ANCIENT MESOAMERICA

The Grolier Codex is discussed in the context of the archaeoastronomy of the ancient Americas on pages 98-99 of the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson. One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. A numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depictes the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Other photos: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

The Grolier Codex (Codice Maya de Mexico, CMM) is discussed in the context of the archaeoastronomy of the ancient Americas on pages 98-99 of the March 1990 National Geographic Magazine article "America's Ancient Skywatchers" by John B. Carlson. One of four known ancient Maya books, the Grolier Codex depicts different manifestations of the planet Venus; the column of glyphs on the left of each panel records days in a 104-year Venus almanac. These plaster-coated bark-paper pages, carbon-dated to the 13th century, represent only half of the 20-page original. A numbered photographic arrangement of the Grolier Codex depictes the author's discovery that Codex pages 10 and 11 are actually two parts of the same "page 10".  Carlson clarifies the identities of Venus deities depicted in the Grolier Codex from a comparison of images from the Cacaxtla murals and links the images of the Grolier Codex with ancient Maya astronomically timed ritual warfare and sacrifice. (Grolier Codex photographs: Enrico Ferorelli; Other photos: Bob Sacha)

This article has been posted on Academia.edu as part of the Grolier Codex Project of the Center for Archaeoastronomy under the directorship of John B. Carlson, Ph.D.  The Grolier Codex Project seeks to further advance the study of the Maya Grolier Codex.

Examines the fire limpias ceremonies of the Yucatec Maya and Maya to initiate cleanses, prognostication and/or periodic renewals, as well as their use of velaciónes (candle work) to cleanse, renew and create.
Also, explains how these ancient traditions influenced the author’s fire limpia practices, the fundamentals in doing fire limpias as white fire, puros, and velaciónes, and shares clients’ success stories after receiving fire limpias.
The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate how the fire limpias of the ancient Mexica and Yucatec Maya were often associated with cycles of death, rebirth, renewal, and creation; to then expand on how the author has integrated these ancient traditions and values when conducting fire limpias.

This article focuses on Structures 12 and 22 from Yaxchilan (Chiapas, Mexico), where the ancient Maya reset stone lintels from the sixth century a.d. in eighth-century buildings. The resetting highlights attention to the preservation of the lintels as relics from the past. Valued for their antiquity and the histories they had accrued, particularly from contact with ancestors, they served as loci for communication with the past, with memory inhering in their materiality. This essay also explores the lintels’ physical contexts and how the Maya may have engaged with them. For example, the arrangement of the Structure 12 lintels would have guided circumambulation. Such movement was associated with sacred processions, and evidence suggests the building was reserved for ancestor veneration. Although only restricted groups could have entered the small structure to perform rites, these may have been integrated into extended ceremonial circuits in public spaces.

This article connects with studies of the life histories of things, in which analysis is directed toward objects’ use, reuse, and modification. Examining how people interacted with sculptures over time offers insight into the people and the objects and provides glimpses into Late Classic Maya perception of sculptures and their material qualities.

This study explores the multifaceted Maya Deluge Myth, from its pre-Columbian origins to current fantasies about a great world-destroying flood at the 13 Baktun period ending of the Maya Long Count on 21 (or 23) December 2012. No such flood is prophesied in any Maya records for this date, and the famous scene on Dresden Codex page 74 is discussed in its context as a symbolic depiction of the annual world-renewing downpours at the onset of the rainy season in springtime in the Maya world. The presiding gods of warfare and blood sacrifice were the agents of fertility and the regeneration of nature, and not the agents for the destruction of the Maya in a world-ending deluge. The misinterpretation of Dresden page 74 has propagated, unchallenged, for over a century of Maya scholarship and found its way into “new age,” fringe, and popular culture. This research helps to set the record straight along with providing a history of the meme.

This paper analyzes the roles and attributes of the Maya goddess Ix Hun Ahau, the female manifestation of Hun Ahau that appears in the
Ritual of the Bacabs. This Colonial Yucatec text is our earliest surviving source for how Maya cosmology provided a framework for
healing practices. Although the extant manuscript dates to the late eighteenth century, it is the culmination of centuries of interethnic
interaction, including innovations emerging from the intellectual exchange that characterized Mesoamerica during the Late Postclassic
period (ca. A.D. 1200–1500). The accoutrements and activities ascribed to this goddess in the incantations identify her as a Maya parallel
to Tlazolteotl-Ixcuina, the Nahua goddess of weaving, sexuality, pollution, and its purification. Pollution concepts and purification
practices that are otherwise peripheral in the Ritual of the Bacabs are specifically related to Ix Hun Ahau, suggesting that early intellectual
exchange between Mesoamerican peoples extended to medical cosmologies as well.

In this article I argue that the graphic images of the gods in the divinatory codices are composed of signs of different semantic values which encode particular properties. All of them contribute to creating the identity of the god. However, these graphic elements are not only shared by different deities, but even differ between representations of the same god. Analyzing the graphic images of Xipe Totec, one of the best-studied deities and one of the oldest in Mesoamerica, I elaborate a hypothesis that the images of the gods in the divinatory codices were perceived by their authors as a mosaic of different properties, which at the same time were dynamic. Consequently, there was not even one “prototypical” representation of a single god, since possibly the identity of a god was defined precisely when composing his/her image with particular graphic signs, thus crystallizing some of his/her multiple properties, important at this precise moment.

