[Aztlan] Plaster & "Progress"

[Sam Edgerton]

Listeros: I have just read an article by Jeremy Sabloff (in cooperation 
with William L. Rathje) published a year ago in the Proceedings of the 
American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia (151.1, March 2007, pp. 11-27) 
which, in spite of its unwieldy title ("It Depends on How We Look at 
Things: New Perspectives on the Post-Classic Period in the Northern Maya 
Lowlands"), has provoked me to ask some questions about plaster - that most 
common-place and taken-for-granted bonding material used everywhere in 
ancient Mexico and Central America by Maya builders and sculptors.
Actually, the gist of Sabloff's piece has to do with his and Rathje's 
argument that traditional assessment of Post-Classic Maya society as 
"decadent" is wrong; that in fact  Post-Classic society, especially in the 
northern lowlands, was even more prosperous materially than the Classic. 
The difference should rather be understood as a contrast between a society 
dependent on religious ideology for its well-being, and a society more 
dependent on secular economics. While Classic peoples spent more time 
propitiating the spiritual forces with elegantly decorated temples, 
Post-Classic folks were less attentive to art and architecture while more 
concerned with the mundane business of  trade and commerce.
The author's prime example is Mayapan, the powerful political hub of Post 
Classic Yucatan, but at the same time artistically impoverished. Many of 
its buildings are poorly constructed with mis-matched stonework masked by a 
veneer of smoothing plaster. Indeed, plaster seems to have been similarly 
employed in other Post-Classic sites like Tulum and Dzibalchaltun.  This 
"decadent" practice is excused, however, by an interesting comparison to 
modern building methods in the technically progressive US where cheap 
concrete is likewise used to put a smooth face on skeletal internal 
construction - suggesting that the Post-Classic Maya were resorting to the 
same labor-saving technique signifying their increased attention to 
material prosperity.
Nevertheless, even the Classic Maya were massive users of plaster, 
particularly for paving their extensive public plazas. The site of Cuello 
in Belize for instance boasted a  plaster covered plaza more than a meter 
thick, indicating that it was paved and repaved continually for 
centuries.  Eliot Abrams in a paper on "architectural energetics" delivered 
during the 1994 DO Conference, estimated that 90% of all Maya structural 
labor was spent of preparing and applying plaster.
Might one dare assume therefore that plaster work was not only the major 
non-agricultural occupation of the Maya laboring classes, but plaster 
itself was the major manufactured product of the entire Maya economy?
Furthermore, wasn't plaster even more important than stone to the Maya 
sculptor's art?   Indigenous artists learned early how to mold plaster to 
stone armatures, permitting them to realize extraordinary imagery, in both 
high and low relief, on architectural surfaces, indeed to cover entire 
temples in plaster relief like the Rosalila in Copan. Merle Greene 
Robertson discovered that the once colored plaster figures in relief on the 
Palenque Temple of Inscriptions were painted not only on the visible 
outside but also fully on the inner surface, the side buried in the temple 
wall never to seen by living human eyes.
Does this not imply that humble plaster (as we consider it today) had for 
the Maya a much higher, even sacred quality - like jade when worked into 
attractive forms - and was so appreciated by the gods?
And finally, did not this endless obsession for plaster bear some of the 
blame for the so-called Maya collapse?   Would not the constant need for 
firewood with which to burn limestone have eventually denuded the forests 
surrounding Maya ceremonial centers, thus giving the inhabitants good 
reason to abandon these sites for new places with a greater supply of 
near-by firewood?
Sam Edgerton