The stylized patterns of feline spots are commonly rendered by painters to decorate polychrome Maya vases, plates and other works of Mayan art. Here yu can see spots that are clearly of a jaguar, but are stylized in repeated clusters.

Feline spots are used to decorate Maya polychrome pottery.

Feline spot patterns are commonly rendered by painters to decorate polychrome Maya vases, plates, and bowls. In most cases they are called “jaguar spots” but in reality some are more likely spots of margay or ocelot.

Another aspect I am studying is which part of the feline body the spots come from that are used to decorate Maya pottery.

Here is Nicholas Hellmuth with a puma.

So over the years I have engaged in photographing as many feline pelts as I can find in people’s homes and offices. My long range intent is to create a “dictionary” of feline spots to assist studies of Maya iconography, epigraphy, and ceramics.

Jaguar pelt at Restaurant Chichoy Tecpan, Guatemala.

Full-color representations of jaguars starts in the Early Classic

At Uaxactun, Tikal, and nearby Maya sites throughout Peten and adjacent Belize, Mexico, as well as Honduras, the earliest full-color portraits of jaguars, ocelots and margays were as decorations for the lids of basal flange bowls or tetrapods.

Jaguars were part of the royal palace.

Enough images of full-figure jaguars can be found in scenes of Maya rituals to suggest that in addition to jaguar impersonators (dancers dressed in feline costumes) that some Maya rulers had trained felines in their royal court as pets.

Long-range interest in studying felines: jaguars, ocelots, margays, etc.

My interest in jaguars is a result of having lived in the Tikal National Park for twelve months (at age 19), while a student at Harvard. I took a year off to spend time in Guatemala to work as a volunteer archaeologist with the University of Pennsylvania. In these years (the blissful 1960’s) it was the tradition to take a year off from the university to accomplish something that was to expand your studies and learn something totally new and different. The tradition in the 1960’s was simultaneously doing your own thing and avoiding things that resulted in making money.

So I volunteered for an archaeology project at Tikal (definitely a way not to earn any money). But the experience in Guatemala was well worth the time and effort. People I met over 43 years ago are still in Tikal or elsewhere in Guatemala and still remember my year’s project.

Tomb of the Jade Jaguar, Burial 196, Structure 5D-73, adjacent to Temple II, facing the Great Plaza, early 9th century A.D., Tikal Guatemala. Discovered deep inside a Maya pyramid in November 1965, by Nicholas Hellmuth, at that time an archaeology student of Harvard. The ruler was wrapped in feline hides; all th claws and even some of the leather was still preserved.

FLAAR also studies the ethnozoology of pumas.

Pumas and jaguarundis of course do not have noticeable spots, but especially pumas are as much a part of the tropical landscape as are jaguars. I had an opportunity to photograph a live puma in Belize a decade ago. This mountain lion was kept by a farmer. But since pumas are cats, it’s hard to get them to sit still and pose for the camera.

The photograph is blurred since the photographer was scared of being attacked by the puma (and probably nervous that I would be bitten by the puma while I was trying to get it to be quiet and look at the camera).

Most recently updated August 24, 2009.
First posted June 25, 2008.