Jade Faces: Heirlooms and Emulations in Olmec and Maya Art

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

From the colossal heads of the Olmec to the severed head of the Maya Maize God in the Popol Vuh, the head and face have been of singular importance in Mesoamerican art and thought. If the human body is an axis mundi, the head and face give that axis a physical manifestation of individuality. A nexus of thought and emotion, the head and face provide a bodily armature for personal identification and royal regalia such as headdresses and diadem jewels. In this presentation, we follow in the rich tradition of F. Kent Reilly’s examinations of Olmec iconography that link site planning to objects from archaeological contexts and museum collections through bold conjecture resulting in coherent models of royal power and performance. We draw on some of Reilly’s myriad observations in order to construct a narrative weaving together cosmograms, metaphorical links between heads and seeds, and the use of heirloom objects in ancient Mesoamerica.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Dancing through Iconographic Corpora: A Symposium in Honor of F. Kent Reilly III

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33618