All that Sprouts Is Not Maize: Phytogenic Imagery in Mesoamerican Art and Narrative

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.

Interpretations of sprouting imagery and phytomorphic deities in Mesoamerican iconography have often turned to maize. Although maize informs Maya art and is personified as the Maya Maize God, imagery from elsewhere in Mesoamerica is often less specific and draws from a variety of sources to construct its deities visually. This fact complicates explanations that posit a direct correspondence between maize and specific deities. A review of the iconographic, archaeological, ethnographic, and ethnobotanical sources demonstrate that cycads, aroids, palms, and various trees, among other plants and animals contributed to the symbolism of Mesoamerican fertility deities and ecological representations. By bringing these lines of information together this paper suggests that such imagery, rather than being representations of specific taxa often depicted systems or ecologies. Therefore, this paper counters studies that assume a one-to-one iconic or isomorphic relationship between the image and its referent. This assumption fails to account for the processes that these hybrid depictions often imply, leaving emic categories underexplored. From this perspective a system for analyzing Indigenous ecological knowledge through the art historical record is elaborated with a specific focus on sprouting, growth, and transformation.

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)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39969.0