named
to shore
mound
up regional support. Painted on
tapering cylinder, the two dancing Maize
clearly
for the
present to local lords there from the
Gods stand
and even calmly against their creamy background,
unlike most examples, these
Maize Gods stand
extended arms the only sign that they dance
quietly,
at all.
No
a
out for
their
frenetic
dwarves accompany them, and the feathers of one figure do not overlap the other, nor the text.
More meticulously draw n
than any
other example of this subject, the Buenavista Vase also seems less
imbued with
life.
After the Buenavista Vase was fired, stucco was added to
its
lower rim, a custom followed with some other Naranjo-area pots, including the Vase of the Seven Gods. Interestingly enough, the tall,
cal,
tapering proportions of the two vessels are also nearly identidespite haying been
styles apparently
of vessels, which
made
at least
eighty years apart. Painting
changed more quickly than the styles and shapes
may have been
a
more conservative backdrop.
Both the Buenavista Vase and the Ah have been made
in
the
Maxam
same family workshop,
pots
may
well
albeit by different
generations, working closely with the king, for the Buenavista Painter, like
Ah Maxam, worked
in
various styles. Based on the
calligraphy and vessel shape, three other vessels have been attrib-
uted to the earlier master, two cormorant pots, and another vessel
203
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"Bunny
180. Like Ah Maxam, his
referred to as the
successor at the Naranjo court,
Jauncy Vase gives way to broad comedy on
the painter of the
worked style,
in
Bunny
is
apparently the
master of the Jauncy Vase as well. Here he indulges his
gift for
comedy, ridiculing God
Here the
staid
workmanship of the a vessel painted in a
Pot
more than one painting
since he
Pot."
L.
range of earth tones. "That rabbit took nearly naked
God L
in
my
belongings!" claims a
an unusual representation of first-person
speech to the enthroned K'inich, or Sun God, the words connected to his
mouth by
delicate scrolls.
But what
God L
can't see
is
that
K'inich himself may have put the rabbit up to the theft, for the rabbit
peeks out from behind the throne; on the opposite side of the
pot, the
haughty rabbit stands on the throne, flaunting God L's
trappings.
The two most important maize agriculture and
aspects of the
tribute,
Maya economy were
whose payments were probably
invoked as a result of warfare. Just as the Aztecs explicitly juxta-
Maya did less specifically The steady message on elite ceramics of Naranjo Maize God; the more subtle story is that of God L,
posed agriculture and warfare, so the
and more
subtly.
praises the
whose
role as the patron of tribute
and then seemingly elevated
in
is
ridiculed in one generation
the next.
( 'odej- vessels
Particularly in the regions of Calakmul and Nakbe,
Maya
artists
painted ceramic vessels with fine black line on creamy back-
grounds, sometimes using
rimmed by 206
a
thinned black wash for
often quite brilliant red paint in
detail,
what has come
and
to be
called "codex" stj
Centuries
the Spanish
u
Conquest, the Maya limned theirbooks with black and red writing
u
le
later,
near the time
ol
on the off-white stuccoed pages, closely resembling some all-glyphic pots that
make
reference to Calakmul. The Aztecs,
actually painted their books with a less
used what
may have been
the
who
wide range of colors, neverthe-
an ancient metaphor
to refer to the concept
the red"
ol
"the black,
of writing, as if this Maya writing
were the origin of the expression.
The makers of these vessels may well have had a clear sense ol their own role in the al
making of art and writing, for the supernatur-
patrons of art and writing are a
vessels. In
behind
Maya
a scribe,
hut
it
makes sense
religious narrative, the
Monkey Monkey
subject in codex-style
Monkey
Scribe
in
profile sits
Maize God. Now the Maize God only occasionally
tin-
appears as
common
isi a supernatural
ill.
Scribes and the Scribes,
Hero Twins.
must have gained
where better than
in
that he
Maize God Ills
wouldbeone, since
fust set of children, the
their scribal skills
the family business?
The
somew
idea that
the
ment 181. Both the Maize God and
Monkey
Scribes frequently
appear on codex-style vessels,
Goddess,
too,
is
Maize God's attire,
—
attire
a relative
of the Maize God, for she wears
worn by many women
her,
perhaps as
is
in
monumental
the rabbit.
a spy, to
The
art as well.
rabbit then
may
the court of God L, the nemesis
often with laconic texts. Here the
of the Maize God, as cleverly rendered on the Princeton Vase.
Maize God
only makes sense that the
is
also scribe, perhaps
is
The
particularly the beaded skirt and beltorna-
Her most notable progeny
accompany
here:
w riting
the family business also runs through the codex-style pots.
Moon
in
the lather of both the
is
Maya would have understood
It
that chil-
offering instruction in the family
business to one of his sons, a
Monkey
Scribe.
dren follow tht family business, one generation to another, the lives of gods
and mortals
alike in this respect.
207
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u
182. From within his lavishly appointed chamber, an aged God L distracts himself with five beautiful
young
women
while an
execution transpires on the other side of the Princeton Vase.
One
of
the great masters of codex-style painting, the artist of this vessel
uses a
light
wash to create subtle The rabbit scribe in
visual effects.
the foreground
God
L's
may
be a spy
in
court.
On
the Princeton Vase, a distracted old
beautiful
young women
jewels, perhaps stripped to have hidden the
same
in his palace,
from the Maize God, since he also seems
Maize God's
belt
ornament
time, a rabbit scribe busily takes
palace.
God L dallies with five
adorning them with jade
down
Meanwhile, on the other side of the
guised characters decapitate the Maize God. the
Hero Twins,
in disguise, in a
in his lap.
At the
notations for the
pot,
two oddly
They might
dis-
also be
mythic episode where they carry
out sacrifices in order to convince the Underworld gods to volunteer for their
own demise.
Despite some modern restoration, the Princeton Vase ancient masterpiece, for the fineness of its
line,
is
an
the effective use of
compositional complexity. Although the style
wash, and for
its
relates to the
making of Maya books, the composition here
is
designed to work most effectively on a continuous surface: the
woman farthest to the left tickles the feet of the woman who kneels in front of God L, as she tries to draw her attention to the scene of sacrifice
turns
The
it
on the other
in his
side.
The result is that the observer of the pot
or her hands, reading the story around continuously.
artist has
drawn the
five
elegant
women
as if they
were mov-
ing through slow motion or even stopped action, caught one frame at a time, the
brush or pen lingering over the sensuous curves of
their bodies.
The narrative range of codex-style vessels is vast, and many of the stories related on their surfaces occur subjects include the Death of the
nowhere
quently reproduced example at the Metropolitan
and scenes from the
208
life
else.
Common
Baby Jaguar, known from
a fre-
Museum of Art,
of the Maize God, whose rebirth
is
vividly
L83 Hunahpu and Xbalanque bring theii father, the
back
to life
turtleshell <
odex
from
.1
<
M
ra<
ked open
on the surface of a
style plate
painted on
a plate
on
\
iew
the
al
Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. On the plate, one of the supernatural
Tw
[ero
1
Xbalanque,
ins,
waters his father, while the other,
Hunahpu, extends tation, as
turtleshell
if
184. Bound
to a scaffold
is
the pious
Only two or three in
site
filial
relation-
political utility
of such imagery on
a
sire.
The twofaces ofthe Ik emblem pots: Pink Glyphs and the
and
apparently scalped, a captive
prepares for death on a vessel
an aged
in invi-
more dramatically rendered, and one can
imagine the
easily gift to
hand
his
him up out of the
symbolizing the sere earth.
Perhaps nowhere ship
to call
late
eighth-century monuments
"Altar" style at
or near the
of Motul de San Jose on the shores of Lake Peten-Itza feature
the Pink Glyphs style. Standing
attendants to either side feature thin
cutaway masks
in
front of
their faces, a characteristic of
an
emblem glyph with
Despite such
a limited
a
main sign of ik, meaning breath or wind.
presence
in stone, this
monly appears on ceramics, and
emblem glyph com-
several ateliers of painters
may
this regional style.
have worked
at
the
site,
perhaps into the ninth century. At Motul
de San Jose, the ceramic record may have had as much validity as stone, for particular rulers and their rites of passage are spelled
out
in
painted vessels.
The Pink Glyphs vessels are known
for the unusual rosy tones
used to paint the hieroglyphic texts, but the mix of these bright
and subtle tones has not always worn well, and many texts have eroded.
A number
pots, sharing
of different artists worked together on these
pigments and
slips,
but with different results.
rendered scenes of sacrifice unusual
almost as
Maya suits.
if
—
for
Many
example,
perform penis perforation or wear giant jaguar
feature a character
usually watches others
A
ceramic art
they would want to demonstrate to posterity that the
really did
Most
in
different
make
hand with the
pot from this group
nicknamed the Fat Cacique, who
sacrifices.
ability to
draw
a finer line
painted
a
at the Art Institute of Chicago. Surely a scene
209
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ihi
185. Tribute-paying lords appear in
the court of a lord of Motul de
San Jose. Wrapped bundles
huge
fabric
as what
may be
awnings, are
introduced at
left.
A
in
office,
the
Cacique descends from
Fat a
black obsidian
mirror rests under the throne.
been tied to the scaffold where he has rendered
all
a
who has The artist
partly scalped captive
of
what may be precious spondylus shells, as well
of installation
jaguar-covered sedan chair to face
be sacrificed.
will
the principal figures with cutaway masks, as
if
the viewer had x-ray vision to see through the disguises of the
ceremony. 1963 Richard
In
Adams unearthed
an extraordinary
vessel at Altar de Sacrificios that bears the Ik
may have been
A
lord.
a gift
or
payment from
a
emblem
distant
who
so
it
Motul de San Jose
pot by the same hand provides evidence of such long-dis-
tance exchange, for a pair of translators (who well)
Maya
— and
sit
may
be scribes as
between the enthroned lord and heavily laden
deliver a tribute payment.
The
visitors,
Altar Painter aggressively
engages the figures with the glyphic frames and creates dramatic settings in part by violating glyphic boundaries. at
Motul emphasizes architectural
scenes,
A related painter
from palace
life
to the
ballgame, where he manages to suggest the setting with just a few horizontal lines.
Chamd andMotagua
Some
region vessels
regions of the
Maya
highlands, particularly along the
drainage of the Chixoy River, part of the Usumacinta River system, saw the rise of fine vase-painting traditions, although no great
210
Maya
cities
— and
no
monuments
—
are
found
there.
iss
powerful lords lived there and when the) died, they took
Still, !
i
i
u
•
1
tomb Many simple
painted ceramics with them to the
\
subjects were painted time and again on straight -sided
oftentimes low ones, and on gadrooned cups,
.1
(
shape
\
linders,
oi
vessel
rarely occurring in the low lands.
Brought from Guatemala the Chama*
Vase
is
White chevrons on
among black
to
the
Philadelphia
ground nun both
lower margin of the cylinder, probably the feather borders that often edged
once again in
trade and tribute, as two
is
the black body paint of their
many
most familiar
a
oi
years ago,
Maya
186
pots.
the upper rim and
replication in painl of
Maya
attire. The subjecl Maya merchants, dressed
Underworld patrons, engage
one another. Typical of Chama painting are the exaggerated and
figures
facial
pronounced
C'hama pots depict supernatural instruments
in
god who lived
buttocks bats,
and
ankles.
Other
animals playing musical
processions, and scenes of
God
N, an old
Maya
in a shell.
The highland
site
of Nebaj yielded the exceptional Fenton
Vase almost 100 years ago, but the discovery of other vessels similar style has
now
led to the
in
determination that the workshop
186. Chama-style vessels
San Agustfn Aeasaguastlan,
usually have perfectly straight
lay near
sides, unlike the tapered cylinders
Motagua
of the
Maya lowlands;
chevron border of the region.
is
the
characteristic
tribute
may
River.
