Considering Form and Meaning in Maya Mural Painting

Summary

The French sociolinguist Roger Chartier argues that “form produces meaning”: the physical arrangement and presentation of a text will influence a reader’s reception of it (2004). In other words, the process by which a reader assigns a text meaning, consciously or not, depends as much on the material or physical form through which the text was published, distributed and received as on its semantic content (Chartier 2004: 147). Elements such as format, layout, scale, and color give a text status, constrain its reception, and/or control the reader’s understanding of it. This paper will consider Chartier’s premise in relation to Maya mural painting: what relationship exists between form, meaning, and reception in the murals of northern Yucatan? I propose that changes in form, size, scale, and color seen in murals produced during the Late Classic to Terminal Classic transition provide an opportunity to consider the way in which peninsular communities responded to the political and cultural turmoil of the epoch. In particular the rich assemblage of painted texts from Ek’ Balam—capstones, calendrical murals, dynastic narratives—with their diverse formats offers a valuable point of departure.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Mesoamerican Painting: Social Memory on Virtual Display

Keywords

Spatial Coverage