Conclusion

As I have argued in this chapter, Maya sculptures would have encouraged people to engage with them through both optic and kinetic experiences. Although the political value of Classic Maya sculptures as symbols of power is often emphasized, their religious significance is fundamental, for they not only portray divine rulers but also may have embodied them and held their sacred, vital essence.

Across the span of sculptural production at Piedras Negras, sculptors experimented with strategies and techniques to carve limestone into forms and images that both established continuity with the past and pushed the medium to increase the living qualities and interactive features of sculptures. These monuments expressed and enacted narrative, both on their carved surfaces and in their strategic placement in relation to people and to other sculptures. Indeed, the deployment of images, texts, compositions, and material qualities described in this chapter

Were not necessarily about increasing realism as an artistic feat, although they may have done this, but more about making explicit the living qualities of sculptures and about inviting engagement with or reverence for—if not fear of—these divine things and the k’uhul ajaw they embodied.

Sculptors strove, for example, to increase the depth of carved reliefs, primarily of the ruler’s body, to present an image of the ruler that could hold his vital essence. At the same time, sculptors developed strategies to portray other important per-sonages—wives, mothers, and local or visiting nobles—interacting with the ruler. The varying placement of their likenesses on monuments’ fronts, sides, or backs produced differing results related to three-dimensional illusion and the guiding of movement. Furthermore, the placement of these subsidiary figures’ portraits in relation to living viewers also performed a mediating role by inciting people to witness or make offerings to the divine ruler embodied in the stone—or, alternatively, to experience the vulnerability of the captive.

Piedras Negras sculptures also mediated between humans and the divine by encouraging the performance of sacred processions. As argued in this chapter, the arrangement of texts on these monuments established counterclockwise circuits around stelae and altars that guided people to circumambulate them, a form of sacred procession among the Maya from the Classic period until today. These processional circuits emulated and enacted temporal and cosmic renewal and aligned with references to creation and renewal inherent in the monuments’ dedications.

Piedras Negras sculptures engaged with the social and cultural meanings of spaces in the built environment, including throne rooms, shrines, pyramids, and plazas. They contributed to enlivening those spaces, providing opportunity and inspiration for performance and reflecting or defining the ceremonially and socially charged physical spaces of Maya cities. These spaces, in turn, influenced the legibility, reception, and performance of the stone monuments, whether by affording or limiting visibility and access to them, or by guiding how they were experienced. Moreover, the experience and performance of spectators, dancers, and ritual participants would have modulated the meanings of the monuments and architectural spaces as well.