Aztec Reconstructionism

Aztec Whistles of Death

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:06:00 +0000

MEXICO CITY (AP) - Scientists were fascinated by the ghostly find: a human skeleton buried in an Aztec temple with a clay, skull-shaped whistle in each bony hand.But no one blew into the noisemakers for nearly 15 years. When someone finally did, the shrill, windy screech made the spine tingle.If death had a sound, this
was it.Roberto Velazquez believes the Aztecs played this mournful wail from the so-called Whistles of Death before they were sacrificed to the gods.The 66-year-old mechanical engineer has devoted his career to recreating the sounds of his pre-Columbian ancestors, producing hundreds of replicas of whistles, flutes and wind instruments unearthed in Mexico's ruins.For years, many archaeologists who uncovered ancient noisemakers dismissed them as toys. Museums relegated them to warehouses. But while most studies and exhibits of ancient cultures focus on how they looked, Velazquez said the noisemakers provide a rare glimpse into how they sounded.

Read the full article here.

Sacrificed Inca Children were not Children of Privilege

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:54:00 +0000

The following comes from an essay on Relativism by Timothy Taylor, archaeologist, University of Bradford:

"My colleague Andy Wilson and our team have recently examined the hair of sacrificed children found on some of the high peaks of the Andes. Contrary to historic chronicles that claim that being ritually killed to join the mountain gods was an honour that the Incan rulers accorded only to their own privileged offspring, diachronic isotopic analyses along the scalp hairs of victims indicate that it was peasant children, who, twelve months before death, were given the outward trappings of high status and a much improved diet to make them acceptable offerings. Thus we see past the self-serving accounts of those of the indigenous elite who survived on into Spanish rule. We now understand that the central command in Cuzco engineered the high-visibility sacrifice of children drawn from newly subject populations. And we can guess that this was a means to social control during the massive, 'shock & awe' style imperial expansion southwards into what became Argentina."

In his essay, Taylor discusses how he has changed his mind about how he viewed such incongrously violent acts as child sacrifice. He writes:

"Where once I would have striven to see Incan child sacrifice 'in their terms', I am increasingly committed to seeing it in ours. Where once I would have directed attention to understanding a past cosmology of equal validity to my own, I now feel the urgency to go beyond a culturally-attuned explanation and reveal cold sadism, deployed as a means of social control by a burgeoning imperial power."

Finally, he realigns his original opinion on the value of relativism as a tool to "understand the internal logic and value system of a past culture" and arrives at the following insight:

"We need relativism as an aid to understanding past cultural logic, but it does not free us from a duty to discriminate morally and to understand that there are regularities in the negatives of human behaviour as well as in its positives. In this case, it seeks to ignore what Victor Nell has described as 'the historical and cross-cultural stability of the uses of cruelty for punishment, amusement, and social control.' By denying the basis for a consistent underlying algebra of positive and negative, yet consistently claiming the necessary rightness of the internal cultural conduct of 'the Other', relativism steps away from logic into incoherence."

There's a lot in this essay for modern day Reconstructionists to think about. It certainly has impacted my own views on how ancient practices should be viewed, evaluated, and adopted, modified, or rejected.

Aztec Civilization Older Than Previously Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 21:26:00 +0000

The Aztec Civilization timeline may need to be revised to at least one century earlier than previously believed according to archaeologist Patricia Ledesma, speaking from the Tlatelolco site of a newly discovered ancient pyramid. According to yesterday's Reuters news article:

Since the discovery of another pyramid at the site 15 years ago, historians have thought Tlatelolco was founded by the Aztecs in 1325, the same year as the twin city of Tenochtitlan nearby, the capital of the Aztec empire, which the Spanish razed in 1521 to found Mexico City, conquering the Aztecs.
The pyramid, found last month as part of an investigation begun in August, could have been built in 1100 or 1200, signaling the Aztecs began to develop their civilization in the mountains of central Mexico earlier than believed.

"We have found the stairs of this, much older pyramid. The (Aztec) timeline is going to need to be revised," archaeologist Patricia Ledesma said at the site on Thursday.

Chac: The Rain God (the movie)

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:42:00 +0000

I found this movie review on FAMSI's Aztlan mailing list. The IMDB listing is here.

A Visually striking, Suspenseful, Hypnotic film! I found this DVD film at my Library in Sacramento, Ca., The caption reads: A cult film from the 1970s, lost for years and now newly restored, Chac: The Rain God is based on the ritual and legends from the Popul Vuh, as well as Tzeltal and Mayan stories. This gorgeous film, shot in the Chiapas region of Mexico by Chilean director Rolando Klein, focuses on a small Tzeltal village during a terrible drought. Desperate for relief, thirteen men set out on a quest to save their people from starvation. They seek a solitary Diviner who lives in the mountains and knows the ways of the Ancients; they hope that he can summon Chac, the Rain God. The Diviner takes them far from their own land on a strange journey - a trek that challenges their beliefs and even their own sanity.

The Mayan god Chac was known to the Mexica people as Tlaloc.

Top Ten Archeaological Discoveries of 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 23:20:00 +0000

Mike Ruggeri points out in FAMSI's mail list AZTLAN that these discoveries include:

... the ancient solar observatory
at Chankillo, Peru dating to 300 BCE, the new dating of Clovis sites
across the Americas with advanced radio-carbon dating which changes
the perspective on the Peopling of the Americas, the discovery of
8000 BCE domesticated squash seeds in Peru, and of course, the
discovery of Polynesian chickens in Peru that were brought before the
Spanish arrived thus establishing that the Polynesians arrived in the
Americas before the Europeans.

