m ay a m a d e
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To my parents Letty and Mario CiprĂŠs who have always supported me. And to my indigenous ancestors who have left such valuable treasures, knowledge, and inspiration to the world. May their history and art never be forgotten by humanity.
MAYA MADE: Art That Transcends Time, April 2019 Printed and bound in San Diego, CA by Clearstory Creative Digital Printing.
THE ANCIENT MAYA..................................................................... 5 T H E M AYA T H R O U G H T I M E & P L AC E . . ..................................................................................... 7
T YPES OF ART & MATERIALS OF THE ANCIENT MAYA...................15 T O O L S . . . . . . . . . . . . ..................................................................................................................... 1 6 S C U L P T U R E , C A R V I N G S & M O D E L I N G. ................................................................................. 2 6 PA I N T I N G .. . . . . . . . ................................................................................................................... 5 0 A R C H I T E C T U R E .................................................. ................................................................. 5 8 J E W E L RY .. . . . . . . . . ................................................................................................................... 6 6 M E TA L LU R G Y. . .................................................................................................................... 7 0 P E R I S H A B L E M AT E R I A L S..................................... ................................................................. 7 8
MODERN MAYA ART...................................................................85 T H E CO N Q U E S T . . ................................................ ................................................................. 8 6 M O D E R N M AYA M A K E R S ..................................... ................................................................. 92 A R T I S T S I N F LU E N C E D BY M AYA A R T................... ............................................................... 1 0 0
INDEX....................................................................................... 110
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T
he art of the Maya, as with every civilization, is a reflection of their lifestyle and culture. The art
was composed of delineation and painting upon paper and plaster, carvings in wood and stone, clay and stucco models, and terra cotta figurines from molds. T H E T ECH N I C A L process of metal working was also highly developed but as the resources were scarce, they only crested ornaments in this media. Many of the great programs of Maya art, inscriptions, and architecture were commissioned by Maya kings to memorialize themselves and ensure their place in history. The prevailing subject of their art are not anonymous priests and unnamed gods but rather men and women of power that serve to recreate the history of the people.
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T
he setting of the art of the Maya Civilization is the tropical Lowlands of southwestern
Mexico and the countries of Guatemala and Belize, as well as portions of northwestern Honduras. This region is conventionally referred to as the “Maya Lowlands” because most of it lies on a relatively flat limestone shelf embracing the Yucatan Peninsula.
At the margins, however, Maya Civilization spilled into the surrounding highlands, and some “lowland” sites, such as Copan and Tonina, are really in very mountainous terrain. D U R I N G the Classic period (ad 250-900) hundreds of semi-autonomous towns and cities, built of finely-cut stone and led by lords (ajaw) and lesser nobility (sajal), sprang up along river systems and wetlands, resulting in burgeoning populations. The largest and most powerful kingdoms—centered at Calakmul, Copan, Dzibanche, Palenque, Tikal and Tonina, among others—can rightfully be called city-states. LOW L A N D Maya Civilization began to coalesce around 2500 bc when the inhabitants of the Central American rainforest started to settle into a village way of life founded upon maize agriculture. The Olmec, considered by many Mesoamerica’s “mother culture,” were already constructing large architectural complexes, monumental sculpture and refined artworks by 1100 bc .
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W I T H one or two possible exceptions, the tombs of the
A LO N G S I D E the religion promulgated by an
rulers who orchestrated these great Preclassic construc-
ever-growing retinue of priests and scribes, art and
tions have yet to be found, and the precise political
writing played equally crucial roles in maintaining the
organization of these societies remains in question.
cohesion of Classic Maya society and in supporting
Nevertheless, in light of the impressive architectural and
the power of the divine kings. This way, the Lowlands
artistic evidence, scholars no longer view the Preclassic
witnessed a dynamic political and artistic climate that
as a warm-up for the Classic flowering that followed, but
peaked during the Late Classic period (ad 600-900) and
rather as a distinct pinnacle in Lowland Maya History.
whose intensity was never again duplicated. Even the
D U R I N G the Late Preclassic period, which witnessed an explosion of symbolic and artistic expression. Symbols began to adorn not just small-scale constructions, such as stone reliefs. Late Preclassic architectural façades were fashioned into enormous stucco heads of
modern population density of the Maya Lowlands has yet to regain its Late Classic height, a blessing, perhaps considering the tenuous balance between environmental conservation and economic development in this ecologically sensitive region.
monstrous deities elaborated through symbolic details.
T H E CL A S S I C population explosion triggered envi-
Perhaps the most revealing of the state of the symbol
ronmental degradation. Added to incessant warfare
system at this time is the stunning mural from San Bar-
waged by a crowded arena of ambitious rulers, all of
tolo, Guatemala, the earliest full-blown narrative and
these factors led to the downfall of the Classic cities.
display of complex imagery known in ancient Maya art.
This so-called “Classic Maya collapse,” largely a
D U R I N G the Classic period (ad 250-900), Lowland Maya Civilization realized its greatest artistic achievements as well as its maximum demographic expansion. Though city-states worshiped different patron gods, they shared a core pantheon and certain basic ideological assumptions regarding, for instance, the creation of the world, the resurrection of the Maize God and the underworld origins of humanity, all of which ensured some measure of interregional solidarity.
ninth-century phenomenon, was experienced differentially throughout the Lowlands. Indeed, the northern Yucatan Peninsula, or Northern Lowlands, showed much more resilience to its effects and even experienced a kind of renaissance during the succeeding Terminal Classic/Postclassic periods. This era gave us the great architectural treasures of Chichen Itza and Mayapan, rich hybrids of Classic heritage and Central Mexican Toltec influences. T H E M AYA people also created ceramic vessels, figurines, and censers make at numerous sites. Figurines and censers were made with molds and hand-modeling to create unique sculptural forms of varying sizes. Maya vessels, like all Mesoamerican pottery, were hand built without the benefit of the potter’s wheel, usually by coiling rolled strips onto a base, or with slab construction, to form the chassis meet might then receive feet, a lid, or other additions.
Discovered at Ceibal by Takeshi Inomata’s archaeological project, this greenstone head, carved in a distinctly Olmec style, provides one of several indications of Lowland Maya connections with the Gulf Coast Olmec during the Middle Preclassic Period.
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LATE 600 AD – 900
PRECLASSIC EARLY/MIDDLE 1200
bc
– 250
bc
680-720 Greatest number of female representations on Maya monuments
1000 bc Founding of Ceibal 770 Aj Maxam paints in multiple styles at Naranjo 500 bc Village life at Tikal 771 Paintings made at Naj Tunich cave 400 bc First Maya writing in Peten, San Bartolo. 791 Paintings at Bonampak LATE 1200 bc – 600
8th–9th c. Chenes, Rio Bec and 100 bc Murals of San Bartolo
By ad 150 main pyramids rise at Teotihuacan in central Mexico
CLASSIC EARLY
ad
250 – 600
Puuc architecture flourished
POSTCLASSIC EARLY
ad
900– 1200
bc
1100 Chichen falls into decline; founding of Mayapan bc
LATE
ad
1200 – 1530
577 Tonina monument 168 1300–1500 Surviving Maya books painted
15th c. Tulum flourishes
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M E X I CO
Quintana Roo
Tabasco
Uxmal
Kabah
Labna
Loltun
Jaina
Mani
Xcalumkin
Mayapan
Xkulok
Cumpich
Comalcalco
Campeche
Edzna Chicanna
Chiapas
Palenque
Tonina
Becan
Pomona
Xpuhil
Yaxchilan
Rio Bec
Bonampak
Calakmul
Altar de Sacrificios
Izapa
Yucatan B E LI Z E
G UAT E M A L A
El Perú-Waka’
Piedras Negras
El Mirador
Nakbe
Rio Azul
El Zotz
San Bartolo
Tikal
Holmul
Naranjo
Motul de San José
Ceibal
Naj Tunich
Cancuen
Chama
Nebaj
Uxmal Kabah
Nim Li Punit
Takalik Abaj
Caracol
Iximche
Labna Loltun
Altun Ha
Kaminaljuyu
Mani
HONDURAS
Cotzumalhuapa
Mayapan
Quirigua
Acanceh
Tiho
Izamal
Chichen Itza
Ek'Balam
Copan
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Location Map of the Ancient Maya Civilization
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he rainforest offered the Maya a world of abundance. From the sea to the rainforest canopy, wild
or grown by humans, the natural environment supplied a wealth of materials to fashion into perishable and permanent works of fine quality. The land and waterways were materials too, for pyramids were built onto hills, and rivers and coasts provided strategic locations for cities.
