The Disembodied Eye in Maya Art and Ritual Practice

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The ritual use and display of skulls, digits, and femurs is well documented in Mesoamerica. But except for the heart, few sources describe how organs and soft body tissues were curated during the brief time they could been have been viable for manipulation or display. Nevertheless, there is rich corpus of Mesoamerican art demonstrating that such exhibitions must have taken place. While stylized eyes are a common motif, particularly in central highland Mexico where they sometimes stand for heavenly bodies, naturalistically represented eyes are typically Maya. Extruded eyeballs, often with the optic nerve still attached, form part of the iconography of death, particularly on Classic period ceramics. Detached pendant eyeballs sometimes serve as adornments for humans and non-humans. The active power of sight is demonstrated by the practice of mutilating the face, and especially the eyes, of nobles represented in Late Classic sculpture and paintings. But did the ancient Maya take out and display the eyes of the defeated? Crania from Chichen Itza show evidence of eyeball extraction, suggesting that eyeballs were removed, presumably from sacrificial victims, and manipulated postmortem. Significantly, eye motifs become more prominent during the Terminal Classic period, now appearing independently and on a monumental scale.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• New Perspectives on Ritual Violence and Related Human Body Treatments in Ancient Mesoamerica

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32719