Classic Maya Textiles and the Crafting of Communities

Summary

One of the striking features of contemporary Maya textiles is that their production techniques and aesthetics can be highly regionalized. These textiles manifest strong village, town, and community identities while simultaneously reproducing other identity formations (e.g., gender, ethnicity). Likewise, Classic period Maya (ca. 300-900 CE) political formations were highly regionalized with multiple, shifting centers of gravity. Nonetheless, relatively little is known about the variability of Classic period textiles across the Maya Lowlands and whether textiles were caught up in the political fissions and regionalisms identified in hieroglyphic texts. This paper explores several Classic period Maya textile and garment traditions that have been previously overlooked in the literature. We suggest that unlike other crafting communities, those surrounding textiles often defied the boundaries of petty politics.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Threads across Time and Space   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15556