It would be a nice marketing twist and a climax to his story. CUNO: Now, and weve talked a bit about the Lambs, but what about this man named Ian Graham? HOUSTON: El Tunel is Laxtunich, in our opinion. He clearly needed local help to get to this place where the lintels were found. But the final thing I would say about this trajectory, Jim, that I think is worth mentioning, is that a stunning feature, even today, of all of these descendant Mayan peoples, these Mayan speakers, is that they have this kind of sustained cultural or ritual orientation that demonstrates just astonishing continuity over time. The civil war tended to suppress it; it tended to stop the more brazen acts of criminality. 2 : to become elaborate (see elaborate entry 1) transitive verb. In Lintel 24, he is depicted holding a torch above his first wife, Lady Xoc. Does lintel 26 depict the same thing? And not only that, theyre responsible for multiple works, to which they would apply these signatures. And at those moments, there would be the impersonations of gods, in which their ethereal substance would be housed in the flesh of the dancer. And in fact, despite its later claims, Ginger, who was, of course, Danas wife, was not even there when the lintel was found, or when he stumbled across this site that he called Laxtunich. And what I mean by that is that they were all in its orbit. He, too, wears an elaborate headdress, a breastplate and ear spools. In the bowl are pieces of paper stained with her blood. In this episode, Stephen Houston, editor of A Maya Universe in Stone, explores the production and complex afterlives of these Maya objects. And ultimately, we want to be able to extract information about the political, the cultural, and the aesthetic circumstances of its creation. Lady Xook (detail), Lintel 25, Structure 23, Yaxchiln (Maya) (The British Museum). The text on the left of the panel contains the name and titles of Lady K'ab'al Xook. onwards, and an essential part of rulership and of all public rituals. A lintel or lintol is a structural horizontal block that spans the space or opening between two vertical supports. But it really is a time with a profoundly different constitution of society, and suddenly things become much more opaque to us. Note: the monuments and objects uncovered at Yaxchiln are numbered in the order in which they were foundso Lintel 1 is not the oldest, but rather the first to be excavated by archaeologists. Its simply a bogus term he made up. We dont know what the ancient name of the city was. Modern day lintels are made using . Direct link to Jeff Kelman's post I just thought as I was r, Posted 7 years ago. A glyphic inscription (oddly, written backwards) in the upper left corner of Lintel 25 notes the date of Shield Jaguar IIs ascension to the throne in October 681. Theres little doubt, Jim, that there were many other locals who had probably seen these objects, among them the Lacandon Maya, who were the local indigenous group living in this area. . Is it just the appearance, that it seemed to be so much similar one to another? This limestone lintel is one of a series of three panels commissioned by Bird Jaguar IV for Structure 21 at Yaxchiln and was once set above the right-hand (north-west) doorway of the central chamber. Discovered in association with the female burial attributed to Lady Xoc were 146 prismatic obsidian blades, each with two lateral notches on the edges. And a good place for that wouldve been the Chiapas rainforest of Mexico, on the border between Guatemala and Mexico. [2] We are able to study the detail of Mayan weaving as depicted in these carvings, and see the pearls woven into the fabric. What event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel showing the Maya ruler Shield Jaguar and his wife Lady Xoc? The figures on top correspond to the local ruler, whose name we know, Cheleew Chan Kinich. Other royal scepters (1979.206.1132) and ritual regalia were carved out of jadeite and other greenstones. London: Thames & Hudson, 2015. Lady K'abal Xook pullinga thorned rope through her tongue (detail). Ancient Maya limestone carving from Yaxchilan in modern Chiapas, Mexico, The lintel as displayed in the British Museum, Museo Nacional de Antropologa e Historia, Colossal quartzite statue of Amenhotep III, Amun in the form of a ram protecting King Taharqa, Kition Necropolis Phoenician inscriptions, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Yaxchilan_Lintel_24&oldid=1109549671, Ethnographic objects in the British Museum, Artefacts from Africa, Oceania and the Americas in the British Museum, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2016, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 10 September 2022, at 14:44. It is strung from a jade bead necklace that is counterbalanced by a long strand of jade beads and what are probably carved shells going down his back. CUNO: You write about the historical practice of partage. Maya Art and Architecture 2nd ed. But what we also know about Lamb is that he was notoriously