The
vases
in
the upper drainage of the
in this style all tell
of the warfare and
payments of the region, and the ow ner of the Fenton Vase
well have been a tribute-paying lord to distant San Agusti'n
211
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i87
187. One of the best-known Maya vases, the Fenton Vase of the
Museum
British
features the
presentation and recording of tribute.
own
Each protagonist has
caption; the
glyphs
is
column
his
of larger
an abbreviated primary
standard sequence.
Acasaguastlan.
On
the Fenton Vase, record keepers tally up the
sums, while the lord examines the bolts of cloth and basket of tamales
188.
In
Yucatan, a carved style
of pottery
— usually
example, K'awil
floats
up
from a waterlily on one side;
on the
of him.
Other styles
Maya ceramics of the Late Classic period
called
Chochola— was made near Xcalumkin. On this particularly fine
in front
and
styles to categorize
muwan
birds
standard sequence.
flourished in Belize, at least one of
than elsewhere. Copador wares, only "pseudo" glyphs, as
212
in
too
many sizes stylized
were painted throughout Campeche. Several
other, batik-like resist
patterns run under a primary
turn up
them all. Large, heavy plates with
if in
them with
made
to the south of
imitation of
styles
a looser use of line
more
Copan, use
typical Classic
ceramics. Left out of this consideration altogether arc the incised alabaster (stone) wares, which were
made
at
Copan and Palenque,
as well as other locations.
Northern ceramic traditions
Maya
artists of
northern Yucatan painted ceramics, but during
the Late Classic period
style
distinctive
a
developed around the city of Xcalumkin,
in
Puuc region
the
Long
of northern Campeche, according to Nikolai Grube.
Chochola vessels from the name of
a
wares
of carved
called
nearby town, vessels
in
this style are cups, straight cylinders with slightly flaring rims,
surfaces
bottoms. Although
with rounded
or cylinders
may seem
to be the
dominant
of other features also pertain.
their
characteristic, a
Many show
carved
number
carved imagery only
on one side and are paired with text on the other
— often
in a
slanted column; others are paired with resist patterns, or a
combination of the two. Yucatan was known
wax
production, and
some of
the
for
wax was used
its
to
honey and
produce the
resist designs.
The
technique of carving
ability of the artist to
images of two or three is
rendered.
The
figures,
K'awil of
iconographic elements; he right and
left
may have
put constraints on the
render action, and although there are lively
is
ill.
more 188
typically a single figure
lias
been reduced to key
seemingly disembodied but reversed
hands emerge from the water
scrolls below.
Carved
2J3
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into
the
background
cross-hatching,
elaborate
is
shorthand for agricultural
fields.
The
reverse
is
perhaps
marked by both
text and seemingly evanescent patterns.
Plumbate and the ceramics ofthe Postclassic
New ceramics appeared late in Maya
region. In
the ninth century across the entire
Guatemala and Chiapas, mass-produced Fine
Orange pottery from Tabasco began stamped-in designs turning up
Veracruz to the Peten.
189. About ad 900, fine-orange ring-stand vessels
common
in
manufacture place
in
became
Yucatan, but actual
may have
taken
Veracruz or Tabasco.
Much rougher than
the carved
ceramics of just a generation or
two
earlier,
the imagery
nevertheless features K'awil.
214
New
at
to appear, with
uniform
disparate locations, from
vessel shapes also took hold: small
plume but
or
from
..
T.
Toltec period
H
Pawatun. aged and wrinkled, inside his shell.
cups and low bowls became common, as did ring-stand vessels of various shapes,
some bases supporting
straight-sided cylinders,
others with tapering or bulbous containers.
This
effort at
rituals: at
mass production may have accompanied new
Chichen
Itza, for
example, feasting may have taken
on new value, and thousands of ring-stand vessels may have been needed for public
use.
An example
at
Gallery may have come from Chichen is
the Yale University Art
Itza or environs. K'awil
featured on both sides of the pot, carefully incised prior to
firing.
With ceramic
came
the rise of Toltec civilization style,
in
Central Mexico,
probably manufactured somewhere
in
a
new
Chiapas,
into widespread production. Called plumbate, the ware's
shiny surfaces develop process.
when oxygen
is
cut off from the firing
Many plumbate vessels are zoomorphic or anthropomor-
phic effigies. Single figures, they cannot provide narration for
way
gious ceremony
in
some plumbate
vessels feature
God X
the
or Pawatun, of the
Maya
gods; one. for example,
Maya Underworld,
and.
like
is
an Early
Classic example, features the craggy, lined face of the old god
stands within
reli-
that cylinder vessels can. Nevertheless,
who
a shell.
21
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5
Chapter 10:
A World
Hand-held Objects
of
Of all the works of the Maya world that have vanished, small-scale objects probably fared
of the latter were
worse than monumental ones, since many
made with
the idea of endurance in mind.
Although the Maya invested time and energy to construct grand
scale,
object, including delicate
a
for private use in their palaces,
and ultimately many of them would find their way
whence come almost
all
to the tomb,
such works that survive today. Ceramic
objects form such a coherent 9,
on
and ephemeral things. Wealthy lords
commissioned small-scale works
Chapter
art
they also relished the miniature and the hand-held
body that they are discussed
in
rather than collected here with the other sorts of gifts
and royal paraphernalia that accompanied the dead on their journey.
Surely
wood was a principal medium for both monumental and
small-scale works of art, but ation or
two
in
little
could last for more than a gener-
the rainforest. Lintels carved of
hewn beams of
iron-hard sapodilla survived at the peaks of temples at Tikal and elsewhere, legible a thousand years after they were set in place, but
few other works of wood fared so
well. Staffs
and scepters from the
Postclassic survived in a waterlogged state in the Sacred Cenote at
Chichen hand.
Itza,
providing
a taste
wooden banquet once
of the
When archaeologists opened Tikal Burial
that the sepulcher had been flooded with ally leaving
at
195, they realized
mud in antiquity, eventu-
behind hollows where wooden objects had rotted
away. Injecting these earthen molds with stucco, quick-thinking
archaeologists captured ancient forms of the god K'awil, just 40
cm
(16 in) high, right
down
to the stucco surface.
The
scale of
these Tikal objects would seem to be that of dozens of hand-held
images of gods depicted commonly on Maya monuments. Most
gods were probably carved of wood, small enough to be held hand, and ultimately lost to time.
shapes of miniature houses
at
The
large stone vessels
Copan bear
Maya gods were
when not
in
kept in such sacred vessels, and they,
too, like the coffered chests that
216
the
self-description as "god
houses" and are the right scale for the Tikal K'awils: active use,
in the in
hold sacred vestments of
Maya
madeol wood
lords today, were probabl)
or were stored
such
in
a
manner as
Maya carved
But to imagine that the
would probably be a mistake.
Museum of
wooden
.1
portrait.
be this confident
if
I
li^
onrj their gods o\
i\
e
wood
kneeling
in) features a
.inns boldly cross Ins chest, and
not aggressive
it
posture that Earl}
Classic stelae often seek to replicate. Because yet
sun
.i\
figure in the Metropolitan
Artol similar scale 38 cm or 15
lord, very likely
may
\
that could not
to in\ itede<
Maya artists had not
developed the ability to foreshorten the body, they could not
effecth ely translate the posture into
Late
Classic,
when
foreshortening, they
the
Maya
two dimensions. During
artists
may have carved
had
lew such
indeed
wooden
portrait
may simply be that they do not sun The Maya mastered many other materials that could
sculptures, although
it
rendered into small-scale forms
own knowledge
the
mastered
— and, perhaps because
ive.
only he of
their
of the decay of rain, termites, and time, they
sought out hard and durable ones. A readily
a\ ailable
raw material
was hone, both human and animal. Some recent work suggests that bodies flesh
may have been
from the tomb
easier, of course.
191. four,
Made
of
wood as
boiled
— making
in
order to eliminate decaying
the taking and keeping of relics
Maya imagery
is
filled
with hones to
a
degree
a set of
these representations of
K'awil
were buried
in
a Tikal
tomb. Maya lords often hold representations of gods that would
appear size(cf.
to
have been about
ill.
this
89).
J 17
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*&M
uncommon ol
in
other world art forms, and even what we think
European version, the
the
the Caribbean, ma} well have been adapted b)
Maya imager}
thieves from \s
a
ol > u<
remarkable collection
tomb, probably
those roving
Hkal King Hasaw Chan
ol ninety
now-lost cotton bag.
in a
carved bones into his
Among the last objects to
be recovered by archaeologists from the burial, the trove
matched
pairs,
continues from one carved bone onto another, w
uli
tagonists' bodies being cut right off by rising waters!
the ancient
luded
in<
perhaps once to have been used together as twee/
unique objects. The story of the death of the Maize
ers, as well as
God
.is
.u.m
offering, attendants ol
final
.1
K'awil put
oj
skulls and crossed bones ol the pirates
the pro-
although
Maya observer, as well as the modern one, understands
they plunge into the Underworld. Into the delicate incision,
by tools modern
man
made
has never recovered or does not recognize,
the artist rubbed cinnabar or hematite, revealing the powerful calligraphic
line.
An
elegant hut naked captive stares
wrists on one hone
whose
the king of Calakmul."
at
his
hound
text proclaims, "his bone, a relation of
Is this
that lord's
\
cry hone, recycled from
the Mesh to an object of lasting power?
193. (above) A pair of carved
194.
bones from Burial
the Burial
would seem sequence. top,
1
16
at Tikal
to feature a narrative
First,
on the bone
at
aged gods (the "Paddlers")
escort the Maize God,
company
of
in
been a
(right)
relics:
kinsman
Some bones from offering may have
116
with
its
reference to
of the king of
Calakmul, might
this
bone be
from his very body?
the
howling animals,
across treacherous waters
in
a
canoe. Remarkably, on the
second bone the canoe seemingly plunges
into the
water and vanishes from the carved surface.
J1U
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A
human femur
carved
would suggest
at the
Yale University Art Gallery
that relics were collected
from victims,
for in this
example the text notes that the protagonist "witnessed" the event.
The carved bone of a victim would have been a potent souvenir to bring home from a visit, particularly from a visit to a more powerful city,
power.
whose lords intended
With
to impress
the bone's heavy,
would probably have taken note as if its bearer
upon
their vassals their
knobby ends, the ancient viewer that
it is
upside-down when seen,
were holding a victim upside-down
The Maya
also cut and carved shell,
gles (a Piedras
as well.
making headdress span-
Negras tomb yielded over 200 cut
tesserae) and
personal adornments, including elegant matched pairs that
have once belonged to earflares. shell
Some
jewelry was designed to be suspended as plaques around the
neck.
The
cut interior of the conch provided a satin-smooth and
often iridescent surface for fine incision.
Cleveland
Museum
of Art depicts a
relaxation and repose, quietly 195. Though somewhat eroded, a
shells carved bone at the Yale University Art Gallery clearly features a
196.
One
of a
matched
pair, this
Early Classic shell depicts a
human— with
vivid
breath-
inside a great skeletal
were
trumpets.
victorious warrior.
mask.
220
may
of the most extraordinary
left
Maya
smoking
whole and cut only
to
An example
at
the
lord in a position of
a thin cigar.
make them
Other conch
into functional
Some bear texts identifying their wealthy owners.
197.
R,
J
beckons kv.
Takeshi Inomata's excavation
in a
burned palace
Aguateca
at
has provided good evidence that finished
shell,
might
workshop, probably by
all
have been produced
in a single
hone, and even jade
single extended family. Jade's intrinsic value meant that even
a
its
scraps were cut into tiny beads and mosaic pieces, probably from the Early Classic onward.
Some of the tiniest jades were inlaid into Some highland Guatemalan
the cut and filed teeth of Maya lords. sites
may have been
particular locales ofjade production, for not
only have large, carved objects been recovered
at sites
with
little
other ceremonial presence, such as Nebaj, but most ancient jade-
working
tools and large,
unworked or
partially
worked jade boul-
ders have come from the highlands, especially Kaminaljuyu, w here the raw material from the
Motagua River region was perhaps
hoarded.
