Maya Textiles are other Mayan clothing and textile art, indigenous peoples of the YucatÃÆ'¡n Peninsula in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Belize. Women have traditionally created textiles in Maya society, and textiles are a significant form of art and beliefs of the ancient Maya religion. They are regarded as a prestige that will distinguish the common man from the elite. According to Brumfiel, some of the earliest weavers found in Mesoamerica can date back to about 1000-800 B.C.E.
Video Maya textiles
Materials
Ancient Mayan women have two types of natural cotton that can be used, one white and one light brown, called cuyuscate , both commonly dyed. Preparation of cotton for spinning is very burdensome, because it must be washed and cleaned from the seed. The cotton is usually associated with the elite.
Elite women are also given the opportunity to work with the most expensive feathers and pearl beads. However, elite women not only have to prepare the best clothes for their families, but they also have to be talented in weaving rugs, brocade, embroidery, and tie-dyeing for tribute to families and other rulers. Weavers have three different natural dyes to use. Women also work with maguey. This fiber is, "another material that is usually spun, and depending on the species used and the number of production steps, it can produce human hair and stuffed animals (rabbits and dogs), feathers, and vegetable fibers such as milkweed and chichicastle , a native fibrous originating from Southern MÃÆ'Ã… © xico, also known as mala mujer. Maguey is the primary value as a binder used for horse equipment, nets, hammocks and bags.
Until the nineteenth century, the most dyed yarn was naturally dipped but nowadays, Guatemalan weavers prefer and heavily reliant on "commercial threads and hand sewn with mollusk dyes." As Brumfiel points out, the use of these more readily available materials "reduces the time required for fabric production by two-thirds to three quarters..., making it possible for weavers to devote more time to the actual weaving process" when using backstrap loom. Instead of focusing most of their time on creating dye and coloring cotton or maguey now, molluscan dyes or acrylic screw threads speed up the whole process. Another reason to use chemically dyed yarn is because, "the colors are brighter and do not wear off because wear and tear and sun exposure is as easy as natural-colored threads."
Maps Maya textiles
Process
In textile fabrics, the first step is to prepare the fiber, which can come from plants, such as cotton or maguey, or animals, such as wool from sheep. In Mesoamerica, only plant fibers are available before European contact. The loose fibers are spun into yarn by hand, with spindles, tools such as long rods to hold the thread, and circular, a load held on the spindle to increase its movement. There are two types of looms used for weaving, "foot looms and ropes, the latter almost always used by women, who attach the looms to the tree or post and fix the other ends behind it.For this reason, the width of the textiles is limited by what can be managed by certain women. "Until fairly recent times, foot looms are operated mostly by men, but these practices change. The circuit is made of cotton, although silk is often intertwined with cotton in textiles intended for ceremonial use.
In the pre-Columbus era, Maya women exclusively weave with a backstrap loom, which uses sticks and straps worn on one's waist to create tension. As Mahler wrote:
The backstrap loom, used before European contact and still used by some weavers today, can not even exist by itself without the support of a comfortable upright at one end and the weaver's body at the other. The weaver controls the tension in the direction in which it moves its body, and opens and closes the shed where the weft threads are inserted by lifting the hedges, placing and rotating the wooden horns, and using other handheld devices required... 'The loom itself seems to be a simple tool. When the fabric is finished, there is nothing left of the loom except the pile of sticks, but the study of this technology argues that it's really a 'complicated device, more responsive to the weaver's creative impulse than the modern pedal loom'... introduced to the region by Spanish.
After European contact, the loom tread was introduced, although the backstrap looms continued to be popular. There should be specific body disciplines, such as silence, balance and kneeling for a long time, to use a backstrap loom properly which will ultimately determine, "the right physical fit for a woman." Bone taking is used before contact and is unique as they have different designs for most families and are usually passed down from generation to generation with the most expensive and beautiful elite.
Traditional pre-contact clothing
In Mayan civilization, men's clothing is a cotton cloth wrapped around his waist and sometimes a sleeveless, white or dyed shirt in color. In traditional twentieth-century men's clothing is characterized by several articles that are specific to several towns, these include: saco (wool jacket) or capixaij (tunic), pantalones (trousers), camisa (shirt), belt or banda (sash), and rodillera (wool hip cloth ).
A woman usually wears a traje , which combines huipil and corte , a woven wrap skirt reaching her ankle. The traje is held with faja or a sling worn at the waist. Both women and men wear sandals.
When the weather is moderate, Mayan clothing takes less as protection from the elements and more for personal jewelry. Maya clerics and other officials wear elaborate clothes with jewelry.
Maya peasants wear minimalist clothing. The men dressed in plain robes or a piece of cloth wrapped around their waist. Some wearing mokasin made from deerhide. Women have two pieces of clothing: length of decorative material with holes made for arms and heads, known as cub . Both sexes are heavier in rugs, as manta, which serve as overwraps on cold days, and as night blankets. Manta also functions as a blind man across the door.
Huipil
The most prominent and influential aspect of women's clothing in antiquity is huipil , which still stands out in Guatemalan and Guatemalan culture today. The huipil is a loose rectangular garment with a hole in the middle for a head made of thin cotton. The huipil is usually white with colorful cross-stripping and zigzag designs woven into fabrics using brocade techniques still commonly used today. The huipil can be worn loosely or tucked into a skirt; this depends on various lengths huipil . Huipils is often used to display a person's religion and/or community affiliation. Different societies tend to have different designs, colors, and lengths and certain huipils for ceremonial purposes. It is unusual and often embarrassing to wear huipil designs from other communities in one's village; though, it is a sign of respect for wearing the community huipil when visiting other villages. Textiles produced by weavers in Maya communities tend to have unique recognizable features that are unique to the community; however, weavers are not limited in their creativity. Instead of community design serves as an outline for what women should have, and then in community design, weavers can apply personal details to make the product individual. One common theme is to express kudos to the various kiuggkes animals around the collars.
