Wanita di peradaban Maya: Perbedaan antara revisi
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== Latar belakang ==
Bangsa Maya dikenal luas sebagai pembangun dari berbagai kota-kota kuno megah di wilayah Mesoamerika. Bangsa ini berkuasa di wilayah Mesoamerika antara kurun tahun 200-900 Masehi, dan kemudian mengalami kemunduran.
The Maya were builders of great cities filled with temples and palaces.
They rose to power in Meso-America between 200 and 900 CE, and then
declined. The Maya realm formed on the Yucatan peninsula, but it never
coalesced into a single centralized state. Instead, city-states grew, analogous to those in the Classical Greek society. These Maya city-states were
governed by elite families who sometimes ruled for generations, and
they fought among themselves incessantly. These families made up the
Maya aristocracy, from whose ranks priests were also drawn. Commoners
included artisans, peasants, merchants, and slaves.
Most Classic Maya cities were fairly uniform. A city’s “downtown”
had elegant structures carved and painted, pyramids, platforms, and residences. Large numbers of people could meet together in the open plazas
surrounded by terraced pyramids and temples. Pyramids were built to imitate mountains and were lofty platforms for political and religious rituals.1
Maya city-dwellers even enjoyed the sports arenas of the time: ball courts,
shaped like an I, with a flat playing surface surrounded by walls. Both
pyramids and ball courts placed Maya squarely in long-standing MesoAmerican traditions. Maya buildings were covered in hundreds of stone
sculptures depicting god masks, human figures, undulating serpents,
and astronomic symbols. The sculptures probably communicated messages to Maya people almost like political posters communicate to us
today. Other sculptures on buildings show how the Maya lived: that
they worshipped beside shrines, ate near the small vegetable gardens
next to the thatched homes of commoners, and cleaned themselves in
sweat baths.
Classic Maya civilization existed from the third through the ninth
centuries CE, but most of the sources about women are drawn from the
later years of this period, a time scholars refer to as Late Classic Maya
(700–900 CE).
== Citra ideal wanita pada peradaban Maya klasik ==
The ideal female of Maya civilization can be explored through the creation
myth recorded in the Maya text Popul Vuh. In it, twin brothers magically
created a garden with the help of their grandmother, Xmucane. To make
people, “the substance of human flesh,” Xmucane ground her corn (maize)
and mixed the resulting flour with water.2 Thus, this myth illustrates that
food processing was central to the ideal female and to female identity
and sacred in the Maya worldview: It was through food production by a
woman that humanity originated. Classic Maya civilization placed women
in an usually high position in religious spheres, in some cases even equal
to men. In fact, one of the most important Maya gods was the ancestor
god Totilmeiletic, “Father-Mother,” which suggests that the Maya may
have seen the cosmic order in terms of an androgynous figure. This may
imply a belief in mutual dependence among men and women.
IDEALS OF ELITE FEMALE BEAUTY Evidence suggests that Maya aristocracy went through elaborate physical changes in order to achieve an ideal
look. Unlike the foot-binding women of Song China, however, their mutations did not hamper movement, and many of their alterations were also
undertaken by males. For instance, the elite considered sloping foreheads
and crossed eyes beautiful, and thus the heads of newborns were bound
to wooden boards to flatten their foreheads, and a small bead was tied to
children’s bangs, encouraging crossed eyes. Female aristocrats tattooed
themselves, painted their bodies in red paint, and carefully styled their
hair around their flattened foreheads. They decorated themselves with
hair ornaments that resembled sprouting plants and with ear and neck
jewelry of jade, shell, or precious jewels. Some aristocratic women filed
their teeth to points and inlaid them with iron, fool’s gold, obsidian, jade,
or shell.3 The fact that the most drastic of physical changes were made
by both genders again suggests a kind of parity unusual for premodern,
settled societies.
