Mallory Matsumoto

Acceso gratis: https://elsevier-books-eproof.tnq.co.in/EOFFPRINTS/3e851eb875843a18603146d08a2d59cd/

The archaeology of pre-colonial Mesoamerican ritual and religion is as broad in scope as the various definitions that have been offered for their objects of study. This entry provides a brief overview of ongoing debates over what “religion” and “ritual” are and how to recognize them in the archaeological past. Three key themes to date offer an introduction to the challenges and potential of studying ritual and religion in pre-colonial Mesoamerica. With a growing emphasis on practice and embodiment, the archaeology of Mesoamerica is making important contributions to understanding the region’s history and to cross-cultural studies of ritual and religion.

Acceso gratis: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/eprint/38ZHVRCJTMFDZX7CVFJZ/full?redirectUri=/doi/epdf/10.1086/726712

Matsumoto argues for the importance of understanding baptism in Indigenous context by examining not only its administration by representatives of the Catholic Church but how Indigenous communities understood this rite of initiation and its consequences for their early colonial history. As the first and arguably most important of the seven Catholic sacraments, baptism cleansed the soul of the stain of original sin and marked one's formal initiation into the church. But despite missionary attempts to explain the rite's doctrinal underpinnings, Indigenous initiates contextualized both the sacrament and its consequences within their own cosmologies. Specifically, she proposes that K'iche'an Maya interpretations of baptism were shaped by the transformative, identity-making capacity of water in their cosmology.

This article examines baptismal naming in sixteenth-century Guatemala in the context of Indigenous adaptation to the sociopolitical upheavals of Spanish-led invasion, forced resettlement, and the imposition of Catholicism. As part of the institution of baptism—the first Catholic sacrament and one that missionaries implemented soon after their arrival in the Spanish Americas—Indigenous baptizees received a European name, as well as spiritual kin in the form of godparents. The distribution of baptismal names in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Santiago Atitlán, a predominantly Tz'utujil Maya community in highland Guatemala, suggests that Indigenous christening marked a break with precolonial onomastic practice. Instead of continuing the Indigenous tradition of naming children according to their birthdate, Maya adults in the Santiago Atitlán area developed new naming strategies that simultaneously located their children in the Spanish administrative sphere and reconstituted local social networks in the wake of colonial disruptions. Furthermore, the influence of godparents on name selection both expressed and reinforced godparenthood's rising significance as the most socially salient Catholic institution in colonial Indigenous society and one that remains vibrant into the present.

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 (250–850 CE). Scribes and sculptors active across the region produced hundreds of stone monuments inscribed with texts in a common hieroglyphic script. Yet we know little about how these artisans, working in different times and places, acquired and shared knowledge of what and how to write.
This paper presents preliminary results from paleographic analysis to illuminate processes of cultural transmission among Classic Maya scribes. It examines Late Classic (550–850 CE) hieroglyphic monuments from Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan, two antagonistic kingdoms in the Usumacinta River valley. It is argued here that the tradition of monumental hieroglyphic writing at Piedras Negras assumed a conservative stance under the last known ruler (781–808 dC) by reviving hieroglyphic forms that had previously been abandoned. In the Yaxchilan kingdom, in turn, monumental patrons closely controlled the iconography and linguistic message, but not the hieroglyphic form of monuments erected outside of the political capital. This research makes a broader case for studying hieroglyphic texts as material artifacts of cultural transmission that can shed light on the contexts of their creation and use.
La región que se extiende de la cuenca del Usumacinta hasta las tierras altas de Chiapas fue un centro importante de política y cultura durante el período Clásico de la cultura maya (250–850 dC). Escribas y escultores produjeron cientos de monumentos de piedra, muchos tallados con inscripciones en escritura jeroglífica. Sin embargo, todavía no se entiende bien cómo estos artistas, trabajando en diferentes lugares y épocas, recibieron y compartieron su conocimiento de la escritura y cómo usarla.
Esta ponencia presenta los resultados del análisis paleográfico para iluminar la transmisión cultural entre escribas mayas. Se examinan inscripciones jeroglíficas en monumentos de los reinos antagonistas de Piedras Negras y Yaxchilan en el Usumacinta Medio durante el Clásico Tardío (550–850 dC). Se propone que bajo el último rey (781–808 dC), la tradición jeroglífica monumental de Piedras Negras adoptó una orientación conservadora por retomar formas ya abandonadas. En el reino de Yaxchilan, en cambio, los patrocinadores regularon la iconografía y el mensaje, pero no tanto la forma jeroglífica de los monumentos fuera del centro político. Así que el análisis de la escritura maya como resultado material de la transmisión cultural, nos permite entender mejor los contextos de su producción y uso.

