Drilling into the Maize Heart of Mesoamerican Jade

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Hidden Gems: New Research on Lapidary, Lapidarists, and Polished Stone and Shell in the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Jade dominates ancient Mesoamerican lapidary. While artists shaped the precious blue-green stone into varied forms, the quintessential jewel was a simple, round bead — bored through the center, polished to a sheen, and marked with red: either dusted with vermilion pigment or strung on a crimson cord. Many scholars have noted jade’s connections to maize and water. Already visually apparent in preclassic Olmec objects, these links persisted. In Late Postclassic myths, gemstones and corncobs substitute for each other as ballgame winnings; in Templo Mayor deposits, greenstone beads spill from toppled Tlaloc (Rain God) jars. Here I explore further correspondences: between the stone’s endurance, and maize’s recurrent seasons; between the gem’s rotary drilling, and the cornstalk’s growth spiral; between the bead’s glistening roundness, and the dewdrop that funnels daily into the stalk’s furled core; between the jewel’s green and red contrasts, and maize’s cyclical extremes — from cool, verdant sprout, to warm, withered stalk, with its harvest of sunbaked ears. Another possible connection is practical: modern lapidarists use ground corncob as rock-polishing media; ancient Mesoamericans may have, too. Through these ties, jade encapsulates the energetics of maize; they lie behind its longevity as a potent and valued Mesoamerican symbol.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Hidden Gems: New Research on Lapidary, Lapidarists, and Polished Stone and Shell in the Americas

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51788