Author: David Mora Marín (Page 1 of 10)

Linguistics

Note 36

The Cascajal Block: Iconographic Motivations, Part 3

 

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

10/25/24

This is a continuation of the sub-series begun with Note 26 (Mora-Marín 2022) and Note 33 (Mora-Marín 2023). These two installments, combined, outlined possible iconographic motivations for the nine most frequent signs on the Cascajal Block (Rodríguez et al. 2006a, 2006b). My original manuscript (initially Mora-Marín 2006, revised as Mora-Marín 2010) on this topic will once again serve as the basis for this second installment, though this note also incorporates scholarship that has become available since then (e.g. Magni 2012; Carrasco and Englehardt 2015; Mora-Marín 2019, 2020, 2024).

 

The methodology I established in that manuscript, and reproduced in my Notes 26 and 33, is repeated here in full:

 

  1. Use Joralemon’s (1971) motif catalog to identify signs in the Cascajal signary, a task not attempted in Rodríguez et al. (2006a), and only selectively in Rodríguez and Ortiz (2007), who provide Joralemon numbers for CS6, CS16, and CS1/12/27.
  2. Restrict comparisons to Early and Middle Preclassic Olmec-style art to the extent that is possible, and avoid comparisons with much later writing and artistic traditions as much as possible.
  3. Include iconographic sources for such motifs to determine whether the identification is plausible, whenever Joralemon’s gloss or description of the motif is not sufficient or available.
  4. Check against the identifications proposed in Rodríguez et al. (2006a), Justeson (2006, 2012), Ortiz et al. (2007), Rodríguez and Ortiz (2007), Anderson (2007), Mora-Marín (2009), Freidel and Reilly (2010), Magni (2012[2008]), and Carrasco and Englehardt (2015).

 

This third installments considers five more signs that occur three times within the Cascajal Block text (Figure 1); more specifically, I consider signs CS9, CS15, CS16, CS26, and CS28 (Figure 2) (Mora-Marín 2020).

 

Figure 1

 

Figure 2

 

I begin then with CS9. Table 1 presents  the relevant descriptions and identifications by a variety of authors. Figure 3 presents the comparison I offered in Mora-Marín (2010); a similar comparison is provided in Mora-Marín (2020a:220, 2020b:Suppl. Figures 3 and 4), where I suggest CS2 and CS9 represented the same iconographic referent, a design depicting a bag or bundle with a tripartite top. Indeed, Mora-Marín (2009:404) had already suggested, based on a structural analysis, that the two signs were functioning as one in the inscription. The comparison offered in Figure 3 only partially meets the criteria outlined above: it compares CS9 (Figure 3a) and CS2 (Figure 3b) to a depiction of an iconographic motif present on a Middle Preclassic celt from the Chalcatzingo area (Figure 3c), but it also compares them to a depiction of an iconographic motif from the Late Preclassic San Bartolo murals from the Maya region (Figure 3d). The Mayan motif from San Bartolo resembles what would be obtained if one blended CS2 and CS9 into a single motif. While it posdates the Cascajal Block by several centuries, the structural analysis reported on in Mora-Marín (2020:220, 2009:404) suggests CS2 and CS9 have the same value or function; adding to this their general graphic similarity, and the possibility that they depict the same object is strengthened. CS9 and the San Bartolo motif share a horizontal band in between the tripartite top element and the oblong bottom element.

 

Table 1

 

Figure 3

 

This paper regards CS15 (Table 2) to be a possible depiction of a plant or an insect, but no iconographic parallels appear convincing so far, including no close matches in Joralemon (1971).  This author agrees with Justeson (2006) in identifying CS27 as a misdrawn instance of CS15, which means there are three cases of CS15 (Figure 4).

 

Table 2

 

Figure 4

 

Table 3 provides a summary of proposals regarding CS16. This paper regards CS16 (Figure 5) to correspond to Joralemon’s Motif 73, a depiction of a “knuckleduster” (Figure 6); this is what other scholars have.

 

Table 3

 

Figure 5

 

Figure 6

 

Table 4  provides a summary of proposals regarding CS26. This paper regards this sign (Figure 7) to be a depiction of the Crossed-bands motif (Joralemon’s Motif 99) that is commonly present in juxtaposed to the U-shaped motif on the brows or foreheads of certain deities and humans (Figure 8), but paired in other contexts as well, such as the objects held by the Young Lord (or Slim) figurine (Justeson 2006).

 

Table 4

 

Figure 7

 

Figure 8

 

Table 5 provides a summary of proposals regarding CS28, a sign with globular shape with three stubs on the bottom. I propose its identification with Joralemon’s Motif 36 (Paw-wing motif) or 39 (Three-toed Paw); specifically, I regard CS28 (Figures 9a–c) to be a depiction of a mammalian paw with at least three toes. The fact that only three toes are present may be due to stylistic simplification also evident in some iconographic examples (Figure 9d), and not necessarily a taxonomic trait that could lead to the identification of a particular species. This PAW sign can be identified as a simplified version of the paws present on the animal skin worn by the Atlihuayan clay figurine (Figure 9e), and given its occurrence, on two out of its three instances, in close proximity or directly adjacent to CS6 (Figures 9a–b), the ANIMAL.SKIN sign, this paper proposes that the two constitute another iconographic pairing of the sort identified by Justeson (2010). This iconographic pairing pattern also supports the reading format proposed in Mora-Marín (2009): at position 48 one finds the ANIMAL.SKIN sign, unfinished due to the scribe running out of room on the margin, and deciding to continue at position 49 on the next column.

 

Table 5

 

Figure 9

 

The evidence presented in this note, some of it already noted in Mora-Marín (2020, 2019, 2024), is based on an unpublished paper (Mora-Marín 2010) that has been cited in a few works (Anderson 2007; Freidel and Reilly 2010; Carrasco and Englehardt 2015). This evidence further supports the consistency of the Cascajal signary, from a stylistic-iconographic standpoint, with contemporary Olmec art and subsequent Epi-Olmec writing, and offers new insights into some iconographic identifications for such signs, as well as supports for identifications proposed by others. Future installments will provide similar assessments for the remaining signs in the Cascajal signary.

 