== Pertumbuhan dan perkembangan ==
From birth to adulthood, Maya social customs shaped the experience of
women, and here archaeology allows us to analyze the lives of commoners as well as aristocrats. Burial sites suggest that Maya girls were fed
less nutritiously than boys were, because the bodies of adult women were
much shorter than men’s. Despite this disparity, Maya children of both
genders were seen to have worthy roles, as rituals celebrating the place
of girls and women demonstrate. For instance, the Maya ritual hetzmek
occurred when a girl was three months old. During the ritual, her family displayed a miniature loom and corn-grinding stones for the baby’s
future work.4 If daughters survived, at 12 years old they participated in an
elaborate rite marking the beginning of adolescence. Older women were
assigned as godmothers to help expel evil spirits from girl children as
they became women.
====== Masa kecil ======
====== Menikah ======
Marriage was essential for both men and women, allowing each to
fulfill their potential for mutual dependence in Maya society. The prominent position played by a bride’s natal family as well as the ease with
which a woman could divorce were both customs used to Maya wives’
advantage. As with many premodern civilizations, aristocratic men could
have many wives and slave concubines, but monogamy was practiced
by commoners. Girls were usually married at 14 or 15 years of age, and
boys at 18. Marriage was arranged by the parents: The father of the groom
found a matchmaker and, once marriage arrangements were complete,
the father of the bride gave a marriage banquet. Notably, matrilocal marriage was practiced among commoner families in many regions, whereby
the new husband moved to his wife’s family, assisting his father-in-law
and proving his abilities. As with many Southeast Asian cultures, adult
common women benefited by living with their birth families because
they avoided domination by the groom’s family. Furthermore, Maya
common marriages could be dissolved rather simply by a declaration by
husband or wife, and a woman continued to control her possessions after
divorce.
====== Wanita sebagai seroang ibu ======
Classic Maya society defined motherhood as biological reproduction,
and her pregnancy and labor amounted to a sacred blood sacrifice. In fact,
birth was seen as a battle in which an infant could kill its mother; during
labor an image of Ix Chel, the goddess of childbirth, was placed under a
laboring woman’s bed. Ix Chel was a wizened midwife who supported
the mother as she fought between life and death. The association of labor
with a battlefield is borne out by archaeological records, as many excavations show that women’s life expectancy was shorter (35 years old) than
men’s (45 years old), possibly because of the young marriage age and
== Pekerjaan ==
A Maya woman’s economic position seems to have been much stronger
than that of her peers in other cultures. Daughters could inherit property
from their families, though sons were favored as inheritors, and the textile
work of a Maya woman gave her an important place in her society and her
city-state. Home was a common Maya woman’s domain and the typical
setting for her work—though she would occasionally work in the fields,
and her husband might occasionally work in the home. Common women
carried out three main activities in the home besides child bearing and
rearing: producing cloth, tending small gardens, and processing food.
The work of elite women held an unusual degree of importance in
Maya society. As in the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean and
Tang and Song China, they were recognized for their textile work. Among
the Maya, however, some aristocratic women became matchmakers, artists, craftspeople, or scribes (keepers of the books); two examples are
Noble Lady Scribe Sky of Yaxchilan and Lady Jaguar. Such women were
often highly trained and educated. Indeed, elite female matchmakers had
to painstakingly consult historical and tribute rolls, so they had to be proficient in reading.7 Few other civilizations we have examined offered even
elite women the rich education evidenced by the Maya female scribes and
matchmakers
====== Produksi tekstil ======
TEXTILE PRODUCTION Weaving was women’s central occupation and
even featured prominently in the sacred Maya cosmology, in a manner
analogous to Tang and Song China. The Maya weaving goddess carried
spindles in her hair ornaments in much the same way that the Chinese
weaving goddess wore a loom headdress. When women wove, they were
following the lead of the Moon Goddess, the inventor of weaving and the
special patron of women.