Archaeology Magazine's Top 10 Discoveries of 2007

Free Texts on Mesoamerican History

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 16:39:00 +0000

Many thanks for David Hixson of Tulane University who provided the following information on free books:

"Ancient Chalcatzingo" by David Grove

At Dumbarton Oaks, these titles are available for free download:

-Olmec Art at Dumbarton Oaks (PDF, 8.3 MB)
-Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia
-Archaeology of Formative Ecuador
-Gender in Pre-Hispanic America
-Dumbarton Oaks Conference on the Olmec
-The Cult of the Feline (PDF, 6.3 MB)
-Ecology and the Arts in Ancient Panama: On the Development of Social Rank and Symbolism in the Central Province (PDF, 14.3 MB)
-The Burial Theme in Moche Iconography (PDF, 4.3 MB)
-Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica
-Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture
-Andean Art at Dumbarton Oaks
-Native Traditions in the Postconquest World
-Intercambio, política y sociedad en el siglo XVI

Also, 88 publications of the New World Archaeological Foundation (a great resource for site reports and Formative period Mesoamerica, among other topics) are available for free browsing and printing at:

http://www.lib.byu.edu/dlib/spc/nwaf/

Mexico Wolf Boom Raises Hopes

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:33:00 +0000

There's a great video over at National Geographic News that shows the success the Mexican Wolf recovery program has been having in Northern Mexico.

MANAO - Open Repository for Anthropology

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:09:00 +0000

I just received this announcement on another list that I belong to, and am re-posting it here.

***
http://savageminds.org/2007/10/05/please-submit-to-manao/

Fri 5 Oct 2007

Please submit to Mana'o

Posted by Rex under Open Access Open Source

It is with great pleasure that I request submissions for MANAO—an
Open
Access repository for anthropology sponsored by the Department of
Anthropology at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. In Hawai'ian
"mana'o" means thoughts, ideas, knowledge, or opinions—when making
decisions together people in Hawai'i often ask for each other's
mana'o. The Mana'o project combines anthropology's commitment with the
ideal of 'open access' with open source software's focus on free
technology. The goal is to provide tools that allow scholars to better
communicate with each other and with the world.

Mana'o will 'soft-launch' in late-November 2007 during the annual
meeting of the American Anthropological Association in Washington D.C.
We are currently inviting early adopters to submit work that will be
featured in this launch. At the moment we are specifically interested
in:

BA Theses
MA Theses
Ph.D. Theses
Articles in peer-reviewed journals
Papers given at academic conferences
Digitized books

If you would like to deposit your work with us, simply email it to
submissions@manaoproject.org and our staff will process it and deposit
it in Mana'o. If you already have your publications online, simply
send us the URL and we will process the material ourselves.

Please note that we can only deposit documents that are in the public
domain, documents for which you clearly hold the copyright, or
documents for which the copyright owner (typically, the publisher)
permits authors to deposit their work in a repository such as this.
Unfortunately, this does not include PDFs of your dissertation created
by UMI (unless you have used the UMI Open Access publishing option).
We can, however, accept the electronic documents that you submitted to
UMI when you deposited your dissertation with your university library.
If you are unsure who owns the copyright to the work you wish to
submit, we can work with you to determine your rights.

Anthropologists have long been concerned with making their world
available to the public, including the communities with whom they have
lived and conducted fieldwork. Mana'o represents an important step
forward in creating concrete open access solutions for anthropology. I
hope that you will be part of our initial program, and I look forward
to receiving your submission!

Please circulate this call for submissions as widely as possible. If
you are interested in volunteering for the project, please do not
hesitate to contact me at golub@hawaii.edu.

Thank you,
Alex Golub, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
University of Hawai'i at Manoa
***

Two Bald Eagles On Our Beach

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 19:42:00 +0000

Early this morning I took this photo of two bald eagles eating on our beach. In between eating a fish, they were singing to each other.

For the Aztec, and the Huichol, the eagle was symbolic of the Sun, and to even see such a bird was considered a great omen. I feel both humbled and privileged to have seen two eagles sharing a meal on our beach, on the morning of the Autumn Equinox.

40 Mummies Found in Peru's Amazon

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 21:33:00 +0000

Full article follows:

(LIP-ir) -- Under tons of dirt, dozens of mummies from the Chachapoyas culture were found during excavations today.

The Restoration and Conservation Project Director, Alfredo Narváez, reported today that 40 mummies were found at the Kuélap fortress in Peru's Amazon.

According to Peru's Andina News Agency, Narváez stated that the remains which had been found seemed to have been affected by a fire, which raises a series of questions for investigators.

In addition, Narváez, which has is directing the V Stage of the Restoration and Conservation of the Kuélap Archaeological Complex, stated that pieces of Inca ceramics had been found at the excavation site.

Narváez explained that the remains had been heavily guarded under tons of dirt and stones at the southern platform, known as 'El Tintero', of the archaeological complex.

In this area it was reported that six circular buildings were found. It is believed that the circular buildings in which 40 bodies, both male and female were found, are houses. Investigators are attempting to establish if the people were killed in a hostile takeover or if they may have died of a disease.

Mummified Remains of Inca Children on Display

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 03:17:00 +0000

I'm a little disturbed by this action taken by the High Mountain Archaeological Museum in Salta, Argentina. There's only one reason to display the well-preserved body of this 500 year old Inca child, and that's for profit. Everything about the child's death was sacred, and while the scientific study of the remains is certainly justifiable, the public exhibit is not. Several Indian groups have spoken out about this perceived violation, but it appears to have had no effect. The museum reports record numbers of people visiting the exhibit.

