After the advances in decipherment opened a window into the realms of ancient Maya history and politics, much subsequent scholarship was devoted to reconstructing the histories narrated in the hieroglyphs carved onto Maya stone sculptures. However, in 1996, Stuart initiated another line of inquiry, further developed by Houston, Taube, and Elizabeth Newsome, that changed the discourse from inquiry into the historical and political content of the carvings to an exploration of the sculptures as religious objects or entities whose creation and dedication were integral to ceremonies related to the commemoration of time and world renewal (e. g., Houston and Stuart 1998; Houston, Stuart, and Taube 2006; Newsome 1998; Stuart 1996). This work was as important in provoking a sea change in the understanding of ancient Maya sculptures as Proskouriakoff’s historical model was in the 1960s.
As Stuart (1996) contends, the dedication of the objects may have had as much significance to the ancient Maya as the information carved on their surfaces. He further proposes that the dedication ceremonies may have been a primary reason for making these monuments. In particular, he observes that dedicatory texts are the most common of all Maya inscriptions across multiple media. Indeed, many stelae’s first phrases are dedication statements; they can take up a large part of the monument’s text. These inscriptions, he affirms, were “often aimed to explain and contextualize the very stones upon which they were inscribed” (Stuart 1996:154).
Newsome, too, has highlighted the religious purposes of the production and dedication of ancient stelae. She discusses their relation to colonial-period calendrical rites and argues that the raising of each stela commemorated the act of planting stones at the time of “creation,” a mythological event narrated on Quirigua Stela C, Piedras Negras Altar 1, Coba Stela 1, and other stone sculptures and ceramic vessels. The date of this creation is 4 Ajaw 8 Kumku, or 13.0.0.0.0, and it corresponds with 8 September 3114 bce in the Julian calendar or 13 August 3114 bce in the Gregorian calendar. It was the zero date from which events were tracked in the Long Count, and it was a moment of ultimate world renewal, when the three stones were planted and the gods were placed in order (Looper 2003:10-12; Newsome 1998, 2001:8-10; Schele, Freidel, and Parker 1993, chap. 2). The dedication of stelae and other monuments such as altars commemorated creation and brought about renewal in emulation of the primordial acts of creation.
Dedication ceremonies presumably were elaborate affairs, and we have some clues as to what happened during these rites. Stuart has suggested that the sculptures were wrapped in cloth before or during their dedication. In particular, he observes that one of the common verbs used in dedication phrases for stelae is k’al tuun, or stonebinding (Stuart 1996:154-57); it is the most commonly used phrase for monument dedication at Piedras Negras.
Stuart suggests that the stone-binding may refer to the wrapping of the stone with cloth, perhaps in order to help contain its sacred essence (Stuart 1996:156-60). He points to several ancient depictions of stelae and altars wrapped with cloth. For example, in the image incised into the peccary skull from Copan Tomb 1, two figures sit on either side of a vertical, stela-shaped element with stone markings; across this stela are several twisted bands, showing it to be tied or wrapped in cloth, and the text above the stela narrates a stone-binding on a period ending (fig. 1.4). The unwrapping of the stone in the dedication ceremony likely had a performative aspect; as the stone was unwrapped, its carved or colored surfaces were revealed.
Figure 1.4. Central medallion of a carved peccary skull, Copan Tomb 1, showing two figures seated on either side of a wrapped stela and altar. Drawing by Barbara Fash. Courtesy of Barbara Fash.
Ancient depictions of people making offerings in front of stelae and altars appear on a few monuments, such as the upper register of Caracol Stela 15. The offerings most likely consisted of blood and incense, though several stelae at Piedras Negras show sacrificed humans at the base of the ruler’s scaffold on the period ending. In addition, chanting or singing undoubtedly accompanied these dedication ceremonies. Some images depict or make reference to dancing, and as argued in chapter 2, the composition of the texts on many Piedras Negras sculptures would have guided people to move around them in circular paths, which I hypothesize may have been a fundamental part of their ceremonial activation. With such activities as unwrapping, singing, chanting, dancing, burning of incense, and offering of blood, these ceremonies would have stimulated multiple senses for both ritual participants and witnesses.