Open Access Download: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-archaeological-journal/article/cultures-of-creativity-hieroglyphic-innovation-in-the-classic-maya-lowlands/6A472712F99E49898AB9B69232F1B3CF


Classic Maya hieroglyphic writing displays a coherence across time and space that points to intensive, sustained communication among scribes about what they were writing and how. Yet we know little about what scribal transmission looked like on the ground or what knowledge scribes were conveying among themselves. This article examines the monumental hieroglyphic corpora from two communities, at Copan in western Honduras and at Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, to illustrate local processes of innovation and exchange that shaped participation in regional transmission. I argue that distinct ‘cultures of creativity’ developed at Copan and Palenque from local elites’ varying understanding of their position in the Maya world and the nature of hieroglyphic inventions. These case studies attest to the multi-faceted nature of scribal production and exchange within a hieroglyphic tradition that remained largely coherent despite never being centrally administered. In addition, the study's palaeographic methods suggest possibilities for tracing dynamics of cultural innovation and transmission in the ancient past at multiple scales of society.

We present results from the archaeological analysis of 331 km2 of high-resolution airborne lidar data collected in the Upper Usumacinta River basin of Mexico and Guatemala. Multiple visualizations of the DEM and multi-spectral data from four lidar transects crossing the Classic period (AD 350–900) Maya kingdoms centered on the sites of Piedras Negras, La Mar, and Lacanja Tzeltal permitted the identification of ancient settlement and associated features of agricultural infrastructure. HDBSCAN (hierarchical density-based clustering of applications with noise) cluster analysis was applied to the distribution of ancient structures to define urban, peri-urban, sub-urban, and rural settlement zones. Interpretations of these remotely sensed data are informed by decades of ground-based archaeological survey and excavations, as well as a rich historical record drawn from inscribed stone monuments. Our results demonstrate that these neighboring kingdoms in three adjacent valleys exhibit diver...

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Drawing on the Peircean concepts of qualia and qualisign (Munn 1986; Keane 2003; Chumley and Harkness 2013), I propose that Classic Maya hieroglyphs were associated with two fundamental sensorial experiences, materiality and proximity, which were expressed by coordinating lexical, morphological, syntactic, and pragmatic strategies. I argue that Classic Mayan terminology distributed materiality between three basic qualisigns by privileging tactile and technological experiences of scribal production above interaction with the finished text. Qualia of proximity, in turn, implied differential access to hieroglyphic writing and its recorded knowledge with qualisigns that distinguished producers from patrons or owners. A semiotic approach articulates the material, the corporal, and the social in Classic Maya ontologies of writing and reveals the relational nature of hieroglyphic production and access. It also offers a theoretical consideration of the role of morphology, syntax, and pragmatics in culturally conditioned experiences of qualities and their interpretations.

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https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/author/ZGXNCWAEFWGHQ9TG35WK?target=10.1111/jola.12309

          The alphabets that Spanish missionaries developed in the sixteenth century to record Amerindian languages were intimately tied to the evangelizing and civilizing projects of colonialism. This article highlights the consequences of missionaries’ alphabetic ideologies for engagement, in writing as well as speech, with native speakers of highland Mayan languages in Guatemala. In their alphabetic metadiscourse, missionaries juxtaposed Spanish-speaking learners and indigenous speakers in different and unequal roles for linguistic participation. Through close examination of missionary sources, I demonstrate that missionary ideologies of written language not only articulated script with speech but also delineated knowledge circulation and shaped the power dynamics implicated in language’s actual use in colonial Guatemalan society.

