Touch Me Not: Touch and Transgression among the Classic Maya

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

What were the spatial patterns of Classic Maya touch? A recent study in Psychological and Cognitive Sciences analyzed “social touch” across several European cultures and concluded that emotional closeness to an individual affects the bodily zones where touch is permitted, playing a key role in developing social cohesion. However, these findings may not hold true across space and time. This paper focuses on the Classic Maya and the concept of “canonical” or normative touch through a study of relevant imagery. Among the Maya, royal bodies rarely make physical contact with others. Instead, touch highlights status- or gender-driven transgressions of subordinate bodies: warriors pull captives by the hair, aged deities fondle younger women, and women cradle animals.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51689