Deities and ancestors also were invoked in these dedications. Some texts mention the person dedicating the stone in the company of one or more deities, and the portrayal of ancestors floating above kings on Early Classic stelae may show they were integral to the consecration rituals. The transformation of these stelae thus was realized through human agency in concert with the divine.
One fruitful source of analogy is Diego de Landa’s sixteenth-century Relacion de las Cosas de Yucatan, for Landa includes descriptions of the making and consecration of religious idols or effigies by the Yucatec Maya. According to Landa and his informants, the month of Mol—“or another month if the priest told them it was suitable”—was the time to renew “idols” of wood (Tozzer 1941:159, 161). Before making the idols, which were requested by an owner, the priests and workers had to fast, be abstinent, and follow important procedures. The process of making them was considered to be full of danger, especially if the proper ritual procedures were not followed (Tozzer 1941:161). The choice of materials was important, and Landa says the owner went into the forest to find the wood. They were to choose cedar, and Alfred Tozzer (1941:160n824) notes that the Yucatec Maya name for cedar is k’uh che (sacred tree); the material thus was considered inherently sacred even before selection, carving, or consecration.
The place where the idol was made was also important, for the workers had to build a special hut of straw that was “fenced in, where they put the wood and a great urn in which to place the idols and to keep them there under cover, while they were making them” (Tozzer 1941:160). In this hut they gathered the tools they needed for sculpting the idols and the items needed for ceremony, including incense. Landa also notes that while making the idols, the priest, the chacs (assistants who symbolized rain gods), and the workers burned incense and drew blood from their ears with which they anointed the idols (Tozzer 1941:160). Last, Landa describes that once the idol was finished, it was removed from the hut, and the priest performed a ceremony to “bless” the idol “with great solemnity and plenty of fervent prayers,” and that they wrapped the idols in cloth and placed them in a basket to give to the owner (Tozzer 1941:160-61).
It is clear that the Yucatec Maya considered the process of making these deity effigies a serious and sacred act, in which the makers had to be isolated and had to follow prescribed rules and make offerings to the gods while working. After the idol was made, and before it was given to the owner, the priests blessed it. Although not explicitly articulated, the purpose of this blessing may have been to activate or transform the man-made object into something divine, and these ceremonial acts—both during the carving and afterward—undoubtedly were a crucial part of the process of making the gods. Landa mentions that one of the reasons they revered these idols was “on account of what they represented, and because they had made them with so many ceremonies” (Tozzer 1941:110). These series of rites, involving a combination of human agency in concert with divine forces, served to transform the wood effigies into potent entities.
Archaeological data at Piedras Negras—and from across the Maya realm—pro-vide evidence of intense ceremonial engagement with stone sculptures upon their planting in the ground, particularly in the offering of perishable and non-perishable materials that were set in caches beneath altars or in the cists into which the stelae were inserted. These offerings may have been deposited during dedication ceremonies or, for sculptures that were carved in situ, at an earlier point in the sculpture’s facture. The deposition of the cache likely was one of multiple rites in the creation and consecration of these monuments.
At Piedras Negras, caches were deposited beneath stelae, tabletop altars, column altars, and thrones, though not every monument had an associated cache. The caches contained a variety of items, including drum-shaped portable altars, incense burners, lidded ceramic bowls holding eccentric flints and obsidians, obsidian blades, shells, stingray spines for bloodletting, and other items (W. Coe 1959).
At least one of Itzam K’an Ahk I’s stelae, Stela 39, from 677 ce, was associated with a cache. Consisting of a lidded ceramic bowl with three eccentric flints and three eccentric obsidians, incised pieces of shell, and land snail shells, its form and contents are comparable to caches placed in Piedras Negras buildings. Most building caches contained multiple eccentrics made of flint or obsidian; they often had pieces of jadeite or shell, too (W. Coe 1959:93, 104-105).