reticent about where he found and photographed the carvings. Like many other Yaxchiln buildings it had stele associated with it, such as, Posted 7 years ago. After the collapse of the Classic Period kingdoms, Maya artists at northern cities like Chichn Itz drew influence from Central Mexico and southern Central America as they adorned their temples and created spectacular offerings to their rulers and deities. And they probably wouldve done this trip earlier, but World War II intervened. It might be that the ruler wanted to promote his lineage and power through his principal wife (who had more prestige than his other wives). One such site is Yaxchiln (pronounced Yash-chee-LAN) located in Chiapas, Mexico (close to the border of Guatemala) between the famous Maya cities of Copn and Palenque. And its also about that time, or maybe a century or so before, that theres a lot of contact with the great city, the metropolis, of Teotihuacn, which is pretty close to what is now Mexico City. A beautiful diamond pattern decorates Lady Xooks huipil, for instance, in Lintel 24 (below). Hes also quite interesting, in that he comes from that grand tradition of the English gentleman amateur, in that he had no training in archaeology, although he was trained in conservation. The entrances of important buildings usually received decorative carving or painting. Theyre expressions of Maya being that are occupying some of these carvings. Many of the exteriors had elaborate decorations, but it is the carved stone lintels above their doorways which have made this site famous. The difference between Elaborate and Explain. In classical Western architecture and construction methods, by Merriam-Webster definition, a lintel is a load-bearing member and is placed over an entranceway. During the Classic Period (ca. The capture of sacrificial victims was an essential aspect of Maya warfare, as they were necessary for many rituals. And there are lots of grounds for thinking that its both a specific date in historic time for the Classic Maya, but its also replicating overall creation, with the lifting of the sky. Many of the exteriors had elaborate decorations, but it is the carved stone lintels above their doorways which have made this site famous. It also gives us another level of, you might say, ethical or epistemological or interpretive responsibility, in that there are descendant communities that we need to address, and for whom we will frame how we come to conclusions in, I think, a very careful way. Sculptures made of jade range from deity figures (1979.206.1069) made for cached offerings to amulets (02.18.309) and beads to be worn by rulers and deposited in their funerary chambers to be taken with them to the afterlife. And it is opening up all sorts of exciting possibilities of interpretation. And this is a courtly society; its focused on ancient kings, their courtiers, their immediate families. But instead, were getting this strong feeling of what linguists technically would call diglossia, in which there is a profound linguistic, or again, expressive abyss, almost, that exists between what the rulers are saying and what theyre recording in the inscriptions and what people out in farm and field might be speaking, as well. HOUSTON: Ian Graham is a legendary figure in my field. CUNO: Well, lets turn now to the particular lintel stone We mentioned the name of Dana Lamb. "His sculpture was erected, Mo Chaak, he of Hixil?". Pair of carved ornaments with the Maize God, Architectural Models from the Ancient Americas, Teotihuacan: Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon. Laxtunich was a name that was concocted by Lamb. The language of the inscriptions is not necessarily always reflecting the local speech. So that if you see a stele or an upright stone monolith on a Maya plaza, for the Maya, it was a being or a ruler, usually, who is shown in perpetual, almost frozen, dance. Not necessarily of royal commissions, but ones that are undertaken by local nobility. And I think it was always, Jim, quite remote, even in the times of the Classic period. How many Olmec colossal heads have been discovered? Were all very busy with other projects, but its obvious that weve laid out what could potentially be a successful research program to return to this area, to excavate places like El Tunel, to recover even more of the meaning of these lintels, perhaps to find other fragments that would be left behind. In the ninth and tenth centuries, monumental sculpture adorned palaces in Campeche and Yucatan, sometimes marking the buildings as animate mountains. For the ancient Maya, jade objects embodied the color blue-green (the spectrum of blues and green was referred to as one word, yax, in the Classic Mayan language), which symbolized new growth, water, and primordial places and beings. Rulers needed to shed blood in order to maintain order in the cosmos. What event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel showing the Maya ruler Shield Jaguar and his wife Lady Xoc (4.6.5)? He was a sprig of the ducal tree of the Dukes of Montrose in Scotland, so he came from a very distinguished background. 