10-26-2012, 04:24 AM
Hey Melanie! pretty nice research! I had the chance to work on some Mayan proyects this year, one for an archaeologist, and the other for a museum here in Mexico, and reading what you have found, I can tell you that you are getting important things. Just some points that hope can help you.
About Apocalypto, we also used that movie as a reference! haha, it actually has a lot of accurate elements for the costumes and stuff like that, just as a note, many of the characters don't have Mayan facial features, and that was a very important thing (they used a native north american actor for the main character, for example) look at their profiles on the codex from FAMSI, the nose and eyes are very important on the mayan faces, look at indigenous people from Merida, Yucatan and those places, watch out for the skin color :P
About jade, yeah, that's the main valuable material, very connected to the gods and royal stuff, they also had gold, but, for what I was told, it was imported from the aztecs, so it was something royal people could wear. You could use a lot of animal stuff for the costumes (skins, teeth, claws) mainly jaguars and crocodiles (both have a lot of meanings for them). They were mainly hunters.
About the mask, I believe those were used by some type of priests that made the human sacrifices, there's supposed to be 4 of them, one for every cardinal point of the world, and every one of them has a different color. They can be seen on Apocalypto, holding the feet and arms of the sacrificed man (it's supposed to be 4 of them, one for every arm and leg of the victim)
About the headgear, take special attention to that, you can go crazy about them, it's supposed to have a social meaning, so the bigger and more impressive headgears are used by royal people, while simple hairdress is for the lower classes, specially on men. And about skull deformations, they told me that it was only done to royal people, but I'm not very sure haha.
And lastly, read about their gods and cosmogony, everything they did was related to the gods, everything.
If you wish... you could check out my blog, I have a small post there about a mayan market I did for the archaeologist :P
Sorry for the long speech haha, hope it helps. Keep it up! :)
About Apocalypto, we also used that movie as a reference! haha, it actually has a lot of accurate elements for the costumes and stuff like that, just as a note, many of the characters don't have Mayan facial features, and that was a very important thing (they used a native north american actor for the main character, for example) look at their profiles on the codex from FAMSI, the nose and eyes are very important on the mayan faces, look at indigenous people from Merida, Yucatan and those places, watch out for the skin color :P
About jade, yeah, that's the main valuable material, very connected to the gods and royal stuff, they also had gold, but, for what I was told, it was imported from the aztecs, so it was something royal people could wear. You could use a lot of animal stuff for the costumes (skins, teeth, claws) mainly jaguars and crocodiles (both have a lot of meanings for them). They were mainly hunters.
About the mask, I believe those were used by some type of priests that made the human sacrifices, there's supposed to be 4 of them, one for every cardinal point of the world, and every one of them has a different color. They can be seen on Apocalypto, holding the feet and arms of the sacrificed man (it's supposed to be 4 of them, one for every arm and leg of the victim)
About the headgear, take special attention to that, you can go crazy about them, it's supposed to have a social meaning, so the bigger and more impressive headgears are used by royal people, while simple hairdress is for the lower classes, specially on men. And about skull deformations, they told me that it was only done to royal people, but I'm not very sure haha.
And lastly, read about their gods and cosmogony, everything they did was related to the gods, everything.
If you wish... you could check out my blog, I have a small post there about a mayan market I did for the archaeologist :P
Sorry for the long speech haha, hope it helps. Keep it up! :)
También se habla español!