Commoner women most often wove their cloth from a fibrous plant
called maguey, which involved extremely time-consuming work. In fact,
the creation of maguey cloth was so demanding that community-wide
workshops developed to process it. First the women’s teams softened the
plants’ leaves with heat, and then they scraped and beat the leaves to separate fibers and flesh. Some cloth was famous for being made of maguey
with spines intact, but other cloth was made from single maguey spines.
Women met in a processing and weaving building, or outdoors, weather
permitting. They worked in public spaces that were also associated with
community festivals and celebrations.
Cotton cloth was made and worn only by aristocrats and was important for Maya social, religious, and political life. Use of cotton in ritual
activity ranged from its employment in ceremonial costumes, to providing offerings to gods, to wrapping sacred objects. Cotton textiles were also
important as gifts of tribute to other city-states or for exporting in trade,
thus forming an essential component of the government’s economic wellbeing. Evidence for this comes from Maya vases, which regularly show
stacked heaps of cloth for use in political transactions.
Wealthier Maya women worked with elevated materials, such as
feathers, pearls or beads, and expensive dyes—cochineal from tiny red
insects living in the prickly pear, purple dyes from snails, or blue from
indigo. High-ranking females may have supervised and controlled highquality textile production similarly to elite Tang Chinese women’s oversight of silk works.
====== Pekerjaan lainnya ======
OTHER WORK: FOOD PROCESSING AND PREPARATION, FARMING, AND
CERAMICS The centrality of common women’s role in food provision for
Maya communities was probably a major reason for their strong position
in their civilization. They were associated with the production of flour, the
tending of small gardens, and the raising of deer for venison. Processing
dried corn into maize flour required persistence and patience on the part
of Maya commoner women, who had gnarled knees, calcified toe bones,
and powerful arms from years of kneeling to grind maize. Indeed, one
of a Maya common girl’s first possessions as a child was probably her
stone-pounding kit of mano (tubular hand stone) and metate (flat grinding
stone). Every day, women first soaked and boiled maize kernels in lime to
remove the hulls and release the nutrition in the plant; then, after straining the maize, they knelt in front of a grinding stone on the ground and
ground the kernels with their manos on metates.
Maya women also tended small gardens, where they grew a variety
of vegetables and fruits: beans, squash, cotton, sweet potatoes, tomatoes,
chili peppers, avocados, papayas, cacao, and other medicinal plants. For
meat, women raised many animals, but perhaps the most significant
were deer. Women tamed wild fawns and brought them into the household compounds to be raised, and venison in some cities accounted for 90
percent of all animal meat consumed. According to the Maya text Popul
Vuh, deer were the first creations of the Divine Mother, before jaguars and
humans. In Maya communities, half the women were buried with deer
bones, showing the important association of deer farming with women.
Maya women’s participation in farming changed after 700 CE when
agricultural intensification occurred in some regions. In the earlier Maya
communities, making tools and preparing food was done in the same
outside space. Women cooked in large open bowls preparing soups and
gruels, which were not very time-consuming meals. Men, women, and
children participated collaboratively in many aspects of farming.8 After
700 CE, terracing began and agricultural productivity intensified, and
eventually women invented new kinds of food processing, including making tortillas, which demanded more time than corn gruels of earlier centuries.9 Other occupations of Late Classical Maya common women included
helping men to produce pottery and clay products, sculpting stucco, and
creating latticework on rooftops.
== Wanita Maya dan politik ==
Baris 284 ⟶ 600:
== Wanita dalam ritual dan kepercayaan Maya ==
Rituals performed only by women, the essential role of goddesses, and
the sacred power of women’s fertility gave female spirituality a high place
in the Classic Maya world. Furthermore, in elite Maya households, as in
Chinese households, ancestor worship—which included deified men and
women—was also a signifi cant component of religious life.