Quetzalcoatl and One God: Native Distortion of the Pre-Hispanic Lore

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 17:22:00 +0000

The following comes from Brant Gardner's Quetzalcoatl Papers website. It's a wonderful resource for anyone interested in reading some hard data and sound analysis about how Quetzalcoatl was worshiped, and his place in Aztec and Toltec mythology. Gardner provides us with a good model to follow when evaluating post-Conquest writings (i.e., Sahagun), even those done by native scribes, for various distortions (transcription error; accretion; interpretation; selection). The following essay, which I've reproduced in its entirety, dismantles the argument that Quetzalcoatl encouraged his followers to believe in one God.

Quetzalcoatl's Preaching of the One God by Brant Gardner (copyright 1998)

Judeo-Christian monotheism came into sharp conflict with the extensive pantheon of the Nahua. For the Spaniards, one of the most attractive traits of Quetzalcoatl was his putative opposition to this proliferation of deities, and his insistence upon one god. The evidence for this "doctrine" preached by Quetzalcoatl does have support among Sahagún's native informants, men who knew their culture, but were nevertheless schooled by the Spanish and well-versed in Catholic religion. These natives write of an earlier Toltec society, headed by Quetzalcoatl, which believed in only one god:
They were very devout. Only one was their god; the showed all attention to, they called upon, they prayed to one by the name of Quetzalcoatl. The name of one who was their minister, their priest [was] also Quetzalcoatl. This one was very devout. That which the priest of Quetzalcoatl required of them, they did well. They did not err, for he said to them, he admonished them: "There is only one god" [he is] Quetzalcoatl. He requireth nothing...( Sahagún, 1950-75,10:160).

While the passage is originally in Nahuatl, and coming from one of the best extant sources, it is still likely that it is the result of a distortion by selection. This time, the natives are selecting from their corpus the information the Spaniards wanted to hear. This passage would not be so much in question if it did not follow an earlier list (in that very same text) of the gods worshiped at Tula, the capital of the Toltecs. That previous list is a direct contradiction of the statement of belief in only one god.

The Anales de Cuauhtitlan concurs that there were more than one god at Tula. Speaking of Quetzalcoatl himself' "it is told that, idolatrizing, he prayed in the heavens and that he invoked Citlalyncue, Citlallatonac, Tonacacihuatl, Tonacatecutli, Tecolliquenqui, Yeztlaquenqui, Tlallamanac, and Tlallichcatl." ("Anales de Cuauhtitlan". In Codice Chimalpopoca, edited Primo Feliciano Velázques, Mexico: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1975, 8. )

The overwhelming evidence of a large pantheon of deities through all of Mesoamerica at all time periods, as well as the contradictory evidence within the same document (as well as others) shows this aspect of the Quetzalcoatl material to be a Spanish accretion to the tale. In this case, it is just as likely that the Spaniards were accurately recording what they were being told. It was simply expedient for the natives to supply certain elements which they knew were of importance to the friars.

Serge Gruzinski analyzed various native documents produced after the Conquest (known as the Relaciónes geográphicas) and noted a similar process where the interests of the natives were best served by altering their tradition for the benefit of the Spaniards. In one case,

It was in fact convenient to consign to an already distant past, more than 50 years old, all that could have to do with idolatry, with 'rituals and ceremonies that they practiced and did of old in the time of the infidelity', which made it possible at the same time to dismiss the somewhat thorny question of the retention of paganism. Thus the spotless present of the Christianization followed upon the long pastime of the idols. ( Serge Gruzinski, The Conquest of Mexico, translated by Eileen Corrigan, Polity Press, 1993, 78-9.)

The texts extolling Quetzalcoatl's belief in the one god fall into this category. This element in the Quetzalcoatl tales shows the evidence of a distortion by selection, in this case the selection being done by the natives themselves. Even coming from native sources, it is nonetheless a distortion of the pre-Hispanic lore.

This Month's Aztec Calendar Page

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 07:46:00 +0000

RIVER OF GOLD; PRE-COLUMBIAN TREASURES FROM SITIO CONTE; PANAMA

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:57:00 +0000

If you're within traveling distance of Philadelphia, PA, you'll probably want to plan at trip to Penn Museum to see this exhibit.

"In 1940, a Penn Museum expedition excavated rich and remarkable evidence of a thriving, Precolumbian civilization that had inhabited the region more than a thousand years before. River of Gold: Precolumbian Treasures from Sitio Conte features artifacts from the
excavation and includes more than 120 extraordinary Precolumbian gold
artifacts -- large-scale, hammered repoussé plaques, nose ornaments,
gold-sheathed ear rods, pendants, bells, bangles and beads -- as well
as detail-rich painted ceramics, and objects of precious and semi-
precious stone, of ivory and of bone."

Get the full story at the Museum's Web site.

The First Calendar System In Mesoamerica?

