Locating Landscape in Maya Painting
It is surprisingly difficult to find images of landscape in Maya painting before the year 1000 CE. Place is only lightly indicated by image, with a focus on the built environment, and even architecture is often represented in quite generic terms. This chapter attempts to describe the contours of this absence, using emic Maya conceptions of space, which emphasize not a nature/culture divide but rather a tripartite and interconnected system of city, field, and forest, all full of animate forces. At the same, other practices of naming and itinerary amply supplement the underrepresentation of landscape in images. The essay concludes by discussing the representation of landscape in the murals of Chichen Itza, which provide an exception to this millennium-long trend.