Haircut
Hair sashes are often the only piece of traditional clothing that is still woven locally by women with backstrap looms. Each ethnic group not only has their own way of using an interconnected haircut or twisted their long hair, but the colors, motifs, widths, and how to prepare the loom and incorporate geometric and figurative designs into the fabric are different. An elaborate hair band is woven with a finer thread with a more elaborate drawing worn on special occasions.
Ideological aspects
Classic Maya outfits display their full range in the context of religious performance. The gods themselves and their human imitators are identified with their clothes. A good example of this is the Tonsured Corn God, who wears a short, entangled skirt made up of green jade beads and a belt composed of large spondylus shells covering the waist, and repeatedly imitated by kings and queens.
Legislative Protection
In 2011, Efrain Asij, President of the Guatemalan Cultural Commission, proposed legislative changes that supported the protection of textiles produced by indigenous peoples. He praised the economic value of textiles for women from this Maya community, as well as the cultural heritage represented in this design. Asij stated that the traditional wicker designs of Mayans are in danger of losing their cultural values ​​and economic value due to the hijacking and production of counterfeit Mayan clothing. He called for the creation of a school designed to create the next generation of Guatemalan weavers, to ensure that this ancient and sacred art continues to be respected. He also proposed that research be done that would track the sale of Mayan clothing, specifically to discover the problems of their design exploitation and how this design on sale. Asij also proposed that Mayans be allowed to import their factory equipment tax-free. The Mayans can also buy ads, and export their textiles from duty-free Guatemala as well. All Guatemalan Government departments are expected to promote and participate in the protection of traditional Maya textile production.
In 2016, legislative changes are presented to the Guatemalan national government by the Mayan Weavers National Movement, a coalition of weavers from all over Guatemala. 30 Weaving Cooperatives from 18 linguistic communities in Guatemala support the movement led by the Association of Women for the Development of Sacatepequez, known in the Spanish acronym as AFEDES. They argue that companies have exploited their culture by mass-producing their designs that ultimately degrade and lower their sanctity, and they are calling for revamped legislative protection that gives each Mayan community collective collective ownership of their traditional designs.
Textiles Today
In today's Maya textiles, much has changed in the areas of design, engineering, and materials. Kaqchikel and K'iche 'are two distinct ethnic-linguistic groups that still have strong weaving traditions. According to Schevill, "fieldwork reveals that many of the design decisions that a weaver should make in garment are spontaneous, often the only conscious decision made before starting the weaving process is the color selection for the background fabric." Patterns will signify certain ethnic groups and social status but now days the patterns are less stringent and more creativity is filled. For other groups, "local tradition determines at least the overall composition of the garment.Although the deviation from these aesthetic norms is not strictly prohibited, it makes the weavers open to mocking or gossiping.
Apart from more freehand designs, new materials are introduced into textiles. For example, textiles are now, "including the use of imported rickracks, ribbons, metallic threads, multitudinous embroidery threads, and velvet fabrics on hand-sewn clothing, all of which can be seen as inventive games of indigenous artists."
Maya women, textile weavers, are the ones who, for the most part, stick to tradition and wear trajes . The Mayans have rejected the use of their traditional clothing mainly because they want to avoid temporary ladino harassment, "the women... continue to wear traditional clothing styles to symbolize their work and cultivate the next generation and thus preserve the Maya culture.
See also
- Oaxaca Textiles
Note
References
- Brumfiel, Elizabeth M. "Cloth, Gender, Continuity, and Change: Composing Unity in Anthropology." American anthropologist, New Series, 108, no. 4 (2006): 862-77.
- Greene, David B. "Imagining the Community in Guatemalan Art: Weaving, Folk Tales, Marimba Performance, Contemporary Painting." Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2010. eBook Collection (EBSCOhost).
- Hearne, Pamela. "The Silent Language of Guatemalan Textiles." Archeology 38, no. 4 (1985): 54-57.
- Mahler, Joy. "Garments and textiles from the Maya Lowlands." Archeology Of Southern Mesoamerica 2, (n.d.): 581. Anthropology Plus, EBSCOhost.
- Martin, Simon et al. Courtly of the Ancient Maya , London: Thames and Hudson, (2004): 16-198.
- O'Neale, Lila M. Textile from Highland Guatemala . Washington D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington, (1945): 7-27.
- Schevill, Margot B. Maya Textiles of Guatemala. Austin: University of Texas Press, (1993): 8-60.
- Schevill, Margot Blum., Janet Catherine. Berlo, and Edward Bridgman. Dwyer. The Mesoamerican and Andean Textile Traditions: an anthology . Austin: University of Texas Press, (1996).
- Ann Stalcup (1999). Mayan Weaving: A Living Tradition . Craft of the world (illustrations ed.). Rosen Publishing Group. p.Ã, 9. ISBNÃ, 0823953319 . Retrieved May 17, 2014 .
External links
- Pitzer Collection from Mayan Textiles, Natural History Museum of Sam Noble Oklahoma
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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