References

Anderson, Lloyd. 2007. Cascajal: an Old System of Writing in Mesoamerica. Unpublished paper circulated by the author.
Anderson, Lloyd. 2012. Understanding discourse: beyond couplets and calendrics first. In Parallel Worlds: Genre, Discourse, and Poetics in Contemporary, Colonial, and Classic Period Maya Literature, edited by Kerry M. Hull and Michael D. Carrasco, pp. 161–179. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Carrasco, Michael, and Joshua Englehardt. 2015. Diphrastic Kennings on the Cascajal Block and the Emergence of Mesoamerican Writing.  Cambridge Archaeological Journal 22:1–22.
Coe, Michael, and Karl Taube (editors). 1995. The Olmec World, Ritual and Rulership. The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton.
Englehardt, J., Insaurralde Caballero, M., Melgar Tísoc, E., Velázquez Maldonado, L., Guzmán Torres, V., Bernard, H., & Carrasco, M. 2020. Digital Imaging and Archaeometric Analysis of the Cascajal Block: Establishing Context and Authenticity for the Earliest Known Olmec Text. Ancient Mesoamerica, 31(2), 189-209. doi:10.1017/S0956536119000257
Freidel, David A. & F. Kent Reilly III. 2010. The flesh of god: cosmology, food, and the origins of political power in ancient southeastern Mesoamerica. In Pre-Columbian Foodways: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Food, Culture, and Markets in Ancient Mesoamerica, edited by J. Staller & Michael D. Carrasco, pp. 635–680. New York: Springer.
Joralemon, Peter David.  1971.  A Study of Olmec Iconography.  Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology, Number Seven.  Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Justeson, John S. 2006.  Sign Comparisons.  Unpublished manuscript used with permission of author.
Justeson, John S. 2012. Early Mesoamerican Writing Systems. In The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology, edited by Deborah L. Nichols and Christopher A. Pool, pp. 830–844. Oxford University Press.
Macri, Martha J. 2006. The Cascajal Block: Sign Ordering. Glyph Dwellers 22:1-4.
Magni, Caterina. 2012[2008]. Olmec Writing. The Cascajal Block: New Perspectives. Arts & Cultures 9: 64–81. Éd. Somogy, Musée Barbier-Mueller, Genève/Barcelone. Electronic document, http://research.famsi.org/aztlan/uploads/papers/OlmecCascajalBlockNewPerspectives.pdf, accessed 8/6/19.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2009. Early Olmec Writing: Reading Format and Reading Order. Latin American Antiquity 20(3):395–418.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2010. Further Analysis of Olmec Writing on the Cascajal Block: Sign Inventory, Paleography, Script Affiliations. Unpublished manuscript distributed among several authors.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2016. Orígenes de la escritura en Mesoamérica: Una revaluación de los rasgos formales, conexiones interregionales y filiaciones lingüísticas entre 1200–400 a.C.
Ponencia presentada el 26 de octubre del 2016, en el XXXVIII Coloquio de Antropología e Historia Regionales, Colegio de Michoacán A.C.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2019. Problems and Patterns in the Study of Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing. In The Chinese Writing System and Its Dialogue with Sumerian, Egyptian, and Mesoamerican Writing Systems, edited by Kuang Yu Chen and Dietrich Tschanz, pp. 239-269. Rutgers University Press.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2020. The Cascajal Block: New Line Drawing, Distributional Analysis, Orthographic Patterns. Ancient Mesoamerica 31:210–229. doi:10.1017/S0956536119000270.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. Drawings of Three Olmec Celts / Dibujos de tres hachas olmecas. Notes on Mesoamerican Linguistics and Epigraphy 25. https://davidmm.web.unc.edu/2022/05/15/note-25/.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. The Cascajal Block: Iconographic Motivations, Part 1. Notes on Mesoamerican Linguistics and Epigraphy 26. https://davidmm.web.unc.edu/2022/05/15/note-26/.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2024. Orígenes de la escritura en Mesoamérica: Una revaluación de los rasgos formales, conexiones interregionales y filiaciones lingüísticas entre 1200–400 a.C. In La escritura indígena de México: de la estela al texto digital, edited by Hans Roskamp, pp. 23–43. Zamora, Michoacán: El Colegio de Michoacán.
Ortiz C., Ponciano, María del Carmen Rodríguez M., Ricardo Sánchez H., Jasinto Robles C. 2007. El bloque labrado con inscripciones olmecas. Arqueología Mexicana 83:15–18.
Rodríguez Martínez, María del Carmen, Ponciano Ortiz Ceballos. 1999. Informe de inspección en la zona de El Cascajal, Mpio. De Jaltipan, Veracruz, Archivo Técnico del Centro INAH Veracruz, mecanoescrito.
Rodríguez M., María del Carmen, Ponciano Ortiz C. 2007. El bloque labrado con símbolos olmecas encontrado en El Cascajal, municipio de Jaltipan, Veracruz. Arqueología 36:24–51.
Rodríguez Martínez, María del Carmen, Ponciano Ortiz Ceballos, Michael D. Coe, Richard A. Diehl, Stephen D. Houston, Karly A. Taube, and Alfredo Delgado Calderón. 2006a. Oldest Writing in the New World.  Science 313:1610–1614.
Rodríguez Martínez, María del Carmen, Ponciano Ortiz Ceballos, Michael D. Coe, Richard A. Diehl, Stephen D. Houston, Karly A. Taube, and Alfredo Delgado Calderón. 2006b. Supporting Online Material. Electronic document, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5793/1610/DC1, accessed on 8/6/19.

 

Nota 35

Breves comentarios sobre taʔ=k’in ‘metal’ y sus implicaciones histórico-culturales

 

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

12/3/2024 (Marzo)

Esta nota trata sobre la difusión del término “metal” en las lenguas mayas y sus implicaciones lingüísticas e histórico-culturales, especialmente en lo relacionado a la supuesta presencia tardía de los huastecos y kabiles/chicomuceltecos en las tierras bajas mayas.

 

Hace más de tres décadas, Lyle Campbell (1988:211) destacó el caso del término tak’in ‘plata, dinero, metal precioso’ en el huasteco y kabil/chicomucelteco, probablemente un préstamo de una lengua maya de las tierras bajas inicialmente difundida como #taaʔ=q’iiŋ ‘metal ( lit. mierda=sol, es decir, mierda-del-sol)’ (Kaufman con Justeson 2003:400). La razón para suponer que los huastecos y kabiles copiaron este término es que un término nativo huasteco exhibiría k’ih en lugar de k’in de pM *q’iiŋ ‘sol, día’, ya que los huastecos experimentaron un cambio de pM *ŋ > h/__# (la velar nasal se convirtió en una fricativa glotal al final de palabras) (Norcliffe 2003:75–76). De hecho, el término para ‘sol, día’ en huasteco (San Luis Potosí, Veracruz) y chicomucelteca es k’ih. Varios autores, entre ellos el mismo Campbell, habían observado previamente estos hechos (ver p.ej. Kaufman 1980, 1985; Justeson et al. 1985; Kaufman y Justeson 2008).

 

Campbell (1988), sin embargo, también sugirió que este préstamo es evidencia de un contacto tardío, argumentando que la expansión de los artefactos metálicos y la metalurgia fue principalmente un fenómeno posclásico y, por lo tanto, que el préstamo potencialmente respalda una presencia tardía de los huastecos en la región maya. La migración de los hablantes pre-huastecos hacia la Huasteca, por ende, habría ocurrido posterior al préstamo, mientras que los hablantes pre-chicomuceltecos se habrían quedado en la región maya.

 

Sin embargo, con los objetos metálicos la situación no es tan sencilla. Los objetos metálicos fabricados mediante técnicas metalúrgicas complejas habían llegado a la región maya ya durante el Clásico Temprano (p.ej., una garra de tumbaga de Altun Ha, Belice, principios del siglo VI) y el Clásico Tardío (p.ej., patillas de tumbaga, Copán, Honduras, siglo VIII) (Morley 1946:431-432, Fig. 55c; Pendergast 1970), lo que significa que los mayas de las tierras bajas pudieron haber acuñado el término para ‘metal’ ya en el período Clásico Temprano tardío o en el período Clásico Tardío temprano. [1]

Además, en Mesoamérica se habían empleado técnicas metalúrgicas más simples desde mucho antes: algunos minerales de hierro, como la hematita y la magnetita, se pulían para convertirlos en espejos y probablemente se utilizaban para reflejar la luz del sol, y se conocen por el registro arqueológico que se remonta al período Preclásico Medio (1000–400 AEC). Los mayas, tanto en las tierras altas como en las bajas, pulieron minerales con hierro, en forma de discos o cuadrados de pizarra con soporte de pirita o hematita, como espejos que probablemente reflejaban la luz del sol, entre el Preclásico Medio (ca. 600 AEC) y el Posclásico Tardío (ca. 1521 EC) períodos (p.ej., Healy y Blainey 2011). Esta probable función de reflejo de la luz solar se habría resultado en una asociación obvia entre los objetos de metal pulido y el sol, lo que explica la composición del de esta palabra basada en reflejos *taaʔ ‘excremento; residuo; producto de desecho’, utilizada por los idiomas de las tierras bajas mayas (TB) y pM *q’iiŋ ‘sol; día’.

El hecho de que *taaʔ sea un término maya de las tierras bajas es importante. Kaufman con Justeson (2003:293) reconstruyen dos términos como “mierda”: el proto-Mayense (pM) *tzaaʔ y el término de las tierras bajas mayas #ta(a)ʔ. Este último término, maya de tierras bajas (MTB), se refiere al área de difusión de contacto que involucra a las lenguas ch’olanas y yucatecanas como principales intermediarios culturales, pero que incluye también lenguas vecinas (tzeltalanas, algunas q’anjob’alanas mayores, algunas k’ichee’anos mayores). El término difundido #taaʔ=q’iiiŋ, presente en huastecano (huasteco, chicomuceltec), yucatecano, tzeltalano mayor, así como en al menos tres de las lenguas del q’anjob’alano mayor (tojol ab’al, mocho’, tuzanteko), emplea el término #ta(a )ʔ ‘mierda’, como lo demuestra el hecho de que las lenguas q’anjob’alanas mayores normalmente exhiben reflejos del pM *tzaaʔ como su término nativo para ‘mierda’.

