Papers by Cecelia F . Klein
The 84th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2019
Gender in Pre-Hispanic America, 2001
I n her critique of the Western medical establishment's treatment of hermaphroditism, Jul... more I n her critique of the Western medical establishment's treatment of hermaphroditism, Julia Epstein (1990: 101, 104-105, 129) notes that the law today "assumes a precise contrariety between two sexes, whereas medical science has for several centuries understood sex determination to involve a complex and indef inite mechanism that results in a spectrum of human sexual types rather than in a set of mutually exclusive categories." Epstein is referring here to modern medical awareness of the variety of biological factors that enter into the determination of a person's sex, such as chromosomal patterns, gonadal structure, hormonal dominance, and the morphologies of both internal and external genitalia, as well as to the multiplicity of combinations that these can form. Despite scientif ic understanding that in some infants neither sex prevails biologically and that some of the determinants may not fully reveal themselves until the child is older, our law requires doctors to register a name and sex for every newborn at the time of birth. If the doctor's choice of sex for the infant later turns out to have been awkward, the "error" is often addressed, as among transsexuals, with genital surgery. 1 For unless such so-called mistakes are "corrected" so that they can be classif ied as either "true" males or "true" females, hermaphrodites, homosexuals, effeminate men, and masculine women in our culture are likely to suffer psychological anguish and social discrimination, if not outright abuse. Neither sexual nor gender ambiguity, in other words, is accorded a constructive place in our society, where what Epstein calls the "legal f iction" of binary gender boundaries forms the basis of the social order and is, therefore, rigidly maintained.
Estudios de cultura náhuatl, 1994
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, May 1, 1982
N RECOUNTING the tribulations of the Yucatec Maya at the hands of their I Spanish conquerors, the... more N RECOUNTING the tribulations of the Yucatec Maya at the hands of their I Spanish conquerors, the author of the Chilam Balam of Tizimin has written Once there was truth, which we drew from the Serpent in ancient times, from the clear unclouded heavens to the evil-knotted earth beneath. But when the enemy warriors came, the folds of death became the swaddling clothes of our babies.. .. Now it should be said of the four gods that they stretched out the earth. And when they had finished stretching out the earth, they planted the red Imix tree.' The Tizimin passage is notable for its reliance on metaphors that present Maya time and space in terms of a pliant substance that, given the allusions to knots, swaddling clothes, and folds, is here surely some sort of fiber or fabric. Its reference to "the stretching out of the earth," which the text dates to the creation, evokes an image of the weaver who readies the warp cords on her loom. The reference recalls the Tovar Calendar commentary on the Aztec month Tititl, which it translates as "Stretching," for which it depicts "a man as one who stretches something with a cord, in order to indicate that the gods thus stretch and sustain the machine of the world.. . ."Z Kubler and Gibson note that Tititl was frequently identified with the rites of weavers.2 Although the ancient Mesoamerican cosmos has been described by Walter Krickeberg in terms of two bottom-to-bottom, essentially identical masonry pyramids,3 the Tizimin and Tovar texts strongly suggest that, for some at least, it was constructed not of stone blocks, but of filaments. The Tizimin descrip-1
The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2018
The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, 2017
Ancient Mesoamerica, 2000
Similarities in certain paintings and sculptures created by pre-Conquest and early Colonial Aztec... more Similarities in certain paintings and sculptures created by pre-Conquest and early Colonial Aztec artists strongly suggest that the original identities and nature of the tzitzimime changed over the decades following the Spanish conquest. These images support textual evidence that Spanish authors, typically mendicants and clergymen, quickly conflated the tzitzimime with the Devil and his servants, in the process demonizing and ultimately masculinizing them as well. Whereas the most important tzitzimime were apparently female in pre-Hispanic times, Colonial authors writing after the mid-sixteenth century described them as exclusively or predominantly male. The potential for the tzitzimime terrorizing people during periods of crisis, when the sun's continued passage through the firmament was perceived as doubtful, became the sole focus of late-Colonial descriptions of the role and attributes of the tzitzimime. In pre-Hispanic times, in contrast, the most important tzitzimime were ambivalent creator deities whose generative powers rendered them capable of preventing and curing illness as well as causing harm. In the beginning, the tzitzimime apparently were female, the principal tzitzimitl, Citlalinicue, having passed on her powers to her daughters and granddaughters. These descendants included the goddess Cihuacoatl who, like the goddess Citlalinicue, was the patroness of parturient Aztec women and midwives and closely associated with the souls of women who had died in childbirth. Itzpapalotl is another example, to which we can add Tlaltecuhtli, Coatlicue, and Coatlicue's four self-sacrificing sisters. It was probably not until the Aztec government was in a position to rework official history that the national male deity Huitzilopochtli was inserted into Aztec stories of the creation in his manifestation as Omitecuhtli, "Bone Lord." Like other tzitzimime, however, Omitecuhtli was petitioned to heal the sick, especially children, and was subsequently called upon to bestow his generative powers on newly elected government officials. These magical powers were embedded in the tzitzimime's garments. Their capes and skirts were decorated with skulls and crossbones that were often combined with symbols of stars and, occasionally, stone knives. This explains why petitions for a tzitzimitl's assistance were apparently made at a stone platform bearing these same designs. The platforms represented the sacred capes and skirts that, legend suggests, were the essence of the gods. Midwives and curers of both sexes probably made special use of these platforms, which provided them direct access to the tzitzimime. Materializing the sacred garments that embodied the generative essence of the tzitzimime provided the Aztec with a means of petitioning their assistance in averting illness and cosmic destruction.
