Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ph5wq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T08:21:55.592Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Figurines, materiality and social life in ancient Mesoamerica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2015

Katina T. Lillios*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of Iowa, 114 Macbride Hall, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA (Email: katina-lillios@uiowa.edu)

Extract

Reading these two books is like peering into a magnifying lens. One is able to focus in and reflect on small details, but is also made aware that these details are inextricably linked to, and informed by, other elements in the field of view. In Material relations: the marriage figurines of Prehispanic Honduras and Maya figurines: intersections between state and household, the authors carry out focused analyses of ceramic figurines from pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. Through the theoretical lenses of materiality, practice and mimesis, they show how figurines, as individual objects or assemblages, created social life through their portability, transferability and biographies. Furthermore, because of their association with households, they show how figurines can speak to the lives of women, children and commoners, the dynamics of households, and the relationship between non-states or culturally peripheral areas and the state. These two books stand as nuanced exemplars of microscale approaches in archaeology and a concern with intimate practices to reveal larger social phenomena.

Type
Review Article
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd., 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)