[1989 The History of the Study of Maya Vase Painting. In The Maya Vase Book: A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, Volume 1. New York: Kerr Associates.]

THE MAYA VASE BOOK

THE HISTORY OF THE STUDY OF MAYA VASE PAINTING

MARY ELLEN MILLER

Figure 1

As one would expect, the study ofClassicMaya vase painting has followed the dis­covery and collection of Classic Mayapottery. That collection has generally beenthe result ofone oftwo processes: one, thecollection ofMaya vases by private collec­tors and museums, and two, the excava­tion of vessels by archaeologists undercontrolled conditions. The two phenom­ena do overlap: some vessels excavatedby archaeologists have ended up inmuseum collections, and some found bypothunters have been ofuse to archaeolo­gists. In general, however, the conditionsof the excavation of Maya pots have fre­quently determined the treatment theyreceived. After the passageoflong periodsof time, the difference in the treatment ofthe vessels recedes. Finely painted pots,regardless of their means of excavation,eventually end up in museums wherethey arewritten aboutbyarthistorians orby anthropologists interested in theirmeaning.

John Lloyd Stephens may have been thefirst to commenton Mayavases,Justas hewas the first towrite and publish about somany other aspects of ancient Maya lifeand art. WhUe Stephens was staying inncul, Yucatan, a townsman lent him avase so that Frederick Catherwood might

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draw it. At the time, Stephens regrettednot being able to acquire the object him­self, but after a fire had destroyed thecollection of antiqUities he took home tothe United States, he was relieved that hehad only been lent the object for examina­tion (Stephens 1843, I: 271-275). He notedin particular the band of glyphs aroundthe rim, which he identified as part of thesame writing system he had seen atPalenque and Copan, and he also thoughtthat the figural representation bore aresemblance to stone monuments at theseplaces (Figure 1).

After Stephens and Catherwood hadcompleted their travels in the Maya regionin 1842, the Maya were avidly studied byothers. Teobert Maler, Alfred P. Maud­slay, and other nineteenth century ex­plorers, however, did not encounter fmelycarved or painted pots at the Maya sitesthat they visited. Both found modemLacandon pots in the Usumacinta ruins.and Maudslay retrieved some simple potsfrom aPalenque tomb (l889-1902, 5: 36).Maudslaywas also familiar with the finelypaintedvessels from Guatemala that E. P.Dieseldorff (called J. Dieseldorfby Maud­slay) was publishing at the same time(Maudslay 1889-1902, 5: 38). In the 1880s,Desire Chamay sought Maya pots inYucatan but finally had to accept themfrom another source when his own effortsto excavate some from a mound did notpan out. He had little good to say aboutMaya ceramics, but he did note the simi­larity between pots dug from a mound inYucatan and a vessel from Teotlhuacan.'The resemblance between the ceramicart ofYucatan and that of the table-land[I.e., Central Mexico) is seen at a glance.Their value as works of art is nu, but thepeculiar ornamentation, common to all,cannot be over-estimated from the pointof view of our theory. On examining thispottery, it is found that the potter made

the vases with reliefs. which he coloured.varnished. and baked before he gave themto a CaIVer who sculptured devices andfigures with a flint chisel" (Charnay 1888:376. illustration on p. 375) Charnay wasobviously not acquainted with the meansof pottery manufacture. but he neverthe­less isolated shared traits that served histheory ofa shared ''ToUec'' heritage for allof Mesoamerica. From Charnay's timeonward. studies of pottery were oftenused to hypothesize diffusions of culturethroughout Mesoamerica.

During the late nineteenth century. manyGermans came to Guatemala to establishcoffee fincas. among them E. P. Diesel­dorff, who acquired a ranch in Coban andshared with his countrymen Eduard SeIer,Ernst Forstemann, and Paul Schellhasan interest in Maya antiquities. He col­lected Maya objects from farmers, labor­ers. and travellers. In 1892, he directedexcavations at Chama; and he built a

1. "In Germany we possess the most valuableMaya manuscript fThe Dresden Codex], and ourscholars have taken the most activepart in deci­phering it; but, on the other hand, almost nothinghas been done on the part of Germany towardrollecting.fresh nnt.erial and promoting researcheswhich give such rich returns when conducted onthe spot" {l904 a: 640}. He was dismayed thatthe famous CharntL oose, now in the University

collection both for himself and for theBerlin museum. 1 He published articleson two particularly important Chama pots.and his publication provoked essays fromhis German colleagues. Although Diesel­dorffwas interested in the archaeologicalcontext, his concern was largely for themeaningofthe imageryand style ofpaint­ing. He was the first, I believe, to make"rollout" drawings of Maya pots. in whichthe images from a cylinder vessel wereextended onto a sheetofpaper. With sucha drawing. all the figures and hieroglyphscould be easily labelled for reference. anda narrative scene could be viewed at aglance.

The relationship of highland Guatemalato the lowland Maya wa.s not known at thetime and Dieseldorff's finds were the firstto show. based on the hieroglyphs. thatthe Maya at Chama had written in thesame writing system as did the Maya atPalenque--much as Stephens had used

Musewn ofPhiladelphia, had been sold after itsdiscovery to an American, "where it probablyfigures as one of the chief ornaments of somedrawing-room" {l904 a: 639}. At the time of thepublication of the Gordon and Mason folio, theCharntL vase was in the Cary Collection in Phila­delphia. Maudslay later noted that a Yaxchilanlintel which had been "repacked in Coban fortransmission toEngland" had, by some mistake,