Other greenstones were also valued, particularly times,
when
jade supplies
may have been
less plentiful.
in
A
early
Late
221
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198. Precious materials formed
an Early Classic mask
of the rain
god Chaak, including conch,
He
spondylus, and greenstone. carries the glyph for
sun
in
a
closed bowl on his forehead.
199, 200. stela,
(right) Like a
miniature
the Leiden Plaque features a
triumphant
ruler
on one side and
a text relating an early
8.14.3.1.12
(in
Maya
ad 320), on
reverse. Originally
date, its
worn as one
of
three plaques at the waist, like the
adornment worn by the plaque's protagonist, the object drilled to
Preclassic head of fuchsite
context.
Worked
in three
was found
at
Tikal
was
later
be worn sideways.
in a first-century
BC
69
dimensions, the head probably repre-
sents an early king, as indicated by his foliated headband, insignia
of royal status. Fuchsite was also used during the Early Classic at
Rio Azul, where an extraordinary representation of Chaak, the rain god,
masked
a
worked with both deep modeling and
Chaak
is
brought
light incision, the face of
to life with inlay of shell, further suggesting that
several obdurate materials in a
198
dead king early in the fifth century Confidently
might have been worked side-by-side
workshop. Usually by sawing with
a string
and abrasives, Maya artisans
cut jade stones and boulders into several distinct shapes,
which could be mass-produced times, celts
for jewelry.
Common
in
some of
Olmec
—or ceremonial axeheads—persisted during the Early
Classic, often receiving only incised decoration, like the Leiden
Plaque.
From AD 400
to 900, the
Maya
generally
made
thin
m 200
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plaques, which they then carved in very low relief, using tubular drills
more commonly
like the
as time
Leiden Plaque, bear
a
went
on.
Many
of the
earl}' jades,
dated inscription, but once incision
gave way to the more standard low
relief of Classic
Maya jades, few
received any writing.
The Early
Classic
Maya had
adding an inscription or
works
—and
a
Olmec
collected
jades, often
statement of ownership to the early
for a while, they
had emulated some Olmec shapes
jade, especially celts. Later, in turn, the
AD 800 onward sought any and
all
Maya at Chichen
Itza
for
from
earlier treasures to offer to the
Sacred Cenote, and the types of offerings read
like
an inventory of
Maya jades. A rare dated jade from the cenote bears an
inscription
celebrating a Piedras Negras king of the eighth century, and the
—
sensitive
indeed, for jade, unusually so
Such ajade may have made its way
to
—head may be
Chichen
a portrait.
Itza's sacred well as
treasure or tribute, or perhaps as booty looted from Piedras
Negras
at the
Maya
time of its ninth-century abandonment.
pilgrims hurled dozens of necklaces, bracelets, and
tiaras of jade into the Sacred
201 The .
text
on the back
of the
head names the early eighthcentury king of Piedras Negras,
whose
injadeitethis
meditative portrait
is.
JJl
Cenote
as well.
They probably once
formed the costumes
literall)
into
featured
at
enough,
little
ill.
\
the "black
his
Maize God, and
they
hole"
wasprobabh
where the Maize God
moment of death and
in his
often
is
resurrection. Interestingly
turquoise was recovered from
Maya
it
ictims met their water} death, cast there
192 has what isprobabh turquoise
the clear
in
the
ol
guise that most young
inlay.
tin-
cenote, although
Nevertheless, despite
appreciation for the material in the era of Chichen,
may have recognized
that iconographically,
it
did not belong
the "black hole" because the material, unlike jade, did not
represent maize.
Main' plaques may have been costume pieces as finest
examples
retain the clear evidence of less finished drill work.
Aesthetically, the low
relief of jade plaques offers
part because low qualities of jade a
—
relief fails its
to exploit
translucence,
its
many
color,
enthroned Maize
God
in
visual
large
of the intrinsic
even
large jade plaque perhaps once designed to he
chest, an
less
more vigorous modeling,
satisfaction than incision or
On
The
well.
were shaped carefully with abrasives, but many Late Classic
its
obduracy.
worn on
the
receives his attending dwarf.
202. Many Late Classic jade plaques feature the Maize God, here attended by his dwarf,
probably a reference to the stunted ear that often
accompanies the
principal cob.
225
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202
Such representations commonly occur on painted Maya pottery and on monumental Maya stone sculpture, but the imagery harder to read and the results less successful intractable jade. This plaque, too,
was
from the Sacred Cenote: found
Teotihuacan
whence century,
at
it
was taken
to the British
early in this century. Jades, then, all
as
a
precious
Precolumbian world. 203. Rendered
Palenque's King
in jadeite, shell,
of
Hanab
Pakal
portrayed him as ever young,
suspended
in
time
like a
in
is
translated to
although not one Central Mexico,
in the
seventh or eighth
Museum
by Thomas Gann
were among the most portable of
ancient treasures. Small, resistant to breakage and intrinsically
valuable
and obsidian, the mask
a treasure,
probably had been spirited
it
when
young
Maize God.
226
material,
they
moved through
the
Almost
.ill
know
Skilled
Maya
jade mosaic
i)
Maya, although
the
oi
s
Mesoamerica were made
maj have begun
this specialty
l>v
Oaxaca.
in
shaped dazzling assemblages of tiny tesserae,
artists
forming compelling portrait masks to place over the faces of dead kings.
Over the course of the Classic period, tesserae grew smaller
and thinner.
Yucatan after 900,
In
fine
grained turquoise mosaic
masks were made. At Palenque,
at
the end of the seventh century,
mask transformed the
permanent image of youth, segmented
into a
of green maize. Unlike other masks,
wood or stone A
a trial
to decay.
mask must have
The
like so
mosaic
fallen apart as
a
stucco head of the place on the king's
in
soon as
larger pieces that are specific to
trait cluster at
many kernels
one had no armature of
assembly over
light coat of Stucco kept the
face, hut the
this
hut was formed instead directly onto the face of the
dead king, perhaps after king.
jade mosaic
a
aged King Hanab Pakal
tare of the dead,
I
the center of the face; small tesserae
Mesh began
his
lanah till
l'akal's in at
por-
the ears
and chin.
Around
the year 900, Toltec traders began to
turquoise from what
of Chichen
Itza.
Some
other finished works
— round
is
available
to the lords
turquoise was probably worked
may have been
locally,
hut
imported. Several tezcacuit-
mirrored hack ornaments
lapilli
make
now New Mexico and Arizona
— depicted
as
having
been worn ceremonially on the backs of Toltec lords were found the
site.
Archaeologists found one example intact and
seat of the
Red Jaguar Throne of the
;it
set into the
interior Castillo. Before that
building was sealed and abandoned, Chichen lords placed three large
Maya jade beads on top of the mosaic of Central Mexican
fire
serpents. Each fire serpent head points to a cardinal direction,
radiating from the center, itself the direction of "up and
along a central mosaic, the
axis. In
Maya
down"
placing the three jade heads atop the
lords set out the three stones of their creation
hearth, perhaps initiating a
new era.
Although the Maya used most of the
and obsidian
flint
they quarried for tools and weapons, they also came to cut these stones into precious objects called "eccentrics." Their sharp edges give
them
the
aspect
of
tools,
but
Hints
these
and
obsidians were purely ceremonial, and most were never used as
tools,
although some of them may have been
worn
as
ornaments.
The
best flint sources
apparently worked nearby. gists recovered
lie
in
From
Belize,
and much of
the site of Altun
1
la,
it
was
archaeolo-
dozens of caches and burial offerings- — frequently
227
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204. Late Classic masters
and obsidian worked
obdurate materials with
Here the
of flint
their
human heads
fluidity.
pull
back
as the monster plunges forward,
as
if
traveling at extraordinary
speed.
placed under the
tomb
floor
—consisting of great numbers
eccentric flints in the shapes of
former had brought the
latter
weapons and animals,
as
if
of the
down. Some of them also resemble
agricultural tools. But truly extraordinary eccentric flints have
been found elsewhere, although never several very fine ones
in quantity,
were revealed
Hieroglyphic Stairs of Copan and also
where they were still wrapped in In artist
making an reduces the
same way
calligraphy, filling in
that
what
is
it
the
flint.
flint
204, the
Maya
emphasizing
Maya head and flint. The eye
the pouty
reads the
reads the quick brushstrokes of
not rendered and accommodating
the strange working-out of the
every
ill.
face to its simplest outline,
just the slightest bit of
result in the
in the Rosalila structure,
eccentric flint like the one of
human
and recently
caches set into the
cloth.
the long, sloping forehead of the elite
mouth with
in
human form
that characterizes
Yet of course where the calligraphic line
outline can only have been
is
speedy,
made under the most
intensive concentration and at great investment of time, the artist
having carefully struck the stone to chip flakes so the artist
who rendered
precisely.
So
the earth monster bearing his earthly
charges into the Underworld has such control of his material
228
even today, we can sec that the monster's
that
maw plunges
dow nw ard Gold was never common of Chichen It/a, by 900 or
finished
so,
the
:.
Maya gold
from the mi.
the disks,
probabl}
at
mam
chilling scene: a
:-idraws his knife from the chest of a hapless
in
1
It/a
Ml
itseli
survive the Spanish invasion served as one sort
types ofgoldworking
500 were
the lords
Local craftsmen
Chichen
costume element or another and pro\ ides
Sacred C i
to
area, bul
imported semi-finished round
205. the bottom of Chicher
Maya
from lower Central America
disks, probably
then
in
<>i
idence that the four
e\
known among the Mixtecs and Aztecs
familiar to the Maya as well. Artisans cast bells, using
the lost-wax method; they also
hammered repousse
designs, cut
captive while the next victim
watches on. The workers gold disks
of
may have been
Maya
familiar
thin sheets of gold, and
t\\
isted gold filigree into rings
and other
ornaments.
with the compositional solutions
The imagery
achieved by painters of plates
of the gold disks has no obvious source that
and bowls, the only other round
survives, although general parallels tan be
forms known today. Despite
imagery of sacrifice
common
to the disks
the painting
Chichen
It/.a.
and
drawn between to particular
the
images
iconographic details that relate to Central
Mexico, the
composition
is
purely Maya.
in
at
the deft handling of the
But what
human forms and
is
extraordinary
is
the compositional
229
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strength of the scenes rendered on the gold disks. Each one of multifigural
the
compositions provides a separate dramatic
moment; each one focuses on the climax the "pregnant Peten.
moment"
so typical of
205 shows
111.
a
Maya
itself,
rather than
art in Chiapas or the
victorious warrior
who
thrusts his
right hand into the open chest cavity of the slain captive to rip out
The kneeling
the heart. to
attendant in front of him looks up, as
engage him; the two
clasp the legs of the captive as
them
in right
to help, and the artist has
worked
surrounds the void over the captive's chest.
of these two rear attendants turns, his face rendered
and he makes eye contact directly with the viewer,
frontally, if
if
behind the sacrificing warrior's calves, so that
a press of bodies
One
if
tezcacmtlapilli-clad attendants behind
both to acknowledge the
as
of the rendering and to
artificiality
bring the viewer into the scene, to make him complicit
in the
sacrifice.
Other scenes are also dramatic: sea captured a
battles,
armed combat
all
dashed off with
in a sort of breathless narrative, as if
brush, despite the meticulous and slow craft necessary in
goldworking. Although Chichen Itza
is
a painted
and carved
city,
the passion and excitement of the imagery worked on these disks is
anomalous, and more typical of Classic vase painting than
Maya sculpture. The costumes
on the gold disks feature what
depicted
have long been considered evidence of foreigners trampling local
Maya, particularly the long
tresses, facial hair,
and trimmed
feathers of the victorious warriors, but these characteristics
can
all
be identified as normal
Maya
representations of warfare
of the seventh and eighth centuries, with
Mexican
influence. In fact,
executed on
a
a
dose of Central
new luxury
material,
the imported sheet gold, much of the imagery might well have
been conservative, and even old-fashioned, much as luxury ivories
late
in
occasional
Rome
preserved a Hellenistic tradition.