Y, de manera crucial, el hecho de que el término difundido #taaʔ=q’iiiŋ se refleje en tuzanteko (q’anjob’alano mayor) como taaq’iiŋ, con q’, también indica que el término debe haberse difundido antes del cambio de *q’ > k’ que probablemente se propagó regionalmente desde las tierras bajas mayas. Este cambio es muy anterior al período Posclásico, y muy probablemente incluso a las primeras inscripciones mayas legibles y comprehensible, las cuales no contienen evidencia de una distinción entre reflejos de pM *q(‘) y *k(‘), y mucho menos de un cambio en progreso de *q(‘) > k(‘) (ver, p.ej., Justeson y Fox 1989; Kaufman y Norman 1984; Kaufman y Justeson 2007, 2008, 2009; Law et al. 2014; Mora-Marín 2022). Por lo tanto, no hay razón para esperar que los huastecos (ya sean huastecos o kabiles) hubieran tomado prestado este étimo durante el Posclásico.

 

(Párrafo agregado el 12/03/24) Un breve comentario sobre Pharao Hansen y Helmke (2019) es relevante aquí: esos autores no consideran la tradición mucho más temprana de manufacturar discos reflectores de metal, que se remonta al Preclásico Medio. Algunos de estos minerales, como la pirita, eran de un color similar al oro. También ignoran las implicaciones de la presencia de /q’/ en la forma del tuzanteko para la cronología del préstamo. Y por último, también optan por ignorar la reconstrucción semántica de Kaufman con Justeson (2003) como “metal”, a pesar de la experiencia de muchas décadas de Kaufman en lo que respecta a la reconstrucción lingüística histórica de varias familias lingüísticas dentro y fuera de Mesoamérica.

 

El étimo difundido #taaʔ=q’iiŋ ‘metal’, en consecuencia, podría haber viajado junto con los espejos de mineral de hierro durante siglos antes del comienzo del período Clásico (ca. 200 EC). Los objetos metálicos fueron artículos de comercio a larga distancia por excelencia desde el período Preclásico. Posteriormente, el oro y las aleaciones de oro y cobre comenzaron a llegar a Mesoamérica desde lugares tan lejanos como Costa Rica, Panamá y Colombia, por lo que la amplia difusión de términos para tales objetos no debería sorprender: los hablantes de yokot’an/chontal pueden haber estado en en condiciones de difundir este término tanto en la costa como en el interior. Otros préstamos entre el huasteco y otras lenguas mayas, especialmente términos atestiguados en ch’olano y yucatecano, quienes también tenían acceso a la costa, pueden ser el resultado del comercio costero que conecta a la huasteca con la región maya, y no requieren una suposición de contigüidad geográfica de los asentamientos.

[1] Un término escrito ta-K’IN-ni, posiblemente en referencia al oro o al metal, está de hecho atestiguado para el año 870 EC en el dintel del Akab Dzib en Chichén Itzá (Pharao Hansen y Helmke 2019:118–119 , Fig. 3). Sin embargo, su contexto no está claro y es posible que en realidad quisiera decir tä k’iin ‘en/en/hasta/por (un/el) día’.

 

 

Referencias

Campbell, Lyle. 1988. The linguistics of Southeast Chiapas (Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation, 51). Provo: New World Archaeological Foundation.

Healy, P., & Blainey, M. 2011. Ancient Maya Mosaic Mirrors: Function, Symbolism, and Meaning. Ancient Mesoamerica, 22:229–244. doi:10.1017/S0956536111000241

Justeson, John S., and James A. Fox. 1989. Hieroglyphic evidence for the languages of the Lowland Maya. (Unpublished manuscript used with permission of the authors.)

Justeson, John S., William M. Norman, Lyle Campbell, and Terrence Kaufman. 1985. The Foreign Impact on Lowland Mayan Language and Script. Middle American Research Institute, Publication 53. New Orleans: Tulane University.

Kaufman, Terrence. 1976. Archaeological and linguistic correlations in Mayaland and associated areas of Mesoamerica.  World Archaeology 8:101–118.

Kaufman, Terrence. 1980. Pre-Columbian borrowing involving Huastec. In American Indian and Indo-European studies: papers in honor of Madison S. Beeler, edited by Kathryn Klar, Margaret Langdon, and Shirley Silver, pp. 101–112. (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 16). The Hague: Mouton.

Kaufman, Terrence. 1985. Aspects of Huastec dialectology and historical phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics51:473–476.

Kaufman, Terrence, and John Justeson. 2007. The History of the Word for Cacao in Ancient Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica 18:193–237.

Kaufman, Terrence, and John Justeson. 2008. The Epi-Olmec Language and its Neighbors. In Philip J. Arnold, III, and Christopher A. Pool (eds.), Classic Period Cultural Currents in Southern and Central Veracruz, pp. 55–83.  Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Kaufman, Terrence, and John Justeson. 2009. Historical Linguistics and Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica 20:221–231.

Kaufman, Terrence, with John Justeson. 2003. Preliminary Mayan Etymological Dictionary. http://www.famsi.org/reports/01051/index.html.

Kaufman, Terrence, and William Norman.  1984.  An outline of Proto-Cholan phonology, morphology, and vocabulary.  In Phoneticism in Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, edited by John S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell, pp. 77-166.  Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Publication No. 9.  Albany: State University of New York.

Law, Danny, John Robertson, Stephen Houston, Marc Zender, and David Stuart. 2014.  Areal Shifts in Classic Mayan Phonology. Ancient Mesoamerica 25:357–366.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. Evidence, New and Old, Against the Late *k(’) > ch(’) “Areal Shift” Hypothesis. In Festschrift for Lyle Campbell, edited by Wilson Silva, Nala Lee and Thiago Chacon, pp. 130–163. Edinburgh University Press.

Morley, Sylvanus G. 1946. The Ancient Maya. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Norcliffe, Elizabeth. 2003. The Reconstruction of Proto-Huastecan. MA Thesis in Linguistics, University of Canterbury.

Pendergast, David M. 1970. Tumbaga Object from the Early Classic Period, Found at Altun Ha, British Honduras (Belize). Science 168:116-8.

Pharao Hansen, Magnus, and Christophe Helmke. 2019. Tracing the Introduction of Gold to Mesoamerica Through Linguistic Evidence. Contributions to New World Archaeology 13:113–136.

Note 35

Brief Comments on taʔ=k’in ‘metal’ and Its Culture Historical Implications

 

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

3/11/2024

 

This note deals with the spread of the term for ‘metal’ in Mayan languages, and its historical linguistic and cultural implications, including implications regarding the presence of Huastec and Kabil/Chicomuceltec in the Maya lowlands.

 

A while back, Lyle Campbell (1988:211) highlighted the case of Huastec and Kabil tak’in ‘silver, money, precious metal’, likely a loan from a Lowland Mayan language initially diffused as #taaʔ=q’iiŋ ‘metal (lit. shit=sun, i.e. shit-of-the-sun)’ (Kaufman with Justeson 2003:400). The reason for assuming that Huastec and Kabil borrowed this term is that a native Huastecan term would exhibit k’ih instead of k’in from pM *q’iiŋ ‘sun, day’, for Huastecan experienced a change of pM *ŋ > h/__# (the velar nasal became a glottal fricative word-finally) (Norcliffe 2003:75–76). In fact, the term for ‘sun, day’ in Huastec (San Luis Potosí, Veracruz) and Chicomuceltec is k’ih. Prior authors, Lyle Campbell among them, had observed this already a while ago (cf. Kaufman 1980, 1985; Justeson et al. 1985; Kaufman and Justeson 2008).

 

Campbell (1988) went on to suggest, though, that this loan is evidence of late contact, arguing that the spread of metal artifacts and metallurgy is mostly a Postclassic phenomenon, and therefore, potentially supportive of a late presence of Huastecan in the Mayan region, after which pre-Huastec speakers migrated north toward the Huasteca, leaving pre-Chicomuceltec speakers behind in the Maya region.

