Browsing by Subject "Mesoamerica"
Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
Results Per Page
Sort Options
Item Defining the Red Background style: the production of object and identity in an ancient Maya court(2014-05) Lopez-Finn, Elliot Michelle; Stuart, David, 1965-; Guernsey, Julia, 1964-As one of many other distinct painting styles that appeared on ceramics throughout the Guatemalan Lowlands of the Late Classic Period (AD 600-900), the Red Background vases represented the economic reach of the owner into local and foreign courtly culture. Supernatural processions, playful hieroglyphic texts, and the distinctive red background circulated on vases, plates, and bowls in order to perform prestige and the elite identity in public feasts. The diverse narrative content of these vessels reveals the importance of mytho-historic origin stories and supernatural identities to the prevailing political order, while the unique hieroglyphic texts link the style and its imagery to the royal court of Pa’ Chan. However, the lack of context for most of these vases thwarts a straightforward understanding of their role in Maya society as objects from a specific geographic place with archaeological provenience. Despite this inability to embed the Red Background vases within a robust archaeological framework, the production and circulation of a visually distinct style by a named community still indicates that the creators of these objects wished to communicate a unique artistic identity through an intersection of formal qualities. Refocusing the question of agency through the lens of the final product reveals that these works acted as part of a larger campaign to create the typical courtly trappings of master artisan production and public social feasting with representatives of other powerful polities. This Master’s Thesis aims to examine the current corpus of almost sixty vases in order to describe how the Red Background style manifests. In addition, my study explores the tendency of many polychrome styles to link a specific royal court with the artistic product through hieroglyphic emblems. I conclude that the unique Pa’ Chan emblem takes this extroverted statement of belonging to a higher level, providing an emic classification of the vase where the text comprises a social category of art that performs identity through its distinct visuals.Item Embodying the kingly persona : ephemerality and memory in Temple 18 of Copan(2016-05) Madsen, Alexandra Isabel; Stuart, David, 1965; Guernsey, Julia, 1964This thesis analyzes a late Classic temple located in the southern reaches of the Maya world. Temple 18, the subject of this study, occupied Copan’s acropolis, positioned between the site’s ceremonial center and residence of the final king, Yax Pasaj Chan Yopaat. Temple 18 was the last construction at the site of Copan, and in many ways reflects the increasing turmoil at the site and surrounding areas. In this thesis I explore the temple’s importance within Copan and larger Mesoamerica to better understand its position, layout and function as a funerary crypt. I seek to comprehend the temple’s iconographic message, both historical and mythical, seen in the inclusion of military and maize imagery. I rely on iconographic analysis, spatial analysis, and archaeological and epigraphic data to understand its importance and nuances. I argue that Temple 18 legitimized Yax Pasaj’s rule, and ultimately served as an extension of the kingly persona; Temple 18 memorialized the last’s king’s rule, permanently interring his presence in Copan’s landscape.Item The ethics of ruins in Petén, Guatemala : problematizing architectural conservation in the context of people, practice, and politics(2013-05) Coronado Ruiz, Anabell; Stuart, David, 1965-; Julia, Guernsey, 1964-; William, Saturno; Brian, Stross; Samuel, WilsonMaya buildings have always been multifaceted in nature, both in the past and during present times. The preservation of such artifacts is dictated by current archaeological research, tourist agendas in the region, conservation practice, and national cultural policies. This dissertation problematizes the practices of the architectural conservator in Petén, Guatemala, situating them within the many challenges currently faced by archaeological research and the study and preservation of ancient constructions. In this approach, it is argued that architecture is a living artifact charged with historic significance serving variable roles in archaeology, tourism, heritage, or Maya religion. The history of conservation in the Maya area has proven successful for professionals working with a multidisciplinary agenda in which the methodologies employed by archaeologists and conservators coexist, but this thesis focuses on the philosophical dilemmas that specifically surround archaeological work in Guatemala today. The role of the state and its cultural policies is questioned in the context