Ancient Maya Gender Identity and Relations
Ancient Maya Gender Identity and Relations

Author: Lowell S. Gustafson

Publisher: Praeger

Published: 2002-07-30

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13:

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The first book to examine how the ancient Maya defined gender. Contributors explain what it meant to be male and female. They show how gender was experienced and what the bases were for gender designations. They demonstrate how gender relations affected other areas of Mayan life, such as the arts, cosmology, economics, politics, religion, and social structure. And they analyze the changes in Mayan gender relations and identities that were fostered by evolving historical systems. There was no single Mayan polity nor was there a unitary cultural approach. Certain similarities in culture account for the observation of a general commonality among the ancient Maya, but there clearly were significant differences between Mayan sites, within the same site over time, and even between social sectors at the same site in any given time—this is no less true for ancient Maya gender identity and relations. Thus, the authors seek to explain why emphasis upon bilateral inheritance of power and prerogative was emphasized in artwork at some periods and some sites and not at others. Avoiding the vain attempt to provide a single explanation, they seek to offer a clearer sense of the richness of their topic.

Ancient Maya Women
Ancient Maya Women

Author: Traci Ardren

Publisher: Rowman Altamira

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9780759100107

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The flood of archaeological work in Maya lands has revolutionized our understanding of gender in ancient Maya society. The dozen contributors to this volume use a wide range of methodological strategies--archaeology, bioarchaeology, iconography, ethnohistory, epigraphy, ethnography--to tease out the details of the lives, actions, and identities of women of Mesoamerica. The chapters, most based upon recent fieldwork in Central America, examine the role of women in Maya society, their place in the political hierarchy and lineage structures, the gendered division of labor, and the discrepancy between idealized Mayan womanhood and the daily reality, among other topics. In each case, the complexities and nuances of gender relations is highlighted and the limitations of our knowledge acknowledged. These pieces represent an important advance in the understanding of Maya socioeconomic, political, and cultural life--and the archaeology of gender--and will be of great interest to scholars and students.

Dwelling, Identity, and the Maya
Dwelling, Identity, and the Maya

Author: Scott Hutson

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780759119208

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Dwelling, Identity, and the Maya offers a new perspective on the ancient Maya that emphasizes the importance of dwelling as a social practice. Contrary to contemporary notions of the self as individual and independent, the identities of the ancient Maya grew from their everyday relations and interactions with other people, the houses and temples they built, and the objects they created, exchanged, cherished, and left behind. Using excavations of ancient Chunchucmil as a case study, it investigates how Maya personhood was structured and transformed in and beyond the domestic sphere and examines the role of the past in the production of contemporary Maya identity.

Social Identities in the Classic Maya Northern Lowlands
Social Identities in the Classic Maya Northern Lowlands

Author: Traci Ardren

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2015-04-15

Total Pages: 203

ISBN-13: 0292768133

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Using new archaeological data from four major cities of the Classic Maya world, this book explores how gender, age, familial and community memories, and the experience of living in an urban setting interacted to form social identities. Social Identities in the Classic Maya Northern Lowlands plumbs the archaeological record for what it can reveal about the creation of personal and communal identities in the Maya world. Using new primary data from her excavations at the sites of Yaxuna, Chunchucmil, and Xuenkal, and new analysis of data from Dzibilchaltun in Yucatan, Mexico, Traci Ardren presents a series of case studies in how social identities were created, shared, and manipulated among the lowland Maya. Ardren argues that the interacting factors of gender, age, familial and community memories, and the experience of living in an urban setting were some of the key aspects of Maya identities. She demonstrates that domestic and civic spaces were shaped by gender-specific behaviors to communicate and reinforce gendered ideals. Ardren discusses how child burials disclose a sustained pattern of reverence for the potential of childhood and the power of certain children to mediate ancestral power. She shows how small shrines built a century after Yaxuna was largely abandoned indicate that its remaining residents used memory to reenvision their city during a time of cultural reinvention. And Ardren explains how Chunchucmil’s physical layout of houses, plazas, and surrounding environment denotes that its occupants shared an urban identity centered in the movement of trade goods and economic exchange. Viewing this evidence through the lens of the social imaginary and other recent social theory, Ardren demonstrates that material culture and its circulations are an integral part of the discourse about social identity and group membership.

Ungendering Civilization
Ungendering Civilization

Author: K. Anne Pyburn

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-02-24

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1134509146

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With nine papers examining a distinct body of archaeological data, Ungendering Civilization offers a much needed scrutiny of the role of women in the evolution of states. Studying societies including Predynastic Egypt, Minoan Crete, ancient Zimbabwe and the Maya - to determine what the facts actually show, the contributors critically address traditional views of male and female roles, and argue for the possibility that the root historical cause of gender subordination is participation in modern world system, rather than 'innate' tendencies to domesticity and child-rearing in women, and leadership and aggression in men. With an interdisciplinary potential, students of archaeology, cultural studies and gender studies will find this full of useful information.

