Maya Ceramics Essay

Aside from the great temples and pyramids the Mayas also had city states spread throughout. Unlike the Aztecs in Mexico, the Maya were never a unified empire ruled by a single ruler from a single place. The Maya’s were a series of smaller city states who ruled their immediate vicinity. Each city was different in its own unique way. Although they had their differences they tended to share certain characteristics as well, such as their general layout. The Maya’s laid out their cities similarly to the Aztecs and built around a central plaza. In the center of the cities were the important public buildings such as temples, palaces and a ball court. Residential areas radiated out from the city center, growing sparser the further they got from the center. Raised stone walkways linked the residential areas with each other and the center as well. Something important to note is that these plazas were rarely neat and orderly, and this is because the Maya’s

| In the industry of hand crafted goods their pottery showed various types of patterns carved or painted onto them, even stones had fine pictures painted onto them. They usually wrote in a special ink, they had various forms of writing like hieroglyphics, and self-explanatory characters. They usually carved these onto animal bones or tortoise shells. Architecture was built into houses made of wood or carved out of the earth into rows. They listened to folk music and palace music. With their practice in bronze they made fine musical instruments, people engaged into music but they were divided into 3 sections; Wu, music slavery, and Gu.

Pottery can not only tell us about the past, but it can also tell us about people’s beliefs and what people did in the past. Pottery was used for many purposes. It was made in many different shapes and sizes. Some pieces of pottery had unique pictures and designs on them. The pictures and designs expressed different types of things that went on in the daily lives of ancient Greeks. Music and entertainment, religious beliefs, death and burial traditions are a few aspects of Greek life that are pictured on many different types of ancient Greek pottery.

The ancient Maya once occupied a vast geographic area in Central America. Their civilization inhabited an area that encompasses Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and parts of the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, as well as Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. "From the third to the ninth century, Maya civilization produced awe-inspiring temples and pyramids, highly accurate calendars, mathematics and hieroglyphics, and a complex social and political order" ("Collapse..." 1). Urban centers were important to the Maya during the Classic period; they offered the Mayans a central place to practice religion.

The Maya has a rich culture, tradition and life styles such as lifeways through costumes, rituals, diet, handicrafts, language, housing, or other features that would attract tourist. It is estimated that between 35 and 40 percent of tourism today is represented by cultural tourism or heritage tourism. However, in some places such as Roaten Island on Honduras and would use that tourism as an advantage and would create fake Maya artifacts and invent an idealized Maya past for the island.

All artists are influenced by the culture they are from. Our experiences and the environment in which we were raised shapes us, and thus the works we produce as artists. This essay will discuss, compare and contrast two artists from different cultures, and their ceramic artworks, with a focus on how their cultural background has influenced their art. The artists that will be discussed are Janet Fieldhouse, who is influenced by her Torres Strait Islander heritage and Aboriginal artist Dr. Thancoupie Gloria Fletcher.

One of the most well known figures of the twentieth century pottery world is Maria Martinez. Maria Martinez is a Pueblo Indian part of the San Ildefondo tribe. Pueblo pottery from the American Southwest holds a unique place in ceramic art forms of American art. It is full of age-old tradition and culture handed down form family members and potters of the past. The old Pueblo ways of creating it still hold true today and have not been changed or influenced like so many other styles in modern times.

After weeks of working I made a total of three pottery pieces, the one that I spent most time on is a clay pot that was made to look like an ancient greece piece of art. They used as grave markers and many other useful things. Back in ancient Greek pottery was divided into four different areas. These areas are for storage and transport vessels, mixing vessels, jugs and cups, vases for oils, perfumes and cosmetics. Many believed that Greek pottery, unlike today's pottery, was only fired once, but that firing had three stages. When firing their art pieces the kiln was heated to around 920-950 °C. They technically decorated their pieces to tell a old story or to represent something, normally people in a darker shaded color. I chose this culture

Pottery is very beneficial and advantageous to archaeologists as it is a very common and widespread product that leads us to have a greater understanding about the everyday life of the area inhabitants. “Pottery is one of the most common artefacts in ancient sites. Once broken, unlike glass and metal, it cannot be recycled. This makes it very useful to archaeologists,” said Pont. Pont made the conclusion that the red slip pottery was used by the Pompeian’s as tableware with the main purpose of serving food and drink given its characteristically glossy surface. By dipping ceramics in liquid clay and later firing it in an oxygenating kiln is how this gloss is created (Kalnins, 2004) (see figure

The Maya made small sculptures of clay and carved huge ones from stone. Some of the large sculptures stood over thirty feet high.( Voorhies 326) Early Classic stone sculpture usually features a single Maya ruler celebrating his reign.Many fine

The Classical Maya was lost to the archaeological records until the last 200 years due to it’s abandonment. When the Mayans left there great cities, thick vines and jungles overtook the great monuments they once built. But in the last 200 years, in depth research has lead to breakthroughs into what the Classic Maya was like. The earliest Mayans were agriculturalist, growing crops such as corn (maize), beans, squash and cassava. The Mayans also invented a very accurate calendar, a math code using 0’s, constructed buildings still intact today, and a writing system that took decades to decode. The Mayans were situated in one geographical block covering all of the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico), modern-day Guatemala, Belize, parts of the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas, and the western part of Honduras and El Salvador. Due to their location on the

Massive temples hidden in the jungles of the Yucatan, mysterious stone stelas, and cryptic calendars eluding to advanced knowledge of the stars and mathematics are just some of the artifacts originating from the “Classic Maya” period (200 CE-900 CE). However, these popular items should not be the only defining characteristics of a society that dominated the Mesoamerican region for nearly a millennia. Dynastic lines, similar to those found in European houses, were important elements during this period in places like Palenque, Tikal, and Calakmul. Additionally, the Maya experienced violent and consistent warfare between localized powers and the backbone of their society, agriculture, suffered through several multi-year droughts. These factors

The city states consisted of numerous citizens but these citizens were not all equal. Indeed, one characteristic of Maya society was the hierarchical nature of its social organization. This meant that, at different levels in the society, people would be treated according to their status. This difference in social treatment automatically meant that some citizens enjoyed a better standard of living with more of the amenities of life than others. It also meant that at the bottom of this graded social pyramid were the agricultural farmers and foot soldiers of the empire flourished. By virtue of being at the bottom of the social pyramid their training and skills consisted largely of the social functions that they performed. Hence, they were not literate and concerned themselves largely with issues of agriculture and the basics of following orders in warfare.

Some of the most distinct features of Classic Mayan culture were the pyramids. The pyramids were either temples or

When the northern Maya were finally integrated into the Toltec society by A.D. 1200, the Maya dynasty finally came to a close, although some smaller cities continued to thrive until the Spanish Conquest in the early sixteenth century (Ruddell).