Foreign Intimacies: Terminal Classic Shells, Novel Identities, and Gathered Elites

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part I" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For close to a century, a remarkable set of shells have been found archaeologically across the Maya region and beyond. Most likely shaped and incised in a single workshop, they present a decided paradox, depicting specific warriors and elites yet, on these Terminal Classic shells, in varied and dispersed settings. The scenes are also, in a few examples, linked to non-Maya day signs and distinct conventions of depiction, hinting that the identities are hybrid—i.e., the objects draw on Maya imagery yet contrast with it by introducing non-Maya elements. Questions abound as to the identity of the personages in these images, the purposes for which they were gathered tête-à-têtes, and their appearance on pectorals or gorgets to be worn individually. Deeper still is the puzzle of how these scenes of identifiable, non-generic people found an audience over a large area. This talk collects known examples, examines their production and find spots, and details the conventions and visual content of the shells. In so doing, it probes the transcendent distribution of stories and novel identities in the Terminal Classic period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Movement of People and Ideas in Eastern Mesoamerica during the Ninth and Tenth Centuries CE: A Multidisciplinary Approach Part I   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35845.0