TexasScholarWorks
    • Login
    • Submit
    View Item 
    •   Repository Home
    • UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    • Repository Home
    • UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Chocholá ceramics and the polities of northwestern Yucatán

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    MDWChocholaDiss1.pdf (8.894Mb)
    Date
    2010-05
    Author
    Werness, Maline Diane
    Share
     Facebook
     Twitter
     LinkedIn
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    Maya artists working in the northern Yucatán Peninsula c. 700-800 CE began creating a new ceramic style. Deeply carved and exhibiting complex iconography and hieroglyphic inscriptions, Chocholá ceramics have long been recognized as among the most beautiful items produced by ancient Maya craftsmen. Indeed, the Chocholá style can be associated with a number of firsts in Maya studies: the first published explorations, the first major art historical investigations of ceramics, the first attempts at ceramic seriation and the first translations of the dedicatory formula all include images of Chocholá pots. Many examples lack provenience, however, due to extensive looting and the corpus has been relegated to a shadowy corner of the Maya world as a result. With the aid of new archaeological information and advances in iconographic and epigraphic studies, I develop an interdisciplinary rubric for classifying Chocholá pieces. Additionally, I analyze vessel imagery and texts, thus deciphering ostensible meanings as well as identifying the kinds of messages elites were trying to project through ownership and exchange. As with other high-status commodities, these ceramics functioned as prestige items and facilitated regional alliances through gifting and feasting. An analysis of temporal setting illuminates the aesthetic innovation and traditionalism Chocholá patrons manipulated in order to legitimize their own standing in such contexts. My work results in a more refined picture of extended northern socio-political interaction and interconnection. I show that one extremely powerful site—Oxkintok, in the hilly Puuc region of Yucatán—produced such vessels and disseminated them south, west and northeast. In dialogue with Oxkintok's expanding sphere of political influence, stylistic variations also developed in these outlying regions. Ultimately, I use the confluence of data to reconstruct a more concrete system of intra-regional connection and interchange.
    Department
    Art History
    Description
    text
    Subject
    Maya
    Ceramics
    Chocholá
    Oxkintok
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/2152/ETD-UT-2010-05-1339
    http://hdl.handle.net/2152/21489
    Collections
    • UT Electronic Theses and Dissertations

    University of Texas at Austin Libraries
    • facebook
    • twitter
    • instagram
    • youtube
    • CONTACT US
    • MAPS & DIRECTIONS
    • JOB OPPORTUNITIES
    • UT Austin Home
    • Emergency Information
    • Site Policies
    • Web Accessibility Policy
    • Web Privacy Policy
    • Adobe Reader
    Subscribe to our NewsletterGive to the Libraries

    © The University of Texas at Austin

     

     

    Browse

    Entire RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsDate IssuedAuthorsTitlesSubjectsDepartmentsThis CollectionDate IssuedAuthorsTitlesSubjectsDepartments

    My Account

    Login

    Statistics

    View Usage Statistics

    Information

    About Contact Policies Getting Started Glossary Help FAQs

    University of Texas at Austin Libraries
    • facebook
    • twitter
    • instagram
    • youtube
    • CONTACT US
    • MAPS & DIRECTIONS
    • JOB OPPORTUNITIES
    • UT Austin Home
    • Emergency Information
    • Site Policies
    • Web Accessibility Policy
    • Web Privacy Policy
    • Adobe Reader
    Subscribe to our NewsletterGive to the Libraries

    © The University of Texas at Austin