page_title: Performance archaeology
section_title: Ancient Dance
hierarchical_section_title: Performance archaeology / Ancient Dance
caption_attribution_description: Русский: Музыканты с трубами и танцоры в костюмах крабов. Фреска из Бонампака, комната 1, фрагмент северной стены. 790-е гг.
context_page_description: Performance archaeology is a subset of archaeological theory. Developers of this theory include Michael Shanks, Mike Pearson and Julian Thomas who in the 1990s at University of Wales, Lampeter began formulating concepts which view the social aspect of performance along with the artistic nature of theatre together through an interdisciplinary lens as "an integrated approach to recording, writing and illustrating the material past" thereby marrying the academic with the artistic. Performance archaeology has further expanded in the last decade upon the theories of presence. Geoff Bailey states that "because we believe that the present is known or knowable better than the past, we must seek our inspiration in studies of present phenomena and our concepts and theories from authorities on the present."
context_section_description: Musicians and Dancers played important roles in ancient Egyptian performance. Elite women in ancient Egypt adorned their hips with trinkets including not only aesthetically pleasing ornamental gold, shells and jewels, but also noise-making trinkets that were thought to both ward off evil spirits and invoke the goddess Hathor and appeal to her sexual nature in order to promote fertility. Modern belly dance is thus a derivative of this older Egyptian practice. Through the archaeological record dancers can be seen in artwork such as the Tomb of the Dancers painting in Thebes. 
  Violent war performances were reenacted in Mesoamerica by elaborately plumed war dancers. The representation of maize was personified by human/plant hybrid models which were utilized for ritual purposes. Dramatic enactments of this nature are presumed to have been used for the purpose of sympathetic magic in order to win in battle in the former instance, as well as to resurrect the spirit of the vegetation each Spring in the latter. A theatrical performance was reconstructed in Guatemala in 1543 CE that incorporated music along with the Dance of Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the Maya Hero Twins, which portrayed their decent into and resurrection from Xibalba. Theatrical performances also frequently incorporated both music and dance into a procession as exemplified on limestone murals found in Bonampak, Mexico. Here musicians playing drums, rattles and turtle shells accompany actors wearing bizarre costumes in an elaborate ceremony welcoming a child heir to the throne. Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions show people posed in "highly-stylized gestures...explicitly labeled in accompanying text as 'dance'" and are thought of as a form of sign language. Instruments used in Maya culture such as horns, turtle shells, drums and rattles can be found in their visual art.
  Alessandra Lopez y Royo analogizes dance to poetry describing the karanas, or dance movements artistically portrayed on the temple walls, as the 'sentences' left for us to re-embody the 'vocabulary' of the dance. 'Contemporary dance' of Indian performance arts on the other hand is a "distinct genre" and can be interpreted as the product of Western or 'non-traditional' influence.
caption: Procession of performers welcome child heir. Bonampak, Mexico.
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