The Adorned Body by Franco Carter

Author:Franco Carter [Carter, Nicholas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2020-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

The Shod Body

FRANCO D. ROSSI AND ALYCE DE CARTERET

Footwear is a neglected item of ancient dress, commonly worn but rarely constituting a primary topic for study. Yet footwear was as vital in antiquity as today—toes and soles need protection from hard, rocky, or muddy surfaces and ankles need some support against sprains. In this, the Classic Maya were no exception. Despite thin material evidence (few shoes or sandals survive), imagery reveals a rich variety of footwear among the pre-Columbian Maya, with examples from the most mundane (traveling footwear) to the most extravagant (quetzal-headed sandals for public ceremonies). This chapter explores Maya footwear by probing the archaeological and artistic corpus, surveying available materials and methods of manufacture, and touching on various fashions from the Preclassic through Postclassic periods.

Footwear relies on certain resources and expertise in working leather, cordage, feathers, cloth, beads, and even metals. Looking to historical documents from Central Mexico, Justyna Olko (2005, 294) has identified no fewer than twenty-one Nahuatl terms for different types of sandals (cactli) in Nahua and Early Colonial Mexican society. These include basic terms for a sandal’s appearance, such as “thin sandals” (canhuac cactli) or “embroidered sandals” (tlamachcactli), or they might embrace cultural or social meanings, as in “lordly sandals” (tecpilcactli). There were many material-specific terms too, from “rubber sandals” (olcactli) to “wolf skin sandals” (cuetlachcactli) and “obsidian sandals” (itzcactli). Although Bernardino de Sahagún focuses on Nahua peoples of early colonial Central Mexico, his writings are helpful in thinking about sandal making and decoration throughout pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and among the Maya in particular.

In book 10 of the Florentine Codex, Sahagún’s informants describe “the sandal-maker/seller” in sixteenth-century Nahua society, detailing an array of relevant production methods and types:

He [the sandal-maker] adorns the sandals with flowers. [He who] sells sandals, sells sandals of cured leather, of maguey fiber—of tight stitching, of thin stitching, of thick stitching, of tangled stitching, basted, of loose stitching; loose, straight and long, straight, shiny, no dragging—in no way dragging, with gathered tabs—tabs which are gathered, with short tabs; white, black, tawny, green, blue; with designs, with feathers, with dyed fur, with the ocelot claw design, with the eagle claw design, with streamers, with the shield jewel, with the wind jewel, narrow, wide, long; large sandals, small sandals, children’s sandals; tangled ones; enlarged ones; creaking, noisy, noise-making ones; distended ones. (1961, 74)

Although this lexical and descriptive spread of terms does not appear in colonial documents from the Maya area, Classic-period images point to many categories, constituent materials, decorative methods, and even meanings that recall Nahuatl examples.

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