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 20:44:00 +0000

"First Dates: The Maya calendar and writing system were not the
only ones in Mesoamerica--or even the earliest"

by Joyce Marcus

in "Natural History" (April 1991, pp. 22-25)

At the time of the Spanish conquest, a number of peoples--
the Aztec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Zoque, Maya, and others--occupied the
region extending from central Mexico to as far east as Honduras
and El Salvador. Although they spoke diverse languages and had
distinct customs, they all shared what anthropologists consider a
similar, Mesoamerican culture. While the Maya constructed
monumental cities in the tropical lowlands of the Yucatan
Peninsula, some of their best-known accomplishments had their
origins among earlier societies located to the west of their
homeland. Among these are the related phenomena of hieroglyphic
writing and calendrical systems.
In Mesoamerica, writing first emerged among chiefdoms,
societies that had hereditary differences in rank--based on the
degree of kinship to the chief--but that lacked the division into
exclusive upper and lower classes typical of ancient states, or
civilizations. Between 3,000 and 2,500 years ago, a network of
chiefdoms ran from the Valley of Mexico south through the present
states of Morelos, Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Chiapas to the Pacific
coast of Guatemala and El Salvador. The Maya who occupied the
southern lowlands of the Yucatan Peninsula may have been relatively
late participants in this network.
A wide range of materials and artifacts--including magnetite,
jade, marine shells, obsidian, and pottery--circulated among the
chiefdoms, probably as a result of trading and the ritual exchange
of gifts on the part of high-ranking families. This interaction
fostered a social milieu in which ideas traveled rapidly. For
example, among the widely distributed items were pottery vessels
with stylized motifs, such as lightning, that appear to have been
linked to descent groups. The exchange of objects also reinforced
political connections between chiefs, who formed alliances through
intermarriage and cooperated in raiding rival chiefdoms.
A chief's authority was sanctioned by his supposed links to
supernatural forces, rather than backed by real political power
based on laws and arms. Nevertheless, a great deal of labor was
coordinated for communal efforts, notably in constructing the
massive pyramidal bases for temples. In Mesoamerica, the first
carved stone monuments with hieroglyphs appeared in this context.
They were erected, not in the Maya region, but in Oaxaca (inhabited
by Zapotec-speaking people) and in southern Veracruz and western
Chiapas (inhabited by Zoque-speaking people). Incidentally, the
ancient Olmec of Veracruz and Tabasco, famed for their jade
carvings and colossal basalt human heads--and once regarded as the
"mother culture" of Mesoamerica--were already in their decline by
the time writing came to the fore.
Some of the early hieroglyphic monuments made use of a 260-
day calendar, which was common to all Mesoamerican groups and
probably originated long before it was first recorded in stone.
This calendar was produced by combining twenty day names with the
numbers 1 through 13. A counting system based on twenty (perhaps
originally derived from the twenty digits of the hands and feet)
was used by all Mesoamerican Indians, while the day names, based
on animals and natural phenomena, varied somewhat from group to
group. Thirteen, far from being unlucky, was an auspicious and
sacred number. The combination of a given number and day name
formed a unit that could not recur until 260 days (20 X 13) had
elapsed. The calendar as a whole served ritual purposes, such as
scheduling events for favorable days or divining the destiny of a
child born on a certain day.
So important was this 260-day calendar that among peoples such
as the Zapotec, Mixtec, and Aztec, children were often named for
the day of their birth, resulting in such names as 2 Wind, 3
Crocodile, 5 Flower, 6 Monkey, and 8 Deer. To give the day name,
a hieroglyphic sign was used; to give the number, most groups
(including the Zapotec and Maya) used a dot for the number and a
bar for the number 5. Thus, "8 Deer" would be written with one
bar, three dots, and a picture of a deer's head. Among the Maya,
the number was placed to the left or above the day name.
Because calendrical glyphs were so common in Mesoamerican
inscriptions--and were the first signs deciphered--scholars such
as Sylvanus G. Morley and J. Eric S. Thompson once assumed that
many pre-Columbian monuments recorded only calendrical information
and that the Maya "worshiped time." But the Zapotec, Maya, Aztec,
and others used the calendar to place both real and mythical events
in time. Very early on, Mesoamerican chiefdoms depicted members
of the elite and captives taken in combat, inserting the
calendrical names of the persons portrayed.
Subsequent Mesoamerican writing systems continued to record
the taking of rival lords and other captives and to honor victors
in battle. In later states, which were larger and more socially
stratified than chiefdoms, the themes of territorial control and
personal aggrandizement were added. With the emergence of a
distinct noble class, writing became a tool of the state. It
content then expanded to include royal genealogies, ancestor
worship, and important events in the rulers' lives, such as birth,
marriage, and accession to the throne.
The earliest-known stone carving to display elements of the
260-day calendar is Monument 3 from San Jose Mogote, located in the
Valley of Oaxaca only nine miles north of the ruins of the ancient
Zapotec city of Monte Alban. This carved stone is between 2,600
and 2,500 years old (its age can be estimated because it lies
beneath a dated floor and is associated with a certain type of
pottery). It shows what appears to be a naked sacrificial victim
sprawled in an awkward position, eyes closed, mouth open, with a
stream of blood flowing from his open chest following removal of
his heart. (These pictorial conventions appeared at a later date
in Maya monuments.) Between the feet of the figure is inscribed
the Zapotec day sign for "earthquake," placed above an ornate dot.
This inscription, 1 Earthquake, was probably the victim's
calendrical name.
As a result of competition for land, tribute, and water, rival
settlements engaged in raiding, and prisoners so taken were
commonly sacrificed to insure supernatural favors. This may have
been the fate of 1 Earthquake. His name was proclaimed for all to
appreciate, perhaps simply because he was a chief or other
important person, perhaps also to identify the town that had been
raided. This custom prevailed in later times among the Maya and
other groups, but whether the victims were members of the same
ethnic group as the captors or belonged to a different one is
