Funerary Masks of the Mayan Classic Period

 Maya Classic Period rule (250-900 CE) was centred on the concept of the "divine king", who acted as a mediator between mortals and the supernatural realm. Kingship was patrilineal, and power would normally pass to the eldest son. A prospective king was also expected to be a successful war leader. Maya politics was dominated by a closed system of patronage, although the exact political make-up of a kingdom varied from city-state to city-state. By the Late Classic, the aristocracy had greatly increased, resulting in the corresponding reduction in the exclusive power of the divine king. The Classic period Maya political landscape has been likened to that of Renaissance Italy or Classical Greece, with multiple city-states engaged in a complex network of alliances and enmities. The largest cities had populations numbering 50,000 to 120,000 and were linked to networks of subsidiary sites.

In 378 CE, Teotihuacan decisively intervened at Tikal and other nearby cities, deposed their rulers, and installed a new Teotihuacan-backed dynasty. Tikal's great rival was Calakmul, another powerful city in the Petén Basin. Tikal and Calakmul both developed extensive systems of allies and vassals which were used to against each other. At various points during the Classic period, one or other of these powers would gain a strategic victory over its great rival, resulting in respective periods of ascendance and decline.

Classic Maya social organization was based on the ritual authority of the ruler, rather than central control of trade and food distribution. This model of rulership was poorly structured to respond to changes, because the ruler's actions were limited by tradition to such activities as construction, ritual, and warfare. This only served to exacerbate systemic problems that may have included overpopulation with resulting severe environmental degradation and drought. By the 9th and 10th centuries, this resulted in collapse of this system of rulership. In the northern Yucatán, individual rule was replaced by a ruling council formed from elite lineages. But, in the southern Yucatán and central Petén, kingdoms declined. In western Petén and some other areas, the changes were catastrophic and resulted in the rapid depopulation of cities. One by one, cities stopped sculpting dated monuments. The last Long Count date was inscribed at Toniná in 909 CE.

Image: Funerary Mask (Jade, Shell and Grey Obsidian) Calakmul, Late Classic (660-750 CE) at the Museo de Arquitectura Maya, Baluarte de la Soledad, Campeche, Mexico courtesy of Bernard Dupont (CC BY-SA 2.0) The Maya exhibited a preference for the color green or blue-green, and used the same word for the colors blue and green. Correspondingly, they placed high value on apple-green jade, and other greenstones, associating them with the sun-god Kʼinich Ajau. 

See more Maya funerary masks on Wikimedia Commons:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Maya_funerary_masks

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Jinsha excavation continues to yield relics

"The construction site in the western suburbs of Chengdu, in Sichuan Province, looked much like any other. It all started when a bulldozer driver heard a scraping sound as his machine bit deep into the ground: he struck a collection of golden, jade and bronze objects. Workers and passersby snapped up the treasures and scurrying off. Those too late to get anything, disgruntled, report the find to the police. And that''s how, in February 2001, the world learned about the relics of a mysterious 3,000-year-old Jinsha kingdom in the mountains of southwest China.

"Jinsha culture is unique, quite different from cultures in other parts of China, but is scarcely mentioned by Chinese historians," said Zhu Zhangyi, a veteran archaeologist in Sichuan and deputy-curator of the Jinsha Museum. "The harsh geography made it difficult for outsiders to enter the kingdom and so it was able to preserve its endemic culture."

Police have been able to recover most of the relics purloined from the construction site -- about 100 items in all, but no one can confidently claim that they have recovered everything.

In the past six years, the site has yielded up about 6,000 gold, jade, bronze and stone artifacts, tens of thousands of pottery items and also hundreds of elephant tusks. Gold fever

Jinsha means ''gold sand''. True to its name, the site has proved extraordinarily rich in gold relics.

"Chinese people typically use gold as jewellery -- earrings, bracelets or necklaces -- but Jinsha people used gold for sacrificial purposes. They made gold masks, gold headware and strange, horn-shaped objects in finely worked gold," said Sun Hua, an archaeologist from Beijing University.

Two relics in particular showcase their technical prowess.

One is a round foil bearing images of the Sun and of four flying birds. The gold foil is only about 0.02 cm thick, the width of a piece of paper, 12.5 cm in diameter and 94 percent pure. Some people have speculated that the twelve lights around the Sun represent the twelve months and the four flying birds the four seasons. "It''s just speculation. No one can say for sure what the pictures really mean," Zhu said, "but we do know that the ancient kingdom worshipped the Sun and birds."