The
work of gold
that converges explicitly with Chichen
more
surprising: remarkably, early twentieth-
Itza painting
is
far
century divers retrieved
three pieces
all
of a cut-out gold
mask, perhaps once affixed to some sort of armature, nearly identical to
imagery worn by
a figure in
of the Jaguar paintings and the 206. Three pieces of a single
mask were Itza's
retrieved from
Chichen
These rare
pieces of
foil
and hammering
details.
Maya
production of the tenth century,
Sacred Cenote, remarkably,
each formed by both cutting the gold
carving.
leader
in
introducing
Mesoamerica.
230
new
both the Upper Temple
Lower Temple of
the Jaguar
gold link the works to the
when Chichen
materials
Itza
was
a
and techniques across
SrrsaS *
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81 2
Chronological Table
Middle Preclassic
Village
(900/800-250
El Mirador,
BC]
Tikal
life at
Nakbe begin growth and
development Tikal Burial 85
Late Preclassic ('2.00
BC-AD 250)
AD 150 250
EVII 292
Early Classic
(AD 250-550)
North Acropolis
in
Main pyramids at Teotihuacan El Mirador, Nakbe collapse in
use
at
Uaxactun
on
Earliest date
built
a
Maya
stela
found
in
archaeological context
320
Date of Leiden Plaque
.'378
Arrival of Teotihuacanos at Tikal,
45
Siyah Chan K'aw
Uaxactun, and elsewhere dedicates Stela
il
.'3
1
a
Tikal
562 615
Late Classic
(ad 550-900)
650 onward 680-720 6 8.'3
692
Caracol defeats Tikal
in
war
Hanab Pakal becomes king at Palenque Teotihuacan enters decline Greatest number of female representations on Maya monuments Death of Hanab Pakal at Palenque Completion of thirteen katuns (9. 1.-3.0.0.0
celebrated)
Tonina defeats Palenque Gold object interred at Copan under Stela
Dos
H
Pilas celebrates victory over Seibal;
Seibal king sacrificed
Quirigua takes Waxaklahun Ubah K'awil of Copan captive
Ah Maxam
paints at Naranjo in
multiple styles
Paintings at Bonampak, Cacaxtla,
800 869 900
Mulchic Chichen Itza dominates Yucatan Tikal Stela
erected
1 1
Toltec trading routes extend from
Yucatan to LIS. Southwest; centered at
Tula, Hidalgo
Gold disks
Chichen Itza
Early Postclassic
Chichen Itza
at
falls
into decline; founding
of Mayapan
(AD 900-1200)
Mayapan
2th!
Aztecs found their capital
Late Postclassic
(ad 1200-1530
city,
Tenochtitlan
14001400-
Surviving Maya books painted
Quiche and Cakchiquel Maya thrive highland Guatemala
in
Tulum 1
5
Juan de Grijalva explores coast of
1
Yucatan; sights
1519
Cortes arrives,
Tulum
first in
Yucatan and then
Mexico Cortes defeats Aztecs with aid of
1
52
1
524
Pedro Alvarado defeats the Maya of
l
.)
Francisco Montejo founds Merida on
1
Tlaxcaltecan
allies
Guatemala 1
site
232
of T'ho
Select Bibliography
G
General Ilk- l>rsi .in
Maya (6th .mil
haeologu
veya
sui
al
ol
the
are surd) Mi< hael Coi
i
rhames and ludson, 1999 Robei Shan Maya ill
ludson.
Linda
Others worth reading are indent Maya Civilization Rutgers, 1982 .along with i
largei
drawn ol the Maya within Mesoamerican surveys, including
tuii-
Muriel Porter Weaver, lh,
and their Predea Press,
>»">
,
\i
.
ademii
!99S)andR E.W Adams, Mesoamerica (Universit)
Oklahoma
Ties-,,
consulted
is (
199]
rene and
ol
AN., to be
|
(
to «
i
three
ite
I
and
rOW,
I
I
I
id.
I.
S< hele,
|,
Maya OSmOS Moi rOW, 199 i);andS< hele and Petei Mathews, lo\
Pal
k«
i.
(
lh, (,,d, oj Kings iS. I
mi
readei
\
i
|
ibnei
1998)
s,
an benefit b) reading
i
the tour volumes ol John Lloyd
Stephens
Prehistorit
weni on
s> hele
MOI
Aztecs, Maya,
3rd ed
majoi exhibition
.1
ioi us on Maya hist,»i \ ind religion Scheleand David reidel, t Forest oj
Norm. in Hammond, the pu
.on. Ion, 1992), the
I
lot
othei majoi intei pretive woi Ks thai
i
(5th ed .Si. mt. M.l Universit) Press,
i""
I
atalogue
I
.
i.\.u Vbrk, 1986; rhamea
r.i.i.-.ll.
and
In,
idents oj Travelin
(
'entral
and Yucatan (I larper Brothers, 839) and lm idents oj Travelin Yucatan (Harper Brothers, 18 Claude Baudez and Sydney Pu ass.i have tmerica,
'hiapas,
(
1
reorge Stuart.
1
)
1
Lost Kingdoms of the
Geographic Kubler,
lit
.
Society, 1993).
1
)
(
/«< lent
,
1962; 3rd ed., Pelican,
ed.,
pro\ ided
written a delightful history
reorge
andArchitet ture ofthe
Americas (1st ims
Maya (National
pioneering art
a
Mesoamerica and the Andes. limit discussion of the Maya to two chapters in The Art ofMesoamerica (2nded., Thames and Hudson, 1997). I
Maya
religion
is
considered
Karl
in
Taube, The Ma/or Hods of. im ient Yucatan (Dumbarton Oaks, 1992), Mary Miller and Karl Taube, The Gods and Symbols ofAncient Mexico and the Maya (Thames and Hudson, 1992), and in David Carrasco, Religions of Mesoamerica (Harper, 990). The reader 1
should also consult Bishop Diego de
Landa's account of sixteenth-century Yucatan; the least
cumbersome
ucatan Before and After the
)
Conquest {Do- er reprint, 1980). principal
Maya
w in
mo
is
best told by
Breaking the
Maya
(
(2nd
A major conference in
1!)')
I
treated
resulting
m
at
Maya
1999)
Dumbarton Oaks architecture,
the most important study of
the built em ironment to date, with major contributions from and edited by Stephen Houston, Function and Meaning
inClassu
Maya Architecture (Dumbarton
Oaks, 1998). A recent volume on
Mesoamerican architecture also gives some Maya cities: Jeff
consideration to
Elizabeth Benson,
The
ed., City-States
Maya: hi and In hi lecture, .
.
)env
( I
ofthe
er,
1986), provides a look at the
religious narrative to
Dennis Tedlock, The I'ofol Vufc The Mayan Book ofthe Dawn ofLife (Simon and Schuster, 1985). Several important museum and
cities.
exhibition catalogues have advanced the
programs of five Maya
Tatiana Proskouriakoffdrevt
reconstructions of Maya architecture that have been
more persuasiv e than
written descriptions: Album ofMaya Architecture (Carnegie Institution of
among them Clemency Coggins and Orrin Shane,
Washington,
The Cenote of Sacrifice: Maxa Treasures
the excavations there (A. L. Smith,
study of the Maya,
Sacred Well
at
(
Charles Gallenkamp,
im I'.j; her sequenced Uaxactun reconstructions are based on
Uaxactun, Guatemala: Excavations i<>:u-
'huhen Itzd
(University of Texas Press, 198 ed.,
in
ed.,
Architecture
architectural
the
Maya
ol
Michael Cue
'ode
Thamesand Hudson,
survive has been re-translated by
from
v.
Kowalski, ed., Mesoamerican Architecture (Oxford University Tress, 1999).
translation remains that of William Ciates,
ovei
Ww
The decipherment
York. 1992)
historical treatment of the arts ol both
ol disi
ofth Maya (Thamesand Hudson, London, 1992; A In an is, \j)st Cities
:i7,
!•);
Maya:
Carnegie Institution
1950).
Most
i
ities
of
Washington,
are best looked at in
Treasures of an Ancient Civilization,
focused studies that treat
(Abrams, 1985), Eva and ArmEggebrecht and Nikolai Grube,
an haeology of a given site. Anions; those to consider: William Fash, A; ribes, Warriors and Kings: the City of L 'of, in and the In, ient Maxa (Thames and Hudson. 1991 Peter Harrison, The
Welt der
Maxa
(von Zabern,
1
Peter Schmidt, Mercedes de
and Enrique Civilization
N'alda, eds.,
eds.,
Die
992), and la
Garza
Maya
Maya
art in recent years
Scheie and
Mary
Kings: Dynasty
and Ritual
in
Linda Blood of
is
Miller, 'The
Maxa
.
);
(Thames and Hudson,
London, 1998; Rizzoli, New York, 1.9.98), but the most important writing on
art, writing,
architecture, and
Art
Lords qfTikal Rulers ofan Ancient City
(Thamesand Hudson,
Maya
1999);
Stephen Houston, Hieroglyphs and History at Do- Pilas Dynastu Politii theClassii
%
Press, 1993);and Jefl Kowalski,
The
233
www.ebook3000.com
of
Maui (University of Texas
House oftke Governor: A Maya Palace at Uxmal, Yucatan, Mexico (University of
Oklahoma
Press, 1987).
doctoral dissertation at Yale treats the sculpture of Palenque:
A Critical
of Maya Stone Sculpture,
Although
Claude Baudez looks
Study
AD 250-800.
each volume with articles
on the
art
a
clutch of essential
and writing of Maya
vases.
The Puuc: An Architectural Survey ofthe Hill Country of Yucatan and
meaning
Maya Sculpture of Copan: the Iconography (University of Oklahoma
For Jaina figurines, see Linda Scheie, Hidden Faces ofthe Maya (Mexico City, 997), Christopher Corson, Maya
northern Campeche, Mexico (Peabody
Press, 1994).
Anthropomorphic Figurines from Jaina
Maya
Mary
I
larry Pollock provided a masterful
review
in
Museum,
at religious
in
must return
1980), the reader
Ruppert for the architecture of Chichen Itza: TheCaracol (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1935); The to Karl
1
Campeche (Ballena 1976), and
Island,
Painting
Rio Azul has featured
in
Miller,
Jama Figurines (Princeton Museum, 1975).
University Art
National
Geographic Magazine (April 1986), as
A.V Kidder, J.D. Jennings, and E.M.
Mercado (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1943); and Chichen Itza (Carnegie Institution of Washington,
have Cacaxtla (September 1992 and
Shook,
March 1990) and Bonampak (February
Guatemala (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1946), provided
1952) and to Charles Lincoln's unpublished 1990 Harvard doctoral
excellent color photographs of their
dissertation, Ethnicity
Organization
at
Itza,
Yucatan,
where the reader
paintings.
Mural
and Social
Chichen
1995),
in
The Proyecto de
thoughtful analysis of jade, shell, and
other materials used by the
Pintura
Mexico has begun systematic
publication of all Precolumbian
paintings in Mexico.
Mexico.
will find
Excavations at Kaminaljuyu,
in
Maya
to
make works of art; Kidder studied jades again in Excavations at Nebaj, Guatemala
The two volumes
(Carnegie Institution
of
Washington,
on Bonampak, edited by Beatriz de
la
1951). See also Tatiana Proskouriakoff,
Sculpture
Fuente, came out in 1999; Cacaxtla
is
Jadesfrom the Cenote of Sacrifice, Chichen
Some ofthe most important sources for the study of Maya sculpture remain the
scheduled for the near future. For
early publications that simply
document
Among these: Alfred
the works.
Teobert Maler, Researches
in the
Central Portion ofthe Usumatsintla Valley
(Peabody Museum, 1901-03); Researches Upper Usumatsintla and Adjacent
in the
Region (Peabody
Museum,
also see J.E.S.
Thompson,
Karl Ruppert, and Tatiana Proskouriakoff, Bonampak, Chiapas,
P.