Androgyny, or gender ambiguity—the combination of male and female genders within a single body—is... more Androgyny, or gender ambiguity—the combination of male and female genders within a single body—is almost impossible to identify archaeologically. Nonetheless, we know from ancient and modern myths, literature, religious beliefs, and art that androgyny was associated with power and/or change in many societies. Keywords: cross-dressing; gender ambiguity; hermaphrodite; third gender
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection eBooks, 2001
... What will be found, how-ever, is a collection of interesting, informed, thought-provoking, an... more ... What will be found, how-ever, is a collection of interesting, informed, thought-provoking, and often lively essays. Cecelia Klein has chosen a fine range of scholars who offer stimulating and diverse approaches to gender issues. ...
Archaeoastronomy, Apr 1, 1980
The Journal of Art Historiography, Dec 1, 2012
and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 2004. For that exhibition, she wrote the catalogue ... more and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 2004. For that exhibition, she wrote the catalogue of the same title with Simon Martin. First known for her book on the murals of Bonampak, she is equally well known for her collaboration with Linda Schele on the exhibition and catalog titled The Blood of Kings. Mary has authored two survey texts: The Art of Mesoamerica and Maya Art and Architecture, and co-wrote, with Karl Taube, a compact survey of The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya.
... 7). Indeed, while the exclusive association of spinning and weaving with fe-male ... Female w... more ... 7). Indeed, while the exclusive association of spinning and weaving with fe-male ... Female warriors are prominent in the Mixtec codices from Oaxaca in scenes concerning creation, and Sharisse and Geoffrey McCafferty (1994) have ar-gued that figures in the battle murals of ...
Art Journal, Jun 1, 1990
This issue grew out of a symposium held at the University of California, Los Angeles, in May 1985... more This issue grew out of a symposium held at the University of California, Los Angeles, in May 1985, titled “Depictions of the Dispossessed: Image and Self-Image of Euroamerica's Colonized Natives.” I organized that symposium because it seemed to me at the time that the work and interests of many UCLA art history faculty and graduate students, like those of more and more scholars outside our university, were converging on the questions of how and why pictures represent those who experience the deprivations and transformations of a major foreign takeover. While the problems concerning representation of native inhabitants of colonized lands had been addressed by various students of literature or history, the number of serious studies of pictorial images of the dispossessed was far fewer. The latter, moreover, had never been synthesized or analyzed as a body.
African Arts, Jul 1, 1990
... Feathered serpents and flowering trees: Reconstructing the murals of Teotihuacán. Post a Comm... more ... Feathered serpents and flowering trees: Reconstructing the murals of Teotihuacán. Post a Comment. CONTRIBUTORS: Author: Berrin, Kathleen. Author: Millon, Clara. PUBLISHER: Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (San Francisco, Calif. and Seattle, Wash.). SERIES TITLE: ...
Ethnohistory, Apr 1, 2008
Most scholars, citing a passage in the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex by Bernardino de Sahagú... more Most scholars, citing a passage in the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex by Bernardino de Sahagún (1950-82), have interpreted the famous Aztec stone statue known as Coatlicue, "Snakes-Her-Skirt," as a reference to that goddess's role as the mother of the Aztec patron deity Huitzilopochtli. Sahagún's text, however, cannot account for the statue's portrayal of Coatlicue as decapitated and dismembered, the presence of similar statues that appear to have been part of the same set, or the lavish attention the carver paid to her skirt of braided serpents. The statue seems to better match several other sixteenth-century accounts in which, at the creation of the world, Coatlicue and four of her sisters were voluntarily sacrificed in order to put the sun in motion. The women left behind only their mantas, or large rectangular panels of cloth used to make Mexica skirts, from which they eventually were resurrected. The Coatlicue statue may represent this resurrected creatrix, whose sacrifice gave us light and warmth, in the form of her personified skirt. Prior to the 1978 discovery of the now-famous carved-stone relief of Coyolxauhqui, "Bells-Her-Face," the rebellious sister of the Mexica migration leader Huitzilopochtli, the most famous Aztec sculpture of a woman was the one known as Coatlicue. Towering over visitors to the Museo Nacional de Antropología, this statue, at a height of over eight feet, remains the largest three-dimensional Mexica carving in existence. Discovered in the course of reconstruction and drainage work in the Plaza Mayor of Mexico City in 1790, the statue was named for the figure's magnificently carved skirt, which is formed by multiple intertwined rattlesnakes (fig. 1). The skirt and the figure's exposed breasts make it clear that the statue is gendered female. The snakes have long been regarded as a ideogram for the name Coatlicue,
Art Journal, 1990
... taken place during a tableau vivant staged shortly after the opening of his Indian Gallery sh... more ... taken place during a tableau vivant staged shortly after the opening of his Indian Gallery show in ... Adorno's work makes it clear, how-ever, that the artist's ability to articulate a range of ... in the pictorial spaces regarded by Andeans as of the highest value, Guaman Poma denied the ...
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Papers by Cecelia F . Klein