Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Contact Period Of Central Peten, Guatemala In Color, Timothy W. Pugh, Leslie G. Cecil

Faculty Publications

When Bernal Díaz del Castillo passed by Nojpeten with Hernán Cortés in 1525, he remarked upon the Itza capital’s brilliant whiteness, even from a great distance (Jones 1998:69). However had he stood in the central plaza, he would have discerned that the sun’s reflection eclipsed artifacts and architecture of a variety of colors. The archaeological record is frequently similarly whitewashed by our focus upon form, weight, and distribution. Nevertheless, color helped imbue the Contact period (AD 1525-1697) world of the Maya of the Petén lakes region of Guatemala with significance. This paper investigates the colors of ritual paraphernalia encountered in …