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Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology & the Ancient World
Brown University
Box 1837 / 60 George Street
Providence, RI 02912
Telephone: (401) 863-3188
Fax: (401) 863-9423
[email protected]
Virgins, Ping-Pong Balls, Polygons: The Graphic Representation of the Ancient Maya
Stephen Houston, Brown University
To date there has been little to no consideration of how scholars, artists, architects, and the public see and reproduce the ancient Maya of Mexico and Central America through fixed and fluid imagery. This paper examines several dimensions of such evolving practices, including the reductive depiction of objects, buildings, and archaeological deposits, the population of images with human narrative, and reconstructions and consolidations that create telegenic images for tourists. These images conform to overt models of "acceptable" professional practice yet often derive from unconscious decisions by previous generations: what is seen replicates that which others have seen, in a regress of vision that needs correction and reworking.