Maudslay, Biologia Centrali- Americana: Archaeology (4 wis., London, 18891902);
Bonampak,
1908);
Mexico (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1955) and Mary Miller,
materials in Artifactsfrom the Cenote of
The Murals of Bonampak (Princeton, 1986). Uaxactun's paintings lasted less than a year after being uncovered; a color copy exists in Guatemala City For Tulum and Tancah, see Arthur Miller,
Museum,
Explorations in the Department ofPeten,
On
Guatemala, and Adjacent Region
Tancah-Tulum, Mexico (Dumbarton
(Peabody Museum, 1908); Explorations in the Department ofPeten, Guatemala (Peabody Museum, 1911); and A.M. A Preliminary Study ofthe
Tozzer,
the
Edge ofthe Sea: Mural Painting at
Oaks, 1982). For Naj Tunich, see
Andrea Stone, Images from the Underworld: Naj Tunich and the Tradition ofMaya Cave Painting (University of
Institution of Washington, 1920)
Texas Press, 1995). Both Clemency Coggins (above, 1984) and Linda Scheie and Peter Mathews (above, 1998) have provided fresh publication ofthe Upper Temple ofthe Jaguar Paintings at Chichen Itza; see also Earl Morris, Jean Chariot, and Ann Axtell Morris, The
Inscriptions ofPeten (5 vols.,
Temple ofthe Warriors
Prehistoric Ruins ofTikal,
Guatemala
(Peabody Museum, 1911). Focusing on text but usually presenting figural
sculpture as well are the major contributions of Sylvanus Morley, Inscriptions at
Copan (Carnegie
and Carnegie
Institution of Washington,
1
937-38). In
at Chichen Itza,
Yucatan (Carnegie Institution of
volumes now released (Peabody
Washington, 1931). Michael Coe and Justin Kerr have offered fresh insights into Maya books in The Art ofthe Maya Scribe (Thames and Hudson, London, 1997; Abrams,
Museum,
New
recent years, comprehensive publication
Maya sculpture has been led by Graham in the Corpus ofMaya of
Ian
Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, with seven
I
1975-).
[erbert
J.
Spinden,
among
197.';)
was
art,
followed
eventually by Tatiana Proskouriakoff, Classic
Maya
Sculpture (Carnegie
The Maya
Institution of Washington, 1950).
sculptural styles of only a few
have received comprehensive
cities
study
in
recent years: Carolyn Tate,
I'a.rchilan:
Design of a
City (University
Adam
23
I
Maya
Ceramics and Small Sculpture
Dorie Reents-Budet's traveling
the first to chart the
development of Maya
York, 1998).
A Study of Maya
Art (1913; Dover reprint,
Ceremonial
of Texas Press, 1992).
Herring's unpublished 1999
Itza, Mexico (Peabody Museum, 1974), and Adrian Digby, Maya Jades (British Museum, 1972). Clemency Coggins analyzed wood, textiles, bone and other
exhibition, Painting the
Maya
Universe,
brought Maya ceramics to international attention (Duke University Press, 199 4). Coe and Kerr (above, 1998) have written an insightful book about how these works of art were made and the tell. No study of Maya ceramics can begin without Justin and Barbara Kerr, eds., The Maya Case Book,
stories they
now
in five
volumes (New York, 1988—),
Sacrifice,
Chichen Itza, Yucatan (Peabody 1992).
Samuel K. Lothrop
studied the gold disks of Chichen,
Metals from the Cenote of Sacrifice, Chichen Itza, Yucatan (Peabody Museum, 1952).
.
.
List of
Frontispiece Seated musician, \l> »50 tooerl and LisaSainsbui
Illustrations
Collection,
Photo lames Vustin lama couple, Late Classii
I.
Archh
Whitestar, ltd)
to
Museum, London
British
D Coe
Michael
2 View
..
\/>/i/<
ll)\l
Graham
Ian
MEM
Mar}
NGS
Nation.i]
PMIll
TP
1
file
U
Miller
Geographic Society
Image Collection Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University
US
\l
\
WS
30 Yi.w
)i
I
.iw
PiedraaN. graa 35 c.i. in. ( .ii.ii
Photo
Prim
(
Si ribes,
i
6. The Nunnery, Uxmal. From Catherwood, Views of Am tent Monuments
7.
Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan,
Full-figure hieroglyphs
From A
I'
Maudslay, Biologia Centralis tmerii ana.
_'
PMHU.
"Peto" pot. Chochola style,
9. Lintel 2
K Yaxchilan; BM. Photo: JK
Map of Maya sites.
Drawing: Philip
Winton.
ipal
\
II'
the Sweat Bath,
R
I
ol
oui tes) ol
i
Chase, Cara<
I
Projei
(roup,
A and
B,
L'axactun; TP.
37. The Ballcourt,
Copan,
after Fash,
Copan Photo
MEM 38. Replica Rosalila stru< ture,
Copan
39. Reconstrut tion ol Stru* ture 22,
Copan; TP 40. Reconstruction of the Hieroglyphic Stairway. Copan. TP
XpujiljTP doorway Photo: Massimo
41. Reconstruction ol
AWs
Borchi
44.
Temple
Photo:
12. Plan ofTikal, after Harrison.
Lords of Tikai,\999,
ill.
The
of
Massimo Borchi AWS EVII solar alignments. L'axactun,
MEM.
Magician, Uxmal.
ol the
Massimo Borchi AWS. Massimo
45. Nunnery. Uxmal. Photo:
AWS
Borchi
5.
Temples I & II, Tikal. Photo: Jorge Perez de Lara. 14. EVII pyramid today, L'axactun.
Ground \ iew
46.
House of the Governor, Uxmal.
Photo: Michel Zabe. 47.
I
louse ol the Masks, Kabah. Photo:
Photo:
Michel Zabe.
15.
48.
Arch of Lahna. Photo:
after
Renfrev and Bahn, Archaeology, 2nded., 1996.
Remondet/Collection Musee de
16. Teotihuacan-style building, Tikal.
49. Caracol, Chichen
Photo:
MEM.
II
lomme. It/.a.
Photo: Simon
It/.a.
Photo:
Martin.
17. Evolution of Group
A
buildings,
L'axactun. Drawing: A.Kubler. 18. Aerial
ol
t
Warriors and Kings, 1991
43. Hochob. Photo:
II. Reconstruction of groups
13.
/ (has, and
42. Chicanna
S87
10.
I)
Marquina Weal
Photo Simon Martin
1844.
1889-1902.
the
Negras; ol
36.
i
ol
34 Reconstru* tion
i.
Ibnin*
tun
ui
ing aftei
ropolis, I'm .has
RD
God frieae,
Hon
33. Hei onsii in
Marquim
iftei
Photo
sn
ol
I
\i
he
Model
Detail ol Death
Photo RD i2 levation
rempleol the
ol
lonin.i
oi
is
8.
Gallery
utawaj model
\ .l\^ Inl.in
Ijectura, 199*7
F,
Museum,
YUAG Yak University Art
and Gaspai
eleven gods, Private
University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia
i
al
in
Linda Scheie
29
w ol the Cross Group Palenque Photo Massimo Borchi
haeologii
London
egie Institution of
i.
Jl
Guatemala*
Cham
ing Philip \\ inton
\
An
Album ofMaya
Architecture
CI,
.iw
)i
Copan From Catherwood, liii nut Monuments in ( 'tntral America, Chiapas and Yucatan, London Stela
Tatiana Proskouriakoff, An
I
Palenque,
Bon hi \\\ S From Juan Vntonio
Collection Photo: JK 7750 5.
Washington Publications 558)
UM
II
4. \\o\ ol
Justin Kerr, plus
i
M
rikal
Photo Danul
>om/
IG JK
k>,
Valdes, Federico Fahsen
University 1
Stda
I
jh
(ioss. Palenque
Scott) Sapiro
Munoz Cosme, Hallazgo y
[arvard
RD
ol tlu- Palace,
Chiapas Photo 3.
CMIII
Vnglia,
.isi
l
Dumbarton Oaks Photo
-
ws
niversit) ol
1\
1
BM
I
\
view of Tikal. Photo:
Chichen
50. Castillo,
Massimo Borchi AWS. 51. Section of Castillo, Chu hen
It/a.
Nicholas Hellmuth, courtesy of the
After Longhena, Splendours ofAncient
Foundation for Latin American Anthropological Research (FLAAR).
52. Plan of Chichen
19. Problematic Deposit 52 pot, Tikal.
Drawing: William R. Coe, courtesy of Tikal Project. 20.
UM.
Mexico, 1998. It/.a.
After Coe,
The Maya, 6th ed., 1999, ill. 53. Great Ballcourt, Chichen
1
10. It/.a.
Photo: Visual Resources Collection,
Twin Pyramid Complex,
Tikal.
Drawing: Martin Lubikowski. 21. 22. Development of defenses, Dos Pilas. Drawings: Proyecto Petexbatun, courtesy of A. A. Demarest.
Yale University. 54. Tzompantli, detail.
Chichen
55.
Photo:
Men ado
plan and ele\ ation; from
56.
24. Aerial view of the Palace, Palenque.
Ruppert, TheMercado, Chichen
Massimo Borchi AWS.
25. Corbeled vault with roofcomb, Palace, Palenque. Photo:
MEM.
26. Northeast court of Palace. Palenque.
Photo: 27.
MEM.
Temple
of Inscriptions, Palenque.
It/.a.
MEM.
23. Plan of Palenque, after Stierlin 1964.
Photo:
It/.a.
Massimo Borchi, AWS. Temple of Warriors, Chu hen
Photo:
llza,
Yucatan, (Contributions to Amerii an
Anthropology and History No i
57. Castillo.
Tulum
Photo:
Massimo
Borchi /AWS 58. Caveentran<
i
.
Naj Tunich. Photo:
235
www.ebook3000.com
Chip Clark. 59. Nebajjade plaque, Museo Nacional, Guatemala City, Guatemala. Photo: JK
Head of tin- Sun God, Guatemala.
Draw ing: Merle
Mathews. 1 19. Sculptured columns building, Xkulok. From Pollock, ThePuucAn
87. Reconstruction of the interior of
Temple of the Cross;
IS.S!,'
60.
Inscriptions, Palenque.
Greene Robertson.
TP
Architectural Survey
88. Tablet of the Cross, Palenque.
ofthe Hill country of Yucatan and Northern Campeche, Mexico
Indiana University Art Museum. Raymond and Laura Wielgus
Draw ing: LS.
(PMHU),
89. Tablet of the Sun, Palenque.
120. Stela 21, Oxkintok.
Collection. Photo: Michael Cavanagh,
Drawing: LS.
Proskouriakoff.
Ke\
m
Montague. bone from Hasaw Chan lis tomb, Tikal. Drawing: after A.
90. Stela
Palenque. Photo:
1,
MDC.
1980.
From Tatiana
A Study of Classic Maya
Sculpture (Publication .593, Carnegie
61. Incised
91. Palace Tablet, Palenque. Drawing:
Institution of Washington), 19.50.
Haw
LS.
121.
92.
Trik. 62.
Human
wooden
PMHU.
3,
Yaxchilan. Drawing: from
Morley, Inscriptions ofPeten (Carnegie
Hill country of 1 ucatan and Northern Campeche, Mexico (PMHU), 1980.
93. Creation tablet, Palenque, detail.
Photo:
Photo: Hillel Burger. 63. Altar
Door jambs, Kabah. From Pollock, The Puuc: An Architectural Survey of the
fragment. Palenque.
16,
Photo: Michel Zabe.
censer/cup with
skull
plug, Chichen Itza,
Group
MDC.
122. Stone head of tattooed lord, Kabah.
94. Detail. Tablet of the 96 Glyphs.
Photo:
Photo:
MDC.
MDC.
123. Champoton column, Campeche. Draw ing: Larry Mills.
MEM.
95.
Tonina
64. Ballgame panel, Art Institute of
96.
Monument
The Ada Turnbull Fund. Photo: J K 2882.
97. Wall Panel 2, Piedras Xegras,
Draw ing:
PMHU.
125. Chacmool, Chichen Itza. Photo:
Institute.