 

Nonetheless, with regard to metal objects, things are not that simple. Metal objects manufactured through complex metallurgical techniques had been arriving into the Maya region already during the Early Classic (e.g. gold-copper alloy claw from Altun Ha, Belize, early sixth century) and Late Classic (e.g. gold-copper alloy legs, Copan, Honduras, eighth century) periods (Morley 1946:431-432, Fig. 55c; Pendergast 1970), which means that Lowland Mayans may have coined the term for ‘metal’ as early as the late Early Classic period or early Late Classic period.[1]

 

Moreover, within Mesoamerica, simpler metallurgical techniques had been employed much earlier than that: some iron ores, such as hematite and magnetite, were polished into mirrors and likely used to reflect the sun’s light, and are known from the archaeological record going back to the Middle Preclassic period (1000-400 BCE). Mayans in both the highlands and lowlands manufactured polished iron ores, in the form of pyrite- or hematite-backed slate disks or squares, as mirrors that likely reflected sunlight, between the Middle Preclassic (ca. 600 BCE) and the Late Postclassic (ca. 1521 CE) periods (e.g. Healy and Blainey 2011). This likely sunlight-reflecting function would have become an obvious association between polished metal objects and the sun, accounting for the etymon’s composition based on reflexes of Lowland Mayan *taaʔ ‘excrement; residue; waste product’ and pM *q’iiŋ ‘sun; day’.

 

The fact that *taaʔ is a Lowland Mayan term is important. Kaufman with Justeson (2003:293) reconstruct two etyma as ‘shit’: pM *tzaaʔ and Lowland Mayan #ta(a)ʔ. The latter term, Lowland Mayan (LL), refers to the contact diffusion area involving the Ch’olan and Yucatecan languages as primary cultural brokers, but including also neighboring languages (Tzeltalan, some Greater Q’anjob’alan, some Greater K’ichee’an). The diffused etymon #taaʔ=q’iiiŋ, present in Huastec, Yucatecan, Greater Tzeltalan, as well as at least three of the Greater Q’anjob’alan languages (Tojolab’al, Mocho, Tuzantek), uses LL #ta(a)ʔ ‘shit’, as evidenced by the fact that the Greater Q’anjob’alan languages exhibit reflexes of pM *tzaaʔ as their native term for ‘shit’.

 

And crucially, also, the fact that the diffused etymon #taaʔ=q’iiiŋ is reflected in Tuzanteko (Greater Q’anjob’alan) as taaq’iiŋ, with q’, also indicates that the term must have diffused before the shift of *q’ > k’ that was likely spread areally from the LL region. This shift long predates the Postclassic period, and quite likely even the earliest legible and readable Mayan inscriptions, which contain no evidence of a distinction between reflexes of pM *q(‘) and *k(‘), much less of a real-time change of *q(‘) > k(‘) (cf. Justeson and Fox 1989; Kaufman and Norman 1984; Kaufman and Justeson 2007, 2008, 2009; Law et al. 2014; Mora-Marín 2022). Thus, there is no reason to expect that Huastecan (whether Huastec or Kabil) would have borrowed this etymon during the Postclassic.

 

(Paragraph added on 3/12/24) A brief comment on Pharao Hansen and Helmke (2019) is relevant here: those authors fail to consider the much earlier tradition of fashioning of metal into reflective disks, going back to the Middle Preclassic. Some such ores, like pyrite, were of a similar color as gold. They also ignore the implications of the presence of /q’/ in the Tuzanteko form for the timing of the borrowing. And last, they also choose to ignore the semantic reconstruction by Kaufman with Justeson (2003) as ‘metal’, despite Kaufman’s decades-long expertise in historical linguistic reconstruction of multiple language families from Mesoamerica and elsewhere.

 

The diffused etymon #taaʔ=q’iiŋ ‘metal’, consequently, could have been traveling along with iron-ore mirrors for centuries prior to the beginning of the Classic period ca. CE 200. Metal objects were long-distance trade items par excellence since the Preclassic period. Gold and gold-copper alloys began arriving in Mesoamerica from as far away as Costa Rica, Panama, and Colombia, and thus the wide-ranging diffusion of terms for such objects should be no surprise: Yokot’an/Chontal speakers may have been in a position to spread this term both along the coast and inland. Other loanwords between Huastecan and other Mayan languages, especially terms attested in Ch’olan and Yucatecan, both of whom had access to the coast, may be the result of coastal trade connecting the Huasteca to the Maya region, and do not require an assumption of geographic contiguity of settlements.

 

[1] The term, spelled ta-K’IN-ni, possibly in reference to gold or metal, is in fact attested by 870 CE on the lintel of the Akab Dzib at Chichen Itza (Pharao Hansen and Helmke 2019:118–119, Fig. 3). However, its context is not clear, and it is possible that it actually was meant to say tä k’iin ‘on/at/to/by (a/the) day’.

 

 

References

Campbell, Lyle. 1988. The linguistics of Southeast Chiapas (Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation, 51). Provo: New World Archaeological Foundation.

Healy, P., & Blainey, M. 2011. Ancient Maya Mosaic Mirrors: Function, Symbolism, and Meaning. Ancient Mesoamerica, 22:229–244. doi:10.1017/S0956536111000241

Justeson, John S., and James A. Fox. 1989. Hieroglyphic evidence for the languages of the Lowland Maya. (Unpublished manuscript used with permission of the authors.)

Justeson, John S., William M. Norman, Lyle Campbell, and Terrence Kaufman. 1985. The Foreign Impact on Lowland Mayan Language and Script. Middle American Research Institute, Publication 53. New Orleans: Tulane University.

Kaufman, Terrence. 1976. Archaeological and linguistic correlations in Mayaland and associated areas of Mesoamerica.  World Archaeology 8:101–118.

Kaufman, Terrence. 1980. Pre-Columbian borrowing involving Huastec. In American Indian and Indo-European studies: papers in honor of Madison S. Beeler, edited by Kathryn Klar, Margaret Langdon, and Shirley Silver, pp. 101–112. (Trends in Linguistics, Studies and Monographs 16). The Hague: Mouton.

Kaufman, Terrence. 1985. Aspects of Huastec dialectology and historical phonology. International Journal of American Linguistics51:473–476.

Kaufman, Terrence, and John Justeson. 2007. The History of the Word for Cacao in Ancient Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica 18:193–237.

Kaufman, Terrence, and John Justeson. 2008. The Epi-Olmec Language and its Neighbors. In Philip J. Arnold, III, and Christopher A. Pool (eds.), Classic Period Cultural Currents in Southern and Central Veracruz, pp. 55–83.  Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Kaufman, Terrence, and John Justeson. 2009. Historical Linguistics and Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Ancient Mesoamerica 20:221–231.

Kaufman, Terrence, with John Justeson. 2003. Preliminary Mayan Etymological Dictionary. http://www.famsi.org/reports/01051/index.html.

Kaufman, Terrence, and William Norman.  1984.  An outline of Proto-Cholan phonology, morphology, and vocabulary.  In Phoneticism in Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, edited by John S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell, pp. 77-166.  Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Publication No. 9.  Albany: State University of New York.

Law, Danny, John Robertson, Stephen Houston, Marc Zender, and David Stuart. 2014.  Areal Shifts in Classic Mayan Phonology. Ancient Mesoamerica 25:357–366.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. Evidence, New and Old, Against the Late *k(’) > ch(’) “Areal Shift” Hypothesis. In Festschrift for Lyle Campbell, edited by Wilson Silva, Nala Lee and Thiago Chacon, pp. 130–163. Edinburgh University Press.

Morley, Sylvanus G. 1946. The Ancient Maya. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press.

Norcliffe, Elizabeth. 2003. The Reconstruction of Proto-Huastecan. MA Thesis in Linguistics, University of Canterbury.

Pendergast, David M. 1970. Tumbaga Object from the Early Classic Period, Found at Altun Ha, British Honduras (Belize). Science 168:116-8.

Pharao Hansen, Magnus, and Christophe Helmke. 2019. Tracing the Introduction of Gold to Mesoamerica Through Linguistic Evidence. Contributions to New World Archaeology 13:113–136.

