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Question for November 2021

How did the Maya carve their masks?? Asked by Hampton Primary School. Chosen and answered by Our In-House Team

To answer this we sought the help of American archaeologist Mary Lou Ridinger, well known for her discovery of the jade quarry sites in Guatemala that had been lost since the time of the Spanish invasion of the Americas. She kindly sent us this answer:-

’Some jade masks from the Maya area were carved from a single piece of stone [pic 1] but the majority were assembled from individual jade plaques.

‘These pieces of jade mosaic would usually be pressed onto a wooden backing. They probably used either pine resin or beeswax to glue the pieces to the wood backing. Jade was traded for 3,000 years throughout Mesoamerica, from the area where jade is found in its rough form along the edges of the tectonic plates which occur along the valley of the Motagua River in Guatemala. Jade traders would carry the jade in racks on their backs. Jade is very dense and heavy, so a trader could not carry a large quantity.

‘The jade was usually traded in the form of axe heads to the place where it would be reworked into smaller pieces. In order to cut jade a material harder than jade must be used. Metal is softer than jade, so the Maya lapidaries [gem craftsmen] used garnet abrasive sand [pic 3] on the edges of their tools. They would use wooden saw blades and garnet abrasive could adhere to the edges of the saw blades and to the tips of the bow drills [pic 3] so that the abrasive would do the cutting. Vases full of garnet sand were frequently found in lapidaries’ tombs.

‘Garnet has a hardness of 7.5 on the Moh’s scale of hardness, while jade has a hardness of 6.5 to 7.0. Garnet occurs along the same tectonic plate boundary along the Motagua river where the jade is found. Both are caused by subduction faulting as one tectonic plate moves under and over the other.’

Picture sources:-
• Pic 1: photo by and courtesy of Professor Karl Taube
• Pic 2: photo downloaded from http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/mayan-masks.htm
• Pic 3 (L) & pic 4: illustrations scanned from ‘El jade en Mesoamérica’, Arqueología Mexicana no. 135, May-June 2015, p. 46
• Pic 3 (bottom R): object no. Am1938,1021.55, British Museum collections, courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

‘What tools did the Aztecs use to make their jewellery with?’

Our In-House Team has answered 25 questions altogether.

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