Maya female figure

Of overall corpulent proportions with a finely incised coiffure, wearing a pendant on her forehead, ear-spools and aright fitting dress with her right hand to her chest.

Jaina figures, from an island off the Yucatan peninsula, are noted for their lifelike faces and their immense attention to detail. Scholars believe that sculptors modeled these figures’ clothing on real clothing worn by the elite during the Late Classic Maya period. These figures likely represented actual people, were produced in Campeche, and then were brought to Jaina Island to be buried with the deceased. Fascinatingly, the people around Jaina are the only people in southeastern Mesoamerica who put human figures into graves. Everywhere else in the region, figures have been found solely in domestic contexts. The Spaniard Diego de Landa, who recorded details of Maya life shortly after the Spanish Conquest, wrote that the artists who created pieces like this one lived lives of religious isolation and ritual – fasting and abstaining.