Research Mending the past: Ix Chel and the invention of a modern pop goddess Traci Ardren * For modern communities, she is the moon goddess and protectress of Maya culture and women; for scholars she is one of a number of deities with different roles in the Postclassic period. Which is the real Ixchel? The author excavates the story of the Maya goddess and her re-invention by myth-makers – including archaeologists. Keywords: Maya, Postclassic, religion, symbolic archaeology, post-modern archaeology, feminism Introduction Archaeologists have begun to examine the ways in which knowledge about the ancient past is consumed and appropriated. The Postclassic period supernatural patron of weaving known today as Ixchel, the Maya Moon Goddess, has become a common image in both modern marketing and cultural revitalisation movements within the greater Maya area. A simple search for ‘Ixchel’ on Google or any other search engine produces almost 50 000 instantaneous results for everything from resorts to language schools to feminist retreat centres. How has this relatively obscure deity from the Maya ethnohistoric literature penetrated so deeply into modern popular consciousness? This essay explores the history of an idea based on archaeological evidence, and attempts an archaeology of knowledge about an ancient deity with modern significance. The study documents the modern appropriation of academic scholarship for deliberate re-imaginations of the past, by exploring the relevance of a re-imagined ancient deity to modern communities as both a native symbol of gender specific household roles and an exoticised commercial symbol of Maya-ness. I use the popularised spelling ‘Ixchel’ to refer to the modern re-imagination of the ancient deity known in the academic literature also as ‘Ix Chel’. Three well-known modern examples, each using the icon of Ixchel, are examined for evidence of a pattern of interpretation and intention. I conclude with suggestions about why the study of archaeological knowledge production is important today, and why myths about the weaving goddess continue to retain meaning and significance among various modern communities along the Caribbean coast and beyond. Modern citations of Ixchel Perhaps the best-known museum of Maya textile arts is the Museo Ixchel in Guatemala City (Figure 1). Opened in 1973, the museum claims to have taken its name from the * Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Dept of Anthropology, University of Miami, P.O. Box 248106, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA Received: 9 June 2004; Accepted: 10 October 2004; Revised: 20 January 2005 antiquity 80 (2006): 25–37 25