Women in Maya society

The lives of women in ancient Mesoamerica are not well documented: "Of the three elite founding area tombs discovered to date within the Copan Acropolis, two contain the remains of women, and yet there is not a single reference to a woman in either known contemporary texts or later retrospective accounts of Early Classic events and personages at Copan," writes a scholar.

Maya societies include Toniná, a city that developed a matrilineal system of hereditary descent after the reign and death of the powerful leader, Lady Kʼawil.

[2] Lady Kʼawil's reign is documented in murals that depict her seated on a throne with captives at her feet.

Techniques implemented by pre-Columbian Mayan societies include large-scale agricultural production, hunting, and foraging.

The milpa growing system provided the essential staples of the Mayan diet: corn, beans, and squash.

[citation needed] The leading role of the Moon goddess may be interpreted through her depiction in the codices and ancient murals.

[citation needed] The social, and political rank of ancient Maya women is increasingly debated in archeological studies into the role of gender.

To date, lines of evidence are based chiefly on an investigation of material culture (e.g. monumental sculpture and iconography, ceramic art), use of space (residential architecture and activity analysis, and, to a lesser extent, mortuary data).

The principle of complementarity, i.e. that men and women played separate, but equally important, roles in society, is found in many studies that define an ideological basis for various expressions of female power, including male/female pairings and gender combination.

Grave goods, inscriptions, and texts also provide evidence of complementarity via the authority elite women gave to ruling lineages often through marriage alliances outside their natal homelands.

Feasts and rituals were visible and significant means used by competing Maya elites to demonstrate their status.

The labor of women was very important, both socially and economically but their participation in public rituals was limited; because of the potential ethnocentric and geographic bias.

Archaeology at Caracol has been carried out annually from 1985 to the present and has resulted in the collection of data that permits insight into the economic production and social distribution of cloth at the site.

The contextual placement of these burials stresses not only the link between women and weaving but also the high status associated with such activity, thus signaling the importance of cloth and spinning in ancient Maya society.

This act was highly ritualized; the objects used to pierce the skin were "stingray spines, obsidian blades, or other sharp instruments.