M AT ER I A L S such as rock, clay, and wood were available to Maya artisans everywhere, but others, including jade, seashells, and obsidian, were found only in certain areas, and the Maya traded with people near and far via land, coastal, and riverine trade networks. The history of the materials of Maya art changes according to the pulses of expansion and contraction of these networks, affected both by the desire for acquisition of materials and limitations to access driven by politics, warfare, or environmental pressure.
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culptors used chert chisels, flakes, picks, and bifaces, some hafted onto wooden handles, to carve
these stones, and then abrasives for polishing. In general, freshly quarried limestone yields easily to stone tools and hardens over time, and in the west, sculptors carved fine-grained limestone as fluently as if it were butter, particularly at Palenque (where the stone has a lovely golden tone). T H E CH I S EL worked almost like a paintbrush, whether in bas relief or incision, and sculptors crafted designs in stone that, at other sites, could only be achieved in paint. Palenque’s painters and carvers may have been one and the same, in fact, grafting both whiplash and pushed paintbrush lines onto the chiseled surface.
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tool s
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Knives and other sharp-bladed tools are known by archeologists as flake tools. The blades were made from flakes of flint or obsidian, a type of volcanic glass. Flint could achieve an adequate cutting edge, while obsidian blades have a cutting-edge sharper than that of surgical steel.
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Plumb-Bob The Maya used plumb-bobs, also known as plummets, to create a vertical reference line for construction purposes. A heavy stone was suspended from a string, with the weight of the stone pulling the string taut and creating a perfect vertical line when steady.
Scrapers Stone scrapers, usually made from flint, were used for a variety of purposes. They were used domestically for food preparation, particularly in the butchering of animal carcasses, as well as for the shaping of construction materials.
Hammers Basic hammers were made from both stone and hardwoods. Stone hammer heads were either attached to hardwood shafts or simply struck with other hard objects. The Mayans used their stone hammer heads to break and shape large stone blocks.
Chisels Stone chisels were important in the creation of Mayan buildings and works of art. Small, flint chisels were used to add the finishing details to religious stonework sculptures.
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OBSIDIAN, PYRITE, CINNABAR, & HEMATITE
V
aluable materials came from farther away, from the Guatemala highlands, or the Maya mountains
of southern Belize. Volcanic flows provided obsidian, a material often considered the “steel” of the New World, used for blades and projectile point, and also worked into art forms. Sometimes incised, obsidian also was used to create polished mirrors, as was iron pyrite, which were put together to create mosaic mirrors. This portrayed in images of courtly life painted on ceramic vessels were used for both personal reflection and spiritual divination.
T H E M AYA found and used cinnabar, or mercuric sulfide, also called vermilion. They knew how to convert the soft ore to quicksilver, first heating the ore to yield the poisonous gas mercuric oxide, and then cooling the gas to yield liquid mercury, dangerous enough, but stable in which archaeologists have found in intact vessels interred in caches and burials. More characteristically, the Maya preferred the red ore, applying it to sculptures and using it in the preparation of bodies for interment. Mountains yielded hematite, a red iron ore pigment, also used to color the deceased, and specular hematite, flecked with mica, used as painting pigment.
An earflare worn by the ajk’uhuun of K’inich Ahkal Mo’Nahb III has a projecting obsidian element Temple XIX stone panel, Palenque. Late Classic.
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Artisans knapped flint into unusual shapes, ranging from actual weapon forms to simple dogs and turtles, and at their most prized, human forms. Archaeologists call these odd flints “eccentrics”.
CHERT & FLINT
C
hert is a micro crystalline quartz that sparks when struck. Found throughout the Maya Lowlands, it
was the main material for tools and weapons. Flint, a black chert, held practical and ceremonial in value, and the Maya made thousands of flint objects that never saw use as tools. Artisans knapped flint into unusual shapes, ranging from actual weapon forms to simple dogs and turtles, and at their most prized, human forms. Archae-
ologists call these odd flints “eccentrics”. The knapping of stones was a specialized skill, and some artists were able to achieve the subtlest of detail of a pouty mouth of pronounced chin. Eccentric flint figures often sprout multiple human heads, some personifying body parts, particularly the penis. ECCEN T R I C flints in anthropomorphic form usually personify the god K’awaiil, whose characteristic torch may signal he was the patron god of flint. These were carried as K’awiil scepters or tucked into headdresses; some may have been hafted onto wooden handles. Other eccentric flints were made explicitly for architectural dedication caches, perhaps to channel the power of lightning into architecture.
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eramic vessels also became the prime repository of elite imagery. Maya pots were painted with clay
slips, blended with colored clays and minerals, which bonded permanently to the pot; burnishing increased surface sheen. Although often glossy, no Maya pot was ever glazed, but in the Postclassic, the vitrification of Tohil Plumbate achieved a high gloss. M AYA vessels and figurines were fired in and possibly
inside larger vessels called saggers, which would have protected finer objects from fire-clouds. Archaeologists have found one possible ceramic kiln in the Maya area, at K’axob, where they also found broken ceramic sherds used as production tools. Most artisans painted with slip before firing; some adopted the Teotihuacan technique of painting fired ceramics with stucco, including pastel pink and blue.
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ARCHITECTUR AL SCULPTURE
T
he earliest Maya cities of the central region fashioned elaborate exteriors of pliable stucco built
over tenoned supports on buildings. The façades of the largest buildings feature huge deity heads, and these may have functioned as idols for adoration or to name buildings or mark them as mythological places. Wellknown examples come from Late Preclassic El Mirador, Cerros, and Uaxactun, and this practice continued at Early Classic Tikal, Copan, and El Zotz. Recent excavations have uncovered more Preclassic examples of modeled stucco deity heads at Calakmul and Cival. By the Late Classic period, the scale of façade decoration diminished and may have been replaced by the use of portable braziers and urns installed on pyramid terraces, as discovered on Palenque’s Cross Group.
T H E M AYA also elaborated functional architectural forms including lintel, a stone or wood slab set above a doorway and bearing carvings on visible faces, seen before entry into and once inside the portal, requiring the observer to squat, crane the head, or even lie down to see the composition. Panels were square, rectangular, or oval forms set into buildings’ interior and exterior walls. Columns and jambs, especially in the north, portrayed humans or deities who appear to hold up the lintel or building. Dedication texts recounted on lintels or panels often narrate the dedication of the buildings into which they were set, indicating that they were perceived as integral parts of the structures.
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The red and blue pigments remain vivid on this stuccoed pier from Palenque Temple 19, discovered by the Proyecto de las Cruces. Upakal K'inich wears a giant water bird costume, possibly a cormorant, comparable to the costume his predecessor wears in the stone panel on the pier's front face.
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Stucco adheres and endures best when applied in rounded curvilinear courses supported by an architectural framework, especially tenons.
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LATE PRECLASSIC TO EARLY CLASSIC
M
assive architectural façades of the Late Preclassic era in the Maya Lowlands featured modeled
stucco representations of the heads or bodies of Maya supernatural. Stucco adheres and endures best when applied in rounded curvilinear courses supported by an architectural framework, especially tenons. Deities are shown as oversized heads, 6m (20 ft) high, frontal and modeled in stucco in three dimensions. They also appear in stuccoed architectural friezes as whole, anthropomorphic bodies with zoomorphic faces or masks, shown in active poses and in profile, legs apart, and with costume elements such as twisted ropes, ties, and headdresses covering much of the body, comparable to the rendering of the anthropomorphic body in the contemporaneous San Bartolo murals.