"The Only True People"

Author: Bethany J. Beyette

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2017-03-01

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 1607325675

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"The Only True People" is a timely and rigorous examination of ethnicity among the ancient and modern Maya, focusing on ethnogenesis and exploring the complexities of Maya identity—how it developed, where and when it emerged, and why it continues to change over time. In the volume, a multidisciplinary group of well-known scholars including archaeologists, linguists, ethnographers, ethnohistorians, and epigraphers investigate ethnicity and other forms of group identity at a number of Maya sites and places, from the northern reaches of the Yucatan to the Southern Periphery, and across different time periods, from the Classic period to the modern day. Each contribution challenges the notion of ethnically homogenous "Maya peoples" for their region and chronology and explores how their work contributes to the definition of "ethnicity" for ancient Maya society. Contributors confront some of the most difficult theoretical debates concerning identity in the literature today: how different ethnic groups define themselves in relation to others; under what circumstances ethnicity is marked by overt expressions of group membership and when it is hidden from view; and the processes that transform ethnic identities and their expressions. By addressing the social constructs and conditions behind Maya ethnicity, both past and present, "The Only True People" contributes to the understanding of ethnicity as a complex set of relationships among people who lived in real and imagined communities, as well as among people separated by social boundaries. The volume will be a key resource for Mayanists and will be of interest to students and scholars of ethnography, anthropology, and cultural studies as well. Contributors: McCale Ashenbrener, Ellen E. Bell, Marcello A. Canuto, Juan Castillo Cocom, David A. Freidel, Wolfgang Gabbert, Stanley P. Guente, Jonathan Hill, Charles Andrew Hofling, Martha J. Macri, Damien B. Marken, Matthew Restall, Timoteo Rodriguez, Mathew C. Samson, Edward Schortman, Rebecca Storey

Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica
Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica

Author: Rosemary A. Joyce

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2009-06-23

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0292779739

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Gender was a fluid potential, not a fixed category, before the Spaniards came to Mesoamerica. Childhood training and ritual shaped, but did not set, adult gender, which could encompass third genders and alternative sexualities as well as "male" and "female." At the height of the Classic period, Maya rulers presented themselves as embodying the entire range of gender possibilities, from male through female, by wearing blended costumes and playing male and female roles in state ceremonies. This landmark book offers the first comprehensive description and analysis of gender and power relations in prehispanic Mesoamerica from the Formative Period Olmec world (ca. 1500-500 BC) through the Postclassic Maya and Aztec societies of the sixteenth century AD. Using approaches from contemporary gender theory, Rosemary Joyce explores how Mesoamericans created human images to represent idealized notions of what it meant to be male and female and to depict proper gender roles. She then juxtaposes these images with archaeological evidence from burials, house sites, and body ornaments, which reveals that real gender roles were more fluid and variable than the stereotyped images suggest.

Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica
Gender and Power in Prehispanic Mesoamerica

Author: Rosemary A. Joyce

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0292740654

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Gender was a fluid potential, not a fixed category, before the Spaniards came to Mesoamerica. Childhood training and ritual shaped, but did not set, adult gender, which could encompass third genders and alternative sexualities as well as "male" and "female." At the height of the Classic period, Maya rulers presented themselves as embodying the entire range of gender possibilities, from male through female, by wearing blended costumes and playing male and female roles in state ceremonies. This landmark book offers the first comprehensive description and analysis of gender and power relations in prehispanic Mesoamerica from the Formative Period Olmec world (ca. 1500-500 BC) through the Postclassic Maya and Aztec societies of the sixteenth century AD. Using approaches from contemporary gender theory, Rosemary Joyce explores how Mesoamericans created human images to represent idealized notions of what it meant to be male and female and to depict proper gender roles. She then juxtaposes these images with archaeological evidence from burials, house sites, and body ornaments, which reveals that real gender roles were more fluid and variable than the stereotyped images suggest.

Wearing Culture
Wearing Culture

Author: Heather Orr

Publisher: University Press of Colorado

Published: 2013-03-15

Total Pages: 583

ISBN-13: 160732282X

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Wearing Culture connects scholars of divergent geographical areas and academic fields—from archaeologists and anthropologists to art historians—to show the significance of articles of regalia and of dressing and ornamenting people and objects among the Formative period cultures of ancient Mesoamerica and Central America. Documenting the elaborate practices of costume, adornment, and body modification in Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Oaxaca, the Soconusco region of southern Mesoamerica, the Gulf Coast Olmec region (Olman), and the Maya lowlands, this book demonstrates that adornment was used as a tool for communicating status, social relationships, power, gender, sexuality, behavior, and political, ritual, and religious identities. Despite considerable formal and technological variation in clothing and ornamentation, the early indigenous cultures of these regions shared numerous practices, attitudes, and aesthetic interests. Contributors address technological development, manufacturing materials and methods, nonfabric ornamentation, symbolic dimensions, representational strategies, and clothing as evidence of interregional sociopolitical exchange. Focusing on an important period of cultural and artistic development through the lens of costuming and adornment, Wearing Culture will be of interest to scholars of pre-Hispanic and pre-Columbian studies.