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            Archaeologists and epigraphers have long worked in concert across methodological and theoretical differences to study past writing. Ongoing integration of digital technologies into both fields is extending this collaboration’s scope by facilitating rapid information exchange, integration of multiple datasets in digital formats, and accumulation and analysis of large datasets. Recent research by the Maya Hieroglyphic Database Project, for example, has deployed social network analysis to correlate ritual practice, discourse, and material culture with political interactions. Similarly, epigraphers and archaeologists of pre-Angkorian and Angkorian Southeast Asia have conducted spatial analysis to illuminate the relationship between economy, human mobility, and land use. Collectively, these examples illustrate how scholars are already using digital technologies for research at larger scales and with more diverse datasets than was previously possible. Moreover, they point to further directions for articulating text, material, and context in future studies of the human past.


https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10814-021-09162-4

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              When Maya artisans began molding and stamping hieroglyphic writing in clay, they were deviating from centuries of scribal tradition. In contrast to the copious texts that they and their peers had been painting, incising, carving, or modeling by hand for generations, their ceramics introduced mechanically replicated text into Mesoamerica centuries before the first European printing press and represented its only application to an indigenous, nonalphabetic script. With the aid of a preform—a stamp or mold inscribed with hieroglyphs—artisans could for the first time generate copies of a text without themselves having to write it, or even understand it.

But the unusual history of this practice raises more questions than it answers, particularly when examined from a perspective informed by recent centuries of industrialization and increasingly proliferating mass-reproduction technologies (Matsumoto 2018). Although its origins and early generations of use remain murky, Maya hieroglyphic writing was in use by the Late Preclassic period (ca. 400 BCE–100 CE; see Saturno et al. 2006). Ceramic seals and stamps date to even earlier, first attested in Mesoamerica beginning in the Middle Preclassic (ca. 1100–400 BCE; see Causey 1985, 12–18; Halperin 2014, 6). During the Early Classic era a few centuries later (ca. 250–550 CE), Maya potters adopted molding and stamping technologies, sometimes even combining them to preform clay stamps (e.g., Yde 1936, 36). It was not until the Late Classic period (ca. 550–830 CE), however, that hieroglyphic writing was initially created in this manner. This raises the first question: why did Maya artisans integrate the technologies of writing and ceramic replication then, after so many generations of their parallel use?

Furthermore, the molding and stamping of glyphs was ultimately a short-lived and localized practice. Throughout the history of Maya writing, handwritten texts—whether carved on monuments, sculpted in stucco, incised in precious stone, gouged into unfired ceramics, or painted on walls—composed the overwhelming majority of the hieroglyphic corpus. Molding and stamping never made a numerically significant contribution, and these texts’ production and use were largely restricted to the Late Classic and the subsequent Terminal Classic period (ca. 830–925 CE). Furthermore, the practice of replicating texts in clay is attested at only a minority of sites engaged in Classic Maya scribal tradition (see Matsumoto 2018, fig. 1). Critically, many of these sites otherwise produced comparatively few hieroglyphic texts, particularly in monumental form. Hence, the second query: why did the practice of molding or stamping Maya hieroglyphic writing remain relatively restricted in geographic and temporal scope, as well as in production quantity?

In addressing these two enigmas, this essay will explore the temporal and geographic distribution of the Maya practice of replicating molded and stamped writing in clay. Although definitive answers lie beyond the scope of the available data, considering these questions is more than a simple intellectual exercise. The cultural conditions in which the Maya practice of molding and stamping hieroglyphs in clay arose and, ultimately, disappeared are consequential for understanding the diverse uses of and engagements with the script, as well as the relationship of writing to other Classic Maya cultural practices.

[English translation of: Matsumoto, Mallory E. 2015 La estela de Iximche' en el contexto de la revitalización lingüística y la recuperación jeroglífica en las comunidades mayas de Guatemala. Estudios de Cultura Maya 45:225-258. Please do not reproduce or cite without author's permission.]