rarely easy to determine.
Monument 3 was laid flat on a bed of slabs at the entrance to
a forty-foot-long corridor between two large public buildings,
where anyone passing through would tread on the carved
representation of the sacrificed captive. The image of a conqueror
stepping on the body of a captive was another convention later
borrowed by the Maya, who carved stone prisoner galleries and
impressive monumental displays of political propaganda. The Maya
depicted prisoners as the pedestals on which rulers stood; they
also carved the risers and treads of stone staircases with images
of bound prisoners lying full-length, which the ruler would ascend
on the way to a palace or temple.
Perhaps a century after Monument 3 was carved, one of the
earliest public buildings in the Zapotec city of Monte Alban was
completed. It featured a gallery of more than 300 carved
representations of naked captives. At this time, the first pure
texts appeared, containing both calendrical and noncalendrical
glyphs without any pictorial scenes. Significantly, some
inscriptions, such as that on Stela 15 at Monte Alban, include
calendrical signs (recognizable by their style and format) with
numbers between 14 and 18. The great Mexican scholar Alfonso Caso
interpreted these sings as the first evidence of a Mesoamerican
365-day calendar. Such a calendar, well-known from later sites,
was divided into eighteen "months" of twenty days and a final
interval of five days. Caso argued that the calendar signs with
numbers greater than 13 must have been month signs (many later
examples follow this method of naming the months).
These early Zapotec monuments suggest that the 260-day
calendar may have been the first used in Mesoamerica, and that the
260-day and 365-day calendars were used side by side at least 2,400
years ago. Subsequently, the two sequences were used in
interlocking combination to produce a cycle of dates that did not
repeat for fifty-two years. This system set the stage for a still
more comprehensive method of reckoning time, the so-called Long
Count calendar. This calendar, for which the later Maya are
famous, first appeared in a series of monuments in a region some
linguists have assigned to Zoque-speaking Indians.
Somewhere in southern Mexico prior to 36 B.C., people had
begun to use multiples of a 360-day "year" to produce a very
accurate calendar for measuring long intervals of time. The Maya
version of that calendar used as its starting point a date
corresponding to August 13, 3114 B.C., of the Western (Gregorian)
calendar. Some scholars have speculated that this base date was
of mythological significance, calculated to coincide with the
creation of the present world. From that starting point, the
Indians tabulated the elapsed time in order to place events in an
unambiguous temporal context.
Long Count dates were recorded with a string of numbers whose
value depended on their position in the string (as in the Western
system of ones, tens, hundreds, and so on). This efficient
notation included a "completion" symbol to be used, when needed,
as a place holder (accordingly, the Indians of southern Mexico are
credited with independently inventing the concept of zero). Using
this position-value notation (top to bottom or left to right in the
case of Maya monuments), five different orders of time were
recorded, in descending size. They began with the largest unit,
a cycle of four hundred 360-day years (144,000 days). The next
unit consisted of twenty 360-day years (7,200 days). The third
unit was the eighteen-month year (360 days). Then came a month of
20 days, followed by the smallest unit, the individual day.
Stone monuments erected at four different sites--Chiapa de
Corzo, Tres Zapotes, El Baul, and Abaj Takalik--display dates that
fall into the period that archeologists call Cycle 7. These are
dates that lead off with seven of the 400-year units. Together,
the four dates span 52 years, from 36 B.C. to A.D. 16. For
example, Stela C from Tres Zapotes, Veracruz, records the Long
Count of 7.16.6.16.18, using dots as 1 and bars as 5. In other
words, the date is expressed as 7 cycles of 144,000 days, 16 units
of 7,200 days, 6 years of 360 days, 16 months of 20 days, and 18
additional days. If we assume that the starting date was August
13, 3114 B.C. (as it was for Maya), this corresponds to September
3, 32 B.C., in the Western calendar. We do not know what important
event was commemorated by the carving, since the rest of the text
is heavily eroded.
None of these early sites lies within the area generally
assigned to the Classic Maya. One falls in western Chiapas, one
in southern Veracruz, and two on the Pacific coast piedmont of
Guatemala. The first securely dated monument known from the Maya
lowlands--the area where Maya civilization reached its peak--falls
in Cycle 8. This monument is Stela 29 from Tikal, in the tropical
rain forest of northern Guatemala. Its Long Count date of
8.12.14.8.15 corresponds to July 6, 292, in the Western calendar.
Another important date from about this time is found on a jade
artifact called the Leyden Plaque, believed to have been carved at
Tikal even though it was found more than 120 miles away. its front
depicts a noble, probably an early Tikal ruler, with a captive
sprawled at his feet. On the back of the plaque is a Long Count
date of 8.14.3.1.12, which corresponds to September 5, 320. What
makes the Leyden Plaque so important is that it includes a verb
that means "was seated" (in office), followed by the name of a
ruler, his titles, and an "emblem glyph," representing the city or
possibly the royal dynasty of Tikal. The plaque thus commemorated
the day on which this ruler took office.
Although the Maya knew of and used the 260-day calendar, they
apparently did not draw their names from it, as did their neighbors
to the west and north. Most Maya rulers had names composed of
other signs, including pictograms (such as animal heads, skulls,
limbs, tails, weapons, or shields), ideograms (arbitrary
conventions for such things as sky, earth, sun, or darkness), and
phonograms, which transcribed their names phonetically. In the
case of the Leyden Plaque, the Maya ruler's name features a bird's
head with signs appended to the left and above that serve as
modifiers.
Although the Maya were not the first Mesoamericans to use
writing and calendars, through their contributions, hieroglyphic
writing assumed its maximum versatility, complexity, and
correspondence to a spoken language. We have yet to determine
whether Mesoamerican writing had multiple origins or a single
origin followed by rapid regional diversification. There are many
more early texts out there still to be discovered. The long-
neglected Zoque region of southern Veracruz and western Chiapas,
which lies between the better-known Olmec, Zapotec, and Maya
homelands, might provide the missing transitional stages between
the earliest inscriptions and those of the Maya.