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FIGURINES
M AYA sculpture was made not only to honor kings
S
and gods, but also to negotiate relationships between
ome figures were modeled entirely by hand, with a separate mold-made face often added and then
detailed by hand; others were made entirely in molds. Maya figurines made during the Late Classic reveal a far more extensive range of activities and emotions than monumental sculpture. WO R K I N G in pliable clay and modeling entirely by
hand, and artists successfully mastered the stooped posture of age in a figurine of Chak Chel, the old midwife goddess of the Maya.
men and the powerful supernatural forces that deities embodied. In adopting permanent materials and standardized representations—particularly the stela—in the third century ad, the Maya developed successful solutions that would, in turn, be used by an ever-widening gyre. At first limited to the Petén-area centers, sculpture began to appear in the fifth and sixth centuries at Copan and Quirigua to the south, Oxkintok to the north, Caracol to the east, and Yaxchilan to the west. A S A S TO N E prepared for carving, Stela 29 has qualities associated with the Early Classic in general,
SCULPTURE
T
from local rock, stone-workers quarried a fairly smooth shaft that nevertheless bore imperfections, resulting
he presence of novel representations among the
in an uneven surface. The glyphic cartouches adjust
minor figured on Stela I may have been stimu-
to the surfaces of the rock, listing slightly to the right,
lated by developments in other media that had fewer
and include substantial gaps between the glyphs where
technical limitations than stone sculpture. At Rio
the stone features a natural recess. There is no border
Azul, during the Early Classic, the art of making clay
other than the edges of the quarried rock. All carved
figuring flourished. Their bodies modeled entirely
surfaces bear the same low relief, the background
by hand, the figures sometimes featured mold-made
carved away to leave the finished surface, particularly
heads. Delicate hands applied clothing layer by layer
along the bar-and-dot numbers that are prefixed to
and hair in strands, yielding lifelike figures that
glyphs. Carved lines adhere to the same thickness,
adopted natural poses.
and all carved surfaces are equally finished; no chisel
T H E SI X T EEN T H - CEN T U RY Popol Vuh describes the creation of the world and humans by deities whose
marks remain in evidence, but the grain of the stone is still visible.
names include tzacol, “maker,” and bitol, “modeler.”
CO N T EM P O R A N EO U S works on jade celts, whose
These primordial artisans measure and stake out the
proportions are similar to those of stelae, use a similar
earth’s four sides and corners and shape bodies out
composition. The Leiden Plaque, which would have
of wood, clay, and finally corn dough, which yields
dangled from a ruler’s waist, features incised images
humans who give offerings to their creators. The
of a ruler on one side and an inscription narrating the
artistic records suggest that ancient Maya artists saw
accession of an ajaw on the back.
their acts of material transformation and enlivening as analogous to creator deities’ acts. For sculptors too, carving, modeling and shaping were sacred acts that emulated primordial ones.
BY T H E M I D - FI F T H century, when Stela 31 was carved, Tikal was quarrying limestone of a finer grade, less vulnerable to pitting. Prior to sculpting, masons would work the slab into a nearly perfect prismatic shaft. The sculptors 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 Stela 29 seems little more than a rough draft.
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SCULPTURE OF THE NORTH: THE ART OF YUCATAN AND CHICHEN ITZA
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A FE W stelae have been recovered at Chichen Itza, and the city has carved stone lintels that record rulership and authority. But Chichen was also a place of sculptural invention, developing new ways to promulgate an official
aya art of Yucatan—and that of Chichen Itza
message, from massive interior low-relief sculptures at
in particular—developed along a somewhat
small scale to a virtual sea of carved pillars, from Red
different trajectory from the art of the southern Low-
Jaguar Throne studded with jade disks to the chacmool, a
lands, but with very early beginnings. While Maya art
sculptural form that has been recovered within mul-
ceased to be made in the south after ad 900 altogether,
tiple buildings. Repetition and replication provided a
the end of the millennium nevertheless was a rich and
consistent message, one that emphasized the role of the
fruitful time in the north, and the making of Maya art
Feathered serpent as a unifying authority.
continued unabated until the Spanish invasion in the sixteenth century. The sculptural media of the south —and the freestanding stela especially—adapted to local conditions in the north, where the raw materials were of a somewhat different order and where the very
V ERY LOW- R EL I EF carvings line the interiors walls of the Lower Temple of the Jaguars and the North Temple. Individual slabs were assembled and then carved in situ, before receiving a light coat of paint.
environment of scrub tropical rainforest differs from
A LT H O U G H true of most Maya traditions, the concen-
the high-canopy deep rainforest of the south.
trated energy of the artistic program at Chichen Itza is
Y U C ATA N sculptors-from the earliest efforts in the fifth century to the years just before the Spanish invasion had a different quality of limestone available to them, dense but less fine-grained, durable but less successful for bas-reliefs. Best preserved are sculptures that were three-dimensional in their format, conceived as architectural ornament, or planned for an interior location—a description that in fact fits many of the works at Chichen Itza. W H ER E the high-canopy rainforest long shielded the southern lowland architecture of the north has always stood against the scrub forest, leaving it more vulnerable to both human and natural depredation. T H E S TO RY of public art and architecture at Chichen speaks of rulership and glory. The lords incorporated seamlessly the ideology of Central Mexico into a Maya context, making their city and its monuments the envy of Mesoamerica.
quite astonishing, for everywhere the city was carved or painted, or both. Most sculptures were carved in situ, and the very process of production must have filled the city every day with skilled laborers. Across the main plaza from the Great Ballcourt, dozens of columns and piers were carved, forming the colonnade in front of the Temple of the Warriors and the so-called Mercado. Carved benches in the Mercado established a format that would be replicated time and again, from Tula right up to the Aztec capital at the time of the Spanish invasion, with processional figures limned on projecting sides.
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MONUMENT T YPES
T
he Maya sculptural tradition is intertwined with architecture, for carved stone monuments were placed inside, in front of, on buildings or in plazas. Other sculptural forms such as stuccoed architectural façades and handheld objects or costume ornaments, from massive to minor, these shaped forms were installed and experienced together in the ancient Maya world.
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SCULPTURE MATERIALS Wood
T
he Maya had a number of extremely hard tropical woods to carve, many more resistant to carving
than stone but unfortunately perishable—and thus constituting a boy of Maya art largely lost. Undoubtedly the Maya used mahogany and rosewood (the latter with its pungent, sweet smell) for sculpting, and three-dimensional wooden sculptures were probably common, although only the tiniest sample remains.
Bone A R T I S T S worked bones of all sorts, human and animal. They carved bones into shapes of deities, using the natural nodules of the medium as faces, eyes, or headdress elements. Bones also were used as surfaces for incised images and texts. At Tikal, Jasaw Chan K’awiil departed the mortal world with a bag of some ninety carved bones, a number of them worked with delicate incision and rubbed with brilliant vermilion. Some human bones may have been relics of revered ancestors, or trophies from the bodies of vanquished captives.
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Limestone And Other Stone M AYA stone sculpture emerged as a well-developed tradition, likely with origins in the sculpture of wood. At most sites, the Maya quarried limestone for their monuments, and at Calakmul, partly quarried shafts remain in situ. Using chisels made of chert, some of which have been found in ancient quarries, workmen freed stone blocks on all sides until the prism could be released, leaving only a small “quarry stump” of the sort visible on some stela butts. The quality of stone varied drastically from site to site: at Coba, for example, the gray-white limestone is full of fossilized seashells, which erode fairly quickly, leaving a nearly unintelligible monumental record; Tikal had access to a wide variety of limestone rock, ranging from the fine-grained limestone of Stela 31 to the porous rock of Stela 11. S C U L P TO R S used chert chisels, flakes, picks, and bifaces, some hafted onto wooden handles, to carve these stones, and then abrasives for polishing. In general, freshly quarried limestone yields easily to stone tools and hardens over time, and in the west, sculptors carved fine-grained limestone as fluently as if it were butter. Particularly at Palenque (where the stone has a lovely golden tone), the chisel worked almost like a paintbrush, whether in bas relief or incision, and sculptors crafted designs in stone that, at other sites, could only be achieved in paint. Palenque’s painters and carvers may have been one and the same, in fact, grafting both whiplash and pushed paintbrush lines onto the chiseled surface.
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O N T H E southern margins of the Maya realm, other rock
LO C A L Stone was the rule, but exceptions occurred.
types dominated sculpture. The volcanic tuff quarried
Calakmul Stela 9 is made of black slate imported
at Copan ranges from brown to pink to green in tonal-
from the Maya Mountains, at least 320 km (200 miles)
ity and was particularly malleable after quarrying,
away—and perhaps evidence of political fealty conceded
subsequently hardening after exposure to microflora.
to that powerhouse by Caracol or a nearby polity, either
In contrast to bedding limestone, volcanic tuff lent itself
as gift or tribute in ad 662, when Calakmul was at the
to the greater three-dimensionality characteristic of
height of its power. At Tonina, a variety of stones—some
Copanec sculpture and provided material for massive
of which may have been delivered as tribute payment—
mosaic façades. Most works were covered with at least
depict captives. Completed stone monuments (or parts
a thin wash of stucco, unifying tonalities, but today the
of them) also were moved.
colorful and varied underlying stone once again prevails. Tonina sculptors used local sandstone to craft three-dimensional sculptures of standing rulers with fantastic headdresses of stacked deity heads, and to carve panels portraying ballplayers of bound captives. At Quirigua, the brownish-red sandstone is a particularly hard and resistant red rock that defied sculptors’ attempts to transpose the three-dimensionality of Copan, but, with its great strength and little predilection to shear off or fracture, enabled Quirigua lords to erect the tallest freestanding monuments of the Western hemisphere.