Washington, 1937-38). Hertle
Chicago,
65. Detail, Stela D,
Copan. Photo:
MEM. 66. Eccentric
Museum
flint,
Metropolitan
New
of Art,
York, XV. Photo:
67. Stucco glyph, Tonina. Photo: 68.
Dancing couples
RD.
Kimbell Art
vase.
Museum. Fort Worth, Texas. Photo: JK
122, Tonina. Photo:
98. Wall Panel
.'5,
Piedras Xegras.
69. Greenstone head
from Burial
85,
UM, Neg. # 62-4-972.
Tikal,
Hauherg Stela. Private Photo: JK 01.52.
70.
71. Stela 29, Tikal.
126. Fossil temple shrine with jaguar
Photo:
JK 4892.
throne and chacmool. Photo: Massimo
99. Stela 14, Piedras Xegras,
Photo:
8,
UM. PMHU.
T Maler.
101. Stela
Photo:
Piedras Xegras,
1.
Photo:
Piedras Xegras,
PMHU.
T Maler.
Drawing: William
Museum
wooden
of Art,
figure,
New
Metropolitan
York, XY. Photo:
Charles Uht. 73. Tzitzmitl
from the Codex
Magliabecchiano.
From
Xuttall,
The
Yaxchilan.
104. Lintel 15, Yaxchilan,
105. Lintel 16, Yaxchilan,
8,
BM. BM.
76. Stela 31, Tikal.
BM.
Photo:
&
Satterthwaite 1982.
MDC
77. Stela 27, Yaxchilan. Photo:
78. Wall Panel 12, Piedras Xegras.
MFM. Drawing: C.R
Monkey
New JK
Louisiana. Photo:
Hero Twins
1225.
JK
732.
PMHU.
.SO,
Tikal.
Drawing:
after
Tikal. Photo: 1,
133. Rio Azul figurine. Photo:
69-5-
134. Kimbell
Museum panel.
10. Altar
s,
From Tatiana A Studx of Classic Maya
Tikal.
2823.
Sculpture (Publication 593, Carnegie
135. Vase with full frontal figure, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth
Institution of Washington) 19.50.
Photo: JK 5453.
Proskouriakoff,
111. Lintel
.'3,
Temple
IV,
Tikal,
Basel,
136. Black
Background Vase, Museum
of Fine Arts, Boston.
MA.
Woman
137.
Princeton University Art
Pilas.
Photo:
82. Kimbell Stela, Kimbell Art
114. Stela D, Quirigua. Photo: A. P.
138. Jaina hunter/warrior with deer
headdress. Photo:
Museum.
Museum of Xatural
139. Jaina couple, Insitute of Fine Art.
Museum
Maudslay. courtesy of the
115.
of Art, Cleveland, Ohio. Purchase from the J.H.
Wade Fund,
Museum.
Photo: Jorge Perez de Lara.
Maudslay, courtesy of the American
Fort Worth, Texas. 83. Cleveland Stela. Cleveland
warrior,
MDC.
Joralemon.
Dos
JK
Chaak Chel,
112. Stela 11, Tikal. Photo: Visual
Resources Collection, Yale University. 113. Stela A, Copan. Photo: MFM.
I)a\ id
Photo:
0688.
Switzerland.
Beet/. Ouirigua Project, courtesy of R.J.
81. Stela 16,
George
Kimbell
Art Museum, Fort Worth. Photo: JK 1
Sharer. 80. Incensarios, Peten. Photo: Peter
MFM.
Bonampak,
Mobley/NGS.
Satterthwaite 1982.
UM, Xeg #
Orleans
\ase, Private
Collection. Photo: 1.
New
Orleans,
CMHI/IG.
&
993.
of Classic Maya
Scribes vase.
of Art.
132. Sculptured stone
Museum der Kulturen,
79. Stela 26, Ouirigua.
129.
107. Lintel 10, Yaxchilan. Drawing:
Drawing: IG.
Drawings: after
A Study
Proskouriakoff,
131. Stela
108. Stela
1
Mayapan. After
Institution of Washington), 19.50.
Photo:
Yaxchilan. Drawing:
109. Stela 16, Tikal,
MEM.
1,
CMHI/IG.
(Berkeley), 1903.
Photo:
PMHU.
130.
Jones
75. Stela 4, Tikal. Photo:
ofAncient Mexico and the Maya,
Museum
106. Lintel
Draw ing: from
Sculpture (Publication .593, Carnegie
Book ofthe Life ofthe Ancient Mexicans. 74. Stela 5, L'axactun.
127. Turtle katun.
128. Stela
T Maler. 2.5.
Borchi/AWS. Miller and Taube, The Gods and Symbols
JK2885.
72. Seated
Jones
Michel Zabe.
JK 2884.
R. Coe.
LS.
Xacional, Guatemala City.
103. Lintel
Collection.
124. Ballcourt panel, Chichen Itza.
Museo
102. Stela 12, Piedras Xegras,
0554.
RD.
Photo: Hillel Burger.
100. Stela
IK 2841.
Photo:
stela.
1967.29.
84. Oval Palace Tablet.
Drawing: LS.
85. Detail, sarcophagus
lid,
Temple of Fugen
Zoomorph
P.
History.
Ouirigua. Photo: A. P.
BM.
116. Stela K Uxmal. Drawing: from Taube, The Major Gods ofAncient Yucatan (Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection), 1992. 1
Detroit. Photo:
JK 288
140. Maize god, 141.
Hughes Dubois.
Monument
BM.
1
Photo: JK 2889
27. Tonina. Photo:
MFM. 142.
God L with
rattle staff, possibly
Inscriptions, Palenque.. Photo:
117. Stela
Kusch.
CMH1
from Santa Rosa Xtampak. Drawing: from Taube, The Major Gods ofAncient Yucatan (Dumbarton Oaks Research
118.
Library and Collection), 1992.
86. Sarcophagus
lid.
Temple
of
1, Tzum, Yucatan. Drawing: EricvonEuw. Bonampak Stela 1. Drawing: Peter
C
Museum, Copan
Ruinas,
I
IK
Collei tion Photos
op.tlj
172. Frescoed
londuras
ti
ipod
1
.•
1
Museum
i
lindei vase
\
<
anthropomorphic id,
temple ol
*alcnque, National
Museum ol Anthropology Mexico Photo Irmgard Groth Kimball 145 K'an Balam head, temple ol S Inscriptions, Palenque Photo abPakalhead, temple ol Palenque Photo Irmgard Inscriptions, I
147. Burial
Hkal Courtesy Visual
MJ,
Collection, Yale University
s
148. Early Classic painting Uaxactun
Photo
MEM
149.
Room
150.
Room
l
.
\i l.
Room
Photo 152.
J.
3,
SS
North Wall, Bonampak
Room
throne.
3,
IK
i
if.
"Bunny
ase, 1
Prh
Museum.
Jersey. Photo: .IK 051
183.
MFA
MA.
Sacnficios Painter,
RD
Arts, Boston.
157. 158. Doorwav. Cacaxtla. Photos:
186. Chama-style vase,
RD.
0593.
21, Naj Tunich. Photo:
161,162. Paintings from Upper Temple
From Cenote of Sacrifice (PM1 If
of the Jaguars. Chichen Itza.
On
1,
the Edge
ofthe
Sea (Dumbarton Oaks).l.9v2. 164. Page from the
Museode
las
Photo IK 2891 203. Hanab Pakal moaait mask. Palenque Photo Merit <•> Robertson 204 ccentri< \i
t
I
in
I
flint,
Dallas
Museum ol
ugene and Mai gai e( in honor ol Mrs
1
952,
>
Ii/.i
ourtes)
"t
I'Mlll
Embossed gold eyepia es and mouth from Sa< red Cenote. Chic hen
206.
li/,i.PMIIF Photo
Hillel
Burger
New
Museum
Photo:
\
ase w ith
.IK
ictim in
\
Art Institute
Illinois.
MA.
Museum of Fine Photo:
.IK
CM.
1
728.
Photo: JK
BM. JK
189. Vase, carved redw are, Chichen
YUAG, Gift of the Olsen
190. Effigy vessel, plumbate w ith Pawatun, YUAG Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Olsen. Photo: Joseph Szaszfai, Yale Audio \'isual Center.
Wooden
K'awil figures, Tikal.
Photo: courtesy of
Americas. Madrid. Photo:
192.
Wooden
staff,
CM. PMHU.
Photo:
Hillel Burger.
165. Page from the Madrid Codex,
193. Pair of carved bones. Burial
Museo de
Tikal.
las
Americas, Madrid. Photo:
Draw ings:
Bone with
after A.
l
16,
Tnk.
166. Venus page, Dresden Codex,
Morley Museum. Tikal. Guatemala. Photo: JK
Sachsische Landesbibliothek, Dresden.
8087.
194.
Scala.
167. Polychrome,
mammiform
Museo Popol Vuh, Guatemala
ceramic. City.
168. Turtle basal flange bowl with lid, Tikal; Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Ktnologia. Guatemala City Photo:.IK 1,876.
water bird
169. Dallas tetrapod. with paddler
Museum
of Art. Photo: JK
'i
170. 171. "Screw-top" pot. Private
lid, '2
19.
195. Incised
incised captive,
human
femur,
YUAG.
Purchased with a gift from Frederic Mayer, B.A. 1950, and Leonard C. Hanna.Jr. B.A. 1.91.-3, Fund. 196. Far
flare, shell (Fl
Peten school),
YUAG. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Allen WardwelL
B.A. 1957. Photo: Michael
A gee. 197.
\l< \
Drawing
1-7.
191.
Madrid Codex,
Scala.
Dallas
Itza.PMHI
BM
Plaqm
foundation.
l,
Tancah. Reconstruction: Felipe Miller.
Photos IK
lade head, Chichen
L,
K'awil, Private Collection. Photo:
Itza.
1984.
From
Leiden. Netherlands
201
185. Pot painted by the Altar de
\-:>
Chaak impersonators. Mural
io
188. Chochola-style vessel featuring
Cologne.
Chip Clark.
Davalos.
of Chicago,
187. Fenton vase.
159. Painted capstone celebrating
163.
1
1892.
156. Battle painting, Cacaxtla. Photo:
Coggins,
God
plate, codex-style,
scaffold; courtesy of The
Drawing
1.
i
NGS
160.
Phot.. IK
ate
Princeton,
155. Maya God Lat base of Red Temple. Cacaxtla. Drawing: I). Kiphuth after photo by MIX'.
Museum Ludwig,
lion
199, 200. Leiden plaque, Rijksmuseum,
185.
182. Princeton pot depicting
Princeton Art
of Fine Arts. Boston,
Bonampak. Reconstruction:
Collw
from Lothrop,
H>
pot," Private Collection
\
.'sso
Spent e
I
181. Codex-style
on
Photo IK
i
205. Gold disk, Chichen
184. "Pink glyphs"
K'awil,
\U
Tlcurdchs.WIC Photo
Collection. Photo: .IK
detail with laches
\i
M< Dermotl fund
Photo IK
Bonampak Copy: Antonio
Felipe Davalos.
Room
vessel, \l<
177. Vaseol the S,\,n Gods,
180.
_'.
oi
L98 Chaak mask, Rfo tzul, Private
I
Dancing Maize God Photo II,
Photo: JK 1398.
North Wall, Bonampak Copy: Antonio Tejeda, Reconstruction: 154.
primary standard sequence Photo IK
South Wall, Bonampak
Tejeda, Reconstruction: Felipe Davalos. 153.
i060
175. Cylinder, blue-painted vessel with
Department ol Anthropology, Belmopan, Belize Photo
NGS
Room
IK
179. Jauncy vase,
Reconstruction Felipe Davalos 151.
I
sequence, Naranjo Photo
178.
South Wall. Bonampak
ith
lid Photo lughcs Dubois 173 Incised tripod bowl Photo Gerald Berjonneau 174 Red on cream, primar) standard
176.