Note 34

Additional Remarks on the Value of the Verbal GOD.N Glyph as a HUʔ ‘to be able to; to finish (crafting/building)’

 

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

1/7/2024, typos corrected and Figure 1 revised on 1/8/2024

The verbal GOD.N glyph has remained problematic. Previous proposals for the reading of the verbal GOD.N glyph, prevalent in the Primary Standard Sequence (PSS) texts on portable objects, but also common on monumental texts, include primarily the following: HOY/HUY ‘to debut, to inaugurate’ (MacLeod 1990); T’AB’ ‘to anoint’ (Elisabeth Wagner, cited in Schele and Grube 1995 and Schele and Looper 1996); T’AB’ ‘to rise’ (Stuart 1995, 1998, 2005); a reading based on Ch’orti’ uhui ‘to sigh, snort’ or the Tzeltal entries hu’xiyel ‘blow, also a curing ceremony’ or hu’ ‘be able, can, take place’ (Schele and Grube 1997:81–82); among others. In Mora-Marín (2007a) I found evidence supporting the line of reasoning by Schele and Grube (1997), and proposed a reading as HUʔ (or ʔUʔ), arguing that it was based either on a root for ‘soplar (to blow air)’ or ‘poder (be able to)’. This note points to the evidence for the reading HUʔ based on a Tzeltalan root *huʔ ‘poder (to be able to)’, reconstructed to proto-Tzeltalan as *huʔ ‘hacerse, terminarse (to be made, to be finished)’ by Kaufman (1972:103). I suggest that this root was likely present in Greater Tzeltalan, the direct ancestor of both the Ch’olan and Tzeltalan languages, and that it was used in the Classic Mayan texts to refer to the crafting or building, and possibly to the “enabling” (imbuing with power) of objects and structures, but that it was subsequently lost from Ch’olan languages.

 

Here, then, I will carry out five tasks: 1) provide an overview of the graphemes involved; 2) briefly discuss the distribution of PA2/PA3 and its possible substitutional (graphemic or lexical) variants with respect to time, region, and media type; 3) review the spelling patterns that support a reading HUʔ for the PA2/PA3 logogram (and possibly its variants); 4) narrow down the lexical value of said logogram in the context of dedicatory texts to *huʔ ‘to be able to; to be made; to be finished’; and 5) present additional evidence from PSS contexts supporting this assessment.

 

First, it is necessary to introduce the graphemes of direct and indirect relevance (cf. Looper et al. 2022; Looper and Macri 1991–2024), as seen in Figure 1. I believe that the BREATH element graphically prefixed to PA2, and bearing an infixed T503/XHG ʔIK’ ‘wind’ grapheme, is simply a more elaborate version of 1S4. Also, as I show below, this BREATH element is likely its own grapheme, possibly polyvalent/polyfunctional in nature, and should be treated separately. For this reason, in my dataset, I have collapsed PA2 and PA3 as one grapheme (PA3). The same can be said of SE9: it is composed of 1S4 and SE1, at least graphically. While SE1, which in most Classic-period contexts constitutes the DEATH expression, and thus logographic CHAM/KAM/KIM, for a reflex (or multiple reflexes) of proto-Mayan *kam ‘to die’, such as proto-Ch’olan *chäm ‘to die’, in the dedicatory context of the PSS, and perhaps also in the Postclassic augural context, it may have a different value and function, as suggested below. (If it is indeed ‘death’ in the PSS contexts too, a question to ask would be whether pottery vessels bearing SE9 are typically treated in a different manner as others, perhaps with a drill hole on the base for ritual termination.) And again, the same is likely the case with PC2, which I take to be simply a case of 1S4 prefixed to PC1 ʔu, for which evidence is also presented below.

 

Figure 1. Codes from Looper et al. (2022) and Looper and Macri (1991–2023) for graphemes of relevance in this note.

 

A few words about PA3 and its common substitutes are in order. These include ZY1, SE9/SE1, and PC2/PC1. Whether such substitutes are merely graphemic (allograms representing the same lexeme), lexical (different graphemes representing different lexemes), or other (only equivalent from the point of view of visual composition of glyphic expression, but not otherwise equivalent graphemically/orthographically), is another matter. There is another sign that qualifies as a substitute, given the definition just provided, namely PJ8. However, as I have argued recently (Mora-Marín 2023a), PJ8 is likely an amalgamation of two different expressions, one of which is in fact a separate verbal expression in the PSS. Regarding the question of the substitution involved, there are at least two texts in which PA3 and ZY1 co-occur, as noted by previous authors (MacLeod 1990; Mora-Marín 2001, 2007): in one of them (K), they appear in succession, suggesting they are not graphemic substitutes, but lexical substitutes, possibly synonyms or otherwise contextually associated verbal expressions. Nevertheless, PA3 and SE9 do not co-occur, and could potentially represent graphemic substitutes representing the same lexeme, at least in the context of PSS texts at least, or perhaps represent distinct verbal expressions in complementary distribution.

 

Next is the second task, which pertains to the distribution of PA3 and associated graphemes I am utilizing, as usual, the Maya Hieroglyphic Database (MHD) by Looper and Macri (1991–2024), as well as DATAtab (DATAtab Team 2024) to carry out descriptive and inferential statistical tests, as well as to prepare charts of different types. Focusing on the Classic period, I prepared a dataset including the PA3, ZY1, and SE9 graphemes consisting of 531 examples. Table 1 presents their distribution according to Time Period. Cases of SE9 (SE1) are entirely restricted to the Late Classic period. Note that the majority of examples of PA3 are found in the Late Classic, while the majority of cases of ZY1 are found in the Early Classic.

 

Table 1. Distribution of PA3, ZY1, and SE9 according to Time Periods.

 

Table 2 presents the basic distributional statistics of each grapheme in dated texts (n = 87), excluding texts with “estimate” dates in the MHD. Figure 2 plots the distribution of the dated examples in the form of Box Plots for each grapheme. Note that the dated examples make up only a relatively small proportion (16.4%) of the total of 531 cases.

 

Table 2. Distribution of PA3, ZY1, and SE9 in dated texts.

 

Figure 2. Box Plot of distribution of ZY1, PA3, and SE9 in dated texts (n = 87).

 

Next, Figure 3 provides a Bar chart of the total dataset showing the distribution of the three graphemes according to Text Class, whether portable or monumental. It should be noted that SE9 (i.e. 1S4.SE1) does not occur on monumental texts at all. It would appear that PA3 shows up more frequently on portable texts, relative to ZY1.

 

Figure 3. Bar chart showing distribution of three graphemes according to Text Class (portable vs. monumental).

 

Next, Figure 4 illustrates the regional distribution of the three graphemes. The most obvious pattern appears to be that SE9 seems to be restricted primarily to the Eastern region (e.g. eastern Peten, Belize), and secondarily to the Central region. However, it should be noted that these regions make up the majority of the records in the dataset (56.9%). Perhaps SE9 was just rare overall: within the Eastern region, SE9 cases make up 10.8% of the total for that region, while in the Central region, SE9 cases make up 4.31% of the total for that region. Perhaps in the remaining regions, with significantly fewer representation overall in the dataset, cases of SE9 existed but were too rare to be preserved.

 

Figure 4. Bar chart depicting regional distribution of the three graphemes in question.

 

In any case, I decided to apply a Logistic Regression analysis to the dataset to look for significant patterns. Table 3 presents the results for the analysis of grapheme PA3. Suffice it to say, that, when the Eastern region is used as a reference category for the Region variable (Model A), the Northern region appears to show a significant, positive correlation with PA3, as does the West region (e.g. Pomona-Tabasco, Tonina, Palenque), but when the Central region is used as a reference category (Model B), only the West region shows a statistically significant, positive correlation with PA3. Also, it should be noted that PA3 is significantly and positively correlated with portable objects, as far as Object Class, and with the Late Classic period, as far as Time Period. Thus, scribes were more likely to use the PA3 on portable texts, and generally used it increasingly over time at the expense of ZY1.

 

Table 3. Part 1 of results of Logistic Regression (LR) analysis. Dependent variable: Grapheme “Variant” (whether PA3, ZY1, or SE9). Independent variables: Region, Time Period, Object Class. Part 1 includes LR Model for PA3 only.

 

Table 4 presents the results for the analysis of grapheme ZY1. Whether the Eastern region or the Central region is used as a reference category for the Region variable, the results are similar: ZY1 shows a significant, negative correlation with the West region, and it shows significant, positive correlations with monumental texts and the Early Classic period.

 

Table 4. Part 2 of results of Logistic Regression (LR) analysis. Dependent variable: Grapheme “Variant” (whether PA3, ZY1, or SE9). Independent variables: Region, Time Period, Object Class. Part 2 includes LR Model for ZY1 only.

 

Grapheme SE9 is not frequent enough to obtain more reliable results. The only noteworthy result is a significant, positive correlation with the Eastern region. (Even the fact that all 30 cases are restricted to the Late Classic period does not seem to be significant.)

