The Maya World of Communicating Objects: Quadripartite Crosses, Trees, and Stones

by Miguel Angel Astor-Aguilera

Overview

Although anthropologists have been observing and analyzing the religious practices of Mayan people for about a hundred years, this perceptive study suggests that anthropological interpretation of those practices and of Maya cosmology has never escaped the epistemological influence of Christianity. Whereas sacred objects used in Christian rituals are treated with deifying awe, objects such as Mayan crosses can be recycled, bartered with, communicated with, manipulated, disregarded, or destroyed—the apparent equivalent of extorting or defacing a holy image of Christ or the Virgin Mary. Astor-Aguilera holds that we cannot fully understand these indigenous practices by fitting them to our European Cartesian mindset but must instead recognize and try to understand native Mayan epistemology. The binary based western concept of religion, he suggests, is not the best framework for understanding experiential Mayan cosmology or practice. Using ethnographic, archaeological, and glyphic evidence, he traces modern Mayan attitudes toward ritually charged objects and imagery back to the Classic Maya. No scholar of Mesoamerican religion, archaeology, or history can afford to overlook this long overdue approach to a widely misunderstood subject.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826347633
Publisher:	University of New Mexico Press
Publication date:	11/16/2010
Pages:	350
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Miguel Angel Astor-Aguilera is assistant professor of religious studies in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University, Tempe.

Table of Contents

Illustrations ix

Preface xiii

Acknowledgments xvii

Chapter 1 What Are Mesoamerican Religions? 1

Chapter 2 The Living Ancestors: Regeneration in Preclassic and Classic Mesoamerican Imagery 27

Chapter 3 Postclassic and Colonial Mesoamerican World Views and Mayan Communicating Objects 51

Chapter 4 Close Encounters with Maya and Roman Catholic Crosses 75

Chapter 5 Pigs for the Sun and a Mayan Communicating Stela 109

Chapter 6 Communicating Bundles and the Ancestors: Historically Traditional Maya Cosmologies 147

Chapter 7 End Discussion: Quadripartitioning and Native American Relational World Views 183

Notes 247

Glossary 273

References Cited 275

Index 325