Women’s Voices in a Male World: Actions, Bodies, and Spaces Among the Ancient Maya

Abstract

Feminist archaeology has prompted scholars to reconsider gender roles in ancient Mesoamerica. Current research, however, tends to focus on elite women, classes and sites. Although I do not ignore the potential of these sources, in this paper I am mainly concerned with issues such as the phenomenology of bodies and spaces, subroyal ritual actions, and daily activities such as cooking and weaving. My aim is to offer an overview of the most recent studies on gender in Maya archaeology and to provide ideas for further research by emphasising the need to engender ritual and individuate female discourses in the archaeological record. KeywordsBodies, gender, Maya, sexuality, spaces IntroductionDuring the last few decades, the rise of feminist archaeology (Conkey and Gero 1997;Conkey and Spector 1984;Gero and Conkey 1991) has promoted a new sensibility toward themes such as gender, agency, sexuality and the construction of selfhood in antiquity. Studies of the role of women in ancient Mesoamerica have recently increased (e.g. Ardren 2002a; Joyce 2000a; Klein 2001). The aim of this paper is to offer an overview of research on gender in Maya archaeology and to highlight the impact that Maya studies might have on the development of gender theory. My primary concern is not for those areas usually studied by Mayanists: royal architecture, elite burials and hieroglyphic texts. On the contrary, I focus on issues such as the management of the household, the perception of the body and the way in which living spaces were conceived and exploited. My emphasis is on studies which explore how male ideology has concealed women's real position in Maya society. In particular, I note that ideological constructions of body and sexuality were primary means of male domination. I also suggest, however, that a greater focus on female activities such as food processing and weaving can provide valuable information on macro-scale social dynamics, and that further research is needed to identify symbolic and physical 'spaces' in which Maya women were allowed to raise -metaphorically -their voices. Preliminary Methodological Observations: The SourcesHill (1998), among others, notes that mere hypotheses concerning gender roles in the past have been taken for granted on the basis of ethnographic analogy. She suggests that only a "multivariate approach" based on several lines of evidence may allow archaeologists to avoid the pitfalls which emerge when a single source is employed. I argue that the exceptional richness of the Maya record offers unique opportunities to employ gender theory to investigate both women's conditions in antiquity and macro-scale phenomena such as politics and conflict. Before tackling these issues in the following sections, I offer a critical assessment of the evidence through which Maya gender dynamics are revealed. Women's Voices in a Male World: Actions, Bodies, and Spaces Among the Ancient Maya 71Ethnographic and ethnohistorical comparisons can be carefully employed to produce hypotheses subject to testing. General ethnogr...