of archaeology, international conventions on cultural heritage, and activist demands of local communities and indigenous people. While the technical aspects of conservation have reached new levels of acceptance among the archaeological community, this dissertation argues that the ethical dilemmas inherent in the conservation of Maya ruins need to be addressed from the particular vantage point of a multicultural and multiethnic country like Guatemala. Based on ten years of fieldwork, this research describes and reflects on the conservation work at the site of San Bartolo, Petén, and the multi-faceted dynamics that influenced the intervention. Finally, this dissertation addresses the possibilities of transcending the current multidisciplinary work among Maya scholars and transforming it into a community-based and inclusive archaeology that incorporates long-term sustainable conservation methods with shared values and interests.Item Geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical approaches to human-environmental interactions during the Archaic to Preclassic Periods in Northwestern Belize(2015-05) Aebersold, Luisa; Valdez, Fred, Jr., 1953-; Beach, TimothyThis report reviews human-environmental interactions in Northwestern Belize during the transition from Archaic (8000 to 4000 B.P.) to Preclassic periods (4000 B.P. to 2000 B.P.). Specifically, the transition of subsistence strategies from nomadic hunter-gatherer to more sedentary food production, which we still do not fully understand in the tropical lowlands of the Maya region. It is during this pivotal era that early to mid-Holocene humans domesticated a wide variety of plants and animals, establishing a new human niche strategy that dramatically changed environments around the world. This report considers how human niche construction, a theoretical framework that expressly attributes populations with deliberate ecosystem engineering strategies, plays an integral role in the Anthropocene. I present my plans for analyzing sediments and microbotanical remains to contribute to knowledge about paleoenvironment and human-landscape interactions to provide direct evidence for transformative behavior by humans.Item In Ixtli In Yollotl/A (Wise) Face A (Wise) Heart: Reclaiming Embodied Rhetorical Traditions of Anahuac and Tawantinsuyu(2012-10-19) Ri?os, Gabriela RaquelTheories of writing are one of the fundamental ways by which Indigenous peoples have been labeled as "uncivilized." In these discussions, writing becomes synonymous with history, literacy, and often times Truth. As such, scholars studying Nahua codices and Andean khipu sometimes juxtapose the two because together they present a break in an evolutionary theory of writing systems that links alphabetic script with the construction of "complex civilizations." Contemporary scholars tend to offer an "inclusive" approach to the study of Latin American histories through challenging exclusive definitions of writing. These definitions are always informed and limited by language-the extent to which these "writing" systems represent language. However, recentering discussions of writing and language on what Gregory Cajete has called Native Science shifts the discussion to matters of ecology in a way that intersects with current scholarship in bicocultural diversity studies regarding the link between language, culture, and biodiversity. Because of the ways in which language configures rhetoric and writing studies, a shift in understanding how language emerges bears great impact on how we understand not only the histories tied to codices and khipu but also how they function as epistemologies. In my dissertation, I build a model of relationality using Indigenous and decolonial methodologies alongside the Nahua concept of in ixtli in yollotl (a wise face/a wise heart) and embodied rhetorics. The model I construct here offers a path for understanding "traditional" knowledges as fluid and mobile. I specifically look at the relationship between land, bodies, language, and Native Science functions on the reciprocal relationship between those three components in making meaning. I then extend this argument to show how the complex web of relations that we might call biocultural diversity produces and is produced by "things" like images from codices and khipu that in turn help to (re)produce biocultural diversity. Thing theory, in emerging material culture studies, argues for the agency of cultural artifacts in the making of various realities. These "things" always-already bear a relationship to bodies and "nature." Thing theory, then, can challenge us to see artifacts like khipu and Nahua images as language artifacts and help us connect Nahua images and khipu to language outside of a text-based model. Ultimately, I argue that Native Science asks us to see language as a practice connected to biocultural diversity.Item Malinalco : an expression of Mexica political