Spring Break
Professor studies textiles from ancient Mayan tomb
Chris Curtis
Issue date: 4/25/08 Section: Campus
04/25/08 - To many, ancient Mayan tombs may bring to mind images of whip-wielding, gun-toting adventurers dodging clever booby traps, but to University of Rhode Island professor Margaret Ordoñez, it's all about the textiles.
Ordoñez, a textiles, fashion merchandising and design professor, has been conducting research since 2004 on textile samples from a fifth century Mayan tomb in Honduras. After four years of work, Ordoñez said she still has more to study.
"I'll probably be working on it 'till I die," she said. "It's going to be a long, long process."
In fact, she said she intends to return to the site in the summer of 2009.
The tomb Ordoñez studied is in the ruined city of Copán, once the cultural center of the vast Mayan empire.
The burial place of a high-ranking Mayan woman, the tomb contained an unusual quantity and variety of textiles.
"This is the largest collection that exists anywhere, it's unbelievable," Ordoñez said. "These are rare, these are really rare, and to have so many of them is amazing."
Other sites have generally yielded two or three samples, she said.
University of Pennsylvania archaeologists excavating the tomb in the 1990s found pottery vessels and what Ordoñez describes as a stone offertory platform draped with multiple layers of cloth.
The variety and multiple layers of textiles in the tomb suggest to Ordoñez that the tomb was reopened and fabrics were left as offerings years after the woman's death.
Decorative jade beads found on and around the woman's remains indicated that she too had once been draped in some sort of cloth, which has since disintegrated.
The tomb is one of three excavated at the site. The other two tombs, both of high-ranking men, were not as well preserved as the woman's and did not yield the same quantity or quality of samples. Ordoñez said she has not been able to learn anything from the samples she has studied from these tombs.
Ordoñez, a textiles, fashion merchandising and design professor, has been conducting research since 2004 on textile samples from a fifth century Mayan tomb in Honduras. After four years of work, Ordoñez said she still has more to study.
"I'll probably be working on it 'till I die," she said. "It's going to be a long, long process."
In fact, she said she intends to return to the site in the summer of 2009.
The tomb Ordoñez studied is in the ruined city of Copán, once the cultural center of the vast Mayan empire.
The burial place of a high-ranking Mayan woman, the tomb contained an unusual quantity and variety of textiles.
"This is the largest collection that exists anywhere, it's unbelievable," Ordoñez said. "These are rare, these are really rare, and to have so many of them is amazing."
Other sites have generally yielded two or three samples, she said.
University of Pennsylvania archaeologists excavating the tomb in the 1990s found pottery vessels and what Ordoñez describes as a stone offertory platform draped with multiple layers of cloth.
The variety and multiple layers of textiles in the tomb suggest to Ordoñez that the tomb was reopened and fabrics were left as offerings years after the woman's death.
Decorative jade beads found on and around the woman's remains indicated that she too had once been draped in some sort of cloth, which has since disintegrated.
The tomb is one of three excavated at the site. The other two tombs, both of high-ranking men, were not as well preserved as the woman's and did not yield the same quantity or quality of samples. Ordoñez said she has not been able to learn anything from the samples she has studied from these tombs.
