Epigraphy (Other Keyword)
1-25 (29 Records)
The past decade has witnessed a revolution in our understanding of Classic Maya geopolitics, particularly in reconstructing asymmetrical interpolity relationships dominated by expansionist states. Employing variable political strategies, including both direct and indirect rulership, the Kaanu’l Dynasty dominated a large network of kingdoms across the Maya Lowlands. This paper examines the impacts of the expansion and dissolution of the Kaanu’l state in western Campeche, within the northwestern...
Archaeology, Epigraphy and the Development of Long-term Alliance at La Corona, Guatemala (2016)
The integrated program of epigraphic and archaeological research at La Corona, Guatemala aims to document, analyze and understand the development of this highly unusual Maya center during of the Classic period. Known as Saknikte’ in ancient texts, La Corona served as the locus of a small court with its own dynastic history and exhibiting close and long-lasting familial and political ties with the far larger Kaanul or “Snake” kingdom centered at Dzibanche and Calakmul. Architectural excavations...
Architectural Caves and Glyphic Stepped Platforms (2015)
Natural and man-made caves are clearly attested to in myth, iconography and the glyphic corpus as powerful features for the ancient and contemporary Maya. Caves are paramount for they function as entrances into the sacred earth, the most powerful entity of the sacred Maya universe. A third and less explicit category of these subterranean features, although extensively documented (Brady 2011; Rivera Dorado 1993; Tate 1992) in the Maya area, are architectural caves. This latter category, due to...
At the Heart of the Serpent: Archaeology, Epigraphy, and Iconography at Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico (2016)
The metropolis of Calakmul has a pre-eminent place in Classic Maya history that is best understood from a multi-disciplinary perspective, combining the study of its extensive archaeological remains with that of its monuments, both in terms of inscriptions and imagery. This paper focuses on a hundred-year span, from the seventh and eighth centuries CE, which covers the reign of three of its best-known rulers. Representing the highpoint of the Snake kingdom’s “international” influence, this small...
"Bundling the sticks": tallies in Classic Maya inscriptions (2016)
This presentation addresses a set of references to “sticks” in Classic Maya inscriptions, which have been traditionally interpreted as weapons. The available contexts, however, indicate that “sticks” were involved in tribute payment transactions. Although there is no archaeological evidence of these presumably perishable wooden items, the author highlights some visual and material data that support the use of tallies by the Maya. The discussion then centers on less straightforward textual...
Copan in the Wider Maya World (2017)
The peripheral location of Copan has always raised questions about the ways in which it related to the core of the Maya world. Clearly Copan was no isolate in the Classic Maya tradition, divorced from developments elsewhere, but what did it continue to draw from the center and what were the mechanisms underlying those contacts? What do we know about the influence of centrally placed polities in this far-flung region, which held a symbolic status in the far east, but could never be a significant...
Copan reloaded: a new look at the Ante step and its context (2017)
This presentation reassesses the chronology and meaning of the inscription on the hieroglyphic step of the Ante structure at Copan, Honduras. The analysis was made possible by a high-resolution 3D scan of the step produced in 2011. The new interpretation indicates that the city of Copan underwent a re-foundation event upon the accession of its eighth ruler, Wi’ Ohl K’inich. The known contexts of similar statements are discussed along with the implications of several possible translations for our...
Craft, Literacy, and Ephemera: Maya Textiles in the Gendered Scribal Tradition (2016)
Although art historians, archaeologists, and epigraphers often decry the poor preservation of certain ephemeral categories of Maya hieroglyphic remains – wooden lintels, codex-style books and plaster facades – the missing corpus of ancient hieroglyphic textiles is rarely discussed. Yet unlike the handful of maddeningly flat, angular, or profile-view representations of codices in Maya art, the "extant" inscribed textiles seen in murals, painted on narrative vessels, incised into stone and molded...