-----
This essay has been reproduced from a cached version in Google for
educational purposes only. All rights are reserved by the original author, Joyce Marcus.

Primary Sources and Translation Issues

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 08:18:00 +0000

Part and parcel of being a Reconstructionist of an ancient religion is dealing with translation issues. Aztec Reconstructionists have an additional challenge to deal with. The pre-Conquest alphabet was one of pictorial glyphs rather than a written alphabet. It wasn't until after the Conquest in 1521 that Nahuatl was put into script form.

Dr. Nancy Fitch, professor of History at Cal State Fullerton, describes the issue in a Bibliography for her "Conquest of Mexico" project:

"Prior to the arrival of the Spanish, the indigenous populations wrote in a pictographic style and used paintings as vehicles for writing history. Many of the friars educating, controlling, and indoctrinating New Spain villages, thus, encouraged the natives to paint. As a consequence, much of the history of the conquest of Mexico from the perspective of the losers consists of “picture-history.” Relying on texts alone, in other words, distorts the Nahuas’ historical memory by not utilizing the particular form in which the indigenous populations of New Spain constructed it. Reading images introduces challenges of its own. One needs to have at least some visual literacy as well as understand the conventions used in the Nahuas’ paintings. Finally, finding images not covered by copyright is a challenge for the best of historians. The drawings accompanying “authentic” manuscript reproductions often contained drawings from multiple sources, not just those included in the original manuscript itself. Moreover, in producing this project, I discovered that artists often “copied” originals or sometimes provided their own drawings, which were similar but different from the original paintings. The process of verifying the pedigree of out of copyright drawings has, thus, been a nightmare, especially when the books I was using failed to indicate the source of the illustrations.

Problems aside, there are three major sources of “picture-history” of the conquest of Mexico. By far, the most important is the Florentine Codex. The codex richly illustrated many battles and encounters between the Spanish, the Mexicas, and other indigenous peoples. A group of indigenous people, the Tlaxcalans, who allied with the Spanish and massacred many of the Mexicas themselves, produced eighty paintings published in the mid-sixteenth century in a manuscript called El Lienzo de Tlaxcala. These images generate even more questions about whose vision is represented in them, since the Tlaxcalans backed the Spanish without hesitation and produced their paintings to impress the Spanish monarchy with their loyalty to Spain. In other words, just because a manuscript was written in Nahuatl does not necessarily mean that it represented the Mexica point of view, itself an enormous insight into the complex politics of pre-colonial Mexico. The Aubin Codex, often called the Manuscrito de 1576 although that was probably the date of its origin rather than its publication, largely consists of “picture-histories” of the Mexicas from their earliest migration south to the conquest and construction of New Spain. This manuscript is housed in the Bibliothèque National in France. It is plausible that Fray Diego de Durán may have supervised the preparation of this manuscript, and it was published in 1867 as Historia de las Indias de Nueva-España y isles de Tierra Firme with Durán as the author.

Elizabeth Hill Boone, in her landmark book "Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the Aztec and Mixtec", writes "Out of the wealth of documentation that once existed, 5 Pre-Columbian and some 150 early Colonial painted histories survive today."

For more information about translation problems and other Reconstructionist issues, read my essay "The Pagan Reconstructionist's Dilemma".

Does the Jaw Bone, Pelvic Girdle, and Spinal Cord Represent the Aztec Double-headed Serpent?

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 17:23:00 +0000

The following text is from the paper "THE MESOAMERICAN SACRUM BONE: DOORWAY TO THE OTHERWORLD" by Brian Stross (University of Texas at Austin):

"The argument herein concerning the ritual and symbolic significance of the sacrum in parts of Mesoamerica commences with a characterization of a Mesoamerican variant of what some have called a "shamanic" worldview, including a short discussion of the human sacrum bone in its pelvic context and its place in that worldview.

Next, language data are presented to demonstrate another manifestation of Mesoamerican interest in the sacrum and flanking bones. This is followed by evidence that some Precolumbian Mesoamericans shared iconographic concern with the sacrum, presented in the context of a hypothesis that this concern derives from the fact that the sacrum as a focal part of the pelvic girdle represents a metaphor for the cosmic portal linking this world with the Otherworld while emphasizing the generative or (pro)creative aspect of the life cycle, just as the jawbone as a focal part of the skull represents another metaphor for the cosmic portal, but one emphasizing the analytical or destructive aspect of the cosmic cycle.

A discussion follows, developing some of the rationale behind the skulls-and-serpent metaphor for the portals-and-conduit linking cosmic domains, and showing that the place of the sacrum in Mesoamerican cosmology, imagery, and ritual finds common ground with Old World ideas on the "sacred bone."

Stross makes the case that there was a sacred awareness of the two skulls (the jaw bone and the pelvic girdle) connected by the serpentine spinal cord that was part of the shared cosmology of Mesoamerica. Stross goes further and alludes to comparable beliefs throughout the world implying some kind of shared awareness. I particularly liked this Tlinglit image from the Pacific Northwest that he added at the end of his paper. It shows two eagle heads connected by a pelvic girdle that has been formed into a mask.

