Male Court Dress on Late Classic Maya Vases

Summary

Dress is an object made up of other objects. I combine a practice approach with the chaîne opératoire and behavior chains methods to analyze technical and social acts involving dress objects. The analysis starts with one segment of the actions involving dress—the actual act of dressing. The study includes only court scenes that appear to memorialize historic events, although some of the observations and conclusions can be applied to other kinds of scenes and other media. After identifying the elements of dress, we can see how the Maya combined them into ensembles and then how these ensembles interacted with non-dress objects and social acts in the Maya court. Maya artists used dress and non-dress objects to help the Maya audience understand what the scenes on the vases were depicting. This paper will address three aspects of male dress as depicted on the polychrome vases commonly used for drinking various beverages. Head gear and material objects provide evidence for three propositions. Dress ensembles 1) were shared throughout the Maya Lowlands; 2) were connected to known titles; and 3) were used to represent a hierarchy of social positions within the court.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21085