In the Classic Maya civilization, many goddesses existed, and they
were referred to as either “mother” or “grandmother,” which shows
the sacred reverence Maya had for the power of female fertility and the
wisdom of aged women. Two in particular stand out: the moon weaver
goddesses, O (Ix Chel or sometimes Chak Chel) and the young goddess
I (Ix Tab). The Maya revered the moon and credited it with governing
women’s menstrual cycles and the planting of maize, and thus these two
deities held considerable powers. Although the elder O was affiliated
with the waning moon, and the younger the waxing moon, the goddesses
were sometimes blended in Maya thinking and practice. In fact, the physical trinity of earth, moon, and maize was known as “Our Mother.” The
Maya, in this way, associated conception with sowing. Maya goddesses
not only embodied a loving life force that could offer guidance when
needed, but also personified chaos and dangerous heralds of death.
CROSS-DRESSING ROYALTY AND FEMALE RITUALS In their rituals, Maya
kings and queens impersonated gods and goddesses in a way that combined male and female powers of the cosmos. The way in which kings
impersonated the most important god, the Maize God, in special rituals to commemorate his birth, sacrifice, death, burial, and resurrection
show how important was female power in Maya civilization. The Maize
God was androgynous: He was the first father, but he also wore a net
skirt, albeit not in the style typical for Maya women. On his cheek the
hieroglyph “Il” was written, a variant of “Ix” (which meant “goddess”).
He also wore a fertility seashell in the center of a Xoc monster belt. (This
monster refers to the Maize God’s rebirth underwater.13) The Maya perhaps understood the anatomy of maize itself—that the plant possesses
both male tassels and female ears and silk and is thus able to fertilize and
give birth in the same body. In Copan, King Eighteen Rabbit wore skirts
for his bloodletting rituals to combine male and female power. Shedding
blood from the penis imitated the menstrual cycle, and he appropriated
such female fertility symbols to strengthen his power. Female rulers also
impersonated male deities. In Palenque, Queen Zac K’uk sometimes
wore a male haircut and a loincloth when impersonating the Moon Goddess. Mixing gender meant that the rulers, especially female, could break
from the normal domains of common Maya and become deities to wield
extraordinary power.14
Many city-state occasions required rituals and ceremonies in which
women participated. We have already discussed the bloodletting of the
Maya political scene. On some occasions women were charged with special religious duties. For instance, some women were thought to be able
to bring rain in a time of drought. Carvings and vases suggest that Maya
women participated in other rituals in many ways. Festivities included
paying respect to the gods, praying, and burning copal. Women assisted
men engaged in consuming mind-altering substances, such as peyote, or
consumed such substances themselves. Women gave intoxicating enemas to men. Ceremonies often required sexual abstinence and purification techniques before rituals. Following rituals, women danced, feasted,
and drank balche (an alcoholic beverage). In these ways women played a
prominent public spiritual role in the Classic Maya city-states.
== Wanita di akhir periode klasik peradaban Maya ==
The Maya world view placed women in a high position for their reproductive powers. Women were respected for their blood sacrifice and resulting children and thus had a strong position in their families, although
common women were nutritionally deprived. Maya women contributed
to the economies of their families and city-states in many ways, such as
weaving cloth and preserving and processing food. Royal consorts played
critical roles in the political scene, whether through religious bloodletting
rituals, forming political alliances, or as outright leaders. Female goddesses with multifaceted power were important to Maya society for their
fertility and wisdom.15 Not only did the Maya cosmology require mutual
dependency between men and women in marriage and society, but
kings also needed access to female spirituality in various ways to wield
power. Although Maya women had many more paths open to them compared with women in other civilizations, some evidence suggests that
even their status was gradually declining compared with earlier MesoAmerican civilizations. For example, Maya women had been prominent
players in the ancient Meso-American ball game, but they ceased playing
by the eighth century. The farming techniques of common women had
become more time-consuming by this time too. Regardless of this trajectory, by the end of the tenth century, the Maya civilization faded rapidly
and somewhat mysteriously, although the increasingly destructive inter
city-state warfare probably played a role.
== Baca juga ==
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