Sacred Surfaces: Reed Mats in Classic Maya Writing

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological, ethnohistorical, art historical, and ethnographic evidence attests to extensive use of reed mats over millennia across the Maya region. In addition to being used for sleeping or sitting atop benches or floors, mats partitioned space within the built environment, wrapped the bodies of the deceased for burial, or covered the thrones of queens and kings. Small segments of reed mat often adorn the accoutrements or bodies of members of dynastic courts. Mats were, in other words, ubiquitous in Classic Maya life, even if their physical remains are comparatively rare in archaeological excavations. This paper focuses on cross-media evidence of reed mats among the Classic Maya; namely, a small corpus of hieroglyphic texts arranged in an interwoven, mat-like format. This highly unusual layout was not only more sturdy than the reed original but highly restricted in time and place, in striking contrast to its quotidian counterpart. I argue that the practice of writing hieroglyphs in an interwoven format was a visually salient expression of the texts’ ritually activated surfaces. Woven writing, in other words, transmitted the ritual function associated with mats by replicating their structure in durable form.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Beyond Maize and Cacao: Reflections on Visual and Textual Representation and Archaeological Evidence of Other Plants in Precolumbian Mesoamerica   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38152.0