The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya

Latin American and Latino Art and Culture

by Stephen Houston, Stuart David, Karl Taube

All of human experience flows from bodies that feel, express emotion, and think about what such experiences mean. But is it possible for us, embodied as we are in a particular time and place, to know how people of long ago thought about the body and its experiences? In this groundbreaking book, three leading experts on the Classic Maya (ca. AD 250 to 850) marshal a vast array of evidence from Maya iconography and hieroglyphic writing, as well as archaeological findings, to argue that the Classic Maya developed a coherent approach to the human body that we can recover and understand today.

The authors open with a cartography of the Maya body, its parts and their meanings, as depicted in imagery and texts. They go on to explore such issues as how the body was replicated in portraiture; how it experienced the world through ingestion, the senses, and the emotions; how the body experienced war and sacrifice and the pain and sexuality that were intimately bound up in these domains; how words, often heaven-sent, could be embodied; and how bodies could be blurred through spirit possession.

From these investigations, the authors convincingly demonstrate that the Maya conceptualized the body in varying roles, as a metaphor of time, as a gendered, sexualized being, in distinct stages of life, as an instrument of honor and dishonor, as a vehicle for communication and consumption, as an exemplification of beauty and ugliness, and as a dancer and song-maker. Their findings open a new avenue for empathetically understanding the ancient Maya as living human beings who experienced the world as we do, through the body.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Anthropology, Latin American History, Archaeology

679 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2006

Reviews

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

just to be sure i've been learning mayan this past year and not reading fiction that ascertains the person i already know i am. and then well i got hooked: its been almost all mayan for me since. at some point when you study the best a whole culture has to offer, its hard to come back to workshop short stories and like jonathan franzen. so i've been trying with master and margarita which is funny and telling but in a blatant soviet sorta way. alas i also tried hunger, which is like literary cud. its a great novel but not a great reading experience. thus: alay t'abiiy jich ts'ibnaj yuk'ib ta yutal kakaw.

[AskHistorians]

Three of the greatest epigraphers from the Maya region collaborated on this book to give us an understanding of how the Classic Maya viewed the world around them. Pulling from inscriptions on temples, stela, and vessels the authors paint a picture of how the Maya viewed their body, viewed life and death, and viewed nature. This is a linguistics heavy work and it may deter some who find it daunting, but it is one of the most insightful books you can read to truly understand these people who left such large cities behind.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

language and bodies instead of myth, crucial work exploring mayan thought.