 

Table 5. Part 3 of results of Logistic Regression (LR) analysis. Dependent variable: Grapheme “Variant” (whether PA3, ZY1, or SE9). Independent variables: Region, Time Period, Object Class. Part 3 includes LR Model for SE9 only.

It is now time to delve into the third task: the spelling patterns for PA3, primarily, compared to those of SE9 and PC2. I will study the spelling patterns for ZY1 at a later time. First, what is 1S4 BREATH, seen in Figure 5A, doing in the spellings associated with PA3, PC1, and SE1, cataloged in Looper et al. (2022) and Looper and Macri (1991–2024) as graphemes composed of two graphemic components each? Figure 5B provides an example of 1S4 that seems to function as part of a graphemic unit with respect to the anthropomorphic head. Combined, the two seem to bear the logographic (lexographic) value K’AYOM for k’ay-om ‘singer’, a bimorphemic, derived noun, spelled out syllabographically as k’a-yo-ma in Figure 5C. Note that 1S4 as cataloged consists merely of a CURL motif. However, in the example of the logogram K’AYOM in Figure 5D, it also bears an infixed T503/XHG ʔIK’ ‘wind’ grapheme, just like the examples associated with the PSS verbal expressions (Figures 5E-5G). The point here is that 1S4 BREATH is the same grapheme present in the K’AYOM logogram, perhaps functioning in such instances as a semantic/lexical determinative (Mora-Marín 2023a), whether infixed with T503/XHG ʔIK’ ‘wind’ or not, and therefore, that it is also 1S4 that that we are also seeing juxtaposed to PA3, PC1, and SE1. The question now is, what is it doing when juxtaposed to PA3, PC1, and SE1 in the context of PSS verbal expressions?

 

Figure 5. The function of 1S4 BREATH with respect to PA3 (PA2), PC1 (PC2), and SE1 (SE9).

 

Stuart (2005:151) suggested that 1S4 functions as an association with the notion of something rising, and thus, with his proposed value for PA3, proto-Ch’olan *t’äb’ ‘to rise’. As several authors have remarked (Schele and Grube 1997; Bricker 1987; Mora-Marín 2007), 1S4 appears in the Postclassic codices and in Landa’s “alphabet.” In the latter, it is glossed as <u> (Figure 6A). Bricker (1987) proposed that in the codices, 1S4 could be used to spell /hu/, and thus possibly to function as a syllabogram hu, in the context of the ‘iguana tamale’ expressions, as seen in Figure 6B, with a possible spelling hu-wa-WAJ-ji for huuj waaj ‘iguana tamale’. Figure 6C shows the more common spelling of this expression, using IGUANA as a logogram HUJ.

 

Figure 6. 1S4 in later texts.

As Figure 7 shows, when we plug in 1S4 hu in the expressions of interest, the spellings hu-PA3/PC1/SE1-yi are obtained, showing an apparent equivalence among PA3, PC1, and SE1. Nevertheless, this equivalence is not exact, as will be shown shortly.

 

Figure 7. 1S4 as hu in PSS verbal expressions with PA3, PC1, and SE1/SE9.

 

Next, as was done in Mora-Marín (2007), it is time to examine the PC2 collocation, which I propose to consist of 1S4 hu and PC1 ʔu. But first, we note some of the uses and traits of PC1 ʔu. Figures 8A-B illustrate the graphic design of PC1 ʔu that show a person’s head with closed eyelid and what appears to be a fleshless lower jaw bone. These examples illustrate the common expressions ʔu-tz’i-b’a-li for u-tz’ihb’-al ‘its writing (of/on the vessel)’ and ʔu-ja-yi for u-jay(-il) ‘his/her vessel’. PC1 ʔu could occur without the fleshless lower jaw bone, as in Figures 8C-E. (The example in Figure 8C in fact seems to be the exemplar for PC1.) Not illustrated here, but reserved instead for a later note, are examples where PC1 ʔu shows an open eye.

 

Figure 8. Examples of PC1 ʔu outside of the PC2 context.

Given what was just presented, it is now time to return to the example of PC2: the human head glyph used in this spelling (Figure 9B) is the same as PC1 ʔu. Consequently, plugging in the value of PC1 ʔu to the hu-PC1-yi template yields hu-ʔu-yi. Given the apparent equivalence already established for the spellings hu-PA3-yi (Figure 9A), hu-PC1-yi (Figure 9B), and hu-SE1-yi (Figure 9C), one could argue that PA3 and SE1 are also likely syllabograms with the value ʔu. But this is not likely the case. There is more to the spelling patterns yet to be discussed.

 

Figure 9. Expressions framed by 1S4 hu and 1B9 yi.

Next, as I noted in Mora-Marín (2007), it would appear that SE1 bears an important clue: it seems to contain within it, as a result of graphic conflation, the grapheme YG2 ʔu, illustrated in Figure 10A. YG2 bears a double-notched element oriented horizontally; in painted versions, the area around such element is typically colored in with dark paint (red/black). SE1, the DEATH glyph, often bears this double-notched element, as well as the larger circular element to the left of the double-notched element; in such cases, the EYE or % element of the DEATH sign essentially occupies the space where the DOT element of YG2 would be placed.  Maybe, one could imagine, the YG2 elements are mere optional graphic components of the DEATH expression. Nevertheless, there is paleographic evidence that this was not originally the case. Using the MHD, it is possible to examine approximately 114 examples of SE1, the DEATH expression. Interestingly, the earliest example of SE1 fused with YG2 used in a death verbal expression is found on La Corona Panel 2, dated to 9.11.16.2.8 (CE 668), with examples starting to pick up the pace in frequency during the eight century. In other words, during the Early Classic period, SE1 lacks the graphic elements characteristic of YG2. Recalling now that SE9 (1S4.SE1) in PSS texts is completely absent from Early Classic texts, I propose that: 1) the conflation of SE1 and YG2 is a Late Classic innovation; 2) that it arose in the context of the PSS texts where YG2 was functioning as a syllabogram ʔu; 3) that SE1 is polyvalent, with a value CHAM/KAM/KIM in death contexts, and a different logographic value in the PSS context; and 4) that in the PSS context YG2 ʔu functions in part as a phonographic complement to the second logographic value of SE1, which, based on the presence of 1S4 hu and the conflated YG2 ʔu would likely be HUʔ. Thus, I propose, the almost exceptionless use of 1S4 hu and YG2 ʔu with SE1 in the PSS contexts is a means of disambiguating its value HUʔ (n = 30) from its more frequent value CHAM/KAM/KIM overall (n = 114). But interestingly, after the SE1:YG2 conflation was innovated as a disambiguation, scribes began to adopt it for the more common value of SE1, but optionally, whereas in the context of the PSS verbal expression, it is almost exceptionless.

 

Figure 10. Evidence for conflation of YG2 and SE1.

 

What this means, then, as proposed in Figure 11, is that PA3 (Figure 11A) and SE1 (Figure 11B) are logograms with a basic phonographic value HUʔThe reason for proposing logographic values for PA3 and SE1, as opposed to a syllabographic value ʔu, is that PA3 and SE1 are not known to appear in contexts where a ʔu value would make sense, for example, to spell the u- ‘third person singular ergative/possessive’ proclitic, but are in fact known to behave like logograms, with PA3 often appearing as a lexogram, representing an entire verbal expression (with derivational and inflectional suffixes) on its own. Thus, the spellings in Figure 11 are orthographically equivalent, but PA3, PC1, and SE1 are not orthographically equivalent. Given this, the full expression represented by all three of these spellings should be read as the more phonographically explicit example hu-ʔu-yi suggests: huʔ-uy-i-Ø. So then, what does this word mean?

 

Figure 11. Proposed solution for PA3 and SE1 in the PSS verbal dedicatory expressions.

