Access analysis of Maya building groups, together with thematic inquiry of monumental art, has provided a means of further assessing the role that imagery played in signaling how space was used and socially demarcated in Classic Maya city centres. At the beginning of this inquiry, I argued that, because of limitations in the breadth of literacy among the Classic Maya (a. d. 250-900; Marcus 1992b: 230), an alternative means would have been required to transmit doctrine to the wider population. One of the methods that the Maya elite would have used to communicate to the broader masses in city centres was with the strategic placement of sculpture and other iconographic media, in effect using monumental art as a form of “signposting” and as a means of signaling the function and hierarchical divisions in ritual and administrative spaces in city centres.
The objective of my investigation was to determine whether a spatial analysis of sculpture within a Classic Maya centre would influence current proposals that define elite-civic demarcation and area function, sustained by ethnohistoric, artefactual, and epigraphic assessment. As previously stated, I saw value in a study establishing whether imagery, as displayed on monuments and architecture, could further contribute to our understanding of social order and control within important Maya sites. Results of my analysis of sculpture and other artwork associated with the earlier phases of the Palace Group, as well as the Cross Group temples at Palenque, do suggest a correspondence between the thematic variations present in Classic Maya art and differences in the accessibility of that art. Furthermore, differences identified in the text and imagery of monuments suggest disparities in the types of activities associated with those spaces as well as the classes of audiences that could access them.
In this investigation, differences also have been identified in the way rulers chose to portray themselves in sculpture and other artwork, depending on whether representations were positioned in public (common) view or restricted to more private (elite) display. The implication of this finding is that Maya rulers used art to promote different perceptions of themselves, depending on whether the art was positioned in areas accessible to other elite individuals or to the general population. General questions that I addressed in this investigation were: (1) What was it that motivated the Maya elite to position sculpture where they did? (2) Is there specific iconography marking specific spaces? and (3) Acknowledging the multidimensionality of meaning communicated by Maya sculpture, are there embedded within compositions clues as to how certain space was used and socially demarcated?
World History
