MAYA
Stone lintel from Menché, Chiapas
(Scale: ⅛th)
Paint was much used as a body-decoration by the historical Yucatec, red being the favourite colour for women and married men; bachelors usually painted themselves black. Pottery stamps are among the remains commonly found throughout the Maya region, and no doubt some of these were used to impress designs upon the body as in Mexico. Tatu was also practised, and Landa states that the more ornamented a man was in this way, the more respect he won from his associates. The decoration was usually applied at marriage, the design being first painted on and then pricked in. Women also covered the body with tatu from the waist upwards, with the exception of the breasts. Probably the custom was of long standing, since ornament simulating tatu is often seen on the faces of the figures on the monuments. The Yucatec were fond of perfumes, and the women were in the habit of rubbing the body with a pottery brick impregnated with a sweet-smelling gum.
Fig. 61.—Man in ceremonial costume, from a stone relief in the Temple of the Cross, Palenque.
(After Maudslay)
The men of Yucatan at any rate wore no hair on their faces in Spanish times, and it is said that mothers scorched the faces of their children with hot cloths in the belief that its growth was thereby prevented. However, pottery fragments from Alta Vera Paz occasionally show faces with a heavy moustache, and certain of the gods appear on the manuscripts with beards. Bearded figures also occur on vases and among the sculptures, notably at Quirigua. The hair was usually worn long, and the priests in Guatemala had great difficulty in persuading their converts to cut it. In Yucatan a patch was burnt short on the top of the head, the rest of the hair being plaited and wound round the head with the exception of a small tail behind. The women wore it in two long plaits down the back. Head-ornaments existed in great variety and were extremely elaborate among the men; brilliant feathers were used in great profusion, and masks of animals or gods were frequently added, if we may accept the evidence of the sculptures. Clothing itself was made from textiles, and was usually assumed about the age of five or six, children under that age going nude. The principal garment worn by men was a girdle of about a hand’s breath, the ends falling down before and behind (e.g. Figs. [61] and [82]; pp. 297 and 344). These ends were ornamented by the women with embroidery or feather-work, and in the monuments they are shown furnished with the most elaborate designs, of which the most frequent is a grotesque face, often highly conventionalized, with long nose-ornaments, probably representing a water-deity. Wide, square shoulder-mantles were also worn, as well as sandals of plaited hemp or hide. The sandal-strings, again, were often highly decorative, and in the monuments the sandal itself is of so elaborate a nature that it may almost be said to be a shoe (Pl. [XXII], and Fig. [61]). The manuscripts seem to show some sort of a leg-covering also (e.g. Fig. [46, e]). Women wore a skirt, and often covered the upper portion of the body with a cloth or a tunic open at the sides; the breast-cloth was worn at Campeche and Balcalar and tunics elsewhere in Yucatan at the time of the conquest. It is possible that the ceremonial dress of the men in early times included a skirt, for it hardly seems probable that all the skirted figures in the monuments represent women. Ornaments were worn in great variety, beads of jadeite and other hard stone were strung as necklaces; masks, also of stone, were worn as breast ornaments, and shells appeared as fringes to the edges of garments. But the details of dress and ornaments can be understood better from the illustrations than from any lengthy description.
Fig. 62.—A. Turkey in a trap.