Archaeologists unearth ancient nose jewelry, made from human bone, amid Maya ruins in Mexico

Claire Voon
Fri, September 1, 2023 

Carlos Varela Scherrer/INAH

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Art Newspaper, an editorial partner of CNN Style.

(CNN) — Archaeologists working in the ruins of Palenque, an ancient city in the southeastern Mexican state of Chiapas, have found a centuries-old, intricately carved Mayan nose ornament made of human bone. The curved artefact, which measures just over 6 centimeters long and 5 centimeters wide (or roughly 2.4 by 2 inches), offers insight into ancient funerary traditions; it is believed to have been worn by priests during ceremonies in which they embodied the Mayan deity K’awiil, also known as God K, who is associated with lightning, fertility and abundance.

It is also an important example of Mayan artistic sensibilities, Arnoldo González Cruz, director of the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), which conducted the excavations, said in a statement.

The ornament is made of a fragment of the distal tibia, a bone which helps to form the ankle joint, and features engravings that symbolize ceremonial communications with gods and ancestors. The central figure is a Mayan man, shown in profile wearing a headdress and a beaded necklace, and with the Mayan glyph for “darkness” on his arm. He is accompanied by a skull and carries a bundle that is a common icon in Maya funerary scenes, according to González Cruz.

INAH’s team found the object while conducting conservation work at the Palace of Palenque, an elaborate complex at the center of the pre-Hispanic city and National Park of Palenque, a Unesco World Heritage site. The bone was buried in what archaeologists believe was a ritual deposit, interred between 600CE and 850CE to commemorate the completion of a building. Placed with it were seeds, small animal bones, obsidian blades and large pieces of coal.

When worn, the ornament would have sat on the bridge of the nose, creating a continuous line from the forehead to the tip of the nose. González Cruz said this was likely an attempt to echo the elongated head of K’awiil, who was often portrayed as a personification of an ear of corn.

This is the first nose ornament of its kind that archaeologists have found in Palenque, although artistic depictions of figures wearing such pieces appear elsewhere at the site — carved onto the lid of the sarcophagus of the famed 7th-century Mayan king Kʼinich Janaab Pakal at his burial chamber at Palenque, for instance, and also appearing on an oval tablet depicting Pakal and his mother.

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