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OBJECT, MEMORY, AND MATERIALITY AT YAXCHILAN: THE RESET LINTELS OF STRUCTURES 12 AND 22

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 December 2011

Megan E. O'Neil
Megan E. O'Neil*
Affiliation:
Art and Art History Department, The College of William and Mary, P.O. Box 8795 Williamsburg, VA 23187-8795
*
E-mail correspondence to: megano2007@gmail.com
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Abstract

This article focuses on Structures 12 and 22 from Yaxchilan (Chiapas, Mexico), where the ancient Maya reset stone lintels from the sixth century a.d. in eighth-century buildings. The resetting highlights attention to the preservation of the lintels as relics from the past. Valued for their antiquity and the histories they had accrued, particularly from contact with ancestors, they served as loci for communication with the past, with memory inhering in their materiality. This essay also explores the lintels’ physical contexts and how the Maya may have engaged with them. For example, the arrangement of the Structure 12 lintels would have guided circumambulation. Such movement was associated with sacred processions, and evidence suggests the building was reserved for ancestor veneration. Although only restricted groups could have entered the small structure to perform rites, these may have been integrated into extended ceremonial circuits in public spaces.

This article connects with studies of the life histories of things, in which analysis is directed toward objects’ use, reuse, and modification. Examining how people interacted with sculptures over time offers insight into the people and the objects and provides glimpses into Late Classic Maya perception of sculptures and their material qualities.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , Fall 2011 , pp. 245 - 269
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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