THE MAYA VASE BOOK

hieroglyphic writing to show relationshipsfiftyyears before. Dieseldorffused BishopLanda's Relacion and the Popol Yuh tointerpret the scene and hieroglyphs onthe Chama vase (Kerr #2894), which hebelieved to be a scene ofsacrifice attendedby Ahpops. Ernst Forstemann followedDieseldorffs interpretation of the sceneand further elucidated the glyphs, noting,for example. the glyph ahau, or lord. asthe fourth in the column behind figure fand probably naming him (1904: 649).Both Forstemann and Dieseldorff werestruck by the fact that the pot had neverbeen used before its interment and that itshowed a scene of dally life.In response, Eduard SeIer. writing withgreater academic authority and convic­tion, tackled the problem of the pot(SeIer1904). He faulted the previous inter­pretations. and he argued. by analogywith later arts of the Aztec and Mlxtec,that the fans carried on the Chama vasecharacterized long-distance traders. On

been ''put into the wrong case and sent to theMusewn at Berlin" (Maudslay 1889-1902, 5:2,47). Could Dieseldoljf, a resident ofCoban, havesent the lintel astray in order to build the collec­tion in Berlinfor which he so much hoped? Sub­sequently known as Lintel 56, the monumentwas destroyed in a World War II bombing raid.

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the basis of this identification, all fans inMaya artwere long regarded as attributesof traders, and many misidentificationswere made (Kurbjuhn 1976). He also-­correctly, I believe--identified the basicgestures of the figures on the pot asappropriate ones for arrival, reception,and. in the case of the kneeling figure, ofhumble salute (cf. V. Miller 1982). Hefurther proposed that the glyphic cap­tions offered the "title and name of theperson in question" (SeIer 1904: 661).SeIer also suspected that the entire cor­pus of Maya writing might treat astron­omy (he wondered whether the pot mightshow Venus gods). but he found thissomewhat in contradiction to the realismof this particular vase painting (SeIer1904: 662).

Such attention to the meaning and inter­pretation of Maya imagery and writingwere the preoccupation of the Germanschool, as we might term it. of the turn ofthe centmy. Dieseldorff continued hiscollecting. writing. and interpretation(Dieseldorff 1926-33). but the ideas andwritings of Eduard SeIer were the moreprominent ones. SeIer increasingly turnedhis attention to Central Mexico. No Ger­man expedition to excavate a Maya sitematerialized. and, following in the steps of

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Forstemann and SeIer, most subsequentGerman Mayanists worked on the prob­lems of Maya writing. calendar. and ico­nography (cf. Beyer, Zimmermann, Ber­lin, Barthel. and Diitting).

Whole painted and carved pots, as well aspotsherds. were first systematically col­lected at the major Classic site of Copanby Harvard's Peabody Museum of Ar­chaeology and Ethnology in the 1890sand it is here that the history of archaeo­logical collection and study begins. Freder­ick W. Putnam. director of the PeabodyMuseum, had already instituted a pro­gram of careful stratigraphy in NorthAmerican excavations; by means of hisstudents, this method was introduced tothe Maya region. In their reports. Copanarchaeologists Marshall Saville and J.G.Owens described tombs and their con­tents but made no attempt to determinestratigraphy or meaning; their final re­ports are limited to straight description(in Gordon 1896). Following Hondurasgovernment's termination ofthe PeabodyMuseum project at Copan in 1896. GeorgeB. Gordon turned his attention to thearchaeology of the Ulua Valley. In hisstudy (l898). he published rolled-outdrawings and attempted to determinediffusion into the Ulua Valley of 'foreign'

Maya influences (l898: 39). His interestin the Maya. like that of his contempo­rary, William H. Holmes of the Smith­sonian Institution, was extremely broad.He wanted to know the techniques ofancient pottery manufacture, the distri­bution of decorative motifs. and themeaning of iconography. We now recog­nize that this first large corpus of pots,some from Copan and more from the UluaValley, are not characteristic of Mayapottery in general.

Following the work at Copan, few system­atic excavations were carried out in theMaya area for many years. But here andthere. an occasional pot was happenedupon. In highland Guatemala. particu­larly in the region of Ratlinxul, Chama,and Nebaj. farmers. amateurs, and pot­hunters encountered a number of finelypainted pots which came to the attentionof collectors and scholars. The "FentonVase," for example. was excavated at Nebajin 1904. whence it came into the hands ofthe English collector C.L. Fenton. for whomit is named.

HerbertJ. Spinden submitted his disser­tation. A Study ojMayaArt. to the facultyof Anthropology at Harvard University in1909. and it was published as a memoir

of the Peabody Museum in 1913. Hestudied the known corpus of Maya art.including ceramics, which he included asa nine-page subsection ofhis chapter, "AConsideration ofthe Material Arts" (Spin­den 1913: 133-142). Spinden treatedtechnique and acknowledged the useful­ness of pottery in establishing a chrono­logical sequence. but in general. he wasmost concerned with the representationand decoration ofthe pottery. His sampleincluded the excavated pots from Copanas well as those collected for the PeabodyMuseum by travellers and pothunters; healso used anyvessels ofinterest known tohim in private collections. He praised theworkmanship of calVed and stampedwares--which formed the preponderanceof his sample. of course. since those arefound in Yucatan, the part of the Mayaregion most frequented by early visitorsand where a resident population was morelikely to encounter objects in mounds-­but he reserved his highest praise forpolychrome pottery, particularly for thoseexamples from Chama that Dieseldorffhad published, and for other specimensthat had come into the hands of thePeabody Museum.

In 1918. Thomas Gann, a British physi­cian, published the results ofhis years of

excavating. collecting. and study in Be­lize [then British Honduras) and the south­ern part of the Mexican territory ofQuin­tana Roo (Gann 1918). He himselfexca­vated a number offine pots, includingonefrom Rio Hondo sometimes known as theGann Vase (Thompson 1939,1970;HammondI985). and two others from anearby mound, one of which was pub­lished byGordon and Mason (Gann 1918:Plate 17)--as was the Gann Vase (seebelow). He also bought a number of potsfrom the mayor ofYalloch, EI Peten, whohad found them some years before inwhat Gann describes as a chuItun, orunderground storage pit (Gann 1918: 138),but which might have been a partly col­lapsed tomb. Gann compared his finds tothe few known published Maya pots. andhe attempted to identify the figures andsome glyphs on the vases with the godssorted out by Paul Schellhas (1904); hecorrectly identified God D. Itzamna. forexample, on one oftheYalloch pots (1918:Plate 23). He related the Yalloch pots toNaranjO, which is indeed their logicalsource, and he paid close attention to thepatterns ofwear on individual pots. Gannwas an amateur archaeologist, but hewas also a collector for museums. amongthem. the Bristol Museum, which ac­quired the Yalloch pots.