4 Wei-Cheng Lin, . He never recorded, Lamb did, any precise information about the location of the lintels. Event and date Emplym Glyph Name Glyph: The artists name are carved into the lintels Action: The blood is dripping onto some paper in a basket She is kneeling She is wearing: Ceremonial blood leading costume In zigzag pattern there is the axis mundi The cross is the intersection of the universe Non-structural Mayan ornamental lintel stone, from the Yaxchilan city site in Chiapas, southern Mexico. How do we know the names of those mentioned in the article? Shield Jaguar II's commissions at Yaxchiln's central complex of buildings (called the Central Acropolis) include carved lintels (the beam at the top of a doorway), stairs faced with hieroglyphic writing, and stele (upright wood or stone slab monuments). Such Maya rituals as bloodletting were only enacted on slaves. Doyle, James. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. But because he had collected so much information, he continues to loom quite large, in a positive way, in my subject. HOUSTON: Bonampak is a high-ranking city. Structure 40 (above) sits in the South Acropolis, flanked by two other structures. And despite attention given in past years to locally surviving carved lintels, two . Review the vocabulary list for "Uncle Marcos". And so many of them went to, of all places, Canada, which was, of course, part of the British Empire as well, until fairly recently. Now, on the carvings that we studied, the blue rims of the glyphs are probably referring to the idea of preciousness. Near the Usumacinta River in Chiapas (photo: Daniel Mennerich, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Lintel 24 is the designation given by modern archaeologists to an ancient Maya limestone sculpture from Yaxchilan, in modern Chiapas, Mexico. And I would be also shocked if Mayuy, the carver that weve been examining, didnt know the painters, didnt know the carvers at Bonampak. Now, he, in this volume, decided to go look for primitive nativesthats very much in quotation marksin rawest jungle. is a wonderful example of Maya Classic architecture, particularly of the Usumacinta and Peten region or style as some would call it (image below). And we have made, I think, a persuasive argument that the four lintels came from two separate buildings. Alfred Maudslay had the lintel cut from the ceiling of a side entrance in 1882 and shipped to Great Britain where it remains today in the British Museum of London. Lintels may be visible or recessed in the roof of the facility, and reduce dose rate in publicly accessible areas by reducing the maze cross section. The master was an established craftsman of recognized abilities who took on apprentices; these were boys in late childhood or adolescence who boarded with the master's family and were trained by him in the elements of his trade.. How do you become a master tradesman? Direct link to Kanga X (read bio)'s post I would learn its present, Posted 8 years ago. Why did the looting take place? What effect it might have on the physical condition of the limestone of which the Mayan stones are primarily made. During the Classic Period (ca. But even the coloration of the stone lintels that were looking as is similar to what you might see in the paintings, and also the carvings, that help to define the doorways leading into the great murals at Bonampak. The structure 23 does not depict warfare which differentiates it from other structures build during Jaguar's time. Not a conventional way of getting from one place to the other. But why focus on Lady Xook rather than Shield Jaguar II exclusively? The royal courts of the Maya kings and queens employed full-time painters and sculptors, some of whom signed their works. And then the final thing to remember about all of these carvings is that theyre interacting with changing meteorological circumstances. (P) 2006 Nonesuch Records, Inc., Produced Under License From Nonesuch Records, Inc. ISRC: USNO10600825 & USNO10600824. Its about supporters of the king but its taken into an entirely different direction. And its already putting you in a kind of subordinate or supplicative position, in which youre in some discomfort trying to access them. The ancestors are people literally underfoot, and theyre recorded in sequence up and down the stairway. And in addition to that, we are laying out the kind of cultural parameters for what will become Classic Maya civilization, which is the period I study. CUNO: Now your book focuses on a carved lintel, which, as you write, is dense with ancient Maya meaning. Tell us about the role of such carvings in ancient Maya culture. And in those smaller sites and in those isolated pockets would be lintels, of which quite a few are known from this area. Lady K'abal Xook pullinga thorned rope through her tongue ( detail ), lintel 25, structure 23, (... 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