Mayan Gods From The Stars?

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 05:13:00 +0000

A few years ago in a more or less Reconstructionist Yahoo group, I introduced a fairly standard Mesoamerican belief (not to mention other ancient cultures) that the gods originated from the stars. To my surprise, I was roundly criticized for claiming that the gods were "aliens". I guess no one had heard of or read Susan Milbrath's "Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars", published by the University of Texas Press in 2000. Here's an excerpt:

"Astronomical gods form the core of the Precolumbian Maya pantheon. In the past, some Mayanists have suggested that the Maya did not worship gods; rather they believed in spiritual forces. Karl Taube (1992b:7-8) refutes this position in his study of the Maya pantheon.

"As the most highly developed ancient civilization in all of the Americas, the Maya had a sophisticated astronomy that was integrated with their religion. Like the ancient Greeks, Romans, Hindus, Chinese, Mesopotamians, and Egyptians, the Maya believed that the celestial luminaries were gods who influenced human destiny and controlled events on earth. Whether Maya artworks show rulers dressed up as gods or the gods themselves is sometimes debatable, but there is no question that the star gods were invoked in Maya art for more than a thousand years."

It's no surprise that Reconstructionists argue amongst themselves, but if we all agree to look to primary sources as a starting point, it's kind of hard to miss the celestial origin of the gods.

The Curse of One Rabbit

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 01:33:00 +0000

I recently came across a fascinating study entitled "Aztec Drought and the Curse of One Rabbit", published in the September, 2004 issue of The American Meteorological Society journal. In it, the authors present their work in using Aztec codices and tree ring chronologies to corroborate Aztec climate folklore.

The curse of One Rabbit is significant as a single test of the accuracy of the workings of fate through the day count of the tonalpohualli. Here's an excerpt from the study:

"The tree ring data indicate that the Aztec's fear of famine and catastrophe in One Rabbit years may have been based on long experience. Thirteen One Rabbit years between A.D. 882 and 1558 are covered by the available tree ring data (1350 not covered). Ten of these years were immediately preceded by below-normal tree growth in the year 13 House and the mean of the preceding 13 House years is significantly below normal. These 13 House years include very severe low growth periods in 1037, 1089, 1297, and 1557. Below normal Douglas Fir growth in Central Mexico is associated with poor Maize harvest (Therrell 2003). So the Aztec belief in the curse of One Rabbit may have arisen because of drought-induced poor Maize yields prior to 1 Rabbit years.

"This amazing coincidence between drought/famine and the Aztec calendar cycle apparently ended with the Aztec empire. There is no significant relationship between the eight One Rabbit years and tree growth that occurred after the 1558 event."

The Huichol and the Aztec

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 18:29:00 +0000

When Reconstructionists place too great an emphasis on primary sources for the religious beliefs of a specific civilization, they frequently run into the problem of gaps in the historical record. When that happens, one of the next steps is to examine the artifacts of neighboring tribes or nations for information that might fill in some of the gaps.

In the case of the Aztec civilization, there was widespread destruction of their religious records and artifacts by the Spanish conquistadors and their attending priests from Rome. Fortunately, some of the tribes of the Sierra Madre Occidental who co-existed with and were part of the Aztec empire, did not suffer nearly as much and so retained their traditions more or less intact.

In Peter Furst's book "Visions of a Huichol Shaman", he writes that "the Huichol were never fully conquered, nor were they Christianized." Thus, the information available about the Huichol religion may give us a glimpse into the beliefs of the pre-conquest Aztec religion as well, particularly how they worked with animal spirits and their view of the Underworld. As I work my way through Furst's book, and "People of the Peyote: Huichol Indian History, Religion, and Survival" (which Peter Furst was a co-editor on), I'll be posting relevant information here on this blog.

The Tzitzimime: Star Demons of the Aztec

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 05:17:00 +0000

I found a wonderful paper by Cecilia F. Klein entitled "The Devil and the Skirt: An Iconographic Inquiry Into The PreHispanic Nature of the Tzitzimime".

The Tzitzimime were a group of supernatural beings (probably female, but that's in dispute), who descended to earth during certain astronomically significant times to eat people. A solar eclipse is considered one of those times, and the stars that are visible during the eclipse are considered the place of origin of these "star demons".

Professor Klein does a wonderful job of demonstrating how an artistic study of iconography can illuminate problems in the translation. Klein's reasoning begins with the fact that while the commentaries were written by Chrisitan European authors, the images were drawn by native artists.

The Huichol Indians Use Technology To Save Their Ancient Culture

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:47:00 +0000

UEJUQUILLA EL ALTO, Mexico - Five hundred years after it started, the Spanish Conquest has finally reached the Huichol.

In this Mexican city perched high in the Sierra Madre, a small band of people is urgently recording native Huichol traditions, like monks preparing for the onset of a modern Dark Ages.

Using computers and cutting-edge software, the Huichol Center is spearheading an effort to preserve a culture thousands of years old - cataloguing images, teaching computer skills, burning language CDs and running a bustling crafts center to underwrite a shoestring budget.

Read the full article here.

I blogged about the magical yarn paintings of Huichol shamen last year. The image above is one of my favorites. It is a Huichol shaman's view of the Underworld.

Pre-Conquest Tomb of an Aztec King Discovered

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 00:55:00 +0000

The burial chamber of the last Aztec king to have completed his rule prior to the Spanish invasion in 1521 may have been discovered today underneath a stone monolith of the goddess Tlaltechutli.