THE MAYA VASE BOOK

In 1919. the Museum of the AmericanIndian in NewYork acquired a sculpturedvase from Acasaguastlan. Guatemala (Kerr#2776; Saville' 1919), from the collectionof the German Consul General in Guate­mala City. Saville noted that the "vase iswithout question the most beautiful ex­ample ofearthenware ever found in eitherNorth or South America," a claim stilldifficult to dispute. He compared itscarving to monumental stone and woodcarving at Quirigua and Tikal, and whileacknowledging its complexity and impor­tance, he deferred "a comparative studyand an analysis" for a later date (Saville1919: n.p). J. Eric S. Thompson laterconfided to Frederick Dockstader that theunusual carved vessel was surely a fake(personal communication from MichaelCoe, December 1988), and perhapsThompson's misapprehension of the potwas what condemned it to scholarly ob­scurity for a long time. Not surprisingly.the only serious consideration of the potin the early twentieth century came fromHermann Beyer, who analyzed theAcasa­guastlan Vase in light of the Aztec Calen­dar Stone (Beyer 1921).

By 1925, there were enough painted andcarved Maya pots for George B. Gordonand J. Alden Mason to undertake their

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THE MAYA VASE BOOK

three-volume corpus, Examples ojMayaPottery in the Museum and Other Collec­tions, luxuriously printed folios in fullcolor. Mary Louise Baker, Annie Hunter,and other artists made color drawings ofthe pots, including rollout drawings.Despite its lavish production and limiteddistribution, the Gordon and Mason vol­umes, published between 1925 and 1943,were known for many years as the stan­dard corpus of Maya vases. That corpusincluded examples of the pots mentionedabove--Chama, Copan, Nebaj, Yalloch,Rio Hondo--with attention to those in othercollections: the Fenton Collection, the BerlinMuseum rur Volkerkunde, and an occa­sional example from Mexican or Guate­malan collections. One vessel in thecorpus is fake (Plate LVll), as Mason himselfsuspected ("of doubtful authenticity," henoted). To my eye, this fake vessel seemsto be closely related to the Maya Art Decoof the 1920s and 1930s (cf. Ingle 1985).Conspicuously absent from the volumeswere the Holmul pots, whose separatepublication was in progress by the Pea­body Museum (see below) and the Acasa­guastlan Vase of the Museum of theAmerican Indian. Black and white linedrawings were made from the color rol­louts and reproduced in popular litera­ture and in such widely read books on the

132

Maya as Sylvanus G. Morley's The An­cient Maya (1946). In the Gordon andMason publications, no general commentswere offered about Maya vases, but thevery richness of the publication presentedthem as art, not artifact.

In 1910-11, Raymond E. Merwin hadconducted extensive excavations at Holmul,Guatemala, and there he had "collectedfor the Peabody Museum...ceramic mas­terpieces of the Maya" (Spinden 1913:141). During this era, archaeology wasstill equated with acqUisition for a foreignmuseum, such as Harvard's PeabodyMuseum, just as ethnography was equatedwith the acqUisition of a non-industrialsociety's religiOUS and magical objects fora museum.2 Merwin completed his dis­sertation in 1913, and then George Vail­lant submitted his dissertation in 1927on the ceramics from Holmul. Merwin's illhealth delayed publication of the excava­tions and pots until 1932, when GeorgeVaillant had completed their joint study.In it, Vaillant published the design he hadused in the dissertation for the first se­quence oflowland Maya pottery that wascorrelated to the Maya Long Count calen­dar--and thus, in turn, to our own calen­dar. Vaillant is better known for his workin the Valley of Mexico, but his Holmul

sequence has formed the basis for allsubsequent ceramic sequences in the Mayaarea, even when not acknowledged bymodern Maya archaeologists. Althoughsome of the 90-odd Holmul pots are ex­tremely interesting for their complex ico­nographyand beautiful painting. Vaillantfelt that the "pottery found at Holmul isextremely important because of its chrono­logical implications."

But Vaillant was a museum curator(American Museum of Natural History)and collector as well as an archaeologist,so he also sought to interpret the pots insome other frame. Based on what was, bythe time ofpublication in 1932, still a verylimited sample ofknown Maya pots, Vail­lant established three broad schools ofpainting: 1) Copan-Motagua, 2) Pusilha­Uaxactun, and 3) Holmul-Yalloch (Mer­win and Vaillant 1932: 78-83). Vaillantmade a very prescient prediction: "it might."he wrote, "be possible, through associ­ated trade wares, to find a fixed point in

2. Diana Fane ofthe Brooklyn Museum has doneextensive research on the methods and goals ofStewart Culin, who acquired a great AmericanIndian coUectionfor that musewn. His goal wascollectionofobjects. even to seize the lastremain­ing sacred objects ofan indigenous people. suchas the Zuni, but his stated plan was couched asethnography.

Mexican history. and with these externaldates to work backward into a fixed pointin Mexican history" (1932: 79). Startingin 1936. at KaminalJuyu, A V. Kidderbegan to excavate tombs that producedJust such trade wares (Kidder, Jennings,and Shook 1946). From the Teotlhuacan­style pots he found he was able to showthe simultaneityofthe EarlyClassic Mayaand Teotihuacan. Itwas the first concretedating of Teotihuacan and it helped es­tablish the attribution ofTula, Hidalgo. asthe horne ofthe great Toltec predecessorsoftheAztec by showingTeotihuacan to beearlier. When in 1941 Vaillant publishedhis great life's work, TheAztecs ofMexico,he followed earlier assumptions whichplaced the Toltecs at Teotlhuacan. Alas,today he is often remembered more forsuch misapprehensions than for his fun­damental contribution to the establish­ment of a Maya ceramic sequence.

