Abstract :
Painted ceramic vessels of the Late Classic Maya, depicting scenes of the royal court, provide an entry into understanding the courtly
community as an institution built on relationships and embodied through lived practice. By examining these ceramics both as
circulating objects, representing the materialized form of courtly values, and as vehicles for imagery that conveys idealized representations
of the court hierarchy and how it was enacted, archaeologists may more profoundly integrate material and iconographic investigations.
Assertions of identity and status are examined through the ways in which they are “contained” by these decorated vessels and emerge as
characterized by a series of simultaneous unifications and oppositions. A focus on bodily behaviors and interactions, and the ways in which
objects played courtly roles in their own right, yields an animated understanding of a dynamic court and a larger perspective on the
enactment of identity and difference in Classic Maya contexts.
