The Maya world, in miniature

My obsession with clay Jaina figures started about a year ago at the Museo de la Cultura Maya in Chetumal, Mexico. That is where I set my eyes on the tiny statues of a Maya woman wearing an elaborate blouse and ear spools and a young warrior with facial tattoos and scars. The 6- to 7-inch-tall figures -- depictions of ancient Maya in traditional dress -- looked so lifelike that I half expected them to speak. When a museum guide told me that the statues behind glass were replicas of statuettes unearthed at Jaina, the Maya island of the dead off the western Yucatán Peninsula, I was determined to learn more about the figures. The delicately detailed terra-cotta statuettes, described by experts as the finest figurine art of ancient America, were buried with each deceased person on the island, as many as 10,000 in all. Pursuing my obsession, I headed to Ticul, a pre-Columbian Maya town about 50 miles south of Mérida that’s known for its red-earth pottery, where I was told the replicas of the Jaina figures were being made.