In 1926, the Carnegie Institution ofWash­ingtonbegan 11 years ofsystematic exca­vations at Uaxactun, Guatemala. To OliverG. Ricketson, A Ledyard Smith. and RobertE. Smith. the recovery ofpots from tombslocated in stratigraphic sequence to oneanother afforded an opportunity to pro­vide the basis for temporal distinctionswithin the Classic period. The correlation

of the Maya calendar with the Christiancalendar that established the years AD.300-900 as the Classic had been ac­cepted, but the nature of change dUringthat era was not known. At Uaxactun, thearchaeologists retrieved hundreds ofpotsfrom tombs, bUrials, caches, and otherofferings. In the years before radiocarbondating. through association with datedmonuments, the ceramics, too, could begiven secure dates, and they could thenbe used, in turn, to date architecturewithout associated dated sculpture. Gor­don R. Willey and Jeremy Sabloff havereferred to this period of American ar­chaeology as the "Classificatory-Histori­cal Period" and have noted that its great­est concern was for chronology (Willeyand Sabloff 1980: 83). Robert E. Smithstudied the Uaxactun ceramics carefully,reviewedVaillant's HoIrnul sequence. andnamed the basic ceramic periods stillused today: Tzakol 1. 2. and 3 for theEarly Classic (AD 250-550) and Tepeu 1,2. and 3 for the Late Classic (AD 600­900). He clearly considered pottery to bemost important as an archaeological toolfor dating architecture. but he was alsointerested in the information yielded byvessels: 'Their structure and decorationprovided gauges of the Uaxactun potters'development of technical arxl artistic ability

THE MAYA VASE BOOK

during the city's long life. From paintingsand carvings on vases and bowls of thelater periods. when depiction of the humanfigure carne into vogue, much was learnedabout the appearance ofthe people. theircostumes, ornaments, weapons, imple­ments. and particularly their ceremonialregalia" (1955 I: 11). In other words, Smithsought to retrieve information ofarchaeo­logical and anthropological value fromthe pots, but he made no attempt todiscuss their intrinsic meanings. Nocomprehensive study was ever made ofthe inScriptions on the pottery, perhapsbecause by the time of publication in1955. both Sylvanus G. Morley and J.Eric S. Thompson had made a powerfulargument that they were meaningless.

In a separate publication, "Two RecentCeramic Finds at Uaxactun," A LedyardSmith discussed several Uaxactun potsofextraordinary beauty and iconographyshortly after their excavation in 1931(Smith 1932). The pots themselves in­cluded the Initial Series Vase. the Uaxac­tun Dancer Plate, and the UndeIWorldJaguar Plate, but Smith evinced no par­ticular point of view about them otherthan to note that they "have much es­thetic interest." Morley commented onthe inscription of the Initial Series Vase,

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which although in error from his point ofview. seemed to him to be in distinctionfrom most glyphs on pots. which he be­lieved "to have degenerated into purelydecorative elements" (Smith 1932: 21).Morley, as usual, although full of praisefor the object ("the most important ex­ample ofancient Maya ceramics yet broughtto lighn. had little to say about the vesselas a work of art.

In his great, synthetic 1946 book. TheAncient Maya. Sylvanus G. Morley de­voted a chapter (Chapter 15, "Ceramics:pottery. the best guide to cultural devel­opment") to Maya pots (Morley 1946: 382­404). In this chapter. Morley treated Mayaceramics essentially for their technicalproperties (shape. temper, slip) and fortheir value to the archaeologist in estab­lishing chronology. Morley wrote one ofthe clearest explications of how pottery isuseful to the archaeologist and culturalhistorian that has ever been written forthe Maya.

However. Morley treated the nature ofpainting on Maya vases in a subsequentchapter. as part of "Miscellaneous Artsand Crafts," under the subsection "Paint­ing." Few monumental paintings wereknown--Bonampak was only found in

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1946, the year Morley's book was pub­lished-so he could write that "by far thebest paintings ofthe Old Empire that havecome to light...are the polychrome vasesand bowls of the Great Period found atUaxactun, at Holmul, and in the Chamaregion along the upper ChJxoy Riverw (1946:415). Morley reiterated the interpretationof the Initial Series Vase ofUaxactun thathe had made a decade earlier. CUriously,Morley claimed that this same Uaxactun"tomb contained other polychrome ves­sels of equal beauty," a claim one mightwell dispute, particularly based on thepoorly drawn illustrations provided byMorley himself (Morley 1946: Figs. 49-51)By 1950 and the publication of his MayaHferoglyphic Writing, Thompson had cometo a conclusion that he and Morley shared,and it shaped a generation of thinkingabout Maya vase painting: "Hieroglyphspainted on potteryvessels appear to havebeen largely decorative" (1950: 27). Hebelieved that many glyphs formed orna­mental borders. and he found the "sense­less mistakes ofa rather singular nature"in calendrical notations proof that the"artist who painted the details was igno­rant of hieroglyphic writing" (1950: 27).

In his determination of the Copan ce­ramic sequence from the wares collected

during the Carnegie excavations of the1930s in comparison with the 1890sexcavations, John M. Longyear III ana­lyzed the glyphic notations on Copan pots.He suggested that the Copador potterytexts "intended at least to imitate glyphs"(1952:61) and the carved and incisedpots were made by artists "not familiarenough with the glyphs to reproduce themexcept from a copy prepared by one ofthepriests" (1952: 65). He astutely noted thatthe guetzal Vase from the 19th centuryPeabody excavations bore a rim text nearlyidentical to the the rim text of the GannVase and surmised that "one was obvi­ously copied from the other, or both werepattemedaftera third specimen"(1952: 64).