ABSTRACT: The revival of the Mayan hieroglyphic script constitutes a dynamic component of the Maya movement in Guatemala and offers a rare opportunity to observe the reclamation of a dormant writing system. This study analyzes the hieroglyphic text on the recently erected stela at Iximche’, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, and proposes that it manifests various strategies used in revitalizing the modern Mayan languages and in the construction of a Pan-Maya identity. The acquisition and active use of the ancient script in the present in this and other media reflects the dynamic between the Pan-Maya identity and the distinctive identity of the Kaqchikel people. Furthermore, by reasserting an ancient monumental and scribal tradition, it affirms the cultural link experienced by the Maya peoples with the pre- Columbian past. The study of the revived script thus may also enhance our understanding of the role of writing in expressing, reinterpreting, and developing traditions and identities.

Research on documents composed by Maya communities during the mid-sixteenth to seventeenth centuries has been largely limited to basic transcriptions, translations, and ethnohistorical analysis, particularly for those whose textual contents are political in nature. This analysis focuses instead on grammatical errors in a Spanish-language título from the K’iche’ Maya region of the western Guatemalan Highlands. I argue that the patterned gender and number disagreement indicates that the scribe was a native K’iche’ speaker who was not fully bilingual in Spanish. This case study illustrates the sociolinguistic potential of colonial-era indigenous sources when examined from a paleographic and linguistic perspective.

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              Inherent to warfare are armed conflict and an acknowledged enemy against whom one is fighting. Yet relations with that enemy are defined as much in the discourse of war as on the battlefield. Words mobilize both martial and symbolic power by identifying the antagonist and morally justifying one’s own cause at the expense of the opposition. Scholars have long been aware that the Spanish-led conquest of the Americas was a discursive phenomenon as well as a military one. However, the influence of just war philosophy on conquistadors’ representations of their indigenous foes has remained largely unexplored. In repelling the Spanish-led invasion, Highland Maya communities employed various strategies that drew on the cunning and deceit that they so highly valued in their warriors. The Spaniards, however, were highly critical of such conduct, which did not conform to their traditional conceptions of just war. To them, such comportment marked their opponents as insurgents resisting not only their rightful place in the Spanish Empire but also civilization more broadly. In condemning their Highland Maya enemies as an ethical “other,” the conquistadors articulated a just cause for their conquest waged to subdue a rebellious population. By asserting moral superiority in the face of a treacherous and malevolent adversary, they legitimized not only their quest for power in the Americas but also the often excessively violent means that they employed to this end.

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                A fundamental distinction is made in craft production between custom or bespoke creation and mechanical reproduction that generates multiple iterations of the same form. In Mesoamerica, technologies of reproduction are attested by around the sixth century bc in the form of moulding and stamping, and they become increasingly common in ceramic production in the Maya and neighbouring regions in the third or fourth century. Beginning in the Late Classic period (c. 600–830 ad), Maya artisans applied them to the hieroglyphic script as well, generating a corpus of texts that are at once fundamentally distinct from and intimately linked to the broader scribal tradition dominated by hand-written texts. This article examines Classic Maya texts moulded and stamped on ceramics in the context of scribal practice and the social and cultural role of the script. I argue that these artefacts manifest changes not only in hieroglyphic production, but also in writing's role in user communities. Consequentially, they invite reconsideration of scribal practice's relationship to other crafting traditions, as well as the diversity of modes of engaging in Classic Maya scribal tradition.

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              Scholars have been aware for some time of the linguistic and orthographic processes through which phonograms, signs that communicate an established phonetic value but have no inherent semantic content, may be derived from logographs, which encode semantic meaning, but whose phonetic value can vary depending on the linguistic context. However, they have largely ignored the possibility of the reverse, of phonograms transforming into logographs. This phenomenon, referred to here as orthographic semantization, entails the reinterpretation of a known sequence of one or more phonetic signs as conveying an inherent semantic value. At the same time, the original phonetic reading of the reinterpreted sign or sign sequence becomes obscured or changes completely, even if the graphic form remains the same. This paper explores evidence of this process in Maya hieroglyphic writing by examining cases of overspelling and incongruent or redundant phonetic complementation. Significantly, the underlying motivations for orthographic semantization differ by context. Hence, studies of this phenomenon can yield insight into the sociocultural aspects of script development and use, including language contact, script ideology, script transfer, or interruptions in scribal practice. Such research promises to enhance our understanding of the dynamic relationship between writing, its users, and spoken language.

