Preface

Houston, Stephen D.

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Preface

Stephen D. Houston

The Life Within: Classic Maya and the Matter of Permanence

I have a habit that is both unconscious and compulsive. A place does not seem real unless I touch a wall or pass my hand along the bark of a tree or feel the rough texture of stone. Then, somehow, I am there, completely in that time and place. A memory of it takes root. It turns out that matter means something to me. Another fixation is more aesthetic than cognitive. It concerns stone. Whatever the level of skill, an over-polished sculpture from the nineteenth century repels me. I can’t help it …

Author

Stephen D. Houston

PublisherYale University Press

Related print edition pages: pp.ix-xi

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00151.002

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-14174

Preface

I have a habit that is both unconscious and compulsive. A place does not seem real unless I touch a wall or pass my hand along the bark of a tree or feel the rough texture of stone. Then, somehow, I am there, completely in that time and place. A memory of it takes root. It turns out that matter means something to me. Another fixation is more aesthetic than cognitive. It concerns stone. Whatever the level of skill, an over-polished sculpture from the nineteenth century repels me. I can’t help it: viscerally, emotionally, the carving fails to appeal in any way whatsoever. Not so the surface of a Michelangelo Slave, a prismatic block by Isamu Noguchi, or a late Aztec carving, puffed out, inflating as if by some mysterious internal pressure. The contrasts of polish and texture—a perceived softness, a real hardness, a warmth that, on touch, turns out to be cold—deny yet affirm their stony nature. These things please and intrigue me. They get right at the paradoxes that make life interesting. This book extends my idiosyncrasies to yet other times and places. It asks, what did the Classic Maya of the first millennium A.D., in cities within and near the Yucatan peninsula, think of such matter(s)? Matter they could touch, shape, undo, and remake? The lasting appeal of the ancient Maya is their ceaseless ability to surprise us. These questions offer novel ways for them to take our breath away.

But there is sadness, too. Trained as an archaeologist, I have excavated ceramics by the ton, uncovered buildings, stone sculptures, held jade in my hand (cool, almost greasy to feel), washed seashell, and found remnants of wood and cloth. I have also glued sherds and patched walls. Yet, in the final analysis, decay seems always to win. Even jade will crack to flame and a hard wallop. Archaeologists seldom acknowledge the fact that we work in a gloomy business. Everywhere are reminders of futility and decline. By definition, a past civilization, like a biography, always ends badly. But here is the thing: the ancient Maya fought back with courage and panache. They took what would pass, the most ephemeral of things, and sought to make them last. This book shows how.

It looks first at Classic Maya views of the workable matter in their world, the stones, precious or not, but also woods, fabrics, fired clays, skins and pelts, gourds, bark, and paper. An exemplary book by Andrea Stone and Marc Zender, referenced in later chapters, has started this task. The second part describes how the Maya played with matter, making it, by varied means, harder, like-but-different or different-but-like, depending on one’s view or emphasis. A process that de-textured, re-textured, and transformed, it also made things more permanent. These concerns became most acute at moments of political and social turbulence, as part of what Matthew Liebmann has called an “innovative materiality.” Courtly competition also played a role. A third chapter examines the claimed vitality of matter along with the livening, literally so, of sacred speech in Maya writing. There is serious play in this, along with playful solemnity. Pleasure and fun, wit too, can coexist with a desire, addressed in the final chapter, to thwart entropy, to find renewal and shelter in hard things. There, at the core of the Maya image and text pulses an aesthetic of life and effort.

In this, the Classic Maya declare a broader truth. The play of matter, the perception and infusion of vitality—indeed, the very act of representation—reflect many functions and histories. But, in essence, they all serve to counter decay. They recognize a world that must perish yet, with cunning, and in altered and marked form, will somehow be made to survive and endure. The anxiety is that the goal will prove impossible, yet optimism promises otherwise: “doubt isn’t the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith,” said the theologian Paul Tillich, in The Dynamics of Faith. In works of skill and wonder, the Maya surrendered to hope.