The recognition of such patterning wasultimately important to Maya vase paint­ing studies, but for the meantime, thediscovery seemed to fuel the notion thatthe glyphs on pots were not readable."Certainglyphs were much favored by thedecorators of pottery and are repeatedover and over again," wrote Thompson inthe introduction to his 1962 A Catalog ojMayaHferoglyphs (1962: 15). "IUs surelySignificant that among the glyphs par­ticularly favored by potters and copiedfrom one pot to another are themonkey. afish and a bird, glyphs easily recognized by

the illiterate" (1962: 16). Thompson alsoconsidered what he interpreted as errorsin the inscription ofthe Initial SeriesVasefrom Uaxactun to be evidence that thepainterdid notwork from a manuscriptordrawing. He believed there to be "severalerrors in details ofglyphs which show theartist's Ignorance of his subject and whichcould hardlyhave appeared had this beena careful copy of a priest-astronomer'sdrawing" (1962: 17).

In general, Thompson paid very little at­tention to Maya pots. Having decided thattheir glyphs were ofno value, he had littleconcern for the painting, carvlng, orimagery, and he was known to condemnvarious vessels as forgeries. One vessel,however, struck a resonant chord: theGann Vase, which seemed to him to illus­trate a Kekchi myth he had recordedabout the moon's betrayal of the sun(1939). He repeated his thesis about thispot throughout his life (cf. Thompson1970).

Starting in the 19405, art historians beganto pay attention to Maya vases. In 1943,Pal Kelemen wrote that "one ofthe great­est artistic achievements of the Maya wastheir painted pottery," and he was par­ticularly interested in the abllltyofpots to

tell a story (1943: 177). He lamented theundeciphered glyphs on Maya ceramics.He considered overall composition, not­ing that the Initial Series Vase displays"splendor, dignity, and movement" andthe Chama Vase "radiates tension anddisplays more action than is usuallydepicted..... (Kelemen 1943: 180). In 1944Salvador Toscano wrote in a similar veinand drew attention to what he called the"realismo pict6rico maya" (Toscano 1970:159). Jose Pijoan drew largely historicalconclusions about Maya pottery (e.g. that"Old Empire" refugees must have takenany fme Maya pots to the highlands)(1946: 438). Like Toscano, Paul Wes­theim, too, was drawn to the more simplelife shown on Maya ceramics ("estan ausen­tes los dioses'1, in distinction to the stonemonuments, which were thought at thetime to show priests or gods (1950:239).George Kubler first suggested in 1962that Maya pots reflected a lost "coevalschool of manuscIipt illumination" (Kubler1962: 171), a notion thatwas revived laterby Michael Coe and others (Coe 1973;Robicsek and Hales 1983, 1988). Hebelieved that "Maya painters of this pe­riod also transferred the pagination ofbook-like compositions to pottery sur­faces" and noted that the form of thecylindrical vase reinforces the "re-entrant

THE MAYA VASE BOOK

composition" (Kubler 1962: 171). Ter­ence Grieder submitted a dissertation onthe formal qualities ofMayavase paintingin 1962, and in a published article, hediscussed the representations of spaceand form on the pots (1964). He attemptedto study forms without analysis of theirmeaning. a difficult task under any circum­stances.

This flurry of writing by art historianstreated an essentially unchanged corpus.The body ofMaya pots published by Gordonand Mason, Merwin and Vaillant, andSmith had been fIxed by World War II. Itwas essentially this pre-war corpus withadditions from Tikal and Altar de SacIif1­cios that Marta Foncerrada and SoniaLombardo de Ruiz treated in their 1979catalogue.3 Postwar excavators turned fIrstto less elite settlements and were preoc­cupied with settlement pattern and dailylife. Archaeologists, from 1940 to1960,essentially ceased to discover fme Mayapottery because they were no longer fmd­ing the tombs of the noblllty nor even thetombs of other wealthy persons. In fact,despite the discovery ofoneofthe greatestMaya tombs, that of King Pacal, in the

3. They described their corpus as the pots witharchaeological provenience, but for some Wi­

stated reason, they omitted the Seibal pots.

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Temple ofInscriptions at Palenque. manyarchaeologists. particularly in Mexico.began to say that Maya lords were notburied in pyramids at all. Archaeology ofthe great cities languished. When a single.significant pot was published by FransBlom--who suggested that its imagerycould be interpreted in light of the tale ofthe Hero Twins in the Popol Yuh (1950)-­it was completely ignored.

In turn. the "new" archaeology necessi­tated greater use of pottery for mechani­cal purposes. "Recently. with a shift ininterest to smaller. presumably domesticor rural sites that are devoid of monu­ments or great architectural endeavors.ceramics have assumed a more impor­tant role as indicators oftlme" (Smith andGifford 1965: 498). Ceramicists becamespecialized practitioners of archaeology.and usually one such specialist was in­cluded on every major excavation. "Adetailed knowledge of ceramic develop­ments is necessary for a proper evalu­ation of such phenomena (i.e. connec­tions with Central Mexico. diffusion.migration) and their place in the broaderoutlines of Mesoamerican prehistory"(Rands and Smith 1965: 95). As anoutgrowth of such speCialized ceramicstudies. James and Carol Gifford foundedthe journal Ceramica de CulturaMaya et.

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al. in 1961 at Temple University as aclearinghouse for the nomenclature usedfor Maya pottery. Interestingly enough.for the first eleven years of publication.Geramica usually featured an unprove­nanced work of Maya art on the cover.despite the fact that said work was neverdiscussed in the issue; in 1972. policyapparently shifted. and all subsequentcovers featured archaeologica1ly excavatedvessels.

