Hieroglyphs and Hegemony in the Classic Maya Kingdoms of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The area stretching from the Usumacinta River basin in western Guatemala into the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, hosted key centers of Classic Maya political and cultural life (ca. 250–850 CE). Scribes and sculptors active across the region produced hundreds of stone monuments inscribed with texts in a common hieroglyphic script. Yet little is known about how these artisans, working in different times and places, acquired and shared knowledge of what and how to write, or how this exchange was inflected by other aspects of inter-polity interactions. This paper presents preliminary results from paleographic analysis to identify patterns of written variation reflecting scribal change and exchange. It examines Late Classic hieroglyphic monuments from Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan, two antagonistic kingdoms in the Usumacinta River valley. Focusing on visual form, rather than content, of the inscriptions produced in both kingdoms provides insight into the cultural construction of intra- and inter-polity relations. In doing so, this research makes a broader case for studying hieroglyphic texts as material outcomes of cultural production and transmission that can shed light on the contexts of their creation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32657