K’inich Yo’nal Ahk Il’s Stelae 6 and 8 also had offerings of lidded ceramic bowls holding eccentric flints and obsidians. In addition, beneath his Altar 1 was another lidded ceramic bowl, but its contents were richer and more diverse, with an eccentric flint, flint flakes, pieces of jadeite and crystalline hematite, shell figurines,
Cut Spondylus shell pieces, a fossil gastropod, clamshell fragments, bird and animal bones, and five stingray spines, both worked and unworked (W Coe 1959:89-90). This cache was more elaborate and diverse than many other caches at the site, and its abundance likely was because of the import of the celebration of the 9.13.0.0.0 (692 ce) period ending.
In addition to holding bloodletting implements, some caches associated with the stelae of K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II and Itzam K’an Ahk II held altars and incense burners, items normally used in ceremonial offerings. In particular, cached at the base of K’inich Yo’nal Ahk II’s Stela 8 and Itzam K’an Ahk II’s Stelae 9 and 11 were drum-shaped portable stone altars (W Coe 1959:89-90; Satterthwaite [1933] 2005a:25) (see figs. 5.13, 5.14). The altar cached with Stela 9 had scratches on it, which Satterthwaite suggested were from cutting, possibly from ceremonial sacrifices. Stela 9’s cist also contained a ceramic incense burner decorated with spikes (W Coe 1959:90; Satterthwaite [1933] 2005a:25; [1936] 2005c:150). These altars and the incense burner may have been used for ceremonial offerings and then cached with the stelae as part of their dedication. No caches were found with any of K’inich Yat Ahk II’s stelae, but his throne—Throne 1, from 785 ce—had a cache interred beneath it consisting of a lidded ceramic jar with offerings inside, including flint chips, shells, and stingray spine fragments (W Coe 1959:90-91). This cache was similar to others deposited beneath earlier monuments and in buildings.
Finally, even some plain monuments—including a monumental altar and many smaller column altars—had caches buried beneath them. For example, Altar 5, a plain table altar on the central axis of Structure O-13, presumably from the reign of Ruler 5, 6, or 7, had an associated cache containing multiple eccentric flints and obsidians (W. Coe 1959:82). In addition, caches were buried under the plain stone column altars that were set in front of pyramids, on stairways, and in shrines on top of pyramids. The caches beneath the column altars of Structures R-9, K-5, and J-29, for example, included the same types of items found in building caches and other sculptural caches, including eccentric flints and obsidians, blades, shells, and stingray spines, usually inside a ceramic vessel (see W. Coe 1959:92-94, 96). These altars often had other offerings and signs of burning on and around them (W Coe 1959:90, 93-94; Mason, n. d.b, 27, 42, 48; Satterthwaite [1933] 2005a:24).
The caches deposited beneath stone monuments and in buildings were offerings to those structures and were the remains of ceremonial practice. Their deposition made the ephemeral ceremonies permanent, and they continued to function as active offerings to the monuments or buildings where they were dedicated. Offerings found with an array of sculptural types indicate that each type—regardless of its size and whether or not it was carved—was dedicated amid offering ceremonies, presumably during which time the sculpture was ritually activated. This pattern provides another indication that Classic Maya stone monuments were significant for reasons beyond what was carved on them, for they were sacred entities whose production and dedication were fundamental parts of religious practice.
This is not to underplay the significance of the images of rulers carved onto many Classic period stelae. Stuart, Houston, and Taube contend that these images did not simply represent these persons but embodied them and the rituals shown in the scenes, and that the figural carvings of rulers on stelae functioned as doubles of
Royal bodies. Using evidence such as the appearance of the glyph baaj (self or head) in the captioning of Maya images, as well as making comparisons with understandings of Mexica practices, they have proposed that part of the essence or soul of the person was transferred into the image (Houston and Stuart 1998; Houston, Stuart, and Taube 2006:57-101; Stuart 1996). Furthermore, Houston and Stuart (1998:90) explain the process of this transference of essence through a conceptualization of “personhood” that is not limited to the physical human body but can be transferred to objects and representations. These substitutes allowed rulers—both alive and dead—to be eternally and multiply available for supplication and veneration (Houston, Stuart, and Taube 2006:77-78). In other words, they suggest that stelae were not inanimate objects, but embodiments of divine rulers that contained and were enlivened by parts of those rulers’ souls. Moreover, Houston, Stuart, and Taube (2006:76) propose that it was the resulting living nature of the stone sculptures that allowed humans and sculptures to interact.
