Project Gallery Boxing Day: a Maya polychrome pot from southern Belize Norman Hammond ∗ The notion of ancient Maya ritual combat, beyond the well-known rubber-ball game played across Mesoamerica, was proposed 40 years ago on the basis of a polychrome vase from southern Belize and a series of Late Classic (AD 700–850) pottery figurines depicting similarly accoutred individuals, found at the site of Lubaantun (Hammond 1976: figs 4–6). Visual evidence for interpersonal combat had even then been available for almost half a century on the figurines (e.g. Joyce et al. 1927, pl. XVIII, fig. 2), but had mistakenly been arrogated to the iconography of the ball-game; Eric Thompson had come close in describing such figures as apparently “dancing or fighting”, one hand inserted into what “in some ways resembles a large boxing-glove” (Joyce et al. 1927: 309), but he subsequently decided that they were ball-players (e.g. Thompson 1963: 97; 1966: 308), a view unchallenged until 1976. The unlabelled sherds of the vessel came from the British Museum’s 1926–1929 expeditions to British Honduras (now Belize), and were excavated at either Lubaantun, in 1926–1927, or Pusilhà some 32km south-west in 1928–1929 (Joyce et al. 1927; Joyce 1929). (The vase was not recorded or restored until several decades later, but before 1970, when I photographed it in storage.) The vessel has recently been relocated, re-photographed and given the (belated) designation Am 1997 Q856. It now merits further attention (Figures 1–5). On grounds of paste and style, Lubaantun is almost certainly the source. The vessel tapers from the rim towards the (restored) base, and is of buff, finely tempered fabric, echoing the Louisville Polychrome type established at Lubaantun (Hammond 1975: 315– 23). It has a buff slip and is decorated in red, red-brown, black, cream and white—a broad palette compared with many Late Classic polychrome vases. There is some stylistic overlap with the ‘Ballplayer Vase’ fragments excavated at Lubaantun in 1970 (Hammond 1975: fig. 115; 1976: fig. 1), and close thematic correspondence with numerous helmeted figurines found at Lubaantun (Figures 6–7; Joyce 1933: pls VII–VIII). Such mould-made figurines are found rarely at Pusilhà, and what is known of polychrome style there differs from Lubaantun. Most of the vessel is present, and the lacunae have been skilfully infilled; it has been restored at a height of 21.5cm, with a diameter of 12.8cm. The exact degree of taper to the missing base and the form of that are unknown, but the reconstruction is credible. The hieroglyphic rim inscription, 2.2cm high, is not a Primary Standard Sequence, but ∗ McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Universityof Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3ER, UK; Department of Archaeology, Boston University, 675 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston MA 02215-1406, USA (Email: ndch@bu.edu) © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2017 ant iquit y 91 355, e6 (2017): 1–7 doi:10.15184/aqy.2016.223 1 https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2016.223 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 195.166.136.52, on 21 Jan 2017 at 14:36:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at