lntertextuality in Classic Maya Ceramic Art and Writing: The Interplay of Myth and History on the Regal Rabbit Vase (original) (raw)
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Monumental Discourse and Social Distinction: A Contextual Approach to Classic Maya Sculpture
Tiempo detenido, tiempo suficiente: Ensayos y narraciones mesoamericanistas en homenaje a Alfonso Lacadena García-Gallo, edited by Harri Kettunen, Verónica Amellali Vázquez López, Felix Kupprat, Cristina Vidal Lorenzo, Gaspar Muñoz Cosme and María Josefa Iglesias Ponce de León, 2018
Abstract: The socio-political structures of the Classic Maya have received considerable attention, especially given the sudden advances made in epigraphy. Textual evidence has shed light on titles, offices and interaction among royal and—to some extent—non-royal elites, creating a differentiated panorama of basic mechanisms of social cohesion and distinction. As important as the contents of text and image are for the historical approach, comparably little attention has been paid to their context, i.e. their social function and use as media of communication. For some time, sculpted monuments have been considered as devices of political propaganda, through which the ruling elites legitimised their status. However, it has frequently been ignored who were the addressees of written and depicted messages and how people received and interacted with hieroglyphs and imagery. The spatial environments of monuments are extremely diverse, ranging from closed and sacred spaces to open plazas, so that we cannot assume that the messages they conveyed were meant for the same group of people. The reception of Maya media occurred not only in diverse spatial contexts, but also in specific social situations. In this article, we explore the relationship between the strategic use of visual media and social differentiation. Certain social actors were consciously included or excluded from the active and passive participation in the monumental discourse. When it comes to non-royal social units, we can distinguish various degrees of integration, dictated by the courtly authority, which reflect different political settings and strategies throughout the Maya area.
Period (250-600 C.E.). Two types of pottery, the tripod cylindrical vase and the incense burner, as well as the architectural talud-tablero form, are the main material indicators of the Teotihuacan interaction with the Maya. Interestingly, the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University in Atlanta owns a vase that combines the tripod form with talud-tablero shaped feet (1990.011.074 https://collections.carlos.emory.edu/objects/3054/incised-tripod-vase-with-sculpted-heads). By exploring stylistic details of tripod vases from Teotihuacan and several Maya city centers, this paper will attempt to identify the origin of the Carlos Museum vessel and explore its possible significance as a metaphor for rebirth after death.
In: The PARI Journal, 15 (2): 15-37. A small selection of dedicatory texts on Classic Maya ceramics is composed by well-versed painter-scribes, but something is out of the ordinary. The calligraphic style and graphic intelligibility of the hieroglyphic signs used by these scribes indicate a high level of scribal competence (knowledge) and performance (usage). However, the order in which these particular dedicatory texts are written can be best described as “out of order.” By this I mean that these few texts do not conform to the common order of dedicatory texts on Classic Maya ceramics. On the surface, these texts can be simply categorized as errors or mistakes made by incompetent artists or scribes. Two of these texts are the subject of this essay, and I propose a solution for the actual reading order of both texts. I suggest that we need to look at the whole object to arrive at a probable solution for the actual reading order. Classic Maya ceramics were not static objects—they were dynamic; they were often manipulated (i.e., handled) on special occasions. I propose that the manipulation of the objects will reveal the actual reading order of these two dedicatory texts.
in R. Berg, A. Coralini, A. Koponen, R. Välimäki (eds) Tangible Religion. Materiality of Domestic Cult Practices from Antiquity to Early Modern Era, 2021
The chapter focuses on vases and vase shapes to explore their materiality and semiotics in Roman domestic and ritual contexts. To this end, I focus on a group of Julio-Claudian cinerary vases in coloured stone that present a double-handled hemispherical body resting on a short foot and with a lid with a pear-shaped finial. Due to the striking resemblance to a (modern) soup bowl, I called this shape “tureen”. Previous scholars had noticed these urns’ “atypical” design, which appeared random if compared to the other known types of Roman cinerary containers and with no obvious funerary connection. Instead, I suggest that the tureen’s ‘unconventional’ shape was symbolically charged, and thus meaningful. I further argue that it resulted from the synthesis of a series of more ancient ritual vases connected to both the domestic and ritual spheres. I start from the observation that the choice of a given shape for a cinerary container could not be made randomly, but on the account of its perceived familiar, sacred character or semiotic reference to the cultic sphere. To illustrate this point, I discuss the tureen shape’s hybrid ancestry by recalling the use and function of its architypes considering recent debates on material culture, memory and skeuomorphism. Although no tureens have been found in “physical” form in Roman domestic contexts, there is evidence from visual representations that the iconography of the shape itself could have played an important role in domestic religion and in everyday life. I shall thus set the discussion further against the images of vases, of which the tureen seems to be the materialisation, featuring in Roman domestic frescoes to speculate upon its potential connection with Roman domestic cults. By discussing the ritual meaning of these painted objects within their scenes, I aim to demonstrate that they are not simple parerga or accessories but meaningful visual symbols that acting upon the senses made the sacred a tangible reality in everyday life. Furthermore, the evidence emerging from the creation and use of the stone tureens compels us to frame this phenomenon further in the early Imperial cultural and ideological climate. The tureens do not in fact come into use as urns until the Augustan period. I argue that this is more than a chronological coincidence, but possibly the material actualization of the Augustan visual and religious syntax. Within the framework of lived religion and sensory studies, the aim is to extrapolate the ritual role of the tureen and other vase shapes in Roman religious and domestic contexts to shed further light on the relationship between the sacred and materiality in antiquity.
Ancient Mesoamerica, 2009
Painted ceramic vessels of the Late Classic Maya, depicting scenes of the royal court, provide an entry into understanding the courtly community as an institution built on relationships and embodied through lived practice. By examining these ceramics both as circulating objects, representing the materialized form of courtly values, and as vehicles for imagery that conveys idealized representations of the court hierarchy and how it was enacted, archaeologists may more profoundly integrate material and iconographic investigations. Assertions of identity and status are examined through the ways in which they are "contained" by these decorated vessels and emerge as characterized by a series of simultaneous unifications and oppositions. A focus on bodily behaviors and interactions, and the ways in which objects played courtly roles in their own right, yields an animated understanding of a dynamic court and a larger perspective on the enactment of identity and difference in Classic Maya contexts.
Human, Divine or Both? The Uruk Vase and the Problem of Ambiguity in Early Mesopotamian Visual Arts
Critical Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art edited by Marian Feldman and Brian Brown. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter., 2014
Early Mesopotamian images are several millennia removed in time from us. Their interpretation poses numerous difficulties, beginning with the identification of the represented figures. There are ongoing debates about the identity of quite a few anthropomorphic figures depicted on major early Mesopotamian monuments. They usually revolve around the question of whether the figures represented mortals or deities. Is it reasonable to solve the conundrum by reading ambiguity into the figures? This contribution discusses difficulties of interpretation by re-examining the Uruk Vase as an example of the complexities involved. Moreover, it aims at breaking the reiteration of the prevalent interpretation of this image, which was formulated eighty years ago and rests on a scholarly construct.