The king is believed to be Ahuizotl (ah-WEE-zoh-tuhl), who led the Mexica people to the very pinnacle of their greatness up until his death in 1502. No Aztec king's tomb has ever been found, so the enormous potential of what was buried with him, and what it will reveal about those pre-Conquest times is simply staggering.

It's somewhat appropros that the tomb, watched over by Tlaltechutli, a water deity, is completely submerged in water, along with stone debris, making the excavation proceed at a very slow and cautious pace.

We are doing it very, very slowly ... because the responsibility is very great and we want to register everything," said Leonardo Lopez Lujan, the lead government archaeologist on the project. "It's a totally new situation for us, and we don't know exactly what it will be like down there."

As early as this fall, they hope to enter the inner chambers - a damp, low-ceilinged space - and discover the ashes of Ahuizotl, who was likely cremated on a funeral pyre in 1502.

By that time, Columbus had already landed in the New World. But the Aztecs' first contact with Europeans came 17 years later, in 1519, when Hernan Cortes and his band of conquistadors marched into the Mexico Valley and took hostage Ahuizotl's successor, his nephew Montezuma.

Ahuizotl's son Cuauhtemoc (kwow-TAY-mock) took over from Montezuma and led the last resistance to the Spaniards in the battle for Mexico City in 1521. He was later taken prisoner and killed. Like Montezuma, his burial place is unknown.

Because no Aztec royal tomb has ever been found, the archaeologists are literally digging into the unknown. Radar indicates the tomb has up to four chambers, and scientists think they will find a constellation of elaborate offerings to the gods on the floor.

"He must have been buried with solemn ceremony and rich offerings, like vases, ornaments ... and certainly some objects he personally used," said Luis Alberto Martos, director of archaeological studies at Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.

"This would be quite an important find for Aztec archaeology," said Michael Smith, an archaeologist at Arizona State University who is not connected to the dig. "It would be tremendously important because it would be direct information about kingship, burial and the empire that is difficult to come by otherwise."

Inaccuracies in Museum Exhibit to be Corrected

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 14:34:00 +0000

The San Bernadino County Museum's curator Adella Schroth has acknowledged the errors of fact that are present in the museums's "Five Suns: the Art in Ancient Mesoamerica" exhibit and has begun making the necessary corrections. These include:

The title of the exhibit (Five Suns is not a universally-accepted world view among Mesoamerican civilizations)
Chocolate was discovered by the Aztec (it was not)
The Pyramid of the Sun was built by Mayans (its location is hundreds of miles north of the region of Mexico that the Mayan civilization occupied)
Various mis-spellings and other inaccuracies.

Again, this story makes some important points for reconstructionists to consider. While facts not in evidence leave the reconstruction of an ancient religion open to interpretation by other means (extrapolation from available data, expert opinions, etc.), facts that ARE in evidence need to be accurate. It sounds like a lot of the problems that this museum's curator is dealing with could have been avoided in the first place.

Hard Recons versus Soft Recons

noreply@blogger.com (Caelum Rainieri) — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 17:53:00 +0000

This story in the L.A. Times discusses a museum exhibit which is a kind of mish-mash of Mesoamerican civilizations. They named it "Five Suns".

That makes Xavier Cázares Cortéz very unhappy.

"Oh, my God, it's horrible," says Cortéz, who has also worked as a curator and art educator. "The exhibition is a pastiche. And this is what they're calling scholarship."

Indeed, says Adella Schroth, the museum's curator of anthropology. And with no apologies.

"We're rather proud of the numerous products of Mesoamerica that we have, and we wanted to show them off," says Schroth, who holds a doctorate in anthropology from UC Riverside. "So this was our chance."

This is an interesting article, so be sure to read the whole thing, but more than that, it is a perfect example of the dilemma that Aztec Reconstructionists find themselves in on a daily basis.

The "hard" recon takes the approach that primary sources set the framework for any reconstructionist practice. If it's not in the primary sources, it isn't accepted as genuine.

The "soft" reconstructionist view (which is mine, by the way) is that dependence on primary sources suffers from at least three fatal flaws:

Most of the original documents of the Mexica priests were destroyed by the Spanish in the 16th century. That leaves huge gaps in our knowledge about the Aztec religion.
The remaining documents were translated from original Nahuatl to Spanish by Roman Catholic priests who applied a Christian gloss to everything they translated. Perhaps one of the worst offenders of this practice was Hernando Ruiz de Alarcon, the priest who wrote "Treatise on the Heathen Superstitions". Here, for example, is the first paragraph of Chapter 1 of de Alarcon's book:
"The ignorance or naivete of almost all the indians (and I do not say of all because I have not traveled through all the land, but there must be little difference) is so great that, according to general opinion, all are very easily persuaded of whatever one might want to lead them to believe. Thus, because of their ignorance, they had, and have, such a variety of gods and such different modes of adoration that, having resolved to ascertain the basis of their beliefs and what they all are, we find as little to get hold of as if we tried to squeeze smoke or wind in our fist."
The third issue is that the Mexica people didn't invent their religious practices in a vacuum. The Aztec cosmology is a mixed bag of deities and concepts that in some cases extend as far back as the Olmec. Therefore it's a perfectly reasonable approach to acknowledge the inter-connectedness of Mesoamerican civilizations when examining any one of them individually.

Needless to say, there are many "hard recons" who disagree with my views. The bottom line is - we're all theorizing.