Others have said that ancient Chinese may have believed that the Sun is carried from east to west on the backs of birds. The sun and birds appear on many Jinsha relics. The piece, dubbed the Sun and the Immortal Birds, has since become a logo for Chinese cultural heritage protection.

Another important piece of gold ware is a gold mask, discovered in February 2007. The mask was probably worn by sorcerers who communicated with divine forces.

It is 19.5 cm wide, 11 cm long, 0.04 cm thick and weighs 46 grams.
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Unusual Mayan(?) burial discovered near Copan

NEW YORK. May 21. KAZINFORM - Archaeologists working in Honduras have discovered an entombed human skeleton of an elite member of the ancient Maya Empire that may help unravel some longstanding mysteries of the vanished culture.
The remains, seated in an upright position in an unusual tomb and flanked by shells, pottery, vessels, and jade adornments, suggest a surprisingly diverse culture and complex political system in the influential Maya city of Copan around A.D. 650.

Located at the western edge of modern-day Honduras near the border with Guatemala, Copan, was one of the most important Maya sites, flourishing between the fifth and ninth centuries A.D.

But until now, much about the political makeup and cultural range of the city—famous for its funerary slabs—has been poorly understood.

The position of the body, the structure of the tomb, and several unexpected artifacts suggest the interred individual was a political or priestly figure, said discoverer Allan Maca, an archaeologist at Colgate University in New York State.

The entombed individual was found with "a jade pectoral hung from a necklace of dozens of jade beads of various sizes," Maca said. Because jade was a precious commodity, he added, the jewels represent "a level of control over economic resources."

"The incised design on the pectoral likely represents a political title or social affiliation that links this individual to other major sites around the city," Maca said.

The remains belong to a 50-year-old man with various illnesses. He had poor use of his left arm, poor arterial flow through his upper spinal cord, and a chronic infection of the skull known as mastoiditis, according to a bioarchaeological analysis by Katherine Miller of Arizona State University.

Maca discovered the tomb in 2005 in the Copan Archaeological park.

But Maca—whose work was funded by the National Geographic Society's Committee for Research and Exploration—only announced his findings last week, in conjunction with officials from the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, after months of excavation.

"The tomb is characterized by a split vault created by interlocking lintels [load-bearing horizontal supports]," said Maca, who is also the director of the Project for the Planning of Ancient Copan.

"The chamber was accessed from above by a stuccoed stone chute that descends from the surface of the temple," he continued.

Maca said the features allowed the tomb to be "reentered years after the original interment, for purposes of ancestor veneration."

The tomb's location, some 1,300 feet (400 meters) west of the Acropolis, Copan's ceremonial core, was unexpected, Maca added.

"The design is without precedent in the Maya area and is the first elaborate tomb construction to be discovered outside the ceremonial center of Copan," he said.

The grandiose tombs belonging to members of the Copan dynasty, royal court, and royal family are typically found in Copan's Acropolis, Maca explained. Copan archaeologists have focused their research in the central area for many recent decades as well as much of the 19th century.

"As we begin to think more broadly about the great extent of the royal city, and about how to protect it against modern looting and population growth, we are coming to understand that the dynasty manifested its power in sectors of the Copan Valley that have never been explored," Maca said.

Oddities

There are other oddities to the tomb.

The position of the buried individual—seated with legs crossed—was not common in Copan or in the Maya lowlands during the Classic period, which lasted from about A.D. 300 to 900.

And several vessels found in the tomb, made in sets specifically for the burial, bear "a type of false or alternative hieroglyphics unlike those used by the ancient Maya," he said.

Some of the pottery vessels likely came from the south near present-day El Salvador, Maca added.

"Thus it is unlikely that these were made in Copan and probable that they signify some sort of cultural affiliation with that region," he said.

Also found in the tomb were seashells laid in a pattern that appears to represent a kind of cosmological map and may be representative of the waters in Maya creation mythology, Maca said."

I'm particularly curious about the non-Mayan "hieroglyphs" discovered in the tomb. I wonder if they resemble Mayan glyphs with differences or are truly from some other culture? Again, I wish there were pictures available!
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