#articleseed/overviewTopic/masks - Here's a good summary of the history of [African masks](https://www.novica.com/blog/exploring-history-artistry-african-masks/) > [!quote] [Mesoamerican Masks](http://precolombino.cl/en/exposiciones/exposicion-permanente-america-precolombina-en-el-arte/mesoamerica/vitrina-mascaras-y-mascaretas/) via [[Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino]] > The Aztec used masks during public ceremonies, religious festivals and even during battles. The masks were objects of privilege and were also used as offerings to the deities. This artistic tradition began in the Pre-Classic period. Many masks and stone pectorals have been found associated with the Olmec culture, which flourished in the Gulf of Mexico around 1000 BC, and whose influential iconography spread to the Mexican highlands. > > Olmec masks have characteristic grimaces. Their faces appear slightly disfigured, suggesting a transformation into birds, lizards and felines. This supernatural union between humans and nature was probably the nucleus of their famous cosmology. Masks are common in Teotihuacán, an urban culture in the Mexican high plains, dating from the first century AD. Although they have been found as funerary offerings, little is know about their use. Unlike the Olmec masks, the Teotihuacán masks are confined to the human realm, with serene, almost blank expressions. > [!abstract] [Masks and Ritual Performance on the Island of Cyprus](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Masks-and-Ritual-Performance-on-the-Island-of-Averett/a159e396e7ccc3d008e1570023e0d036da4c697f) by [[Erin Walcek Averett]] on 2015-01-01 in the [[American Journal of Archaeology]] > The island of Cyprus is well known for its abundance of masks, which have been the subject of focused studies as well as broader investigations on Phoenician and Punic masks. > [...] > The evidence underscores the long tradition of masking on the island and reveals use patterns that allow a partial reconstruction of the social significance of masking ceremonies. At the end of the Bronze Age through the era of the autonomous city-kingdoms, masks likely functioned as symbolic objects used in constructing social identities and can be associated with restricted groups practicing rituals at key sanctuaries. Masking rituals flourished within the autonomous city-kingdoms and dramatically ended with the incorporation of Cyprus into the Ptolemaic kingdom. > [...] **(Semantic Scholar abstract:)** > Worked bucrania and figural representations of masked men dating from the 12th-5th centuries BCE provide striking evidence for ritual performances using animal masks in ancient Cyprus. This study flips the traditional approach to this rich body of material. Rather than focusing on the cult or the socio-political contexts of these performances, I instead explore the production of zoomorphic masks and the impact of masking on the wearer. Drawing on new approaches pioneered in social zooarchaeology and using New Materialities perspectives, this analysis delves deeper into the human-animal relationship in Cyprus and how that was expressed in masking ceremonies. Moving beyond simplistic associations of bull masks with a vaguely defined bull god, this study argues for a more complex and integrated relationship between humans and the natural world that was expressed in Cypriot religion through divine animal attributes, animal sacrifice and feasting, and zoomorphic masking rituals. > [!abstract] [Disease, demons and masks in the Iron Age Mediterranean](https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2021.1900904) by [[Adriano Orsingher]] on 2021-04-08 > This article first addresses the issue of defining ancient masks and briefly explores masking cultures in the Iron Age Mediterranean, then emphasizes the role that Carthage appears to have played in both maintaining and renewing the Levantine disguised traditions. Among the newly invented masks of Carthage, it focuses on and reviews a small group of masks and amulets portraying black African twisted faces and dating to between the seventh and mid-sixth century BC. These masks support the existence of wooden prototypes and currently provide the earliest evidence of black African imagery used for ritual purposes. Based on their features and compelling parallels, it is argued that their iconography was inspired by facial paralysis and they should be interpreted as images of a demon used in curing rituals. > [!abstract] [Masks and masquerade in the Early Neolithic: a view from Upper Mesopotamia](https://doi.org/10.1080/1751696X.2018.1433354) by [[Olivier Dietrich]], [[Jens Notroff]] & [[Laura Dietrich]] on 2018-03-02 > It is argued that during the early Neolithic in the Near East, masks and masking possessed a significant role in rituals reenacting mythological narratives closely related to death, taking place at sites with special purpose buildings and a noticeably rich iconography. This importance justified the time-consuming and complicated manufacture of these paraphernalia as well as miniature and larger-than-life-sized representations of these items. > [!abstract] [Ancestor Masks and Aristocratic Power in Roman Culture](https://doi.org/10.2307/2650287) by Wallace-Hadrill,Andrew et al. in 1999. > In the first comprehensive study of Roman ancestor masks in English, Harriet Flower explains the reasons behind the use of wax masks in the commemoration of politically prominent family members by the elite society of Rome. Broadening her approach from the purely art historical, Flower traces the functional evolution of ancestor masks, from their first appearance in the third century BC to their last mention in the sixth century AD, through the examination of literary sources in both prose and verse, legal texts, epigraphy, archaeology, numismatics, and art. It is by putting these masks, which were worn by actors at the funerals of the deceased, into their legal, social, and political context that Flower is able to elucidate their central position in the media of the time and their special meaning as symbols of power and prestige.