T H E M AYA set their stone stelae in striking configurations, arrayed in stunning order on Copan’s Great Plaza or like a receiving line of ancestors along Tikal’s North Acropolis. At Piedras Negras, each king initiated a new line of stelae, never exceeding eight. On other occasions, wooden banners or posts may have been placed in stone bases, such as Tonina Monument 8. Some sites, including Tikal and Caracol, that erected stelae in the Early Classic favored stela-altar pairings, and at Copan, altars took fantastic forms of turtles and mythological caimans. D E S P I T E the general prevalence of the stela the Maya also adopted other sculptural forms. For example, Palenque artists assembled thin, carved panels of limestone for large interior installations; Yaxchilam and Petexbatun-region sculptors carved steps with images of captives forming galleries for public intimidation; and Piedras Negras builders incorporated carved panels into building façades.
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Jade and Turquoise T WO materials valued for their color were jade and turquoise. The Maya used a single word, yax, to express the colors we distinguish as blue and green. They may have seen all things yax as analogous —a tropical bird feather, a jade bead, a young ear of maize sprouting from the stalk. To the south, Quirigua and Copan lie near rich sources of jade, and offerings dating to 900 bc
at Copan reveal early exploitation of the precious
material. The hardest rock of North America apart from emery, jadeite occurs in rock and boulder from in and near the mile Motagua River, and it was worked with
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S ACR ED to earlier cultures, jade may also have connoted antiquity, and the Maya collected ancient treasures and buried them centuries later in graves and offering caches. Devoted attendants placed a jade bead in the mouth of a dead loved one, to serve either as a receptacle for the soul, or as an endlessly replenished maize kernel. To the Maya, like the Chinese and Japanese, a jade bead was the symbol of preciousness, but objects in jade could range from the thinnest tesserae to a 4.42-kg (9.75-lb) carved cobble, the latter, from an Altun Ha tomb, representing the head of an avian Jester God, a deity associated with Maya rulership.
jade tools, string saws, leather strops, and abrasives.
STARTING around the year 900 and into the Postclas-
Both nephrite and jadeite are true jades and depend
sic era, Central Mexican Toltec traders made a new
for their names on the fact that the Aztecs told the
blue-green material, turquoise, available to the Maya.
Spanish that the stone cured ailments of the liver and
Turquoise comes from the southwest United States and
kidney. The Maya most admired an apple-green jade,
northern Mexico, and the Toltecs, Mixtecs, and Aztecs
and carvers frequently adapted imagery to veins of color
treasured it for their mosaics. Most turquoise mosaics
in the stone, which could range from white to black.
found in the Maya area were probably assembled elsewhere, but the Maya certainly incorporated the material into new objects when it was available.
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Brought to Chichen Itza from distant New Mexico by Toltec traders, turquoise was fractured into tiny tesserae and assembled onto a wooden frame to create this round ornament. Three similar examples were recovered at the site; the center of this one, found on the back of the Red Jaguar Throne, probably once held an iron pyrate mirror.
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Painted Maya vessels are the most impressive ceramic art of the New World.
CLAY & CER AMICS
PA I N T ED Maya vessels are the most extraordinary
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ceramic art of the New World. Although Maya ceramics
he Maya created ceramic vessels, figurines, and censers at numerous sites, and at Comalcalco, clay
bricks were used to construct buildings. Figurines and censers were made with molds and hand-modeling to create unique sculptural forms of varying sizes. M AYA vessels, like all Mesoamerican pottery, were hand-built, without the benefit of the potter’s wheel, usually by coiling rolled strips onto a base, or with slab construction, to form the chassis meet might then
serve archaeologists in the usual fashion—as evidence of dating, like more archaeological sherds—their changing rim shapes are almost trivial when compared with their surfaces. In the lively paintings and carvings that encircle their exteriors, Maya pots provide a window on ancient religion, ancient story-telling, and even the way art came to be made. They are, perhaps, for the art historian, one of the most rewarding and least studied media of the Maya.
receive feet, a lid, or other additions.
T H E M AYA , of course, used ceramics alongside
CER A M I C vessels also became the prime repository of
gourds every day as small cups for drinking vessels, tall
elite imagery. Maya pots were painted with clay slips, blended with colored clays and minerals to yield a range of colors, which bonded permanently to the pot; burnishing increased surface sheen. Although often glossy, no Maya pot was ever glazed, but in the Postclassic, the vitrification of Tohil Plumbate achieved a high gloss. Maya vessels and figurines were fired in open pits and possibly inside larger vessels called saggers, which would have protected finer objects from fire-clouds. Archaeologists have found one possible ceramic kiln in the Maya area, at K’axob, where are they also found broken ceramic sherds used as production tools. Most artisans painted with slip before firing; some adopted the Teotihuacan technique of painting fired ceramics with stucco, including pastel pinks and blues.
cylinders for storing and pouring ritual beverages, and plates for delicious foodstuffs, from tamales to corncakes served up with sauces. Among the elite, many of the vessels were finely potted and elaborately painted, and some held foodstuffs even in the tomb, so that a traveler in the afterlife would have sufficient nourishment. But the Maya also made pots to commemorate important life passages: a young prince’s transition to manhood, an accession to kingship, a victory in battle or the ballgame, or the negotiation of a dowry or marriage. Most of all, when a noble man or woman died, friends and relatives commissioned new ceramics that would 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.
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Maya pots provide a window on ancient religion, ancient story-telling, and even the way art came to be made. they are, perhaps, for the art historian, one of the most rewarding and least studied media of the maya.
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TECHNIQUES
VA R I O U S media were used to finish fine vessels. Despite
A
bear today, the Maya did not invent glaze or glass; like
lways working without a wheel, the Maya depended on two basic techniques to form pots,
and they sometimes used them in tandem. Most commonly, artisans built ceramic using the coil method, although no trace of that technique survives in finished elite vessels. Sculptural additions, often mold-made, needed to be carefully attached, in order that no breakage should occur during firing; potters made firing holes into the open mouths of creatures or hid them where they are not visible. The other basic method for making a pot was slab construction, most obviously to form ceramic boxes. Small slabs were carved or stamped
the deceptively high gloss that many of these wares still ancient Greek wares, Maya vessels were painted in clay slips made from tested recipes of clay and minerals. Broad slip palettes came into use in the fourth century ad
and lasted until the ninth, with results that ranged
from mustard to purple, with shades of red and orange in between. Low firing temperatures yielded blues and greens, but these have faded, leaving only lingering grays. Some schools of Maya ceramic painting eschewed the broader palette, notably the Codex-style painters, who used only carbon black, red, and sometimes cream.
before being added to cylinders to serve as tripod feet.
AT T H E EN D of the fourth century ad, post-fire stucco
Few vessels show any evidence of fire clouds—the dark
techniques from Teotihuacan were adopted for Maya use.
blotches characteristic of vessels fired in pits—so the
Using a thin, prepared quicklime into which mineral pig-
Maya must have been firing them inside saggers, pro-
ments were dissolved, painters developed a broad palette,
tective ceramic vessels designed to protect polychrome
complete with blue and greens. Common in fifth-century
slips from carbon deposits.
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.
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aya painters adopted new modes of representation for pots and walls before artists considered
using them on monumental sculpture, at least for the principal figure.
W H AT is now absolutely clear is that painting developed alongside monumental sculpture in the Maya Lowlands, a tradition that remained unabated until the Spanish invasion, and a steady stream of discoveries in the twenty-first century confirms the extraordinary quality of Maya painting. O F T EN called frescoes, Maya paintings are applied on dry or moist stucco, and are usually dependent on vegetal gums, rather than true fresco, in which wet stucco is impregnated with pigments. Maya painters also worked in other media like ceramics, books and textiles were painted in all periods, but few traces of them are extant today. A S WA L L S for painting became available, they were of different size and dimension, inside and outside the building, providing a changing environment, everchallenging to the artist, and opening up new vistas for multi-figural composition: the fast time of painting could race ahead of the slow time of sculpture.
