Looking At Ceramics Again

The analysis of ceramics is nothing new to archaeologists, in fact it may be one of the oldest archaeological practices. However, how archaeologists analyze ceramics has grown by leaps and bounds. And through different methodologies and theoretical approaches new understandings of cultures have been revealed by looking at ceramics in different ways. This is part of the premise of Sarah E. Jackson’s “Imagining Courtly Communities an Exploration of Classic Maya Experiences of Status and Identity Through Painted Ceramic Vessels” (2009) Jackson has decided to look at the Maya ceramics from the Late Classic period through an interpretive archaeology view of spatial organization and identity in the noble courts.
What Jackson is trying to reveal is the dynamics in the royal courts and how identity in the royal courts may have been expressed through spatial and cultural displays. (Jackson 2009:71) Jackson’s belief is that these identifying displays would have been more apparent on ceramics because of pottery’s ability to circulate and be traded to different parts of the Maya Empire. Ceramics are also more easily made and less durable than items like stone buildings so there are more available and they show the different identity markers of different court periods better than other art forms. (Jackson 2009:71-72) The ceramics that she was analyzing were from different places around the Maya Empire but showed similar poses and spatial recognitions and themes. The main themes Jackson discusses the ceramic vessels by are Spatial Organization, Vision and Gaze, Bodily Gesture and Formalized Roles for Courtly Bodies, each showing some very similar iconographic markers with many respectful and powerful depictions of the courts and its members. (Jackson 2009:75-76)
The vessels showed many similar elements, but to fully understand what Jackson is trying to depict about the identity of different courts within and what courts depicted to other polities the theories of the interpretive archaeology must be discussed. Interpretive archaeology believes that humans create the traditions and social practices of culture as a representation of what they understand life to be. (Geertz 1973: 538) These ceramic vessels were transported with images of power, spatial deference to leaders and generally depicted how great a particular court was so that they could show what their abilities were to other polities. This is a display of social identity and reality through material culture. The vessels were used by courts so they could act “competitively and recognized themselves as exhibiting differently defined identities.”(Jackson 2009:77) This meant that the courts used the vessels as extensions of themselves, as almost ambassadors to display different aspects like economic superiority and how powerful the depicted court was to a lesser court. They defined their social identity to other polities by ceramic depictions and by how well made the ceramic depiction was.
How the vessels were eventually perceived by each Mayan community, were as a social power because of what they bring from court to court. Jackson points out that the social spaces that the court occupies are transformed into two worlds through the ceramics, both a physical world and a social-symbolic world(Jackson 2009:78.) This different look at ceramics as physical traveling social powers depicting the different power structures of individual Maya courts opens up a new understanding of inter-court relations. Looking at ceramic depictions in a different interpretive way could bring new understandings to complex social societies as Jackson did with the Mayan ceramics.

Reference
Geertz, Clifford
1988[1973] Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. Reprinted in High Points in Anthropology, 2nd edition, edited by Paul Bohannan and Mark Glazer, pp. 531-552. McGraw-Hill, New York.

Jackson, Sarah E.
2009 Imagining Courtly Communities: An Exploration of Classic Maya Experiences of Status and Identity Through Painted Ceramic Vessels. Ancient Mesoamerica 20(1) 71-85.