A Diachronic Interdisciplinary View of Maya Foodways (2017)
This paper reviews archaeological, iconographic, epigraphic, and linguistic evidence for Maya foodways, documenting both the remarkable stability of some traditions and the equally significant changes in others, mostly due to cultural contact, civilizational rupture, and generational shift during some two millennia of Maya history. Although hardly a frequent topic of Maya monumentality, with a few notable exceptions, numerous ceramic vessels, murals, and graffiti depict and/or hieroglyphically...
Epigraphy and the Archaeology of Settlement in the Dolores Region, Peten, Guatemala (2019)
This is an abstract from the "At the Interface the Use of Archaeology and Texts in Research" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper summarizes recent research into the timing, distribution, and causes of ancient Maya settlement in the area of Dolores, Peten, Guatemala, in the western Maya Mountains. Integrating evidence from hieroglyphic inscriptions, ceramic studies, and GIS modeling of least-cost pathways and viewsheds, I propose an...
Flower & Song: Exploring Literacy in Postclassic Mesoamerica (2017)
The Postclassic codices of the Maya, Mixtec, and Nahua peoples have often been separated based on preconceived notions of literacy and language, with the Maya codices receiving an epigraphic approach while the Nahua and Mixtec receive an art historical approach. This division is largely arbitrary and based on Western assumptions of the nature of writing and its form, privileging scripts which lean towards the alphabetic as more advanced. Within these codices, the linguistic practice of...
From Stone to Screen: Squeezing into the World of Digital Archaeology (2015)
As the field of Digital Archaeology becomes increasingly prevalent, large-scale projects tend to dominate both thinking about and approaches towards the digital landscape. Scholars and students with smaller budgets and resources are often at a disadvantage; we believe renewed energy should be devoted to exploring the value and integrity of small-scale projects. This poster presents From Stone to Screen, a multi-disciplinary, collaborative, and open-access digitization project launched in 2012...
Holy lords and holy lands: territory in Classic Maya inscriptions (2015)
One of the significant challenges in dealing with indigenous classification systems is establishing continuities and discontinuities between Pre-Contact, Colonial, and Modern situations. The present paper addresses this question with respect to the concept of territory among the Ancient Maya, specifically, the speakers of Ch’olan and Yukatekan languages. It considers the corpus of Classic period inscriptions from the Southern Maya Lowlands as well as sixteenth and seventeenth century documents...
An Inscribed Flask from Tazumal: Historical Evidence for a Political Relationship between Copan and Western El Salvador (2016)
Re-analysis of an inscribed flask excavated by Stanley Boggs in 1952 from a burial in the main pyramid at Tazumal is the first Classic Maya written text found in a primary deposition context in El Salvador. It is also the first historical evidence for political interaction between Copan and El Salvador, a situation that has long been suggested based on archaeological evidence including the use of Copador ceramics in both Honduras and El Salvador and the presence of other elite Classic Maya goods...
Insights from Difference: text and archaeology in Angkor (2015)
The study of Angkor was predominantly the domain of epigraphers, art historians and architects for much of the past century of research. To some degree it continues to be. This focus, to its great credit, has reconstituted a millennium of the political history of Khmer society prior to the 16th-17th C CE. The effect has however, been to prioritise a historicist viewpoint, leading to the material record of the monuments being fitted in to the expectations of textual interpretation....
Izapa's Place in the Discourse on Early Hieroglyphic Writing (2015)
Izapa occupies a curious place in the study of Mesoamerican writing and semiotic practice. Although the linguistic affiliation of ancient Izapa is unknown, glottochronological estimates suggest that Izapa stood at a multilingual crossroads between proto-Mihe-Sokean and proto-Mayan speaking populations. The blended visual vocabulary of Izapa-style monuments, coupled with the site’s location and chronology, further prompted early scholars to place Izapa on a transitional, regional continuum...
Komkom What May: The Ancient Maya Kingdom of Komkom in Time and Place (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Making and Breaking Boundaries in the Maya Lowlands: Alliance and Conflict across the Guatemala–Belize Border" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Painted and carved pictorial pottery of the Classic Maya (250-850 CE) served primarily as ostentatious serving vessels at feasts and other principal celebrations. The vessels were masterful creations by accomplished artisans and are, for the most part, individualistic...