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MUR ALS San Bartolo in the Late Preclassic
A
s William Saturno’s team discovered, artists at San Bartolo began painting as early as 400 bc , when they
created monochromatic red paintings, 300 years before the now famous paintings of the Pinturas building. Around 100 bc , artists and their patrons embarked on an ambitious new program for the pinturas building, creating a series of paintings that wrapped the interior walls, and that record key religious narratives: the life of the Maize God and the establishment of World Trees. T H E A R T I S T I C practice is equally established: like later muralists, artists mapped the entire program with a light red sketch line on the smooth fresh plaster. The consistency of scale and spacing suggests the precision of the grid that must underpin the project, even if no trace of it survives. Artists applied colors and then finished the painting with a dramatic carbon line, leaving an unpainted crisp margin between the red color field and outline of human and animal bodies, enhancing legibility for the viewer. A Maya tradition of painting circa 100 bc had fully launched.
The Early Classic E A R LY Classic murals survive primarily in tombs, and been monochromatic. The simplest of paintings is found on the walls of Burial 48 at Tikal from ad 457, where the artist quickly sketched out his program in charcoal on dry white stucco and then painted over the lines with 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 an ambiance of sacred essence for the Maya. FA R M O R E exactingly executed are the nearly contemporaneous tomb paintings at Rio Azul, painted in red with black highlights. Some feature paintings that wrap around protruding stalactite-like formations; others lime stucco surfaces carefully cut into the limestone bedrock. R I CH polychrome painting in a palace context is now known at La Sufricaya and Xelha as well as from Uaxactun, suggesting a broad but largely unknown polychrome tradition in the fifth and sixth centuries. Framed by a broad red outline, as are Maya books, the Uaxactun painting gives a sense of what a Maya book of the period would have looked like.
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Late Classic Paintings: Calakmul, Bonampak, and Beyond AT C A L A K M U L in the seventh century, artists painted a radial pyramid in the center of a vast plaza with larger-than-life figures. Comparable to the techniques Maya painters used for centuries, artists sketched in red, painted in colors, and then finished with a black outline. The imagery, with its thick red border and narrative content, bears a clear relationship to Maya ceramics from the seventh and eighth centuries.
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COLOR AND PAINTING MATERIALS
S
mooth, plastered walls made ideal surfaces for painting, but we do not know the full extent of
the monumental painting tradition. Buildings of perishable materials may have had stuccoed and painted façades, roofs, and roof combs, some of which are depicted in Maya art, clues to a lost tradition. Painters worked on walls of dry or damp stucco; they mixed organic and mineral pigments with water lime, and vegetal gums (from tree bark or orchid bulbs), which they painted on walls with brushes made of animal hair and plant fibers or quill pens. At Rio Azul, Tikal, and Caracol, archaeologists have found Early Classic painted tombs, worked on in a limited palette of cream, red, and black. The extent of full polychrome paintings may never be known, but the anomalous preservation of murals at San Bartolo, painted around 100 bc , and at Bonampak, from ad 791, raises the possibility that such powerful works existed elsewhere also.
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S T U CCO is created by mixing water and vegetal gums with lime. A pliable medium, it was used to shape architectural façades, and cover book pages, ceramic vessels, and walls in preparation for painting. The largest of all Maya sculptures are architectural façades made of modeled stucco, like those at El Mirador or El Zotz, which represent massive deity heads. Sculptors sketched imagery on plainly finished plastered walls, before building am armature of small stones. Over these stones they applied layers of stucco, completely modeling human body forms before layering on their costumes. Painted stucco is vulnerable to damage by rain and other moisture, and Maya artists repeatedly painted sculptures and buildings to preserve fresh imagery. TO M A K E a good quality lime or cement that will in turn form a supple plaster or stucco, limestone, shells, or sascab (decomposed limestone) must be burned, and it usually takes two days of steady burning to reduce limestone to powered cement. At Tikal archaeologists have found lime kilns, which helped to reduce the amount of wood this process demanded; wood indeed was at times scarcer, and conversion from modeled stucco ornament to cut stone may have been driven by the disappearance of local supplies of fuel. This transition is notable at Copan, particularly in the change from the stuccoed Rosalia building to the stone mosaic Oropendola building discovered by Ricardo Agurcia. This transition, which set the stage for diverse Late Classic façade decoration at Copan, may have occurred out of necessity, or from a desire for more durable materials that did not demand contact maintenance. Stucco ornament flourished longer in areas of richer forest, notable at Tonina and Palenque, although Isabel Villaseñor has shown that later Palenque buildings use a plaster mix with high clay content, perhaps because sufficient lime was unavailable.
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The materials of monumental p cheap and common, such as ca sive minerals, such as azurite, and ones that had to be manuf created by heating indigo and distinctive and stable blue-gree artists made Maya blue even m with azurite to make the strikin nates the paintings. So valuabl material that anyone looking a have gazed with the awe of som mosaics of Ravenna, where lap Old World—studded the walls.
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painting ranges from the arbon for black, to expenwhich had to be imported, factured, such as Maya blue, palygorskite clay to create en shades. At Bonampak, more precious by blending it ng blue pigment that domile and rare was this ancient at the Bonampak walls may meone seeing the golden pis lazuli—the azurite of the
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rom the first millennium bc onwards, the Maya built public buildings, creating vast façades against which
to stage great spectacles and plazas in which to congregate. W I T H its emphasis on mass and less attention to interior spaces, Maya architecture is composed of a few relatively simple elements: the house, the volume of platform or pyramid, and the path or steps through which people’s movements animated the built environment. M O S T CH A R AC T ER I S T I C of the house is its thatched hip roof; translated into stone, the result is the corbel vault, in which courses of stone approach each other until they are spanned by a single capstone. M AYA also created flat, trabiated roofs using wooden beams and stucco, and two examples of stuccoed rounded vaults (without keystones) have been found at Calakmul and La Muñeca.
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T H E P ER I S H A B L E origins of and counterparts to
H OW E V ER , during the Late Classic, massive decora-
Maya stone architecture in mud, wood, and thatch
tion was set on roof combs or upper façades, either in
seem to have been often in the minds of builders of
modeled stucco crafted over stone tenons, as at Tikal, or
monumental architecture, who at times engages with
in stone mosaics, as at Copan. At Tikal, Temple I’s roof
those other materials, as at Palenque, where the edges
comb held a giant stucco enthroned ruler, although little
of the House E roof are shaped to look like thatch, or at
remains today. Upper façades at Uxmal bear elaborate
Plan de Ayutla, where the upper part of the structure,
iconography that offered clues to building function.
made of stone, looks like an enormous thatched roof, its designs mimicking layers of evenly trimmed thatch descending in steps down either side of a mid-line.
M AYA A R CH I T EC T U R E is best characterized by the soaring pyramid temples and ornate palaces which were built in all Maya centers across Mesoamerica
T H E M A S S of pyramids and platforms is an astound-
from El Tajin in the north to Copan in the south. The
ing feat, for builders assembled countless tons of freshly
Maya civilization was formed of independent city-states
quarried limestone an recycled rubble to construct
and, consequently, there are regional variations in
huge pyramidal structures, both on flat ground and as
architecture but almost all buildings were constructed
extensions of hills and other landforms. To create the
with a precise attention to position and layout and a
mass, builders framed sections to fill with rubble; work-
general style prevails. Multi-level elevated platforms,
ers carried materials up tier after tier, often scaling a
massive step-pyramids, corbelled roofing, monumen-
steep, unfinished staircase that later was covered by a
tal stairways, and exteriors decorated with sculpture
more finely finished one.
and moldings of Maya glyphs, geometric shapes, and
PA L ACE S , especially in the Late Classic, were often elevated on platforms built with rubble and on natural landforms. Fasteners for wooden floors and curtains indicate that open spaces and doors were covered with perishable materials to provide additional privacy. M AYA architecture accommodated local topography and took advantage of its features: high, solid, limestone outcroppings served best for massive constructions; low, swampy areas were turned into urban reservoirs. The Maya rarely leveled a hill to rationalize topography, but they frequently hauled massive amounts of rough stone and rubble to expend and accentuate local features.
iconography from religion such as serpent masks are all typical features of Maya architecture. Interestingly, unlike many other cultures, Maya architecture makes no particular distinction between religious and nonreligious buildings.
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INFLUENCES & MATERIALS
WALLS in Maya buildings are usually straight and
T
produce sharp angles but a notable idiosyncrasy is
he Maya were certainly aware of, and were often admirers of, the Mesoamerican cultures which
had gone before them, especially the Olmec and Teotihuacan, and so they took inspiration from this Mesoamerican heritage when developing their own unique architecture.
