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

Abstract

The Memory of Bones is a masterfully written analysis of classic Maya culture, using the human body as both object and method. While many scholars have previously touched upon this topic, Houston, Stuart, and Taube pull together some first-rate research and intriguing methodological and theoretical discussions. These three scholars, all prominent Mayanists, argue that the body centers classic Maya experiences, emotions, and thoughts. The Maya used the body and its representations to understand hierarchy, time, space, gender, and sexuality. The authors use a diverse array of sources, basing much of the book on epigraphy and archaeology, but including ethnohistorical and linguistic analysis. Each chapter begins with relevant Maya terminology and evidence from colonial and postcolonial Maya (and often Nahua) societies. In some chapters, the authors supplement this with theoretical discussion (although this theory often is not incorporated sufficiently into the analysis of the material). Then they present the classic evidence, using pottery, monuments, and classic-era manuscripts. The authors provide significant evidence to support their conclusions and, as a whole, their methodology is sound.The book shows that the classic Maya body did not begin and end with what we often think of as the body, that is, the physiological body. Rather, the body had a variety of properties that extended, not metaphorically, but physically, into all other realms. The body took on what we might consider supernatural properties, as one could detect the presence of the gods and ancestors in the body of the dancer just as one could find the bodily presence of the individual in his or her image. That image, in other words, contained the smell, sight, and sound of the individual. These counterintuitive notions — some familiar to Mayanists, others quite new or radical interpretations — show the importance of this book: the authors reenvision and revise the human body.The strongest chapters focus on portraits, ingestion, senses, and performance. The most controversial argument the authors present is that the perspective of the male gaze organized Maya culture. The authors provide significant evidence to assert the masculine orientation of Maya cultural production by showing, in contrast to much historiography, that the Maya did not present a feminine or third-gender worldview. The monuments and documents, created overwhelmingly by men, present a highly masculinist orientation. The authors also spend much time discussing the relationship between body and self, and the limits of bodily boundaries. Unsurprisingly, the classic Maya used the body as a building block for units of time and space. They viewed the image of the body as imbued with many of the attributes of the self. While others have previously made this point, the authors bring together all of the evidence for this phenomenon in a truly impressive manner. In another key conclusion, the authors show that the Maya trans formed the body through dance, music, and masking. Here the body moves into what I would call, following Victor Turner, a liminal space: through performance, and within the bodies of the performers, the gods, animals, and the past perform in the dance; they come to humanity and the present.The chapters on emotions and dishonor present some methodological problems for the authors. Neither emotion nor sexual honor is particularly well understood based on classic Maya texts. Colonial sources present much discussion of these topics, but that is because of great clerical interest and bias. Thus the authors do not have sufficient evidence to back up their argument that “homoeroticism . . . came into strong view in the captive’s need to submit sexually, pathetically, to the victor, who appeared, by Maya representations, to have disdained the body thus offered” (p. 278). While their evidence supports the point that men feminized and degraded through defeat in battle also were feminized and degraded through sexual encounters (perhaps anally raped, but this is unclear), we do not see much evidence that such a captive was seen as “pathetic” or his body “disdained.” In fact, the evidence shows that the captors may have seen the captive’s body as beautiful and desirable (p. 218). Further, the authors note that there existed an empathic identification between captor and captive. However, the authors’ central point is that the captive lost control of his body, and the evidence clearly supports this conclusion.The Memory of Bones shows that the Maya found bodily control desirable and, much like the Nahuas, found moderation important. In other words, expressiveness and emotion were the stuff of commoners, while both the nobles above them and the captives below them had to be controlled. The nobles, of course, engaged in close internal supervision, whereas captives were controlled by their captors.This book is an excellent contribution and will provide specialists and nonspecialists with a good read and an important analysis.