The colonial-era documents commonly referred to as títulos were composed in Maya communities of the Guatemalan highlands in the context of significant societal change following the initial Spanish conquests in the region in 1524. Based on detailed analysis of five Nija’ib’ K’iche’ títulos and examples from other Highland Maya títulos, this article argues that the Highland Maya títulos served as instruments in negotiating power in the immediate community. As community records composed by indigenous scribes using the alphabet introduced by the colonizers, the títulos physically manifested their elite authors’ privileged access to literacy and their influence on local historiography. Furthermore, the títulos redefined the sociopolitical landscape by integrating written records of territorial claims, historical events, social relationships, and political status into the dialogue of local-level power negotiations.

This first analysis of the Kaqchikel (Mayan) element wi as it appears in the Kaqchikel Chronicles argues that wi emphasizes pragmatically salient information communicated by other constituents that precede wi in the clause. Although its position immediately after the predicate is syntactically determined, wi's use is grammatically optional. The evidence indicates that its occurrence is motivated by information structure. By analysing wi as an indicator of pragmatic salience, this model accounts for wi's association with contexts of both topic and focus and for its syntactic relationship with a variety of other constituents. This analysis has important consequences for our understanding of the pragmatics and distribution of the modern cognate wi in contemporary Kaqchikel as governed by other factors besides the influence of Spanish. In addition, it contributes to our understanding of information structure in general by suggesting that, in addition to their association with pre-predicate syntactic positions, both topic and focus status in K'ichee'an languages share a discourse prominence that could be manifested in the Chronicles through the use of wi.

Los avances en el estudio de la escritura jeroglífica maya constituyen un componente dinámico del movimiento maya en Guatemala y ofrecen una gran oportunidad de observar la recuperación de una escritura dormida. Este estudio analiza el texto jeroglífico en la estela moderna recién erigida en Iximche’, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, y propone que ésta manifiesta varias estrategias de la revitalización de lenguas mayas modernas y de la construcción de una identidad panmaya. El aprendizaje y el uso activo de la escritura antigua en el presente, en éste y otros medios, reflejan la dinámica entre la identidad panmaya y la identidad peculiar del pueblo kaqchikel. Además, por retomar una tradición monumental y de escritura antigua, afirma el vínculo cultural sentido por el pueblo maya contemporáneo con su pasado precolombino. Con el estudio de esta recuperación se puede ampliar también nuestro entendimiento del papel de la escritura en cuanto a expresar, reinterpretar y desarrollar tradiciones e identidades.

The revival of the Mayan hieroglyphic script constitutes a dynamic component of the Maya Movement in Guatemala and offers a rare opportunity to observe the reclamation of a dormant writing system. This study analyzes the hieroglyphic text on the recently erected stela at Iximche’, Chimaltenango, Guatemala, and proposes that it manifests various strategies used in revitalizing the modern Mayan languages and in the construction of a Pan-Maya identity. The acquisition and active use of the ancient script in the present in this and other media reflects the dynamic between the Pan-Maya identity and the distinctive identity of the Kaqchikel people. Furthermore, by reasserting an ancient monumental and scribal tradition, it affirms the cultural link experienced by the Maya peoples with the pre-Columbian past. The study of the revived script thus may also enhance our understanding of the role of writing in expressing, reinterpreting, and developing traditions and identities.

In spite of their aberrant orientation, ancient Maya monumental hieroglyphic inscriptions that were carved in mirror-image have been relatively understudied by scholars with respect to the significance of their shared form. Based on examination of eleven such monuments, I propose that mirror-image inscriptions constituted visual metaphors related to the ritual importance of artifactual mirrors as symbols of political and religious power. Furthermore, the metaphorical significance of these texts influenced the viewer’s interpretation of and interaction with the monument. Using evidence from archaeology, epigraphy, iconography, linguistics, and cognitive science, I argue that the mirror-image form, of these monumental inscriptions, extended ritual participation beyond the monument’s protagonist to the ancient Maya viewer through contact with the supernatural. With this work, I hope to begin to fill a significant gap in ancient Maya studies and offer an alternate perspective on the relationship between monumental form and function.

