Weaving Technologies and Textile Production: A Case Study from the Northern Maya Lowlands

Summary

Ethnohistoric sources point to the importance of textile production in the northern Maya lowlands in the years immediately preceding and following the Spanish conquest. Archaeological evidence of textiles and their creation comes from a variety of sources, including fragments of cloth recovered from the Sacred Cenote at Chichén Itzá; spindle whorls found in domestic and ceremonial contexts at Chichén Itzá, the nearby cave site of Balankanche’, and other archaeological sites in the vicinity; and almanacs concerning the making of cloth recorded in the Maya screenfold codices. This poster examines these interrelated lines of evidence to develop a picture of prehispanic Maya textile manufacture in the northern region, focusing on questions such as gendered facets of production, quotidian versus ritual aspects of the production process, and what weaving and associated tasks tell us about state-level versus agrarian ideologies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Textile Technologies of Prehispanic Mesoamerica and the Andes

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