Groth Kimball
\\
Smoking Maya Ford. Cleveland
237
www.ebook3000.com
6
,
Index
Chaak
90, 93, 102,
1
17-1
18,
138-139,
152. 183, 186, 188, 222; 70, 80, 93,
116, 163, 165,
198
Abaj Takalik 89; 10
Acosta 14
Adams, Richard 168,210 Aguateca 28,35, 107, 109,221; 10 Ah.Maxam 201-206; 176-178 Altar de Sacrificios 200,210; 10
133;
H
D
101; Stela
82, 65; Stela
F
A
12; 5;
76; Structure 16 51; 38;
Structure 22 51,55, 162; 39
chacmools 62-63,66, 146, 148; 125-126 Chacmultun 182-183
copper 76
ChakTok Ich'ak 94, 170 Chama 18, 200,210-211; Chama Vase 2
Curl Snout
1
53; Stela 35
73; Stela
7
Stela
ChaakChel 159-160; 737
numbers
in italicsare illustration
Numerals
compound
corbel vaults 22, 32, 38-40, 48, 57, 59,
29
62, 66; 25,
.?
Nun Yax Ayin
186
10,
Dallas Tetrapod 194 decipherment 14-16,20-21, 135-137,
1
Champoton 142-143; 123 Chan Chaak 60
199
Altar Painter 2 10
chert 82-83
Diaz, Bernal 70
altars 9, so, 130; 63; see also under
Chiapas 21,25,72,86, 195,201, 214-215,230; 70
door jambs 137. 141-142, 144; 121 DosPilas 9,34-35,46, 107, 109, 130;
individual
sites
Chicanna 54-55; Chichen Itza 10,
Altar style 209-210
Ha
Altun
'227-228; 10
architecture 1
9,
1
1-13, 22-71, 90;
6,
1—57; see also under individual sites
atlanteans 62, 146
98
atlatl 94,
attapulgite 85
Aztecs
11-12, 14, 16,20,46,73,75,
9,
85-86, 93-95,
77. 82,
14, 143,
1
198,206-207,229
14,5-146, 148, 150,
Becan 5 1-56, 195; 10 8,
70,
Dresden Codex 14,16,141,187-189; 7 66
49-56; Caracol 62-63; 49; Castillo
eccentric flints 83, 227-228;
63-65, 67, 146, 149, 227; 50-57, 126;
Edzna
Great Ballcourt 24,65-66, 142, 144-145, 184-185; 53, 124; Group of the 1000 Columns 68; Lower Temple
Ehecatl wQuetzalcoatl
of the Jaguars
1
Mercado
44, 230;
229-230; 192; Skullrack (Tzompantli)
12,21,48,72,83, 195,212,
Black Background Vase 158; 136
Temple of the Three Lintels 63; Temple of the Warriors 66-68; 55; Upper Temple of the
Bonampak 6,85,87,
Jaguars 144, 184-185, 230; 767
227; 10
66, 145; 54;
Balam
Bird Jaguar .vreYaxun
120, 122-123, 127,
Chixoy 210 Chochola 17,212-213;
140-141, 154, 156, 163, 170-180,
182-186, 201; 7
49- 1 50;
1
7 4-1 76,
70;
Room 1
Room
2
78; 151;
177-179; 152,
22,
1
7.5/;
10,
171-174;
1
57,
Room
3
1
7
1
74,
1
Sculptured Stone
154, 156; 182; Stela
bone
1
140
1
78,217,21 9-22
1
;
Bourbourg, Brasseur de 14-15
Box of Eleven Gods Buenavista 204-206 Bunny Pot 206; 180 79-
1
82;
1
1,
203-204; 7
Red Temple
Calakmul
9,
26, 28, 34, 55, 81-82,
88-89,99, 102, 104, 107-109, 131, 200, 206-207, 219; 10; ballcourt 34; Structure
II
34;
West Group 34
calendar priests 17-18, 20
Campeche 34,56,
109, 137, 158, 200,
2 12; 10
129,
1
19, 170; 70,
Caana
Altar 21
1-9;
102;
Catherwood, Frederick
CauacSky
54, 134; //
12,
56
/
ceramics 1
1-2.
1
s,
1-9,
167-190
238
16,
18,20-21,86,93, 13S,
15S, 171,
190-215,226;
Fat Cacique 209-210 FentonVase 211-212,221; 187 fig
bark 85
figurines 6, 154, 158-161, 164, 195; 733,
Fine Orange pottery 214 flmt
M,
228; .207 1
glyphs
43,45,68,72,75,85, 137, 158, 187, 9,
28-29, 33, 36, 45-46, 77-78, 80-81,
22 1-222, 224; Late Classic period 9, 27, 35, 51, 84, 88, 93, 101, 104-135, 158, 161. 170-179, 192, 198-213,217
15, 82, 84,
91-94, 97-98,
199-200, 209-2
11,114, 163-164, 179-180,
203-204, 206-208;
Grube, Nikolai
Guatemala
Coe, Michael D. 21, 187-188, 199
,
1
53;
Mam
1
213 8,
2
Hanab Pakal 36-38, 146,
203 K'awil 32-33, 78, 129,
219; 70.9
Hauberg Stela
90; 70
hematite 83-8
4
Margarita 51; Principal Group 50-51; 3e, Rosalila 51,228; 38; Scribal Palace 16 4; Sepulturas
70, 72, 83, 86,
40-4-1, 75. 77,
louse
1
,
110-112, 166, 226-227; 84-86,91,
Plaza 53,80;
/o,
1
148,200,214, 221; 70
Hasaw Chan
Ballcourt 50-51, 53; 37; Hieroglyphic
Stairway 52-53, 135,228;
89,
82,
8, 12,
Halakal 161
17, 26, 40, 46,
53-55, 73, 76, 82, 84, 89, 102,
37-1 38, 1 44, 1 49, 1 57, 164-165,204.213, 216,228; 70,37, 1
142, 155, 177,
gold disks 229-230; 205
67-7 66
3 2- 3 5
4,
182
gold 76-77, 144, 229-230; 206
codices 85, 16S, 170, 182, 187-188;
1
65, 67,
16
Grolier Codex 187
1
7,
16
codex vessels 206-209; 181-183
,
212, 222;
10,
writing
God A God K God L 180,
l
18,
176, 187-188, 198-200; see also
God X wPawatun
Copador 212 Copan 8-9, 1-15,
1
135-137, 139, 168, 171, 176, 194, 197,
Coba 81, 104, 109; 7 Codex Magliabechiano 86 Codex Mendoza 86
7
7,
137-139
Gann, Thomas 226
oftheBacabs
cenotes 72, so, 87
El Zapote 94; Stela 5 94
188
3.9-70, 65; Acropolis 49, 51, 53;
l.<>
23, 27-29, 97; 70
Classic period 8-9, 16, 18,22,27-28,
is-.',
Caracol 26, t8-49, so, 82, 84-85, 89,
9,
El Peru 108-109; 70
Roger fuchsite 222
clay 86
179- ISO
El Mirador
Fry,
85,88-103, 105, 121, 124, 153-154, 158, 168-170, 192-198,217,
198-19,5
1
8,
66
140; 70
cinnabar 83
227, 230; Early Classic period
61-62,
boot stone 57
Cacaxtla
1
21-22; Stela 16 107; 81
62-69, 72, 76,78, 135-138, 142-149, 184-186, 15-2 2 16, 2 19, 224, 227, 229-230; 70,
Sacred Cenote 22, 64-65, 72, 76, 148-149, 186,216,219,224-225,
Joe 205; 179
Belize
42
68-69, 145; 56; Platform of the Eagles 66; plaza 67-68; Red House 62;
azurite 85
Ball,
70,
14, 16, 26,
Hero Twins
140, 151, 161, 164, 184,
207-209; 730,
Hochob
54, 56;
7
60,
KK
183
t.'i
1
HoUnul
,
-
1
Hombrede Hkal 93 Honduras
Madrid Codex mahogan) 80
9i
-
N-
Stephen
human form 184,
i-
i
o -
.'
166,
12,
Humboldt, Alexander von Hunahpu tm Hero [Vins
12
15,
i
i
144,
K),
i
1
is,,.
is, i.,i,
59,
I
IT
119,
209, 219,
161, 163,
tO,
I
2
I
i;
181, 183, 19
emblem 5
Initial Series
65 15
15; 7
127,
i.
/
Itzamnah Balam 111 178 Iximche 2*, 70; 1Q, ballcourts 24,70
Monkey 16
185
Is. 163, 166,
22,224
Jaguar God 95,
Jama
1
801-203 Underworld 91, 93,
homey Vase 205-206; Jester God 93,97,
Kabah 24,60-61,
n-i
l
House of Masks
61,
t2,
ii; 10,
l
H-l
l
1
1
15,
*5
1
1
1
18-1 19;
.9/. .96'
H,
K'awil 1
99, 2
1
83, 111,
2,
2
1
1—2
ll.*5,
152, 182-183,
88-89, 159,
7;
1
1
7
1,
187-188
Kimbell Art
Museum
panel
1
is 7. 206;
152, 163, 185,
60
Kowalski, Jeff 137
George 68 Balam II 17
I.".,
8,
Is.
77, 122, 12
1,
1
4,
64-65, 76, 85,
1
36,
lintels 8. 1
15,33,80, 107, 12
H); see also
1,
17,
12
Panel 12
17
1
5
I
83, 186, 220,
I
19, 122;
1
I
122
Palace
22. Stela 8
I,
103; 122,
10, 121; 3;
Wall Panel 2
t8;
22
12 1,111. 183; 102,
99; Stela in
1;
sweatbaths
1
109, 117,
122; Stela 3
I
100, Stela 12
Stela ii
72-73, 135, 200.
NajTunich 72-73, 170, 183-184;
Drawing
2
1
10,
184; 760
120; 97;
Wall West Acropolis
18, 121
122; 98;
101, 120; 78;
is,.;.;
IT
Pink Glyphs 200, 209 210; 184
226
1
\>5,
53; see also under
8,
I
1
199-206; 10
39, 122, 12
1<>1,
Popol Vuh 2 1-9/3,
97-98, 196;
129
II
Postclassic 2
1
sites
1
8,
2
8,
1
75-76, 85,
1,
1-2 16
Preclassic 8-9,
1
8;
Late Preclassic 23,
28,34,84, 89 90, 192 193,222 Princeton Vase 207 208; 182
227
obsidian 83,210,226; 185,203 olivas 7"
Proskouriakoff, Tatiana
Olmecs 9, 20, 83, 222, 224 Otulum River 37, 40, 42 Oxkintok 89, 140-141; Stela 21
Puuc 10,51,56-57,59-61,63,68 136-1
1-2,
1-6,
1
19; 116, 1.7.—
Ouingua 15,48
1,
under
Ouet/.alcoatl 63
Quintana Roo
sites
12
34, lo, 16-17,
19; see also
193
IT, 1-9,54,
individual
1.9,
l
69,
sites
57, 105, 169-170; see also under
l
18,20,24,
184
182
19,
1
pyramids 22,28 29,32 51,57,65,69,
13,22,37,40,
8,
6,
17- IS
1-12, 15,26,28,35-43,
2, lo,
109; 10
101-102, 132
55,73,82,89,
19,:,:;
135, 204; /a, acropolis
54;ballcourt 54;Grea1 Plaza 23,54;
Monument
135-137, 158,
II
/•;
26 101;
Zoomorph P
7.9;
Stela I)
134;
135; 115
23-26, 28-29; Creation Tablet 117-1
IS; .93;
112-1
15;
28-29, 87-88;
1
1
127-131,
under individual
10
1-;
Popol N'ah 53
Nebaj 18,211; 10 Nun Yax Ayin 32, 9 75-76
14,
16 Plongeon, Augustus I.e plumbate vessels 2 t-215; 190
Pomona
11,82, 108-109, 158,
1
1-1 12, 136; 64, 87,94
37,
Stela
127
Group of the Cross 12, louse A 37, 39; 26; House AD .'58-.'5.9, 1-2, 12; louse B 37-38; 24, House C 37-39; 24, House E 37-38, H>, 78; 24, Oval
188
Lincoln, Charles 157
1
0-13
18, 121, 124,
1.
