RESOURCE: Ancient Maya clothing

What did the ancient Maya wear?
The ancient Maya are well-known for their exotic, vibrant, appearances and practice of unusual body modifications. They exploited the materials available to them in their tropical environments to manufacture colourful textiles and striking ornamentation. They produced a wide range of outfits for different occasions, including lavish dress for large public events; vibrant dance costumes; protective armour for conflicts; sporting attire; and simpler, yet no less sophisticated, clothing for everyday situations.

Pic 1: Maya noble, from lintel 24 at Yaxhilan; illustration by Krystyna Deuss

Dance Costumes
Participants in celebratory dance events are often portrayed with very large costumes that encompass the body with an extravagant costume made of jade, feathers, and other exotic materials. In addition to large headdresses, dance participants often wore large backracks with long feathers. Despite the size of these costumes, they were designed to be light enough to move around with, so it is likely they had a light wooden frame onto which materials were attached.

Protective Armour
The ancient Maya regularly participated in wars and conflicts and developed protective clothing as a means of defense. These outfits involved a padded mantle (perhaps made from twisted cotton or thick leaves), often covered with animal skin, and accoutrements such as shields decorated with animal hide or feathers. Interestingly, ancient Maya scenes show war captives and prisoners stripped of much clothing and their ear jewellery replaced with strips of bark paper—which archaeologists take to be a sign of humiliation and defeat.

Pic 3: God Aprime dances in blood sacrifice costume as he 1) cuts his head with a stone knife, 2) uses a hand stone, and 3) transforms into the bee keeper; details from a Maya ceramic vase (K2942)

Everyday Clothing
Basic components of everyday dress included a loincloth or short skirt for men and a huipil or long skirt (perhaps paired with a quechquemitl) for women (see image to right). These outfits would often be embellished with jewellery such as bracelets and anklets, necklaces, and ear jewellery. Hairstyles were given much attention, and would be tied up (almost never left loose) and decorated with bands of fabric and long feathers. The ancient Maya show neatly maintained hairstyles in their art, suggesting that they may have put a stiffener in their hair to keep it in place.

Pic 5: Male and female Maya clothing

What materials did the ancient Maya use?
Animal Skins
Skins from various animals were turned into hides to decorate clothes and produce footwear. Jaguar hides were a favoured form of decoration because they were a reflection of wealth and power. The bones of animals were also used in the manufacture of various ornaments and jewellery.

Bird Feathers
The feathers of different birds were used to decorate headdresses and other items. Sometimes birds were trapped and bred and other times they were hunted and released. The Resplendent Quetzal was revered for its long iridescent green tail feathers, which were often used to decorate headdresses and backracks (see pic 8).

Pic 7: Modified Maya skull, Museo Regional de Antropología, Palacio Canton, Mérida, Yucatán

Metal
It was not until around 1000 A.D. that metal was introduced into the Maya area from West Mexico (which had received the technology via maritime trade from South America) but it soon came to be an important material for the manufacture of ornamentation, including rings (pic 9) and bells.

Pic 9: Metal ring excavated from the site of Ka’Kabish, Belize

How did they make their clothes?
Fabrics and Textiles
To make fabric from agave plants the Maya had to extract fibres from the leaves. To do this they had to soak or cook the leaves to tenderize them, which allowed fibres to be extracted and then dried in the sun. The fibres could be spun into threads of different thicknesses. Thicker threads may have been used to create a fabric that acted as a stiffener for belts or head ribbons. To make fabric from cotton plants, the cotton fibre has to be hand-picked from the plant and cleaned so it is clear and uniform. Then it must be prepared for spinning, in a process known as ginning, by beating the fibre to loosen it. Both cotton and agave fibres had to be spun into thread so that they could be woven into textiles. The ancient Maya used spindles and spindle whorls to do this (see pic 11). The spindle is a long stick that has a whorl attached to the end. Whorls could be made from clay, bone, or wood, and they are used to maintain or increase the speed of the spin. The spindle is turned with one hand while the other hand feeds the raw fibre to it with the supply over the shoulder or from a container on the ground.

Pic 11: Spindle and spindle whorl. Photo taken at Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Dyes and Colourants
The ancient Maya made colourful textiles from different coloured threads. Since the natural colour of agave and cotton fibre is white, yellow, or light brown, dyes were added to achieve other colours and were derived from plants, animals, and minerals. One of the most challenging natural dyes that the ancient Maya worked with was indigo. The blue colour lies in the leaves of the indigo plant and has to be extracted by composting the leaves for months or by soaking them in water. The resulting paste has to be processed further because it is not soluble in water and can only dye fibres after it has been converted to its colourless reduced form by special bacteria, achieved by placing the indigo into an alkaline solution with other bacteria that consume the oxygen—the alkaline solution can be urine, and the bacteria can be rotting meat. When fabric is submerged in this final solution it turns yellowish-green but transforms to blue when it is removed and exposed to oxygen.

Pic 13: Extract of natural indigo applied to paper

Who made Maya clothes?
We find evidence for textile manufacture from both elite and lower class areas of archaeological sites, so we can assume that most people were involved in the production of textiles. However, it is likely that the elite had access to finer fabrics such as cotton and lower classes relied on coarser fabrics such as that made from agave. We often see images of females involved in textile production (see pic 15), and many items associated with manufacture are found within, although not exclusively, female burials.
There were likely specialist dress manufacturers skilled in creating particular outfits, such as large, intricate, headdresses or backracks. The specialists would have developed ways to make these outfits light enough to wear yet appear very rich and heavy. Elites likely commissioned specialists to make outfits for important occasions.

Pic 15: Jaina figurine of woman weaving on backstrap loom

Further Reading
• Anawalt, Patricia R. 2000: Three Thousand Years of Mesoamerica Clothing. In Chalchihuitl in Quetzalli. Precious Greenstone, Precious Quetzal Feather: Mesoamerican Studies in Honor of Doris Heyden, edited by E. Q. Keber, pp. 183-203. Labyrinthos, Lancaster, California.
• Holsbeke, Mireille and Julia Montoya (editors) 2003: With Their Hands and Their Eyes: Maya Textiles, Mirrors of a Worldview. Etnografisch Museum, Antwerp.
• Mahler, Joy. 1965: Garments and Textiles of the Maya Lowlands. In Handbook of Middle American
Indians Volume 3: Archaeology of Southern Mesoamerica (Part Two), edited by Gordon R. Willey, pp. 581-593. University of Texas Press, Austin.
• Mayer, Karl Herbert 1983: Dental Decoration among the Pre-Columbian Maya. Organorama 20(2):15-20.
• Morris, Walter F. 1985: Warped glyphs: A reading of Maya textiles. In Fourth Palenque Round Table, 1980, edited by E. P. Benson, pp. 317-324. Precolumbian Art Research Institute, San Francisco.
• Reents-Budet, Dorie 1991: The “Homul Dancer” Theme in Maya Art. In Sixth Palenque Round Table, 1986, edited by M. G. Robertson, pp. 217-222. University of Oaklahoma Press, Norman.
• Robertson, Merle Greene 1985: “57 Varieties”: The Palenque Beauty Salon. In Fourth Palenque Round Table 1980, edited by M. G. R. a. E. P. Benson, pp. 29-44. Precolumbian Art Research Institute, San Francisco, California.
• Scheville, Margot Blue, Janet Catherine Berlo and Edward B. Dwyer (editors) 1991: Textile Traditions of Mesoamerica and the Andes: An Anthology. Garland, New
York.

Pic 17: A dignitary from the Temple of Inscriptions, Palenque; illustration by Krystyna Deuss