The Material Evidence of Ancient Maya Sculpture

Abstract

This essay discusses ancient Maya monumental stone sculptures and the images and texts carved on them c. 600—900 CE, focusing not on the moment of their creation but over time, examining particularly how the ancient Maya used sculptures to interact with their past and its personae, stories, and material remains. Following ancient Maya sculptures and their treatment over time reveals the importance of the materiality of these images and objects, which the Maya seem to have valued not simply as bearers of information but also as relics that allowed contact with sacred ancestors, with the material and experiential aspects of image and object intertwined with any pictorial or textual content. The author concludes that a consideration of the realm of the material along with the pictorial, narrational, or informational is instructive, if not essential, in investigating the use of images as evidence in any culture and time.