Producing and Stretching Identity: Earspools and Childhood in the Maya Area

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Iconographic sources indicate that the wearing of earspools by ancient Maya peoples was so ubiquitous that it was an essential part of personhood, a status put into jeopardy when earspools were removed and replaced with paper in scenes of almost naked captives or of warriors. Previous studies of archaeological examples of jade and shell earspools have largely focused on high-status adults, while few studies have considered their importance among children. This paper examines the act of piercing infants’ ears as a key rite of passage in the making of social persons in the Maya area. It examines, in particular, Classic period ceramic figurines, sculpted works, and painted representations of children and their developmental stages and contextualizes these images with ethnohistoric and ethnographic literature on children. Although ear piercing was a key rite of passage, this paper also underscores the stretching of the ear over time, making this ritual a long-winded process where social identity was constantly reworked.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Marking and Making of Social Persons: Embodied Understandings in the Archaeologies of Childhood and Adolescence   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39483.0