Murals and the ancient Maya artist: A study of art production in the Guatemalan lowlands

The murals of San Bartolo, Cival, and Holmul/La Sufricaya represent an extraordinary corpus of artists' works dating from 400 B.C. to A.D. 500. The paintings include the earliest known Maya murals, works of both outstanding artists and poorly skilled painters, and images of foreign interaction between the Maya and Teotihuacan. Among the traditional arts of Mesoamerica, mural painting involves a high degree of technological specialization to prepare materials, as well as fluency in iconography to create images. Due to both its material and symbolic attributes, mural painting lends itself to production analysis as a means of investigating the specialized artisans of this craft, the muralists. The concepts of chaine operatoire and technological style provide a methodological framework for investigating the choices made during mural production from construction of the building, to preparation and application of the lime-plaster surface, selection of pigments used, and creating the painting itself. Documentation of the images and tool marks, combined with compositional analysis of the plaster and paint makes it possible to identify the materials used, their preparation, and how the artist(s) applied them to the wall. Importantly, these techniques do not require an intact mural, but can be equally successful when only fragments are recovered in an archaeological context.;Revealing how mural painters worked and how they made this particular type of art serves to better define socio-cultural organization of the ancient Maya. The production analysis of twelve mural contexts from San Bartolo, Cival, and Holmul/La Sufricaya draws together various lines of evidence to outline the culture history of mural painting in the Maya Lowlands between 400 B.C. and A.D. 500. Defining these artists' specific working practice demonstrates technological variance in painting occurred at junctures that have traditionally defined the cultural historical divisions between the Middle Preclassic, Late Preclassic, and Early Classic periods. The analysis of the technological style of mural painting presents new evidence illuminating the socio-political changes that occurred in the Maya Lowlands.