 

It is now time for the fourth task: narrowing down the lexical item of relevance to the value of PA3. Given the typical, dedicatory context of the PA3 verbal expression, and the fact that its subject can be inanimate entities of a wide variety of material culture (from stepped temples to bone needles), huʔ-uy-i-Ø likely expresses a general concept, such as finishing/completion or construction/crafting. I believe, as already indicated in Mora-Marín (2007a), that Schele and Grube (1997:81–82) were right on target when they suggested, among other possible lexical options, the Tzeltal and Tzotzil root huʔ ‘be able to’, an intransitive verb root that can function as a modal verb ‘can’. Table 6 presents the relevant citations for Tzeltal and Tzotzil cited in Mora-Marín (2007a:11). Slocum and Gerdel (1999:138) provide the following example: ay yu’el, analyzable as ay ‘exist’ and y-u’-el his-power-possessive.suffix, which they translate as ‘tiene poder, es poderoso (s/he/it has power, s/he/it is powerful)’.  This suggests that this hu’-el is in fact a noun that refers to power contained in a person or thing. As already mentioned at the beginning of this note, the term has been reconstructed to proto-Tzeltalan as *huʔ ‘hacerse, terminarse (to be made, to be finished)’ by Kaufman (1972:103).

 

Table 6. Tzeltalan data for *huʔ ‘hacerse, terminarse’.

Tzeltal (Slocum and Gerdel 1999:44, 138)
hu’el ~ u’el [’u’el]

hu’el c’op [k’op]

hu’tesel

‘poder (be able to)’

‘lograr (to achieve)’

‘terminar (to finish)’

Tzotzil (Delgaty and Ruíz Sánchez 1978:71-72)
ju’el [hu’el] ‘poder, autoridad, dominio; poder (power, authority, domain; be able to)’

 

Polian (2018:258) has further documented this term in his multidialectal dictionary of Tzeltal, as seen in Figure 12, noting that the conservative form is /huʔ/, as in Bachajón, and the innovative form is [juʔ]. Observe the subentries (2)–(4) especially, with subentry (2) glossed as ‘terminarse de hacer, de construir, de elaborar (to finish making, building, elaborating)’ and the example referring to the construction of a house, and subentry (4) referring to the elaboration of a written document.

 

Figure 12. Entry for huʔ ‘poderse; terminarse de hacer, de construir, de elaborar; haber, suceder’ in Polian (2018:258).

The root huʔ with the right meaning does not seem to appear in the Ch’olan languages. A similar term is documented exclusively in Wisdom’s dictionary of Ch’orti’, as seen in Table 7. I present it because it is possible that such term may have experienced metathesis from an earlier shape /juʔ/, and that the /j/ may be traceable to proto-Ch’olan *h and proto-Greater Tzeltalan *h. However, this is a long shot. And the best bet remains the Tzeltalan term, which may have existed in proto-Greater Tzeltalan, and may have been inherited by Ch’olan speakers after their differentiation from Tzeltalan speakers, only to eventually become lost completely in all Ch’olan varieties.

 

Table 7. Ch’orti’ /ʔuj/ ‘good, sacred, moral’. Wisdom data based on Stross (1992).

Ch’orti’ (Wisdom 1950:472, 746) English Gloss
uh

uh ha’a

uh-r-an

uh-r-es

‘good, sacred, moral’

‘sacred water (from church or sacred spring)’

‘be moral or sacred’ [cl.3]

‘make moral or good, sacralize’ [cl.2a]

 

An important issue to consider at this point pertains to the syllabogram ju. Looper et al. (2022) and Looper and Macri (1991–2024) considers 1G6 ju to function as an optional graphic component of PA3 rather than as a separate grapheme, as seen in the second version of PA3 in Figure 1 above. I believe this is not the case, and that ju became prefixed to PA3 during the Late Classic period as a phonographic complement. Either way, uses of 1G6 with PA3 begin in the Late Classic (8th century), with the earliest reliably dated case (FLDSt09) dating to 9.15.0.0.0 (CE 731), as the data in the MHD suggest. The use of ju in many spellings makes sense in light of the proposed hu- spellings: While proto-Ch’olan has been reconstructed by Kaufman and Norman (1984) as preserving the proto-Mayan *h : *j contrast in all positions, those same authors noted that all Ch’olan languages exhibit a merger of *h, *j > j, a change that may have occurred late in the process of proto-Ch’olan differentiation, or perhaps diffused between already differentiated Eastern Ch’olan and Western Ch’olan branches. Grube (2004) remarked on this phenomenon: in the ancient texts, roots with *h are sometimes spelled with jV syllabograms (e.g. ju-HUL-ya for hul-i-Ø > jul-i-Ø ‘it arrived’; ʔu-B’AH-ji for u-b’ah-il u-b’aj-il ‘his/her portrait’). This is not anomalous, but the result of a the merger described by Kaufman and Norman (1984), a merger that was clearly in progress during the Classic period.

 

Finally, on to the fifth task: Is there additional evidence from the broader context of the PSS, supporting the lexical identification of PA3 as HUʔ ‘to be able to, to be made, to be finished’? Recall that PA3 covers a wide range of subjects, and must therefore represent a verb with a very general meaning that can apply to any kind of built or crafted object. Here I merely point to other verbal expressions utilized in connection with the dedicatory statements of object, whether monumental or portable. These include verbs such as proto-Ch’olan *pät ‘to construct, build’, a transitive root spelled PAT/pat  or pa-ta in Classic texts, usually as a derived positional stem (with -laj or -wän suffixes); reflexes of proto-Ch’olan *ʔu[h]t ‘to finish; to come to pass’, a transitive root that was typically mediopassivized for the meaning ‘to happen, come to pass’, but was occasionally used to refer to the finishing of artifacts in PSS contexts (e.g. COLK8017, COLK9020, COLSDM10141, TNTAEG352, CHNSt02, XLMPan06). The verb *ʔu[h]t is reconstructed by Kaufman with Justeson (2003:739) as a “light” generic transitive verb, which they gloss as ‘to do it’ and ‘to say it’, documenting its distribution in Wastekan (‘to say to someone’), Tzeltalan and Tojol Ab’al (‘to say to someone; to scold someone’), and Popti’/Mocho’/Tuzanteko (‘to do it’, ‘to say it to someone’). Keller and Luciano (1997:274–275, 302) document various contexts with the meaning ‘to do/make’ in Yokot’an, as in mach a=ut-i-Ø patan sami,… ‘No se hizo hoy el trabajo (the work was not done today)…’,  ut-i-Ø tä México ‘… fue hecho en México (it was made in Mexico)’, and a=’ut-Ø-on ‘terminé mi trabajo (I finished my work)’. The Tzeltalan verb huʔ was not a transitive root, but is inflected as an intransitive or transitivized with a causativizer suffix. Its meanings ‘poderse; terminarse de hacer, de construir, de elaborar; haber, suceder (be able to; to finish being made, constructed, elaborated; to happen)’ are therefore similar to those of *ʔu[h]t, but scribes must have thought of them as complementary meanings, for in at least one case the two verbs occur in a dedicatory context in succession (COLSDM10141).

 

Figure 13 illustrates two sentences from different inscriptions with the proposed readings and translations. I have translated huʔ as ‘to elaborate/craft’ in these examples, but it could have easily been translated as ‘to make/complete’. I have assumed the inchoative function of the -V1y suffix typically employed by PA3 as defined in Mora-Marín (2007b, 2009). And as far as the Initial Sign Collocation, I use the value and function proposed in Mora-Marín (2023b, 2023c), as the existential particle with an evidential or perfective function in preverbal contexts.

 

Figure 13. Examples of phrases with PA3. a) Clause from COLK6697. Drawing by the author after drawing in Coe (1973). b) Clause from TNAMon146. Drawing by the author after drawing in Grube et al. (2002:56).

 

To conclude, the basic value of PA3 is likely HUʔ ‘to be able to, to be made, to be finished, to be elaborated’. In the typical PSS spellings, it spelled a word huʔ-uy-i-Ø ‘it became made/finished/elaborated’, or in Spanish, ‘se completó/finalizó/elaboró’. It is possible that the meaning ‘to be able (poder)’ may have been actually what scribes were intending: if so, huʔ-uy-i-Ø could be translated as ‘it became enabled’, or in Spanish, ‘se habilitó’. If so, the function of PA3 would have been to express that the object (its grammatical subject) was now ready for use.

 

What remains to be done: I do not think that the T843/ZY1 STEP sign bore the same value as PA3. While a value T’AB’ for the STEP sign seems plausible, and supported by recent research (e.g. Gronemeyer 2016), I suspect that there is more evidence that needs to be reviewed, a task for a future note.

 

References

Bricker, Victoria R. 1987 Landa’s Second Grapheme for u. Research Reports on Ancient Mayan Writing 9. Washington, D. C.: Center for Maya Research.