This conceptualization fits with what we know about images of rulers and deities for civilizations such as ancient Mesopotamia, ancient Egypt, and medieval India, among others. Irene Winter (1992), Lynn Meskell (2004), and Richard Davis (1997:17-37), for example, have described cases of sculptures as living manifestations of humans or deities, and of objects understood to be animate or otherwise imbued with power or agency. There are several important factors in these understandings. The first is the idea that things can be animate, whether inherently animate or made animate, and must be washed, fed, given offerings, and otherwise treated as if they were persons or divine entities. In cases in which an object is made animate or divine, it is often imperative to show how this transformation takes place.
Across cultures, agency for transforming the made thing into an animate or divine entity is often shared between humans and the divine. Human actions, for instance, contribute to preparing the object to receive the divine essence. They make and prepare the thing and invite the divine to enter it, but then agency shifts to the divine. In some explanations, the object is understood as a vessel and the animation is comparable to a life force entering the vessel of a human body. Through these acts, the thing is transformed, becomes empowered, and changes how humans interact with it, requiring, for example, that humans feed, bathe, pay reverence, and make offerings to it. Depending on the culture, this pertains to both iconic objects—those with an image of a person, creature, or divinity—and to aniconic objects, such as a stone or even a house.
Winter, for example, has discussed the processes of animation for ancient Mesopotamian sculptures, particularly of royal images from the time of the ruler Gudea of Lagash, circa 2100-2000 bce, which can be considered as “manifestations” of divine rulers. These royal images were animated and beseeched to communicate with deities on behalf of worshipers, and they were themselves worshiped, with priests attending to them, performing ceremonies to them, and washing and feeding them. Winter says that they treated the image “as a living person,” and she notes that the rhetoric of both Sumerian and Assyrian inscriptions maintains that the statues were considered to have been “ ‘born’ in heaven.” Indeed, although the statue might be made by humans on earth, it had to be “perfected” through ritual, which included the ceremony of the opening of the eyes and the mouth (Winter 1992:15-16, 23, 30).
Another key aspect of the rhetoric of animation rites is the idea that the essence of the deity is invoked to enter the image, specifically through a “plea directed to the image itself not to stay in heaven, but to ‘enter the form’ ” (Winter 1992:23). The essence of the deity, invoked by human action, thus moved into the form of the image and changed it from a made thing to a divine, living entity.
Winter (1992:34) ascribes importance to the form of the image in becoming a substitute for a ruler, particularly the “careful constructedness according to appropriate physical form.” She notes that although these Mesopotamian statues were not true portraits, sculptors connected the statues to the person by being true to certain physical features, such as a chin with a particular shape, or broadness of the face. She calls these “signature elements” that “signal salient aspects of the individual and thus are tied to his or her person” (Winter 1992:37n14). The combination of con-structedness and the rituals of consecration not only animate the material but also create a royal image that “stands as the absolute embodiment of the ruler” (Winter 1992:34).
Davis (1997:21) describes the transformation of an object of human facture into a divine form for eleventh-century south Indian stone li-nga and bronze images of Siva, which he describes as “most fundamentally living divine beings.” This transformation requires care in the crafting of the thing and the performance of ceremonial rites during its making and ritual establishment, which he defines as “the ritual program by which Indian temple images are brought to life.” As with ancient Mesopotamia, agency in this transformation is shared between humans and the divine (R. Davis 1997:33). Regarding the ritual procedures to animate it, Davis notes a further step, for “the object that is infused or identical with God cannot be composed of ordinary matter; it must undergo a transubstantiation.” In addition, the metaphor for transformation of the thing into a divine entity is akin to the animation of a human body. Davis (1997:34) writes that medieval Vaisnava and Saiva texts “often employ the analogy of a transmigrating soul entering a human body” to bring it to life, and he explains that this entering force can be referred to as a “soul (atman), animating spirit (jlva), life breath (prana), consciousness (cetana), or divine energy (sakti)”
Davis (1997:34-37) explains that rites of establishment were not sudden but gradual and involved various phases, and that each step, beginning with choosing the materials and crafting the thing, was accompanied by ceremonial rites and recitations that made the thing “fit for divine entry.” Key here are the gradual process and the multiple steps required for its consecration, but also important is the idea that the material was perceived to be special in the first place and was “treated as a deity in the making” even before the fabrication began. Although material and crafting were ascribed importance, achieving verisimilitude was not essential for animation, for according to Davis (1997:21), what was central to an icon’s identity was “the divine presence that was invoked into it through ritual procedures and came to animate it.” Davis (1997:35-36) also describes rites of establishment that are similar to those of Mesopotamia in how a body was treated, that is, opening the eyes and washing, purifying, and dressing the image.