The epigraphic revolution set in motionby Yuri Knorosov (English publication1968). Heinrich Berlin (1958) and Ta­tiana Proskouriakoff (1960. 1963. 1964)initially had little effect on the study ofMaya vases. Unlike the stone monuments.the vases did not seem to relate dynasticsequences of the sort Proskouriakoffhaddocumented for Yaxchilan or PiedrasNegras; the known corpus of 1960did notinclude pots with the prominent emblemglyphs Berlin had isolated. The vases.then. continued to be thought of as thework ofilliterate artists. After the discov­ery of the now-famous Altar de Sacrificiospot. RE.W. Adams believed it to bearillustrations of gods and their celebrantsparallel to those Thompson had describedin the Bonampak murals (Ruppert.Thompson. and ProskoUIiakoff 1955). withceremonies in "honor of the Tepeyollotl-

like god" (1963:92). But by 1971. whenAdams published the complete inventoryof Altar ceramics. he had identified thetexts and figures as those of historicalpersons who attended funerary rituals(Adams 1971). This appeared to be thefirst major breakthrough in interpretingthe inscriptions on Maya pottery.

Beginningwith the 1960s. museums andcollectors. particularly in the United States.but also throughout the world. acquiredgreat numbers ofMayavases that had notbeen previously known. The Museum ofPrimitive Art (now incorporated into theMetropolitan Museum ofArt) acquired itsfamous pot in 1969; Dumbarton Oaksbuiltits collectionoffine pots in the 1960sand 1970s. Almost all Maya pots of thisera travelled the trail of the art market:they were generally looted from theircontexts and by the time they reached theUnited States. it was frequently difficultto detennine their places oforigin.4 By theend of the decade. few of these pots hadbeen published and only one had re­ceived scholarly treatment. the Museum

4. A given provenance may at times have beenattached to a piece to make it more valuable; inother sftuatfons. a dealer may have cautiouslyrefrainedfrom offering such information.

of Primitive Art Vase. now known as theMetropolitan Vase (Foncerrada 1970). Twoexhibitions of the early 1970s ignored the'new' objects: neither the MetropolitanMuseum ofArt·s blockbuster BeJore Cortes:Sculpture oj Middle America (Easby andScott 1970) nor the Center for Inter­American Relations' small exhibit. TheArtoj Maya Hieroglyphic Writing (Graham1971). considered a single example ofthenew corpus.

In 1970. Michael D. Coe began work tohelp organize an exhibition on ancientMaya writing at the Grolier Club. "Whilemounting the exhibit. and especially whilestudying the texts that occasioned it. itbecame quite clear that the focal point ofthe catalogue should be the large numberof painted and carved funerary vaseswhich were brought...together for the firsttime" (Coe 1973: 5). Once the Grolierexhibition. The Maya Scribe and His World(April 20 to June 5. 1971) closed. follow­ing the established tradition ofvase stud­ies. Coe had each Maya pot "rolled out" byan artist. He noted that the "subject matterof this pottery. and the hieroglyphic textspainted or inSCribed upon it. have beengenerally ignored by archaeologists andart historians" (1973: 11). He consideredthe new corpus ofMaya pots in llghtofthe

previously known material. and he drewsome astonishing conclusions. Coe sug­gested that much of the imagery on Mayavases derived from a long-lost corpus ofClassic mythology. of which the tales ofthe Hero Twins in the Popol Vuh were buta small fragment. 5 and that this imagerywas particularly given to funerary ceram­ics because of their very nature: theyformed a "book ofthe dead." carried to theUnderworld by the deceased noble. Nar­ratives and scenes thus previously thoughtto illustrate daily life (the ChamaVase. forexample) could be re-interpreted as scenesrelating to the gods and the Underworld.Coe hypothesized that two gods in par­ticular. God N and God L. were the rulinglords of the Underworld. because of theirfrequency; he also noted the strtkingabsence of a number of gods. amongthem. Chaco the Maize God. God D. andGod K (Coe 1973: 14-15).

But perhaps most strikingly. Coe took anew arid comprehensive look at the in­scriptions on Maya pots. particularly therim texts. among them the two similarones previously identified by Longyear(see above). In direct contradiction of

5. As noted above. Frans Blom had alreadylinked a single Maya vessel to a tale from thePopol Vuh.

THE MAYA VASE BOOK

Thompson. Coe argued that the textswere indeed meaningful. and that thepattern Longyear recognized was wide­spread. with both geographical breadthand chronological depth. Coe called thishighly patterned text the "Primary Stan­dard Sequence" (Coe 1973: 18) and sug­gested that it was the "glyphic form of along hymn which could have been sungover the dead or dying person. describingthe descent of the Hero Twins to theUnderworld... " (Coe 1973: 22). Coeiden­titled a hitherto unrecognized school ofMaya vase painting as the "Codex style"6(Coe 1973: Plates 42-46) and proposedthat masters of manuscript art paintedthese pots. transferring images in blackor brown line from codex pages to thecream-coloredsurfaces of Maya cylinders.

All in all. The Maya Scribe and His Worldrevolutionized the study of Maya pots.and arguments soon surfaced amongarchaeologists and art historians: Shoulda corpus of looted pots be studied? Didlegally excavated pots really have the samePrimary Standard Sequence (Coggins

6. The Metropolitan Vase (Cae 1973: Plate 44Jhad already been published in. Thompson 1970,Plate 14. and by Marta Foncerrada (1970J. wlwrecognized its magnifu:ent quality and unusualstyle.

137

THE MAYA VASE BOOK

1975: 525)? Were not some of the sceneson Maya pottery illustrations ofmundanelife (Gifford 1974; Kubler 1977; Paul 1976;Reents and Bishop 1985)? Up until pub­lication of The Maya Scribe. Maya potshad been thought to conform to the pre­1960 paradigm of Classic Maya history:the Maya were a pure, noble race whodwelt in a time of theocratic peace, ruledover by priestly timekeepers and sky­watchers, who guided the illiterate throughagricultural rituals on their occasionalvisits to vacant ceremonial centers. Epi­graphic work by Knorosov, Berlin. andProskouriakoff had already establishedthat the Maya lords were dynastic warri­ors who chronicled the stuff of their ownlives on their monuments: birth, acces­sion. marriage. warfare. and death. Butstudy of the pots. if thought about at all,had lagged far behind.

