By Claire Luo
Mary Miller, Director of the Getty Research Institute, spoke about Maya figurines in a virtual talk hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s History of Art and Architecture department.
Their nuances have been glossed over and misinterpreted for centuries, but Getty Research Institute director Mary Miller contends that the puzzling characteristics of 8th-century figurines from the Yucatan island of Jaina display traces of slavery in ancient Maya culture.
“Jaina, today, really looks like the surface of the moon because of 150 plus years of looting,” Miller told an audience virtually attending a recent lecture hosted by UC Santa Barbara’s History of Art and Architecture department.
A man-made island built up with clay, Jaina is separated from the mainland of modern-day Mexico by impenetrable mangrove swamps.
Fortunately, thousands of artifacts over 1200 years old have survived. In fact, the lifelike figures appear to be alive and well.
A sculpture of a figurine man excavated from the Yucatan island of Jaina.
“His whole body seems to be part of the inhale and exhale,” said Miller of a sculpture depicting a man with outstretched arms. “We feel the very presence of human touch in both the making of the object and the human touch embodied by the object.”
Miller noticed a trend and is advancing a new theory about adornments around the necks of women. Many wear ropes that Miller says have often been mislabeled as braids around the neck. She says what has previously been interpreted as a decorative necklace may in fact be the marking of a slave.
And ropes are not the only markings these sculptures bear. “Many of these women have these very beautiful scarifications on the face,” said Miller, who speculates that these patterns signify women who sing or perform. “Our first reaction in the 21st century might not be that it’s beautiful, but I think it probably is.”
A sculpture of a woman with a rope around her neck. Such ropes have been mislabeled as decorative necklaces but may have pointed to slavery.
These well-preserved relics make it easier for researchers like Miller to visualize what Maya life must have looked and sounded like. Drawing the UCSB audience’s attention to a figurine of a man and woman, she explained the power relationship between the couple.
“Although it might be desirable to think of these as the early, ill-matched lovers of the modern world, it may very well be that this is the slave master in some way,” Miller said.
In many of these figurine pairs, the presumed slave master is portrayed as old, toothless, and helpless.
“He chucks a chin or squeezes a breast, but he is represented as lifeless and truly, in many ways, pathetic,” said Miller. She admitted she can’t answer why the makers of the figurines would choose to ridicule the slave master in their art. Every new discovery raises more questions about the civilization of the Maya, she said.
“Unfortunately, they don’t speak to us. We have to figure out what these figurines are trying to say.”
A sculpture of a presumed slave master and slave woman, often portrayed as a conjoined pair.
More clues about how the Maya practiced slavery can be found in a clay face adorned with what Miller suspects to be the Maya equivalent of a Glasgow smile, a mutilation tactic in which the victim’s face is sliced from ear to ear. Alongside the disfigured woman is the striking image of a man with a human jawbone carved into his face. This, she believes, is yet another sign of human trafficking centuries ago.
“It is almost as though there is some preview of the death to come, the living death inside these figures,” said Miller. “If you can stop a woman from speaking by this act, if you can mark a man so that he seems to be the living death —the kind of power this shows of one human over another.”
Seeing these disfigurations carved into clay is unsettling, she said, but such details give historians and anthropologists a fascinating window into a dark side of Maya society that has rarely been scrutinized.
“I think a lot of these women are manifestations of some kind of pre-Hispanic Maya slave trade of the 8th-century for which we have had no evidence. And because the figurines are beautiful, no one has wanted to see that ugliness in the practice,” Miller said.
This sculpture shows a dotted imprint around the mouth, suggesting that this female depicted by the figurine would have been a singer.
A Mayan warrior with something akin to a “Glasgow” smile, a mutilation tactic in which the victim’s face is sliced from ear to ear.
A man with a human jawbone carved into his face. Getty Research Institute director Mary Miller believes this is another sign of human trafficking centuries ago.
Claire Luo is a third year UC Santa Barbara student majoring in Communication. She wrote this article for her Writing Program class Journalism for Web and Social Media.