Material Signatures for Idolatry in Sixteenth- to Eighteenth-Century Viceregal Yucatan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Rampant idolatry and Mayan resistance to the religious conquest, narrated in Early Viceregal Yucatan documents, bespeaks an underlying visual component for continuing traditional religious practices. Franciscan rural chapels, churches, and convents interior mural paintings and architectural facade sculptural details provide the material signatures to unlock Native cosmological permanence. This paper addresses some key themes discovered in nearby Spanish urban centers, Spanish administrative municipal and religious doctrine seats, and distant rural enclaves in sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Indigenous communities throughout the Yucatan Peninsula. Most examples date to Early Postclassic architectural, sculptural, and painted imagery, later reiterated in codices and creation myths narrated in ethnohistorical sources to provide fertile avenues within which to identify continuing precolumbian cosmic symbolism that adorns Franciscan built landscapes in congregated urban neighborhoods and rural towns all erected by Mayan natives.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37722.0