and religious dominance in a subject territory(2012-05) King, Virginia Walker; Stuart, David, 1965-; Diel, Lori Boornazian, 1970-Near the edge of the Aztec empire, about sixty-eight miles from Mexico City-Tenochtitlan, the temple complex Malinalco (built 1501 -- ca. 1519) comprises a tiny portion of an eponymous town and has the only known monolithic temple in Mesoamerica. The Mexica tlatoani Ahuitzotl (r. 1486-1502) commissioned the complex in 1501, and his successor Moctezuma II (r. 1502-1520) renewed the work order at least once. The site remained unfinished after the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan in 1521. The remarkable preservation of Structure I offers a unique view of a Mexica temple interior, and the eagle and jaguar seats carved within that temple led to the traditional interpretation of the site as a haven for eagle and jaguar warriors. In contrast, I contend that Malinalco's ceremonial center was a Mexica space for politico-religious rituals likely performed by the tlatoani or his proxies. My analysis of Malinalco's pre-Mexica history (Chapter 2) examines the mythical history of the Malinalca and their possible dual Mexica-Toltec heritage. Malinalco's now-lost mural of Toltec warriors situates the site within the larger corpus of Tula-inspired procession scenes, and links it iconographically to Tenochtitlan monuments that legitimated imperial power. Through a close analysis of early colonial texts and pictographic sources, I show that the eagle and jaguar seats in Structure I were not used by warriors, but rather were the purview of the tlatoque. An analysis of Malinalco's sacred landscape features demonstrates that the Mexica did not simply build a temple complex in the sacred space of a subject territory, but rather transformed the shape of a sacred mountain in declaration of a god-like imperial power. Finally, Malinalco's famous upright drum, often cited as proof that the site was for warriors, actually shows eagle and jaguar warriors weeping as they sing a war song, perhaps alluding to the martial sacrifices of the empire as it fought to preserve and expand its boundaries. I conclude that the Mexica designed Malinalco as a space for the performance of politico-religious regime-legitimating rituals, permanently declaring their dominance in their empire's hinterland.Item Mythic architecture and drama in ancient Mesoamerica : the manifestation of the mythological landscape in the historical world(2006-08) Pope, Elizabeth I.; Guernsey, Julia, 1964-The construction of buildings to replicate specific places within the mythic landscape was a long-standing and widespread tradition in ancient Mesoamerica. This study moves beyond the identification of motifs that marked buildings as mythic, as it examines the messages communicated by these structures and evaluates the meaning and impact of mythic architecture within its historic and cultural contexts. An essential aspect of this study is the investigation of ritual dramas which reenacted episodes from creation narratives. By physically re-creating mythic locations and by re-actualizing mythic events, Mesoamerican communities manifested cosmogonic space and time so that the mythic was made present. Moreover, each building was constructed during a specific moment in time and at a particular location, and therefore it reflected and responded to particular historical realities. Because of this, Mesoamerican mythic architecture had a dual significance: both mythic and historic. Mythic architecture was an active force within the community: it communicated views concerning the origins of the world and the foundations of rulership and culture. It also made these concepts tangible within the historical world. Its very presence confirmed the reality of the mythic realm, thereby reinforcing and validating the culture’s core constructs. Because these structures manifested the mythical landscape, they were particularly potent locations for the reenactment of mythological events. These mythic dramas took place in real time which placed the structure within a specific historical context. When it was the ruler who took on the identity of the creation deities during mythic performances, the blending of myth and history was most significant. In addition, mythic dramas were the means by which the populace could be directly integrated into the mythological narrative. By examining evidence of mythic architecture and mythic drama from different Mesoamerican cultures—with a particular focus upon Classic period Copán and the Postclassic Aztec Templo Mayor—this dissertation demonstrates how they reflected their specific cultural contexts and how different communities interacted with these structures in distinct ways. This study also provides new insight into the significance of these structures at specific places and times and suggests how mythic architecture reflected changing historical circumstances.