M AYA A R CH I T EC T S used readily available local materials, such as limestone at Palenque and Tikal, sandstone at Quirigua, and volcanic tuff at Copan. Blocks were cut using stone tools only. Burnt-lime cement was used to create a form of concrete and was occasionally used as mortar, as was simple mud. Exterior surfaces were faced with stucco and decorated with high relief carvings or three-dimensional sculpture. Walls might also have fine veneers of ashlar slabs placed over a rubble core, a feature of buildings in the Puuc region.
seen at Uxmal’s House of The Governor (10th century ce)
which has outer walls which lean outwards as they
rise (called negative batter). The whole exterior was then covered in stucco and painted in bright colors, especially red, yellow, green, and blue. Interior walls were often decorated with murals depicting battles, rulers, and religious scenes. Mansard roofs were typical and made in imitation of the sloped thatch roofing of the more modest wooden and wattle dwellings of the majority of the population. THE EARLIEST monumental Maya structures are from the Petén region, such as the 1st century ce pyramid at Uaxactun known as E-VII-sub and are low pyramids with steps on all four sides rising to a top platform. Postholes in the platforms indicate superstructures of perishable material once stood there. The pyramids also carry sculptural decoration, masks in the case of E-VII-sub. Even at this early stage buildings were constructed on precise plans according to such events as the winter and summer solstices and equinoxes. In addition, the outline of structures when seen from above was also deliberate and could form or resemble Maya glyphs for, for example, completion and time. Indeed, many structures were built to specifically commemorate the completion of important time periods such as the 20-year katun.
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“El Castillo” (The Castle), pyramid of Kukulcán in Chichén Itzá. Yucatán, México. Image by Daniel Schwen.
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PYR AMIDS
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aya pyramids soaring above the surrounding jungle, such as the 65-meter high Temple IV at
Tikal (8th century ce), are amongst the most famous
images from the ancient Americas. Pyramids were used not only as temples and focal points for Maya religious practices where offerings were made to the gods but also as gigantic tombs for deceased rulers, their partners, sacrificial victims, and precious goods. Pyramids were also periodically enlarged so that their interiors, when excavated, sometimes reveal a series of complete but diminishing pyramids, often still with their original coloured stucco decoration. In addition, individual shrines could be amalgamated into a single giant complex over time as Maya rulers attempted to impress their subjects and leave a lasting mark of their reign. A good example of this development can be seen at the North Acropolis of Tikal. PA L EN Q U E’ S Temple of the Inscriptions, built c. 700 ce ,
is a model example of a Maya temple structure. A
single steep staircase climbs several levels to reach a top platform topped by a single structure with several chambers. The pyramid is rich in symbolic meaning with nine exterior levels representing the nine levels of Xibalba, the Maya underworld, and a 13-level secret passageway descending to the tomb of King Pakal in the interior representing the 13 levels of the Maya heavens. In contrast to this standard approach, the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal (after 600 ce) is distinctive for its rounded corners which make it almost oval in shape when seen from above, making the pyramid unique in Maya architecture. Another two common Maya features of pyramids are a chamfer or deep horizontal groove running around each platform and rounded inset corners. The overall effect of these huge monuments is of a mountain, a feature of the landscape which the Maya held as sacred.
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Maya buildings were positioned to take advantage of solar and other celestial events or weight lines.
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PALACES
BALLCOURTS
T
U
he larger Maya buildings used as palaces and administrative centers, like the temples, very often
have sections with corbelled roofing—that is flat stones
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sed to play the ballgame of Mesoamerica which involved two teams of players trying to bounce
a rubber ball through a single ring without the use of
were piled one upon another, slightly over-lapping so
hands or feet, the most splendid Classic Maya ballcourt
that they formed a narrow enough gap that it could be
is to be found at Copan. Built in c. 800 CE its elegant
spanned with a single capstone. Further support to these
sloping sides perfectly frame the distant view of the
unstable vaults was given by the addition of wooden
hills. The ballcourt at Uxmal is unusual in that its sides
crossties. This technique was further refined at Palenque
are vertical and one example at Tikal has a unique
where the central wall of parallel corbelled passage-
triple-court. The ballgame could have a religious signif-
ways could support exterior roof comb structures which
icance with losers being sacrificed to the gods, and the
presented a lattice-work effect in stone. The use of corbel
orientation of the court is, therefore, typically positioned
roofs can also be seen in the inner burial chambers of
between the north and south—the celestial and under-
some pyramids, notably the tomb of Kink Pakal deep
worlds respectively—and an integral part of the city’s
within Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque. A further
sacred complex.
innovation for increasing the structural integrity of roofing is found at Uxmal and especially in the Nunnery Quadrangle building (pre-1000 ce), which has bootshaped stones in its vaults. L A R G ER Maya buildings could have colonnades (or more commonly piers) and towers. The best surviving example is the palace at Palenque with its unique threestory tower. Doorways are often multiple and of the post and lintel type in wood (usually sapodilla) or stone. They can also present relief carvings of rulers; especially fine examples are found at Yaxchilan. .Alternatively, doorways could be carved to represent, for example, the mouth of a fierce monster, as in Structure 22 at Copan and the Pyramid of the Magician at Uxmal. These portals represented the mouths of sacred caves, traditionally considered portals to another world. Finally, besides halls, sleeping quarters, cooking areas, and workshops, some palaces, as at Palenque, also had luxury features such as lavatories and steam rooms.
LEGACY
M
aya architecture would, then, pass on the architectural baton from older Mesoamerica
to subsequent cultures such as the Toltec civilization and Aztecs, especially at the noted centers of Xochicalco, Chichen Itza, Mitla, and Tenochtitlan. Maya influence even stretched into the 20th century CE when such noted architects as Frank Lloyd Wright and Robert Stacy-Judd incorporated elements of Maya architecture into their buildings.
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aya artisans cut jade stones and boulders into distinct shapes, some mass-produced for jew-
elry. The Maya prized pearls and adorned themselves with them. The Maya also incised designs onto their surfaces, carved portions into figural shapes for ear or chest ornaments, or sliced cross-sections to create spiral pectorals. Maya lords also wore multiple strands of single-valve oliva that hung from the hip or edged their kilts, a noisy costume for dance or war.
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An earflare worn by the ajk’uhuun of K’inich Ahkal Mo’Nahb III has a projecting obsidian element Temple XIX stone panel, Palenque. Late Classic.
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Jade earflares in form of a flower. Late Classic.
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GOLD
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old made a late entry into Mesoamerica from South America, where metallurgy had begun in
Peru by 3000 bc. Two broken legs, hollow, and there-
fore cast by the lost-wax method, of a Lower Central American figure, were found in a cache under Copan Stela H, which could not have been sealed later than ad
731, making it 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, cherished and revered for its luminosity. Still, at the time of the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, most indigenous peoples favored greenstones over gold, a preference quickly exploited by Spaniards; but Spanish conquerors seeking Maya gold went away largely empty-handed, since the material remained rare in this part of Mesoamerica.
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BY N O later than the tenth century, Maya lords at Chichen Itza were importing quantities of metal, particularly sheet gold, from Lower Central America. Some sheet gold may have been delivered in disk form, which the Maya then worked using a repoussĂŠ technique. The hammered imagery reveals sophisticated compositions, usually featuring multiple zones, with Chichen Itza lords in the middle zone, framed by sky gods above and underworld gods below. Slightly convex, the gold disks were probably affixed to wooden backings and worn by warriors. I N T H E last few Pre-Columbian centuries, the Maya came to know and work other metals, including tin, silver, and copper, although most of these were imported from Central Mexico. The Maya at Mayapan and Lamanai made ornaments using the lost-wax process, like the craftsmen of Central Mexico, even melting down copper trade items to make new works. The Chichen Itza cenote yielded a matching set of six copper bowls, all covered with gold foil, or what truly would have been a table setting fit for a king.
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TEX TILES
T H E O N LY real guide to the role of ancient textiles as
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an art form is their representation. Seventh-century
mong Maya people today, textiles dominate other traditional art forms, with the possible exception
of domestic architecture. From town to town across highland Guatemala and Chiapas, traditional weaving has survived and thrived, and weavers and sewers use indigenous and introduced materials to express ethnic and local identity in color and motif. Cloth undoubtedly was an important ancient art form and may have been a means of storing wealth. F O R T H E Maya, we only have a few scraps—fragments from cenotes, and cloth impressions left in burials. Archaeologists have described seeing what appeared to be bolts of fabrics turning to dust when they opened the dry tombs deep within ancient pyramids, as happened at Kaminaljuyu, Uaxactun, and Altun Ha, where David Pendergast also found prints from rope left in the tomb. Tools for making textiles also survive, including ceramic spindle whorls for spinning cotton, bone needles for sewing, bone picks for weaving, and obsidian blades for cutting thread and trimming fabric.
figurines show Maya women weaving with back-strap looms, as many Maya women still do today. On painted pots, cared stone lintels from Yaxchilan, or painted murals at Bonampak, Maya elite men and women are wrapped in sumptuous clothes, generally fine cottons with elaborate woven and painted designs, but also deer hides and jaguar pelts, woven mats, and feathered brocade. The patterning of Maya dress, with bordered selvages and continuous design, is akin to the patterns of painted architecture and painted ceramics, and ancient textile design perhaps was a medium far more influential than most scholars have thought. Y E T T H E lost textile arts also survive in traces of their structural identity in other materials, such as ceramics, where artists painted designs whose forms derive from embroidery or basketry techniques.