Meskell (2004:252) has addressed questions of object animation and agency in ancient Egypt, particularly regarding cult statues placed in shrines. Meskell is also interested in the process of transforming a made thing into a divine entity. Meskell (2004:249) uses as a conceptual framework a four-stage process outlined
By Roy Ellen (1988:219) for what have been defined as “fetishes” for other cultures. The four stages in this process are concretization, animation, conflation, and ambiguity: “concretization, where abstraction assumes concrete, effective entities; animation, where the qualities of living organisms are imputed to objects, usually anthropomorphic; conflation, where signifier and signified, content and form, destabilize one another; ambiguity, where control of the object by the person and of the person by the object is unclear.” Meskell (2004:249) also cites the importance of ongoing ritual action in the maintenance of the animated thing or entity. In fact, she notes that the Egyptian term for sculptor was “he who keeps alive,” a term that, she affirms, “underscores the significance of the image as a living materiality.”
These cross-cultural understandings of animation taking place through ceremonial acts may help us to theorize the evidence relating to Maya monumental stone sculpture. For example, the stages outlined by Ellen and Meskell may apply to the evidence we have for Maya sculptures, starting with their making, or “concretiza-tion,” and then their “animation” through dedication ceremonies, when the objects were imbued with a vital essence. If the monument was of a ruler, the object might have been imbued with part of his soul, and there was a “conflation” of the ruler and the sculptural form that embodied him. Houston, Stuart, and Taube (2006:74) hypothesize that resemblance was an essential part of the transfer of a ruler’s essence into a sculptural form: “the act of carving, modeling, or painting creates a surface that resembles the original and yet transfers a vital charge, a living spark, of that original.” This notion is comparable to Winter’s (1992:34) description of the importance of the “careful constructedness according to appropriate physical form” for the animation of Mesopotamian statues that became the embodiments of rulers. Yet, as Winter (1992:37n14) observes, this likeness did not depend on “true portraiture” but could be achieved through the use of “signature elements” that connected a person with an image.
The concept of signature elements may be appropriate for the Classic period Maya as well. Well-known examples are the diagnostic facial profiles for the Palenque rulers K’inich Janaab Pakal and K’inich Kan Bahlam; distinctive elements in their profiles convey who they were even though much of their representations were idealized. Through these signature elements, the person was recalled to a degree that allowed the entrance of the vital essence of the person (or divinity) into the object.
Finally, there is the question of “ambiguity.” As discussed in the second half of this book, how the Classic period Maya treated these monuments over time suggests that there was some ambiguity in who or what had agency in these relationships. The monuments, whether because of their animation, their insistent materiality (to use one of Alex Potts’s phrases [2000:xii]), or their connections to ancestors, appear to have encouraged—if not demanded—reverence, dialogue, or certain manners of treatment, even many years after they were created.
At the same time, we must also keep open the possibility that, for the Classic period Maya at Piedras Negras, the material was considered sacred or otherwise potent even before carving or dedication, as with the sixteenth-century wooden effigies of the Yucatec Maya described by Landa and Tozzer (1941:160n824) or the medieval Indian images discussed by Davis (1997:33-34). In other words, there may have been ambiguity in the relationship between people and these materials and things from the very beginning.
World History