With the recognition of both the greatlyexpanded corpus and the new light inwhich they could be examined. a world ofinterpretations was opened through thestudy of Maya vases. A good many morenotions about the Classic Maya wereoverturned through recognition of therituals depicted on Maya pottery. Al­though identified as a bloodletting pot byThompson (1961), the Huehuetenango

138

Vase (Kerr #496) was used by David Jo­ralemon as the point of departure for anidentification of the widespread practiceof penis perforation (1974). Based onimages from Maya ceramics. Peter Furstand Michael Coe brought the Maya prac­tice of ritual enemas to attention in 1977(Furst and Coe 1977). Nicholas Hellmuthhas focussed on the representations ofgods (Hellmuth 1987), and the ones flrstthought by Coe to be absent from the potshave been identified (e.g., God K in Ro­bicsek 1978; the Maize God in Taube1985; Chac by Stuart. as cited in Scheleand Miller 1986, and God D in Hellmuth,n.d.). Hellmuth described other grislyrituals (Hellmuth. n.d.). Coe went on toidentify the gods and patrons of writing.the Monkey Scribes. half-brothers to theHero Twins (Coe 1977). Coe also pub­lished other corpuses ofMaya vases thathad previously not been known: in 1975,he examined the Dumbarton Oaks collec­tion and in 1978, he wrote the catalogueto an exhibition at the Princeton Univer­sityArt Museum (Coe 19751978; see alsoCoe 1982). Lords ojthe Underworld.

The exhibition, Lords of the Underworld:Masterpieces of Maya Ceramics, also in­troduced a new technology to the study ofMaya vases: the rollout camera. The

Figure 2

Dumbarton Oaks corpus had been rolledout in life-size color drawings. but in theyear ofits publication, 1975, Justin Kerrbegan to use his rollout camera. a ma­chine he first hypothesized constructingin 1971. In 1975 he made his first suc­cessful rollout photographs with the camerahe designed and buUt. some of whichwere published in "Lords." Although thediagram (Figure 2) suggests a simple ma­chine, the principle has only used been byothers twice. once by the National Geo­graphic Society. (see, for example, Stuart1975; Stuart and Stuart 1977. endpa­pers) and once in Europe. for Lin Crocker(BeIjonneau et al 1985).7 Kerr rolloutshave been made for many subsequentvolumes (Coe 1982; Robicsek and Hales1981, 1982; Schele and Miller 1986;Parsons et al 1988) and widely repro-

7. Others may havebeendeuisedforphotograph­ing Greek vases. 11le British Musewn. for ex­ample, was able to rollout the Fenton Vase (Kerr#2894 J, perhaps with a camera invented forother works.

duced in others. In general. the rolloutcamera has made the draftsman's rolloutobsolete. but Hellmuth. for example. hascontinued to commission drawings ofMayapots (Hellmuth 1976; Clarkson 1978).and some archaeologists continue to havedrawings made of the vessels they exca­vate.

In the 1960s. archaeologists returned tothe excavation ofmajor ceremonial archi­tecture at Tikal and Altar de Sacrificios.and a new archaeological corpus ofMayavases began to be assembled ryv. Coe1967; Coggins 1975;Adams 1971.1977).Clemency Coggins successfully con­structed a narrative of the Classic kingsat Tikal that was based on art. archaeol­ogy. epigraphy. and whole tomb lots.including many pots. In the 1960s and1970s. David Pendergast and NormanHammond. among others, recovered Mayapots from Altun Ha. Nohmul, and othersites (pendergast 1979.1982; Hammond1985). Susannah Ekholm recovered anenormous garbage dump or ceremonialcache filled with broken pots and figu­rines at Lagartero. Chiapas. in the late1970s (Ekholm 1979). In the 1980s. theGuatemalan government directed exten­sive excavations at both TIkal and Uaxac­tun (see. for example, the Mundo Perdido

material in Clancy et. al. 1985). RE.W.Adams has also directed excavations atRio Azul (Adams 1986). Diane and ArlenChase have recovered fine pots in thePeten. at Santa Rita. and now. at Caracol(A. Chase 1985; Chase and Chase1987).Under the successive direction ofGordonR Willey. Claude Baudez. William T.Sanders, and nowWilliam L. Fash. Copanhas been the site ofrenewed archaeologi­cal investigation. Finely painted Mayavases have been recovered and studiedfrom all these and yet othersites (Rice andSharer 1987). Independent ceramic se­quences. based in large part on the Holmuland Uaxactun findings. have been de­vised for these two sites. and some newterminology offered. although in general.most depend on the chronologies andtypologies established by Vaillant andRE. Smith.

Alongwith many ofthe pots with archaeo­logical context, a single archaeologicallyexcavated pot (Figure 3) has been singledout as one ofthe greatest masterpieces ofMaya vase painting. It is the "Altar" Vase(Adams 1977; Schele 1988). which wasfound in a minor burial associated with amajor tomb at Altar de Sacriflcios. Per­haps no other single Maya vase has beenthe subject of such disputed interpreta-

THE MAYA VASE BOOK

tions. Adams first read the texts on theAltar Vase in 1971 as identifying the per­son in the tomb and the attendants atfunerary rites. Following a placement of

Figure 3

the calendar round date on the pot. he de­termined that one of the protagonistsmight be Bird Jaguar the Great ofYaxchi­lan, whose glyph he believed he had iden­tified. and whose emblem glyph surelydoes appear on the pot. As art historiansand some anthropologists began to re­think the implications of the scenes andtexts on painted pots in general. includ­ing the unprovenienced corpus. manyar­chaeologists dogmatically supported theAdams interpretation of the Altar Vase(Hammond 1982; Morley and Sharer 1983),even going so far as to redraw and repoSi­tion the glyphs to make the argument

139

THE MAYA VASE BOOK

more believable (rover ofHenderson 1981).For many archaeologists, a line againstlooted pots had to be drawn. and byfollowing the Adams interpretation. theypositioned themselves on the side of theline with those who did not use such pots,regardless ofthe correctness or incorrect­ness of the reading of the glyphs.

