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KEEPING ABREAST OF THE MAYA: A STUDY OF THE FEMALE BODY IN MAYA ART

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2011

Andrea J. Stone
Andrea J. Stone*
Affiliation:
Department of Art History, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, WI 53201, USA
*
E-mail correspondence to: stone@uwm.edu
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Abstract

This paper discusses the importance of female breasts in gender construction in Maya art and explains artistic conventions and choices in their deployment. The visual analysis focuses on Late Classic pictorial vases and ceramic figurines. Rather than reflecting a natural body, the female breast was filtered through a cultural lens that drove its highly conceptual rendering in Maya art, mirrored in a breast hieroglyph. Through the principle of contrast, including morphology and absence vs. presence of breasts in specific pictorial contexts, Maya artists constructed female personae varying in age, class, supernatural status, and gender ambiguity. In order to flesh out the layered meaning of the breast, the paper turns to ethnographic studies of modern Maya medicine concerning the hot-cold system. It is argued that ethnographic data on women's bodies in medical discourse shed light on how the breast served as an index of age-based female stereotypes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Ancient Mesoamerica , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , Spring 2011 , pp. 167 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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