Researchers have already acknowledged the tendency among Graeco-Roman Egyptians to appeal in their personal correspondence to the gods of the locality from which they were writing, rather than to those of their hometown. Many studies that address this phenomenon have focused on Hellenistic and Roman influence on the indigenous religious tradition and seek a better understanding of the patterns of religious behavior that characterized the civilization of Graeco-Roman Egypt as a whole. Relatively little research, however, has addressed the significance of these expressions of religiosity in illuminating religious self-identification of the authors. Based on the appeals made to specific gods in 113 private letters composed on papyri and ostraca between the third century B.C. and the mid-fourth century A.D., I suggest that personal loyalty to a particular deity was not an essential part of an individual’s self-identification, but rather a fluid condition that changed with location and circumstance. Thus, rather than indicating a personal relationship with a certain deity, these invocations often instead allude to the author’s affiliation with the broader religious tradition of which that god was a member, an association that did in fact contribute to the writer’s process of self-identification.

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https://muse.jhu.edu/book/57170

"Land, Politics, and Memory in Five Nija’ib’ K’iche’ Títulos is a careful analysis and translation of five Highland Maya títulos composed in the sixteenth century by the Nija’ib’ K’iche’ of Guatemala. The Spanish conquest of Highland Guatemala entailed a series of sweeping changes to indigenous society, not the least of which were the introduction of the Roman alphabet and the imposition of a European system of colonial government. Introducing the history of these documents and placing them within the context of colonial-era Guatemala, this volume provides valuable information concerning colonial period orthographic practice, the K’iche’ language, and language contact in Highland Guatemala.

For each text, the author provides a photographic copy of the original document, a transliteration of its sixteenth-century modified Latin script, a transcription into modern orthography, an extensive morphologic analysis, and a line-by-line translation into English, as well as separate prose versions of the transcription and translation. No complete English translation of this set of manuscripts has been available before, nor has any Highland Maya título previously received such extensive analytical treatment.

Offering insight into the reality of indigenous Highland communities during this period, Land, Politics, and Memory in Five Nija’ib’ K’iche’ Títulos is an important primary source for linguists, historians, and experts in comparative literature. It will also be of significant interest to students and scholars of ethnohistory, linguistics, Latin American studies, anthropology, and archaeology." --from the publisher

https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:qzzm46q2/


As a cultural practice made most visible through its graphic artifacts, writing’s form can provide at least as much information about social organization of production and cultural transmission as its linguistic message. This dissertation explores transmission of Maya hieroglyphs during the Classic era (ca. 250–925 CE), using texts on stone monuments to reconstruct scribal communities of practice. The Maya script was used for over 1500 years in communities that were in continual interaction, but were dispersed across parts of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras and never politically unified. By analyzing inscriptions from over 100 sites across the lowlands, I reconstruct multiple transmission scenarios and argue that variation in how scribes wrote reflects decentralized trajectories for exchanging hieroglyphic practice, or knowledge about the script and how to use it. I propose that practices of writing on monuments ultimately reflect more similarity than difference because of scribes’ grounding in an intellectual culture that linked elites across the lowlands. Chapter 1 presents the cultural-historical background of Classic Maya writing and theoretical foundations for interpreting hieroglyphic practice in context, followed in Chapter 2 by an overview of the corpus and paleographic methods. Chapter 3 outlines cultural ideologies generally underlying scribes’ engagement with hieroglyphic writing. In Chapter 4, I analyze inscriptions from two polities to examine intra-site dynamics among scribes working under successive rulers. Chapter 5 investigates inter-kingdom scribal exchange between two pairs of rival polities. In Chapter 6, I interpret scribal transmission across periods of dynastic upheaval. Chapter 7 zooms out to consider scribal dynamics in the Western region, before Chapter 8 addresses innovation, diffusion, and adoption across the broader Maya lowlands. Finally, Chapter 9 synthesizes central phenomena of transmission and innovation identified in these case studies, with particular emphasis on theoretical implications for understanding cultural transmission at different scales of sociopolitical organization. Ultimately, I trace the interplay of scribal exchange with other forms of cultural, political, and economic interaction and argue for the cohesion of Maya hieroglyphic writing as a single, lowland tradition, even as local scribal communities developed their own ways of writing.