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MAYA CODICES
S CH O L A R S have longed agreed that the eight
A
scribes labored over the Dresden Codex, perhaps
lthough Diego de Landa burned books across Yucatan, four examples survived his actions and
other atrocities of the Spanish invasion; later housed in European libraries, three take their names from the cities where they reside (Dresden, Madrid, and Paris). A fourth, known as the Grolier Codex, came to light c. 1970 and is now housed in the Museo Nacional in Mexico City. All postdate the Classic era, but those of the first millennium presumably looked quite a bit like survivors: taller than they were wide and consisting of folded fig-bark paper laboriously prepared, beaten, and overlaid to create continuous sheets. As seen on pots, Maya books of the Classic period usually appear to have been bound between two wooden boards covered in jaguar pelt. T H E O R G A N IZ AT I O N of the painted imagery in Maya books affected the very nature of much of Maya art. The stela form retained book-like proportions and probably adopted book imagery from time to time; the continuous folded paper allowed for narrative to flow across the pages, with subjects ideal for transfer to fineline painted vessels. Yet the book was private.
painted in the fifteenth century. Its most stunning pages deal with a sequence of malevolent Venus gods. Painted with a broad and subtle color palette that ranges from red to orange to blue, the Venus gods take shape across distinctive and reserved color backgrounds, blue, red, and cream, as if they were windows into another world across a unified page, a sort of surprising punctuation at irregular intervals. Other painters adhered to registers and gave no definition to colored backgrounds. The artists of the Dresden Codex may have worked with quill pens, bringing lively detail to each figure. The reviving books offer us a glimmer of ancient Maya book art, but little more, although they were one ever-present among the elite. Maya kings took a book into the afterlife with them: archeologists find only clumps of stucco sizing today. The written word was clearly of the greatest value to the Maya: its power alarmed Bishop Landa, for had he thought their books to be trivial, he would have had little reason to round them up and set them on fire as he did in 1562. I N CO N T EM P O R A N EO U S Europe, paper was unknown, and vellum was an expensive commodity: even at the time of the Conquest, Spaniards marveled at the Aztec profligacy with paper, for in additional to painting on it, they used it to adorn themselves, headdresses, and god effigies, they made offerings of blood and rubber on paper, and they burned paper as offerings, as did the Maya. With fig bark so readily available, the Maya, too, must have considered paper a relatively inexpensive commodity.
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OTHER MATERIALS
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aya representations also offered glimpses into other perishable materials, including tropical bird feathers that were used to create brilliant polychrome headdresses comprising blue-green quetzal feathers and black and white hawk feathers, yet none survives archaeologically. Another important perishable material must have been papier-mâchÊ, made of manioc paste, cornstarch, or bark paper to create light sculptural forms for headdresses and the magnificent palanquins used for processions.
poor preservation, fraglie materials such as wooden bowls, gourds, and textile fragments occasionally survive, and jaguar pelts draped in tombs are evident from the claws left behind. But other items such as assemblages of dough or corn husks do not survive in any form, although we can imagine they might have existed, and they are described in Spanish chronicles about the Aztecs. These materials remain beyond our ken, and what must have been a fantastic world of perishable Maya arts survives only in glimpses.
DESPITE
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T
he year of Christopher Columbus’s arrival, 1492, is marked as a date that changed the Americas,
but there was little contact between Maya people and Europeans for a number of years.
D U R I N G the 1510’s Maya society and culture remained relatively intact during these years, but their lives indeed were changed by the waves of European diseases such as smallpox that began to pass throught their communities, referred to in the chronicles as Mayacimil, “the easy death” that caused widespread death and depredation in 1510-1516, long before the Spanish settlement. T EN O CH T I T L A N —capital of the Mexica (Aztec) Empire—fell in 1521, and Spaniards destroyed many Aztec buildings and constructed the capital of colonial New Spain on its ruins. In 1523, Hernan Cortes, ordered Pedro de Alvarado to head south to capture the K’iche’ Maya kingdom and, along with indigenous warriors brought from Central Mexico, defeated the K’iche’ kingdom in 1524. Continuing in the tradition begun in Mexico, the city of Santiago, the first capital of colonial Guatemala, was built on top of Iximche, the Postclassic Kaquchikel capital.
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PAINTING
F
lorine Asselbergs has discovered that the Lienzo de Quahquecholan, made by indigenous Quah-
quecholtec scribes from Puebla, Mexico, narrates the roles their families played in alliance with the Spanish in the conquests of Mexico and Guatemala. Similar to other efforts elsewhere in the sixteenth century, scribes produced this document in order to gain privileges in the Spanish colonial system. Painted on cotton and designed as a large map onto which numerous events are set, the Lienzo de Quahquecholan (detail shown below) includes many details of Guatemalan geography, especially around Chimaltenango: Asselbergs thus believes it was indeed painted in Guatemala.
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ARCHITECTURE
T H E CO LO N I A L infrastructure in the Yucatan Pen-
I
insula and elsewhere was built with the labor of Maya
n addition to the destruction of capital cities, selected Precolumbian Maya towns and sacred sites were
appropriated and transformed, as colonial churches and government buildings were built directly on top of Pre-
columbian pyramids, as at Izamal, where the Franciscan convent was built on a truncated pyramid. This tactic was both practical, because Precolumbian structures offered convenient building material, and ideological, for the dismantling of pagan structures was a strong statement of authority of the new religion and colonial regime.
people, who learned new architectural techniques such as keystone arch and vault construction, which they used in tandem with traditional building techniques. A sixteenth-century architectural innovation was the open chapel, also built throughout Central Mexico, comprising an open apse with an altar at center, set in front of a large open courtyard or plaza; these were used for Catholic rites, and the open shell in front of a plaza allowed masses to congregate.
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WRITING
I
ndigenous elites throughout Mesoamerica were adapting to the new colonial system, learning to
write in alphabetic script and learning Latin and Span-
ish at schools established by Franciscans in Mexico City, Merida, Mani, and elsewhere. They also used the Spanish legal system to claim privileges within the colonial regime. Some extraordinary documents—which we may today deem works of art—were created in the sixteenth century by indigenous elites who produced genealogies and maps as evidence for landing and ruling claims. One of these, known as the Xiu Family Tree, comes from the Xiu Family Chronical of 1558 1560 [see image on the left], created as a “proof of nobility” to demonstrate rights to traditional lands. It was made by Gaspar Antonio Chi, who descended from the prominent Xiu and Chi lineages and was trained in a Franciscan school in Mani, which had been the Xiu capital. As Constance Cortez has discerned, Chi’s Xiu Family Tree is a syncretic image incorporating Christian as well as Maya and Nahua concepts, with Tutul Xiu, the family progenitor, at the base of a Tree of Jesse, his descendants on branches emerging from his body, with a cave and deer offering at its base.
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O
ver the course of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, indigenous lineages just throughout the Maya
region and Mesoamerica continued to keep their family histories alive, both through Documents now lost as well as oral histories. Yet these narratives were inevitably changed as a family is adopted and re-defined identities in the new colonial context, in relation to both the colo-
nial Regime and other Maya ethnic groups and lineages. In the north, in Yucatan, scribes in multiple towns kept the books of the Chilam Balam, which recorded the history of the past and foretold prophecies, organized by the count of the K’atuns. I N T H E south, in the Guatemalan Highlands, the K’iche’ and Kaqchikel people also continued to maintain family records and narratives. For example, the Popol Vuh, transcribed in the sixteenth century and translated into Spanish (by a Spanish Dominican friar) in the eighteenth century, is a K’iche’ story recounting the mythical and historic origins of the K’iche’ people, starting with the creation of the world, the actions of heroic deities against the underworld gods, and the creation of humans, among other events, and then re-counting the birth of lineages just and stories of migrations of the K’iche’ ancestors.
