Gesture, Identity, and Meaning in Southeastern Mesoamerica

Summary

Hand imagery carried conventionalized meanings across ancient Mesoamerica and represented an embodied semantics that was central to ancient constructions of meaning. Precolumbian ceramic imagery from northwestern Honduras reflects of this generalization and features a set of highly stylized compositions that conveyed an array of specific meanings. Figures and, by extension, the gestures made by them feature prominently in this corpus, but little attention has been paid to how these motifs function vis-à-vis broader constructions of meaning. This paper considers the place of hand forms and gestures within the imagery of the region’s cultural traditions and examines the range of contexts – both corporeal and extra-corporeal – in which they occurred. Particular attention will be given to the range of gestures attested within ceramic compositions from within and around the Ulúa Valley, and to how these forms function as independent constituents that contribute to the construction and extraction of compositional meaning. Similarities with the ways that hands were treated in other Mesoamerican traditions of graphic representation, both local and foreign, will also be considered in terms of their implications for cultural interaction.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Gestures Across a Continent: Hands, Communication and Meaning in the Ancient Americas

Keywords

Spatial Coverage