[1] Called an architrave, the lintel is a structural element that is usually rested on stone pillars or stacked stone columns, over a portal or entranceway. Which is the guerillas not only had this commendable ethos of protecting ruins, they were committed to an ideological perspective about patrimony in the country; but really for a practical reason, they did not want looters padding through the forest in ways that might potentially report on the location of guerilla combatants, and then pass on that information to the military. It took place because this area, which had been almost unimaginably remote until the sixties, suddenly experienced an influx of people coming from other parts of Guatemala; individuals and families being forced out of land by oligarchs or by a land grab by a few very wealthy people up in the highlands of Guatemala. But tell us who Dana and Ginger Lamb were and why they feature so prominently in your book. Some of the most impressive Maya buildings and sculptures were created during this late-Classic period before the city-state collapsed in the 9th century. Itzamnaaj Bahlams remains lay not far, in Room 3. And this may, in turn, account for the kind of micro kingdoms or the political fragmentation that are illustrated or exemplified by the carving weve been looking at. To log in and use all the features of Khan Academy, please enable JavaScript in your browser. Chakalte' Guatemalan or Mexican. Not necessarily of royal commissions, but ones that are undertaken by local nobility. CUNO: Now, thats extremely interesting. For the ancient Maya, jade objects embodied the color blue-green (the spectrum of blues and green was referred to as one word, yax, in the Classic Mayan language), which symbolized new growth, water, and primordial places and beings. And we have made, I think, a persuasive argument that the four lintels came from two separate buildings. Now, he, in this volume, decided to go look for primitive nativesthats very much in quotation marksin rawest jungle. For the AP exam, is it important to know where everything is located in present time? Its like the Appalachia, you might say, the Maya region. In worldwide architecture of different eras and many cultures, a lintel has been an element of post and lintel construction. The glyphs spell out her name. In Lintel 24, he is depicted holding a torch above his first wife, Lady Xoc. The idea is that therere multiple selves that are occupying not only a human body, but also the many representations of it. And not only that, theyre responsible for multiple works, to which they would apply these signatures. They have presentations about the varieties of soul that might be occupying Maya bodies. Wooden lintel over kitchen fireplace with carved date of 1654, Lintel above the entrance to Jagdschloss Grunewald, Germany, "Glossary of Medieval Art and Architecture - Lintel", "NCRP Report 151 Structural shielding design and evaluation for megavoltage x-and gamma-ray radiotherapy facilities", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lintel&oldid=1116905316, This page was last edited on 18 October 2022, at 23:23. Bricker, "Advances in Maya epigraphy,", J. Marcus, "The Iconography of Power Among the Classic Maya,", Posted 8 years ago. But as we discovered, the book is full of almost laughable fabulations. And this is a courtly society; its focused on ancient kings, their courtiers, their immediate families. And this is a process that really, really intensified in the sixties and seventies, and even beyond. CUNO: Now, tell us about the stone itself. He ascended to power in AD 681 and died in AD 742. This sacrifice mirrored the Maya story of creation, when the gods let their blood to create the human race. Lintel 24 is the designation given by modern archaeologists to an ancient Maya limestone sculpture from Yaxchilan, in modern Chiapas, Mexico. He clearly needed local help to get to this place where the lintels were found. The building itself is narrow, only one vault deep, so it was not intended to hold many people. And so to some extent, each one of those language groups and the ethnic groups they represent have had their own varied history of research. And the buildings themselves are doubtless going to contain some remains of pieces left behind by the looters. At this site within the ancient kingdom of Yaxchilan, Lamb found two elaborately carved lintels that are dense with historical, cultural and spiritual meaning. The text on the left of the panel contains the name and titles of Lady K'ab'al Xook. Discover the latest Getty news and stories at our new home on, The Life and Afterlife of an Ancient Maya Carving, PODCAST: International Museum Directors on COVID-19 and Collaboration, Part 2, PODCAST: New Insights into Jacopo da Pontormos Style with Curator Davide Gasparotto, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Figure emerges from the mouth of a vision serpent (detail), Lintel 25, Structure 23, Yaxchiln (Maya) (The British Museum). The colossal statue of Constantine the Great departs completely from statues of earlier Roman Bloodletting was a common practice in Maya life from the Late Preclassic period (400 B.C.E.- 250 C.E.) Rulers needed to shed blood in order to maintain order in the cosmos. The lintels show the elaborate costumes of the king and queen with remarkable detail and an uncharacteristic lack of abstraction. And because of documents that Lamb left behind, we have a great deal of information about what Lamb did when he got to this place. Lintel 24 was found in its original context alongside Lintels 25 and 26 in Structure 23 of Yaxchilan. All rights reserved. Lintels 24, 25 and 26, set above the three doorways of Structure 23, depict a series of rituals performed by Shield Jaguar II and his wife. Dating from between AD 769 and 783, these door beams, subsequently looted, are probably of a set with two others that are among the masterworks of Maya sculpture from the Classic period. tabiiy yuxul mo chaak aj hixiil? And they were then combined with a clay called palygorskite, which is found in only a few locations. What event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel showing the Maya ruler Shield Jaguar and. The identity of this figure is debated; some scholars claim it is an ancestral figure while other believe it is Shield Jaguar II or perhaps even Lady Xook. There are flower tassels on the main part of the head band and a mosaic depiction of Tlaloc sprouting quetzal feathers. When used as verbs, elaborate means to . "Her image at the penance, the cut lady, Ix Kabal Xoc, female autocrat. During the Classic Period (ca. 2 : to become elaborate (see elaborate entry 1) transitive verb. This architectural system and building method has been co. RM DYEKET - Lintel from Yaxchilan 690 A.D. The term iconic refers to something that has become famous and has widely recognizable. But the sculptures are always being modulated, to some extent, and I think