More Carved Monuments from Rio Viejo and their Historical Implications (2017)
The analysis of a dozen recently documented inscribed monuments from the ancient urban center of Rio Viejo, in the Pacific littoral of Oaxaca, provides new insights regarding the historical and political development of the regional capital in the lower drainage of the Rio Verde.
Nested Hegemonies in the Holmul Region (2016)
The recent finds at Holmul has opened a narrow window on the hitherto largely unknown dynastic history of this medium-sized kingdom in eastern Peten and on the complexities of Late Classic lowland Maya hegemonic relations. We now have a royal tomb, a palace, and a funerary temple with dedicatory texts that can all be attributed with a certain degree of confidence to a single Late Classic ruler with ties to Naranjo and Kaanul (Snake Kingdom). This set of contextual information allows us to...
On the Fall of Copan, Teotihuacan, and the Origins of the Fate of 8 Ahau (2015)
"A Forest of Kings" was groundbreaking for its integration of epigraphy, archaeology, and ethnohistory. In their book, Schele and Freidel discussed the Early Classic Teotihuacan-Maya cultural and political interaction as well as the fall of Copan, and the larger issue of the collapse of Classic Maya cities, and even the fall of Postclassic Mayapan. In this presentation I wish to expand on and integrate these disparate themes in an effort to answer the question of why the Colonial era Maya...
Painted pots and royal routes: hieroglyphic and ceramic traditions in the western Peten (2017)
The cities of the western Peten shared a common history and several ceramic traditions. In the northwest along the San Pedro Martir River, archaeological sites like El Peru (Waka’), Zapote Bobal (Hiix Witz), La Joyanca, and La Florida (Namaan) flourished with seemingly few—if any—clashes between them for the entirety of the Classic Period. That being said, we know that this region was greatly affected by the Tikal-Calakmul wars. There was even a ‘road’ or route between the sites allied to the...
Patrons and Artists: New Information on the Producers of Codex-Style Ceramics of the Mirador Basin (2015)
Codex-style ceramics are a distinctive product of the Late Classic Mirador Basin of north-central Peten, Guatemala. Through the archaeological work of the Mirador Basin Project and the chemical analyses of affiliated scholars we now have a considerable amount of information on the physical production of these vessels. In this presentation we present new evidence on the artists who produced these vessels, as well as the nobles for whom they were painting. These data provide much needed new...
Patterns of Grapheme Innovation in the Classic Maya Script (2015)
The ancient Maya script evolved over the course of about 1800 years, during which hundreds of distinctive functional graphic units (graphemes) were employed. Previous studies have shown that only a small subset of these graphemes was used at any given time, with bursts of innovation in certain epochs, particularly when the production of monuments spiked. This study revisits the question of the historical development of the Maya script, using the Maya Hieroglyphic Database, a comprehensive...
The "Snake" Kingdom from the Vantage of Western Belize (2016)
Recent years have seen the evidence from Western Belizean sites—especially Buenavista, Cahal Pech, Caracol, Cuychen, and Xunantunich—beginning to contribute substantially to scholarly understandings of the hegemonic networks underlying Classic Maya politics. Particularly illuminating are a series of seventh-century monuments commissioned by Caracol's king K'an II, which chronicle his polity's shifting fortunes as a client kingdom. While his own father was placed on the throne of Caracol by Wak...
The Social Function of the Title "K’uhul Chatahn Winik" (2016)
Dozens of Maya ceramics from the Late Classic period feature the epithet "k’uhul chatahn winik", ‘divine person of Chatahn’. Most of these are codex-style vessels of unknown provenance, but some specimens have been recovered during archaeological explorations at Calakmul, Nakbe, and Tintal. Moreover, the same title appears in monumental inscriptions, most prominently at Calakmul, where there are at least four examples. Despite a recent increase in research on this specific title, the different...