The great boom in the number of Mayavases excavated both legally and illegallyhas led to a need on the partofall scholarsfor systematic documentation of the cor­pus. In 1970, Nicholas Hellmuth began tophotograph all Mayavases in Guatemala.manyofwWchsub~uentlyappearedon

the art market. He sold copies or partialcopies of Ws archive to the University ofTexas at San Antonio (cf. guirarte 1979).Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.• andthe Metropolitan Museum of Art. amongothers. He has continued to build Wsarchive and has slowly begun to publishit (1987, 1988). Justin and Barbara Kerrhave kept a record of every Maya vasethey have rolled out, and in tWs volumethey have now begun to publish the cor­pus in the order in which this photo­graphic record has been made.

One of the problems of an expanded cor­pus. particularly one without archaeo-

140

logical provenience. is the identification offakes. Maya pots have been forged formany years. Even a vessel in the Gordonand Mason corpus appears to be fake(plate LVII), and many others have beenpublished over the years (Dwyer and Dwyer1975, Plates 25 and 26; Von Winning1978; Clancy et. al. 1985, Plates 77).Increasingly skillful forgers have becomeadept at copying real Maya pots, but it isusuallyjustsuch copying that gives awaytheir art. Forgers are less likely to drawaccurate glyphic texts. Perhaps an evengreater problem is over-restoration (Tay­lor 1982). in wWch a perfectly authenticpot is heavily repainted. Maya Wero­glyphs are the least likely part of thepainting to be retouched. but even archae­ologically excavated pots are not immuneto repaint (e.g. Clancy et. aI. 1985: Plate95). The Kerr corpus frequently includesrollout photographs of Maya vases invarious states of restoration. but to avoidgreat repetition. only one version of agiven Maya pot will be published.

In 1978, with support from BrookhavenNational Laboratoryand the SmithsonianInstitution. Ronald Bishop, Dorte Reents,and others began to study the ceramicwares of both provenienced and unprov­enienced pots. in the hopes of discover­ing. through analysis of trace elements,

their origins (Bishop et. aI. 1982; Bishopet. al. 1985). Although it may be manyyears before large-scale results are known,the study promises greater knowledge ofunprovenienced wares and. with theprovenienced pots, an understanding ofMaya trading patterns.

Meanwhile. the corpus has continued toexpand (Tate 1985; Couch 1988; BeIjon­neau et. al.1985; Schele and Miller 1986;Clancyet. aI. 1985; Parsons et. aI. 1988).Battle lines continue to be drawn aboutthe legitimacyofstudyingone potand notanother (e.g. Klein 1988; Schele and Miller1988). Princeton University Press hasjust issued a volume that focuses on thestudy of Maya vases and their iconogra­phy, and yet more cWlling revelationsabout the Maya will probably be forth­coming (Benson and Griffin 1988). Pri­vate collections age and become part ofthe public domain (e.g. Coe 1982; Couch1988). Ongoing archaeological projectscontinue to yield new works. Throughcareful examination of the corpus, schol­ars are now beginning to recognize indi­vidual hands within schools of painting(Kerr and Kerr 1988; Schele and Miller1986). The Kerrs have identified threepainters. the Princeton Painter. the Met­ropolitan Painter. and the Fantastic Painter,

who all work in "codex" style, and theyfirst recognJzed the Master of the PinkGlyphs, although they now believe thatthe Pink Glyph pots may be the work ofseveral painters in the same workshop. In1975, Clemency Coggins noted that thepots ofTikal Burial 116 had allbeen madeby the same individual, but that eachvessel had then been painted by a differ­ent person (Coggins 1975). Much otherwork can now be done on the styles andhands ofMaya painted ceramics, particu­larlyas the published corpus grows.

Some ofthe most promisingreseareh nowundeIWay on Maya pots regards theirhieroglyphic texts. In the 19th century,Stephens, DieseldorfI, Forstemann, andothers recognized that an understandingof Maya vases and their imagery wouldcome in tandem with the decipherment oftheir glyphic texts. In 1979, Peter Mathewsidentified the phrase "u tup," or, his ear­spool (Mathews 1979) on an Altun Haflare. With this "name-tagging" as a model,Stephen Houston and Karl Taube haverecently shown that many Maya platetexts, at the end of the Primary StandardSequence, read "u lak," or, his plate,followed by the name and titles of theruler (Houston and Taube 1987). DavidStuart has now gone on to identiJY the

glyph for cylindervase, and he has shownconvincingly that many pot rim texts,including part of the Primary StandardSequence, read something to the effect of:"Here it is written, on this vase, used forcacao; his writing, So and So, the Scribe,his title, of this place"(Stuart 1988). Whatis particularly exciting about this deci­phermentis that it reveals the use and pa­tronage ofthe vessel. Stuart has also readthe glyphs identifying both painter andcarver of painted and carved Maya vases(1987). For the first time, we now knowthe names ofMaya scribes and artists. Itis perhaps in these recent glyphic studiesthat the greatest breakthroughs in thestudies of Maya vases are being made,and it is perhaps through such glyphicstudies that art historians and archaeolo­gists may find some common ground.

George Kubler suggested additional ave­nues of inquhy. Michael Coe, George Stuart,Ed Kamens, and Justin and Barbara Kerrall read early drafts of this essay and gaveme thoughtful advice.

THE MAYA VASE BOOK

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