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A S D E S CR I B ED elsewhere in this book, these stories have analogues in Preclassic and Classic Maya art, and although recorded in the colonial period and blended with Christian traditions, they are an essential source for enhancing our understanding of ancient Maya art. S I M I L A R stories of lineage is and communities have also been kept alive through dramas, dances, and other festival performances in communities throughout the Maya region, in the present day Yucatan and Chiapas in Mexico, and several of Guatemala's departments. M AYA art also thrives in the textile traditions of numerous communities in southern Mexico and Guatemala. Textiles, made primarily by woman today, are an important way to express local and ethnic identity, with particular design is reserved for each community, especially in the highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala. Weavers and sewers use both native materials and ones introduced over the past five centuries. Wool and silk — both introduced in the colonial period — have played a key role in twentieth and twenty-first century textiles, as have more recent introductions of rayon, acrylic, and polyester, all interwoven with native cottons. Techniques include weaving on back-strap looms, embroidery, and brocade, among others. Many designs have been preserved for generations, but weavers also innovate and create new designs based on outside fashions. A S I N T H E Classic period, engagement with the landscape continues to be another fundamental form of art-making and ritual practice of Maya people. Throughout the Maya region, people continue to make offerings in caves and in some places adorn cave entrance is with brightly colored Mexican papel picado (“perforated paper”), marking them as sacred sites as their ancestors have done for millennia; in remote settings they also venerate live rock, along with ancient structures and sculptures. In the Mexican state of Chiapas, Evon Vogt has recorded the practice of Tzotzil and Tzetzal Maya people erecting and venerating shrines at the bases and tops of mountains in honor of mountain gods; these shrines, comprising Christian crosses, often adorned with pine branches and red geraniums, are another syncretic tradition in which practitioners merge both Maya and Christian beliefs.
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I N A D D I T I O N to these continuing traditions, Maya art also encompasses new products made a new contexts, with artists and artisans continuing to reshape their identities in the face of changing politics and demographics. For instance, much of the art is made today for tourists — whether the wooden sculptures that numerous vendors sell to tourist at the archaeological site of Chichen Itza, the painted genre scenes made and sold in Santiago Atitlan and other towns around Lake Atitlan, or textiles produced and sold in tourist centers throughout Mexico and Guatemala. Maya art today can also be an art of resistance, such as the many miracles, t-shirts, and figurines made in support of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, starting in the 1990s, in which art was used both to raise awareness and to raise funds for autonomous governments or individuals. FI N A L LY, Maya scribes and linguists, along with the epigraphers and other scholars, have been working to revive and disseminate the ancient Maya glyphic tradition to communities across Mesoamerica, giving people the tools to create new manuscripts and other artworks based on the ancient script but written in diverse Mayan languages, Spanish, and English. “ W H ER E D I D T H E M AYA P EO P L E G O? ” Is a question that is surprisingly often asked of us, likely in response to the dissemination of information in popular culture about the Classic-period Maya collapse, or to the fact that much of the attention about Maya people is focused on their Classic-period florescence. But the answer to this question is a simple one: Maya people are in many places, both in their ancestral homelands and elsewhere, continuing to keep alive the traditions of ancestors and forging new paths in today's global society.
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Maya people are in many places, both in their ancestral homelands and elsewhere, continuing to keep alive the traditions of ancestors and forging new paths in today's global society.
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G
uatemala has long had an impressive art scene. Before the Spanish arrived, the Mayans painted
beautiful murals and carved intricate sculptures; later, the colonial era resulted in a merging of artistic styles which left a lasting legacy on the Guatemalan art scene. Here are three artists from Guatemala you should know.
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CARLOS MÉRIDA
A
muralist, printmaker and contemporary of Picasso, Carlos Mérida is arguably Guatemala’s most famous
artist. Over the years, Mérida’s work displayed three obvious stylistic shifts: there was a figurative period from 1907 to 1926, when Mérida lived and traveled through Europe and Mexico; a surrealist phase until the mid-1940s, when he developed his characteristic trait of geometric figures and forms; and a merging of Cubism and Surrealism with aspects of Mayan art in the period from 1950 until his death in 1984. Mérida’s work is exhibited in Guatemala City’s Museum of Modern Art, and his murals are on the walls of several public buildings.
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L
ike Mérida, the work of sculptor, architect, muralist and painter Efraín Recinos leaves its
legacy on several Guatemala City buildings, including the National Library of Guatemala. Born in Quetzaltenango in 1928, Recinos is best known as the designer of the Centro Cultural Miguel Ángel Asturias, Guatemala’s national theatre, which he designed to resemble a jaguar in a nod to Mayan art. Recino’s murals can be seen in the Guatemalan National Music Conservatory, La Aurora International Airport and the National Mortgage building. Recinos also received the Order of the Quetzal— Guatemela’s highest artistic honor.
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PAULA NICHO CUMEZ
P
aula Nicho Cumez is the most important female Mayan artist in Guatemala today, and her work has broken new ground for indigenous Mayan women. Born in San Juan Comalapa, Cumez began life as a weaver and learnt to paint with her husband, Salvador Cumez Curruchich (relation of Andres Curruchich). In 1985, Cumez began to exhibit her paintings as a member of the Kaqchikel Surrealist Painters group, and has since received many accolades for her work. Cumez’s paintings are usually inspired by her Mayan heritage and culture, often incorporating themes that stem from dreams.
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i n de x
Index A architectural 5, 25, 33, 34, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 76 artisans 15, 27, 32, 42, 47, 68
B bas relief 17, 37 Belize 7, 18, 22, 86 black 25, 38, 39, 47, 53, 54, 55, 57, 83 blocks 20, 37 blue 27, 29, 39, 47, 55, 62, 79, 83 Bone 36 bones 36 books 49 buildings 20, 28, 33, 34, 42, 58, 60, 61, 62, 65, 66, 88, 90
C carved 8, 17, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 47, 66, 68 carving 32, 36, 47 ceramic 8, 22, 27, 42, 47, 58, 76 Ceramic 27, 42 ceramics 27, 42, 49, 76 clay 5, 15, 32, 42, 47, 55, 58 Clay 27, 42 clothing 32 coil 47 color 22, 39, 53, 76, 79 colors 27, 39, 42, 53, 54, 62 construction 8, 20, 42, 47, 90
i n de x
F figurines 5, 27, 32, 42, 76 fire 27, 42, 47, 79 flakes 17, 21, 37 friezes 31
G glyphs 32, 61, 62 green 38, 39, 55, 62, 83 Guatemala 7, 8, 22, 76, 86, 88, 89
H hammers 20 hand-modeling 8, 42 Honduras 7, 86
I incision 17, 36, 37
J jade 15, 32, 33, 39, 68 jadeite 39
L leather 39 limestone 7, 17, 32, 33, 37, 38, 53, 58, 61, 62 lines 17, 32, 37, 53, 65 lintel 28, 66 lintels 28, 33, 76
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M Mexico 7, 33, 39, 72, 73, 79, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91 minerals 27, 42, 47, 55 modeling 8, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, 40, 42, 46, 58 molds 5, 8, 32, 42 monuments 33, 34, 37, 38, 64 mosaics 22, 38, 58 murals 31, 53, 57, 62, 76
O obsidian 15, 21, 22, 23, 69, 76
P paint 33, 37, 47, 53 paintbrush 17, 37 painting 93 palette 47, 57, 79 perishable 3, 15, 36, 57, 61, 62, 79, 81, 83 pigment 22, 55 polychrome 47, 53, 57, 83 pots 27, 42, 46, 47, 49, 76, 79 pottery 8, 42 pyramid 28, 54, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 90 pyramids 28, 54, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 90
R red 22, 29, 38, 47, 53, 54, 57, 62, 79 relief 17, 32, 33, 37, 62, 66 reliefs 8, 33 rock 15, 32, 37, 38, 39
i n de x
S sculpture 7, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 37, 38, 40, 42, 46, 49, 61, 62 sculptures 20, 22, 33, 36, 38, 58 seashells 15, 37 slab 8, 28, 32, 42, 47 stelae 32, 33, 38 stone 5, 7, 8, 17, 20, 23, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 58, 60, 61, 62, 66, 69, 76 stucco 5, 28, 31, 38, 42, 47, 49, 53, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 64, 79
Stucco 27 stuccoed 8
Symbols 8
T technique 27, 42, 47, 66, 73 textiles 49, 76 three-dimensional 33, 36, 38, 62 tools 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 32, 37, 39, 42, 62 turquoise 39 Turquoise 39
V vessels 8, 22, 27, 42, 47, 58, 79
W white 37, 39, 53, 83 wood 5, 15, 28, 32, 37, 58, 61, 66 writing 8
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