This book exists because others have been kind. Above all, Brown University gave a sabbatical, with supplementary support, facilitated by then-dean Rajiv Vohra. A MacArthur Fellowship helped too, offsetting the usual worries about family expense and making ends meet. The Sterling and Frances Clark Institute awarded a residential fellowship in the peace and bibliographic richness of Williamstown, Massachusetts. Its director, the ebullient Michael Conforti, and the head of the research program, Michael Ann Holly, a new hero of mine, enriched the year no end, as did other fellows in the program: Esra Akcan, Dore Bowen, Lisa Corrin, Gao Shiming, Ivan Gaskell (with Jane), Dennis Geronimus, Charlotte Klonk, Frank Korom, Esther da Costa Meyer, Heather Hyde Minor (with Vernon), Mary Kate O’Hare (with Chris and Maya), Bruce Redford (Dennis, too), and Jenny Reynaerts—in plain fact, more than fellows, they are friends. Keith Moxey, best of people, was a thoughtful listener and reader. Ashley Lazevnick, my research assistant at the Clark, offered help throughout.

On the evidence for skeuomorphs and how best to interpret them, my thanks go to Catherine Frieman and Linda Hurcombe, who responded from across the Atlantic. Scott Ortman, too, shared his sharp work on metaphors and cross-media productions among the Ancestral Pueblo. Claudia Brittenham advised on several chapters, too, as a reader for Yale University Press, as did Andrea Stone. Their comments were most insightful and collegial. For pyroengraving in the Andes, there can be no better source than Jeffrey Quilter, who shared unpublished research. Thoughts on step-frets came from Rebecca Stone, on dating at Mitla, from Arthur Joyce and John Pohl, on Near Eastern sources, Joy McCorriston, and from Louis Burkhart on points of Nahuatl. John Baines, Laurel Bestock, and Maggie Bickford offered good information about ephemerality in Egypt and China. Guilhem Olivier reminded me of stony men in Mixtec codices. Kerry Hull gave useful input about the nature of “things” among the Maya, the Ch’orti’ in particular, as did Danny Law. Charles Golden, Andrew Scherer, and Scott Hutson advised on most chapters, to positive effect: un fuerte abrazo to such friends and colleagues. Karl Taube inspired as usual; his reading improved all chapters, as did discussion with another indispensable colleague, Dave Stuart.

Some of the thoughts were presented in different form to audiences at the University of Southern California, as facilitated by Megan O’Neil, and the Cotsen Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, through an invitation from John Papadopoulos and Gary Urton. Joanne Pillsbury, then at Dumbarton Oaks, gave a forum to develop other ideas. She has always encouraged more than she knows. Patricia Fidler, editor at Yale University Press, was most heartening too, as was Katherine Boller, also of the press, and expert copy-editor Phillip King. A timely grant from the Humanities Fund of the Vice President for Research at Brown, facilitated by my department chair, Dan Smith, helped to pay for figures. Others of great assistance with illustrations were: Daniel Aquino, Elise Auerbach, Tim Beach, Elizabeth Boone, Marcello Canuto, Nicholas Carter (who drew several, at short notice), Arlen and Diane Chase, John Clark, Arlen Colman, Jean-Pierre Courau, Jennifer Dibbern, Barbara Fash, Laura Filloy Nadal and Leonardo López Luján, Don Forsyth, David Friedel, Jessica Desany Ganong, Ken Garrett, Stacey Goodman, Liz Graham, Kelley Hays-Gilpin, Nikolai Grube, Heather Hurst, Takeshi Inomata, Bryan Just, Justin and Barbara Kerr, Jeff Kowalski, Matthew Looper, Simon Martin, Luis Alberto Martos, Rachel Menyuk, Mary Miller, Juan Antonio Murro, Scott Ortman, Carlos Pallan, David Pendergast, Alex Pezzati, Jorge Pérez de Lara, John Pohl, Robert Preucel, Michelle Rich, Karen Richter, Bill Saturno, Eric Schnittke, Tracy Schuster, George Stuart, Alex Tokovinine, Loa Traxler, Dorothy Washburn, and David Webster. Casey Mesick, my first doctoral student at Brown, now a curator at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas, gave expert and welcome assistance in preparing the manuscript. My wife, Nancy, was a treasured companion as always, at the Clark and elsewhere.

A work of scholarship is a slight gift to those we love. There is no compensation for a lifetime of care from a sister, Christina, a brother, Christopher, and the selfless person who helped to raise me, Monica Wennersten Frederick. But I offer a small thing, this book, to show what matters most of all.

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