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IMAGINING COURTLY COMMUNITIES: AN EXPLORATION OF CLASSIC MAYA EXPERIENCES OF STATUS AND IDENTITY THROUGH PAINTED CERAMIC VESSELS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2009

Sarah E. Jackson
Sarah E. Jackson*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Cincinnati, P.O. Box 210380, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0380, USA
*
E-mail correspondence to: sarah.jackson@uc.edu
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Abstract

Painted ceramic vessels of the Late Classic Maya, depicting scenes of the royal court, provide an entry into understanding the courtly community as an institution built on relationships and embodied through lived practice. By examining these ceramics both as circulating objects, representing the materialized form of courtly values, and as vehicles for imagery that conveys idealized representations of the court hierarchy and how it was enacted, archaeologists may more profoundly integrate material and iconographic investigations. Assertions of identity and status are examined through the ways in which they are “contained” by these decorated vessels and emerge as characterized by a series of simultaneous unifications and oppositions. A focus on bodily behaviors and interactions, and the ways in which objects played courtly roles in their own right, yields an animated understanding of a dynamic court and a larger perspective on the enactment of identity and difference in Classic Maya contexts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , Spring 2009 , pp. 71 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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