35,
!8,
124, 128, 131,
l
163-166, 200-201, 213, 227;
limestone 72,80-82,84,96, 1
G
7
B,
plazas 23,33 34,
10.9-1
163; 103
LaPasadita 170 Leiden Plaque 222, 224; 199-200
1
119
55; 12
47, 57, 63, 75, 77, 80-82, 84, 104,
80
Landa, Diego de
sweatbaths
plaques 222, 22
Palenque 8-9,
1
lakamtun
6
,.
i
133, 143, 170, 195,
80 81, 101, 104, 108
181
/>'.
Paddler gods 138-140,2
Lacanha 72. 171 Lady K'atun Ahau is. 122-123; 101 Lady Sak K'uk' 10
LadyXok
35,
Peto pol
individual
M
10,
1,215; 172, 174,
!1
80 81, 107, 109
Muybridge, Eadweard
palaces
Labna 60-61;
//.
K)
in
10;
Petexbatun
Piedras Negras
L51, 161, 1
1
Kukulcan 63,65, 185
1
19.
140-141, 146; 120
Kubler. K'uk'
i
Mulchic 182-183; 10 murals 6,85,87, 111, 154, 157, 163, 168-187; / 17-166
Oaxaca
56; 13
Kimbell Stela 109; 82 Kingsborough, Lord 14
K'michAhaw 74—75,97,
17,
18,48,72,88-89,93-94,
Wall Panels
Nun Yax Ayin
191
39,
Kerr, Justin
i
10
Naranjo 16,
,u.
i
96
•
,
.'
Stela
hi-.
mosaics 219, 227; 192
58;
Hok' Chitam 36, 38 1—1 Hok' Chitam II
,,
1
10
,.'.
,9
.
/>ih na/i see
150
Scribes
Morley, Sylvanus
1;
1
Powei
2;
i
individual sites
1
165-166; 88-89,
i~-.
VS.
Kaminaljuyu 78, B9, 96, 221; 10 Kan Balam 36, H-42, 12-1 13,
Kan Kan
im.
Motul de San Jose 200,209-210; 10
79
/
10
1
i
Montejo, Francisco de Moon Goddess 207
22
L59, 164; 10
18, 141, 158
1,
ol
116
is,
196, 199,
g
ii
lo, 10"
Motagua River 53-5
89
71,
1:
186, 195, 208,
27. 89- 60,
J
ot tlu-
13-1
1
II.
1
Sun
99. 101, 104, 131
229
75,
monster mouths jade 9-10,54,73 75,77,86, 112,
16
i,
I',
10
165, 207; 129,
I
1-2,
..
pe< ten
28
Mixtecs 20,
164
1
9
<
Itzamnah 60 61, 152; ir Itzamnah Balam 11 V5, 12
mm
pearla
61
Maudslay, Alfred R
Maya i\ ilization Maya roll. ipse g Mayapan 69, us
[nomata, rakeshi 35, 121
Temple
190
Mathews, Peter
209 810
|v>ts
s''.
IS,
I
rablet ol
15;
1
K)
the
ol
Rivei
I'.isi,-,,
P.m.
I
Martin, Simon 82 Ik
ns
emple
I
•»..(il\plis
III.
theSlavea
III.
PariaCodex
'"i
[97, 802,
Sun
Insi n|
164, 166, iso. in .
I.. I- let Ol
l.ii.Ki ol
the
18
ss.
,.
I
>i.
/,,
110-112,
161 is
MS
iss, /»,/
I
i
18, a
M8
is.
Palace Tablet
1
Palace 37-39,
H-42,
Stela
1
1
15; .90,
10,
1
15, 166; 84, 91; 1
12; 2,
24-26;
Tablet of the Cross
Reents-Budet,
RioAzul 168 1
(iS-
si
16.9. I
Done 200
85, 153 196, 222;
154, 158, 1
0;
Tomb
12
69
Rio Bee 54 55; 10 Robertson, MerleGreene 84
roofcombs 62, 84; 13,
I
-'
tS
'
15,56,58-59,
f>
239
www.ebook3000.com
130;
8
rosewood 80 RulerS 122; 700 Ruler 4 121; 98 99 Ruz, Alberto 40-*]
Ballcourt
10;
/
1-,
E-Group
Acropolis 33;
2s, h9,60,65;
.sandstone 82,
Complex
7 7
18; Stela
186-187; /O
t8,
1
Schellhas, Paul
16
Schmidt. Peter
l
sculpture
20-2 1,61, 65
102-103, 109.
9,
under individual
Seibal 107, 131; 10
221; 797
tin
10, 77, 195,
.wltzamnah Balam
115-119, 149, 163;
Chan
Siyah
K'awil 10.
.'52,
96-99, 153;
76
ballcourts 43, altars
stelae 9-10, 34, 69, 78, 82, 88, 107, 121. 129. 134, 138-141,
1
10.
148-150, 174;
under individual sites
56-57, 64
122
Tulum
Giant
Steps 22-24, 28, 38-40, 46-47, 63-65,
18;
1
27 162; 141;
96
57
Tzum
127
140; Stela
140; 117
1
stucco 12, 26-27, 43, 54, 56, 69-70, 82, 8
1
164-166, 168, 170,
12,
11-1
16.
179
172,
Tancah
12;
1
34
under individual
L'tatlan
see also
Uxmal
sites 1
43; Great
Temple
25-26, 30, 32, 89,
94-96,98, 101, 103-104, 107, 12 1-122, 1
5)5- 96, 1
1 1;
Stela 5 1
54
98, 226;
10
70 10. 12. 2
137-140;
6,
27, 56-60, 70,
1,
10, 44;
ballcourt 24;
South Building 59; Stela 14 121, 138-139; 116
143-144, 170, 192, 1
24;
Structure B-13
House of the Governor 59-60, 138; 46; Nunnery 12, 57-59, 138; 6, 45; Pyramid of the Magician 57, 59; 44-.
11 9.
74.
72, 120,210;
29-30, 105;
13, 22,
Teotihuacan
Group B
11, 17;
L'sumacinta River 27-28, 35, 45-46, 48,
186; 10
Tenochtitlan 26, 1
29,
14,
Ucanal 82 Uolantun 93, 103 L'sulatan 192-193
Taschek, Jennifer 205 temples
24, 27-28, 30, 65, 92,
EVII 28-29, 34; 14-15; EVII-sub 65; 14; E-group 29; 15; Group A
94-95, 99;
Sustenance Mountain 182 sweatbaths 43, 48,
17;
29-30;
192, 196, 205, 227; 54, 67, 87, 1
8,
1
94-95,97, 154, 168-170; 10-11,
80
Temple of
Ouetzalcoatl 144
Tho
7
Vase of the Seven Gods 203-205; 177
86-87, 188; 68
textiles 1
Thompson. Edward 76
wall panels 107, 110,
thrones 62 Tikal
9.
23,
also
25-26. 28-30, 32-3
1.
17- vs. 65, 78, so-81, s h-85, 88
36. 89,
91-99. 103-105, 129-132. 135, 138, 1
11,
153, 16S, 170, 193,
216-217,222;
240
10,
195-196.200,
12-13,
16. 18;
Altar
War
1
19-120, 137;
under individual sites
Serpent 95.
1()7.
Waxaklahun L'bah 133-135;
Wits
1
Xochicalco 26 Xpuhil 9, 41, 54-55;
10, 41
Xultun 93, 99
Yah aw Chan Yaxchilan
Muwan
8, 26,
171,
174-176
28, 35, 45-16, 48, 77,
80-81,89, 101, 120, 122, 124, 127-129, 156, 164, 170-173, 175, 1
78-1 79, 200;
106; Lintel 10
10, 32, 63; Lintel 8
127;
128; 707; Lintel 15
126; 104, Lintel 16 126; 705; Lintel
24
52.
65,
.-,:,.
12 1-122, 196
K'awil 52, 82,
113
138,
1
10;
Wrenn. Linnea 145
39
127
.9^,
46, 121, 124, 126-128,
705
Chan
K'awil 32-33, 77, 129, 131;
777
Yucatan
10, 21, 25, 51, 56,
212-214,219,227; 70
146, 148;
192
Uaxactun
105, 183
L 89, 96-97.
glyphs
71-72, 85,
136-149, 170, 184, 186-187,
82
78,
1
Yik'in
Ahaw
62, 69-70, 148-149, 186; 10, 57;
Castillo 70;
turtles 77, 149;
Andrea David
see also
Xkulok 140, 146, 148; 10; Sculptured Columns Building 140; 1 19
164;
82, 84,
turquoise 68, 73, 75, 146, 219, 225. 227;
Stephens, John Lloyd 12-15, 20-2 1,26,
Stuart.
7;
Xbalanque .swllero Twins Xcalumkm 2 2-2 3; 1
Yaxun Balam
10, 30, 44;
18; 30;
1
Tula 26,66-68, 143-144, Temple B 67
spondylus 77,210,222; 185, 198
Stone,
13-15, 17,20,71,85, 174,
25 124; 103; Stela 27 101; 77; Structure 23 45; Structure 33 45-46; 32; Structure 44
Monument
18;
1
Monument
Snake Mountain 6."), isi Spinden, Herbert 16-17,121
see also
6,
197-198, 207;
18, 77, 144, 163; 9; Lintel
227 Tonina 35-36, 43-45, 80,
II
76
silver
76
Toltecs 66-68,75, 130, 143-144,215,
86
silk
10,
Tollan 143-144
220-222, 226;
196-197, 203 Shield Jaguar
40
Tlaloc 95, 122, 148, 196
serpent columns 62,66, 146 shell
1
14; 76; Stela
1
Temple I 27, 30, 32, 40; 99, 102; 13, 18; Temple II 3(), 32-33; 13, 18; Temple III 33; Temple IV 32-33; 18; Temple 33 96; Twin Pyramid Complexes 33,57,65, 129; 20 7 0;
sites
16,
132; 1 12; Stela 16 129;
29 91-93,96,98-99, 102; 96-99,
109; Stela
6'9-/2,s; see also
serpent
75; Stela 5 77,
Stela 30 129; 108; Stela 3
t5
82, 84, ss, 104-149, 163-166, 170, 173. 190-191, 193, 198, 200, 226; 5, :> 1,
152-153; 131; Stela 4
1
129: Stela 11
12-13, 17,39,49,54,62,
6,
Great
Lost World
North
30, 193-194;
93-96,98, 101-103;
sapodilla 80, 131 Scheie. Linda 6-7,
30;
13, 18;
Acropolis 30, 32-33, 80, 89, 99, 102;
18-1 19; 95
1
Santa Rita 76,
writing
Burial 85 89; Burial 116 2 19; Central
Plaza 30,32-34; sakbehs 2
Marker 94,98;
Burial 10 96; Burial 48 78, 169; 147;
see
BOSTON
3
f'UHl H'
I
IHHAHN
9999 04134 817 6
Brighton Branch Library 40 Academy Hill Road Brighton MA 02136-3316
DEMCO
www.ebook3000.com
^^
WORLD OF ART Maya Art and
Mary
Mary
Architecture
Ellen Miller
Miller vividly takes the reader into the art of one of the
world's most enigmatic ancient civilizations. to tomb, she explains
greatest works and to
how and why
how
understand them.
the
From temple
Maya made
their
the
modern-day viewer might come
New
archaeological discoveries at
Copan, Tikal, and Palenque are
all
included, and the author
draws on recent decipherments
in
Maya
new
interpretations of
Chapters on
Maya
Maya
writing to provide
sculpture and ceramics.
architecture and the materials of
Maya
art set the stage for discussions of the sculpture of different
time periods and regions, the famous murals the dramatic
new
ceramics of the
Bonampak,
findings at Cacaxtla, and the painted first
organized the material of the
at
human form
in
Maya
millennium AD. The author has in fresh
Maya
ways, considering the nature
art, for
example, and the role of
the hand-held object.
Thames & Hudson
ISBN 0-500-20327-X
90000
14.95
(CAN. $22.99) 9
780500"20327
