Informal Talk: Mallory E. Matsumoto

Weaving in Stone: Classic Maya Dedication Rituals and Cross-Media Exchange

Mallory E. Matsumoto (The University of Texas at Austin)

Archaeological, ethnohistorical, art historical, and ethnographic evidence attests to extensive use of reed mats over millennia across the Maya region. In addition to being used for sleeping or sitting atop benches or floors, mats partitioned space within the built environment, wrapped the bodies of the deceased for burial, or covered the thrones of queens and kings. Small segments of reed mat often adorn the accoutrements or bodies of members of dynastic courts. Mats were, in other words, ubiquitous in Classic Maya life, even if their physical remains are comparatively rare in archaeological excavations.

This paper focuses on cross-media transfer of reed mats among the Classic Maya, namely on a small corpus of hieroglyphic texts arranged in an interwoven format. This unusual layout was, unlike its quotidian, perishable counterpart, both materially durable and highly restricted in time and place. I argue that, by writing hieroglyphs in an interwoven format, sculptor-scribes marked the monuments as surfaces for ritual performance. Their innovative, cross-media integration of graphic and visual forms transmitted the ritual function associated with mats to monumental stone inscriptions, creating a durable testament to their creative capacity to shape the ritual and hieroglyphic traditions in which they were operating.