deliberately so, according to the wishes of the carvers and their patrons, whenever someone walks up to them, whenever one wants to look at them. The Maya. (P) 2006 Nonesuch Records, Inc., Produced Under License From Nonesuch Records, Inc. ISRC: USNO10600825 & USNO10600824. Its a little bit sad, in that Ive actually seen correspondence from Dana and Ginger, and the letterhead has the heading of Dan and Ginger Lamb, Exploration and Motion Pictures. But there would be only one movie called Quest for the Lost City, which was released in the 1950s and went into broad distribution. The resources and tools necessarylimestone quarries, chisels, blades, and polishing stoneshave been found by archaeologists. (Late Classic period, 600-900 CE). For photos, transcripts, and other resources, visit getty.edu/podcasts and if you have a question, or an idea for an upcoming episode, write to us at podcasts@getty.edu. CUNO: Were there pots found at the same site as the lintel itself? And that tells us that its cinnabar, which is a very different kind of material, potentially poisonous, in fact, because it was mercury. The relief panel would have been installed parallel to the floor of the entrance of a temple at La Pasadita. We also know something about the work of this artist because we have monuments that span a period of about ten years or so. The charcoal for the barbecue was supplied by the park rangers. It is not very well explored, for the reason that it was very dangerous to work there for quite a long time and remains quite remote. And the lintels are features of buildings that span doorways. These lintels are considered by some to be the pinnacle of Mayan art. And he eventually produced and helped to release the Kon-Tiki movie itself in the United States. And he was well known for guiding and promoting the Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller and Buster Crabbe. What kind of stories do the reliefs tell, and do they tell different stories than the vases tell? Did it have something to do with the fact that he had another scheme afoot, a future movie in mind? In the section Lintels 25 and 26, only lintel 25 is described. In Lintel 24 and 25, Lady Xoc is seen performing blood sacrifice in one or another way. Some of it can be super soft; its almost like talc powder. As seen in this panel, Maya sculptors celebrated the human form in a naturalistic way, portraying royal individuals as they sit, stand, hold things, and interact with one another. But Dana also wanted to do a movie. The scenes are carved in high relief with carefully incised details decorating the raised surfaces. Lady Xocs burial is known as Tomb 3. And we can understand by looking at all of these carvings, which are sometimes which sometimes affix his signature, how he developed, what fascinated him, how he grafted, in this instance, a political arrangement between a king and a magnate-lord onto a pattern that really gets into complex iconography or imagery. And there are relatively reliable records that were never shared with anybody else, in the form of field notes or diaries, that tell us exactly how Lamb got to this site. On Lintel 25 (above), the effects of bloodletting are on display. Theyre living in palaces; there are populations that are going into the millions; we have intensive agriculture, trade, economic tribute. The portrait of Mao Zedong that hangs over Tiananmen has never been taken down since the day it This site is using cookies under cookie policy . Highly skilled artisans were able to simulate the look of wood, imitating the nuances of a wooden structure and the wood grain in excavating cave temples from monolithic rock. So at the moment, I have documented at least about 130 named carvers. And then other ones are highly marshal, very belligerent in their imagery. Elaborately carved lintels of sapodilla wood, some 1,000 years old, are still seen in some Mayan ruins. It suggests that everything is with respect to the Classic period. Ceremonial blades made of flint (1978.412.195) or chert served as royal scepters. The lintel has traces of Maya blue, turquoise and red pigment. CUNO: Now, and weve talked a bit about the Lambs, but what about this man named Ian Graham? Hieroglyphic Stairway #2 leads up to the building. So its part of the same world. Many of the exteriors had elaborate decorations, but it is the carved stone lintels above their doorways which have made this site famous. Is elaborate the same as explain? And a good place for that wouldve been the Chiapas rainforest of Mexico, on the border between Guatemala and Mexico. But really, what were talking about here are the lintels. These objects are often found in burials and other archaeological contexts, though other perishable materials, like the rope and the bark-paper strips seen on the lintel, are now lost. In 1950, the American explorer Dana Lamb happened upon a Maya ruin in the tropical forests of northern Guatemala. There are chocolate recipes that are specifying, to a very great degree, what people might be quaffing in some of these festivities that we know that they celebrated. What does the Justinian mosaic in the Church of San Vitale in Ravenna demonstrate? Accession rituals, for example, entailed the offering of dedicatory human sacrifices to mark the enthronement of a new ruling lord. Its simply a bogus term he made up. Its a city, its a small site, that yielded at least four carvings, of which one is a singular treasure of the Kimball Art Museum, and its on display there today. Throughout this considerable literature one encounters arguments and corrections as to which structures and doorways the various lintels, long removed from the site, originally pertained. The loss of blood and the burning of incense produced hallucinations, which were desired in certain ritual contexts to access other realms. There would be the burning of incense. Were all very busy with other projects, but its obvious that weve laid out what could potentially be a successful research program to return to this area, to excavate places like El Tunel, to recover even more of the meaning of these lintels, perhaps to find other fragments that would be left behind. The civil war tended to suppress it; it tended to stop the more brazen acts of criminality. Non-structural decorative lintel at Buddhist Banteay Srei, in Cambodia, Non-structural lintel in Buddhist cave temple at Ellora Caves, India, Door lintel in Bozen-Bolzano from 1632 with Elias Tagger's coat of arms, South Tyrol, Italy, Non-structural marriage stone lintel at 'The Hill' farm, Dunlop, East Ayrshire, Scotland, One of many 16th century door lintels in Edinburgh's Old Town, Simonsbath House, Simonsbath, Exmoor Parish, Devon. Three-dimensional wooden objects are scarcer and primarily known from dry tombs, cave contexts, or waterlogged anoxic conditions. 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what event is portrayed in the elaborately carved lintel