Megan O’Neil’s research focuses on the historical, material, and ceremonial dimensions of ancient Maya monumental stone sculptures from the fifth through the ninth centuries C.E. in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize. In various projects addressing multiple Maya sites, she explores how the ancient Maya physically and conceptually engaged with sculptures over their life histories, from their creations and dedications to later reception, ceremonial use, and physical transformations. Through these inquiries, she seeks to shed light on how the ancient Maya used and perceived these sculptured stones in both political and ceremonial contexts. As a parallel area of inquiry, she is interested in how later groups of people—such as the contemporary Maya, museums, explorers, and modern nations—have physically and conceptually engaged with ancient sculptures and have used ancient American objects and motifs to create histories, narratives, and images of the past.

One project, Engaging Ancient Maya Sculpture, explores ways that ancient Maya sculptures from Piedras Negras (Guatemala) may have guided and inspired human interaction with them. For example, this research demonstrates that some sculptural formats guide the viewer or ritual participant to move in a counterclockwise direction around the monument, turning the act of viewing into a religious procession. Furthermore, juxtapositions and other physical relations of sculptures from different generations of dynasts appear to have inspired inter-sculptural dialogue, engaging the vision and bodies of viewers in the consideration of connections across monuments and time. In totality, this study seeks to re-activate the physical space around these monuments and re-create a sense of the human participation and movement that were integral to the experience of ancient Maya sculptures.

Another project is her book, The Lives of Ancient Maya Sculptures, which examines how the ancient Maya used monumental stone sculpture to create and reshape historical narratives and how they treated these sculptures over time—including reuse, breakage, burning, and burial of whole and fragmented sculptures. By considering how the ancient Maya treated sculptures after their manufacture, these inquiries can contribute to more nuanced understandings of ancient Maya perceptions and shaping of their past and history, discussions with cross-disciplinary ramifications in the areas of alternative constructions of histories and concepts of collective memory. Furthermore, such analyses also can contribute to a better understanding of the religious implications of these sculptures’ production and use, and the medium and materiality of stone sculpture.

Her research into the life histories of monuments also touches on questions of visibility and invisibility of texts and images on sculptures and the sculptural objects themselves. For instance, she investigates how buried sculptures continued to have meaning outside the mode of the visible, exploring why and how the ancient Maya buried sculptures and what the sculptures may have done once buried, such as sanctifying buildings, transferring their power to newer buildings or sculptures, creating symbolic forms, and making connections with ancestors. Research for this book and related articles considers also how ceremonial interactions affected the monuments’ materiality, their inherent sacredness, and subsequent human perception and treatment of them. For example, although the ancient Maya at times did privilege and curate the objects of their past, in other cases, their intense ceremonial interaction with sculptures destroyed or severely damaged the stones and their carvings. Even so, it may well have been this very interaction that was paramount, and the sculptures’ power as religious objects and agents may well have been their most important aspect.