... Gerardo Aldana Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-4120, USA Abstract ... the recovery of the type of astrology most commonly attributed to the ancient Maya: that concerning the “star war.” Popularized by Linda Schele ...

Año 4 N°10 Enero-Abril 2015

Sistemas de perspectiva prehispánica
Jorge Angulo Villaseñor P. 9

Con la muerte en la mirada
América Malbrán Porto P. 36           

El carácter venusino en el Tonalpohualli
de los códices Borgia, Vaticano B
y Cospi
Ofelia Márquez Huitzil P. 62

El Cacao: de los dioses para el mundo
América Malbrán Porto P.  9

Rituales de las láminas 15 a 17 del Códice Borgia:
¿Nacimiento del tlamacazqui?
Ofelia Márquez Huitzil P. 43           

Abrigo Rincón Mariano, un álbum de trabajo
Enrique Méndez Torres P. 115

A queer archaeology is often equated to looking for ancient homosexuality.  As a challenge to heteronormative practice, queer theory, instead, provides a framework for engaging with all aspects of identity formation and the processes and behaviors that mediate it.  This article examines how queer theory can inform discussions of  archaeological identity, first with respect to its place in broader feminist and archaeological literature; second in its correspondence to theoretical models of identity formation and the construction of difference; and finally in its applicability to models of ancient Maya social organization and commoner identity.

The original research by the Teotihuacan Mapping Project (TMP) identified a large number of obsidian workshops within Teotihuacan based on surface concentrations of production debris. Clark (1986b) questioned the validity of these identifications and called for subsurface excavation to confirm the presence of in situ workshop locales. This article summarizes the results from the excavation of one of the obsidian workshops identified in the Tlajinga district of Teotihuacan at Compound 17:S3E1 (Compound 17). We describe the excavations, discuss the lithic technology, and examine the subsurface contexts in terms of what they tell us about in situ obsidian craft activity. Excavations confirm that Compound 17 was a locus of large-scale obsidian craft production during the Classic period. While only a single test case, these results suggest that surface remains at Teotihuacan can be a useful guide in identifying craft production areas when they are confirmed through subsurface testing.

A series of highly elaborated burial/offering complexes have been discovered recently in association with seven superimposed monumental constructions at the Moon Pyramid. The archaeological contexts excavated during the past seven years indicate that these dedicatory complexes were symbols of a state religious ideology and communicated sociopolitical information on behalf of ruling elites. Rich artifacts made of obsidian, greenstone, shell, pyrite, ceramics, wood, and textile, as well as abundant skeletal remains of sacrificed animals and human beings, stand out in these unusual ritual deposits. Many of the offerings possess strong connotations of warfare and ritual sacrifice. After describing the five burial/offering complexes and discussing their possible function and religious significance, we conclude that, when the expanding Teotihuacan state orchestrated these monumental constructions, the most important ritual paraphernalia was buried in the new enlargement programs to expres...

This article offers a revision of the chronology and settlement history of Tula, Hidalgo, synthesizing information obtained from numerous investigations and 68 radiocarbon and seven archaeomagnetic dates. Tula Chico's earliest settlement appeared while the region was under the control of Teotihuacan as one of many hilltop Coyotlatelco settlements in the region. The monumental center at Tula Grande did not appear until after Tula grew to power, presumably with the consolidation of the other Coyotlatelco polities. Extensive exposure of residential structures in numerous localities have revealed a widespread pattern of barrios containing households exhibiting a wide range of social status that enjoyed access to a wide variety of luxury items including the first reported objects of gold. Tula Grande and the Tollan phase city appear to have already been abandoned and in ruins prior to the arrival of Aztec II peoples. The Late Aztec period occupation shows a preoccupation with Tula&#3...

... George Ernest Hasemann 1944-1998. Boyd Dixon. ... His final book, Clovis Revisited, written with AT Boldurian, was in press at the time of his death. It looks back at his early work on Paleoindians and puts it into context with current Paleoindian research. ...

For the ancient Maya, social organization remains largely understood as a two class system — that of commoner and elite.  While these categories reflect the extreme ends of known social strata, they inadequately characterize the reality of day-to day interactions.  This has led to tacit assumptions that commoners did not participate in or comprehend the political and social complexity of the world around them. This paper examines how occupants of a Late Classic Maya neighborhood employed ritual and public practices as a means of social differentiation.

Excavations at the Northeast Group, part of the ancient Maya site of Chan, Belize, identified considerable diversity between households, suggesting that occupants shaped status and identity through the control and centralization of ritual. Understanding how people distinguished themselves within the context of a neighborhood provides direct evidence of class complexity, challenging traditional models of commoner behavior and more importantly the role they played in ancient Maya society as a whole.

En referencia a lo que se sabe de los mexica y demás grupos nahuas, se menciona que el concepto que se tenía sobre los dioses que regían en el Cosmos, en el Inframundo y en el plano terrestre, donde se desenvuelve el ser humano; o el arriba, el abajo y la biósfera como actualmente es conceptuada, eran la residencia de todas las energías manifiestas en deidades duales con funciones polarizadas y complementarias que, a la vez, se podían dividir en otras dualidades para ejercer sus diversas funciones.
Parece que ese mismo concepto de dualidad genética fue compartido, desde etapas muy tempranas, por todas las deidades mesoamericanas y tal vez panamericanas, puesto que en el caso de los dioses del agua, existen representaciones masculinas y femeninas de este primordial elemento de la naturaleza, conocidas como Tlaloc y Chachiuhitlicue.