Coe, Michael D. 1973. The Maya Scribe and His World. New York: The Grolier Club.

DATAtab Team. (2024). DATAtab: Online Statistics Calculator. DATAtab e.U. Graz, Austria. URL https://datatab.net.

Delgaty, Alfa B., and Agustín Ruiz Sánchez. 1978. Diccionario tzotzil de San Andrés con variaciones dialectales. México: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

Estrada-Belli, Francisco, and Alexandre Tokovinine. 2022. Chochkitam: A New Classic Maya Dynasty and the Rise of the Kaanu’l (Snake) Kingdom. Latin American Antiquity 33:713–732. https://doi.org/10.1017/laq.2022.43.

Grofe, Michael J. 2006. Huyi-chum-i: Returning to the GodN/Step Verb in the Primary Standard Sequence. Unpublished paper used with permission of author.

Gronemeyer, Sven. 2016. Filling the Grid? More Evidence for the <t’a> Syllabogram. Research Note 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.20376/IDIOM-23665556.16.rn004.en.

Grube, Nikolai. 2004. The Orthographic Distinction between Velar and Glottal Spirants in Maya Hieroglyphic Writing. In The Linguistics of the Maya Script, edited by Søren Wichmann, pp. 61–82. University of Utah Press.

Grube, Nikolai, Simon Martin, and Marc Zender. 2002. Palenque and Its Neighbors. Part II of Texas Maya Meetings XXVIth Forum.

Kaufman, Terrence. 1972. El Proto-Tzeltal-Tzotzil: Fonología comparada y diccionario reconstruido. México: Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México.

Kaufman, Terrence, and William Norman. 1984. An outline of proto-Cholan phonology, morphology, and vocabulary. In Phoneticism in Maya Hieroglyphic Writing, edited by J. S. Justeson and L. Campbell, pp. 77-166. Institute for Mesoamerican Studies Publication No. 9. Albany: State University of New York.

Kaufman, Terrence, with John Justeson. 2003. Preliminary Mayan Etymological Dictionary. (http://www.famsi.org/reports/01051/index.html) (Accessed January of 2017.)

Keller, Kathryn C., and Plácido Luciano G. 1997. Diccionario Chontal de Tabasco. Tucson, Arizona: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

Looper, Matthew G. and Martha J. Macri. 1991-2024. Maya Hieroglyphic Database. Department of Art and Art History, California State University, Chico. URL: http://www.mayadatabase.org/.

Looper, Matthew G., Martha J. Macri, Yuriy Polyukhovych, and Gabrielle Vail. 2022. MHD Reference Materials 1: Preliminary Revised Glyph Catalog. Glyph Dwellers Report 71.

MacLeod, Barbara. 1990. Deciphering the Primary Standard Sequence.  Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2007a. A Logographic Value HUʔ (~ʔUʔ) ‘to blow’ or ‘sacred, moral, power’ for the GOD.N Verbal Glyph of the Primary Standard Sequence. Wayeb Notes No. 27:1–22. https://www.wayeb.org/notes/wayeb_notes0027.pdf.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2007b. The Identification of an Ingressive Suffix in Classic Lowland Mayan Texts. In Proceedings of the CILLA III Conference, October 2007, Austin, Texas, edited by Nora England, pp 1-14. Austin: Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America, Linguistics Department, University of Texas. https://ailla.utexas.org/sites/default/files/documents/MoraMarin_CILLA_III.pdf.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2009. A Test and Falsification of the “Classic Ch’olti’an” Hypothesis: A Study of Three Proto-Ch’olan Markers. International Journal of American Linguistics75:115-157.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2023a.  Evidence for lexical and phonetic determinatives in Mayan writing: The case of T713. Ancient Mesoamerica. Publicado en línea 27 de febrero del 2023. doi:10.1017/S0956536122000335.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2023b. Orthographic, and Diachronic Considerations Regarding the Initial Sign Collocation of Mayan Writing. The Codex31(1-2):23–46. Pre-Columbian Society at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2023c. El “Signo Inicial” de la SEP como ʔAY ‘partícula existencial’: Predicación posesiva y predicación evidencial fáctica. Paper presented at the Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala, Friday, July 21, 2023.

Polian, Gilles. 2018. Diccionario multidialectal del tseltal. Tseltal-español. Instituto Nacional de Lenguas Indígenas.

Schele, Linda, and Nikolai Grube. 1997. Notebook for the XXIst Maya Hieroglyphic Forum at Texas, March, 1997. Austin: Departmentof Art and Art History, the College of Fine Arts and the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin.

Schele, Linda, and Matthew Looper. 1996. Notebook for the XXth Maya Hieroglyphic Workshop at Texas, March 9-10, 1996: Quirigua and Copan. Austin: Department of Art and Art History, the College of Fine Arts and the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas at Austin.

Slocum, M.C., F.L. Gerdel, and M.C. Aguilar.  1999.  Diccionario Tzeltal de Bachajón, Chiapas.  México, D.F.: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.

Stross, Brian. 1992. Chorti Maya Lexicon. Language Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas. Transcribed and transliterated from handwritten fieldnotes of C. Wisdom. URL: http://www.utexas.edu/courses/stross/chorti/index.html.

Stuart, David. 1995. A Study of Maya Inscriptions. Ph.D. Dissertation, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

Stuart, David. 1998. “The Fire Enters His House”: Architecture and Ritual in Classic Maya Texts. In Function and Meaning in Classic Maya Architecture, edited by Stephen D. Houston, pp. 373–425. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Stuart, David. 2005. Sourcebook for the 29th Maya Hieroglyphic Forum. Austin: Art Department, University of Texas at Austin.

Hieroglyphic pumpkins are back!

My Writing Systems and Sociolinguistics students practiced tagging their pumpkins and gourds with Mayan hieroglyphs! The tags follow the formula ‘So-and-so’s pumkin/gourd’, in Classic Mayan, hence, u-k’uhm/leek/tzima(h) + Owner’s Name. Here are a few examples!

Note 33

The Cascajal Block: Iconographic Motivations, Part 2

 

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

10/8/2023, 10/10/2023

This is a continuation of the sub-series begun with Note 26 (Mora-Marín 2022), which outlined possible iconographic motivations for the four most frequent signs on the Cascajal Block (Rodríguez et al. 2006a, 2006b). My original manuscript (Mora-Marín 2010) on this topic will once again serve as the basis for this second installment, though this note also incorporates scholarship that has become available since then (Magni 2012; Carrasco and Englehardt 2015).

 

The methodology I established in that manuscript, and reproduced in my Note 26, is repeated here in full:

 

  1. Use Joralemon’s (1971) motif catalog to identify signs in the Cascajal signary, a task not attempted in Rodríguez et al. (2006a), and only selectively in Rodríguez and Ortiz (2007), who provide Joralemon numbers for CS6, CS16, and CS1/12/27.
  2. Restrict comparisons to Early and Middle Preclassic Olmec-style art to the extent that is possible, and avoid comparisons with much later writing and artistic traditions as much as possible.
  3. Include iconographic sources for such motifs to determine whether the identification is plausible, whenever Joralemon’s gloss or description of the motif is not sufficient or available.
  4. Check against the identifications proposed in Rodríguez et al. (2006a), Justeson (2006, 2012), Ortiz et al. (2007), Rodríguez and Ortiz (2007), Anderson (2007), Mora-Marín (2009), Freidel and Reilly (2010), Magni (2012[2008]), and Carrasco and Englehardt (2015).

 

This time, however, I will examine five of the ten signs that occur three times within the Cascajal Block text. Before proceeding, I will once again provide a drawing of the Cascajal Block’s inscription (Figure 1) and my revised signary organized by sign frequency (Figure 2) (Mora-Marín 2020).

 

Figure 1

Figure 2

 

The following signs will be discussed in this note: CS4–CS8 and CS24–25.

 

I begin then with CS4. Table 1 presents  the relevant descriptions and identifications by a variety of authors. Figure 3 presents the comparison I offered in Mora-Marín (2010); a similar comparison is offered in Mora-Marín (2020:221). I consider CS4 to be a representation of an ant. The sign shows an insect, as indicated by the three legs, which assuming bilateral symmetry, suggest the six legs of an insect, and disqualifying arachnids, which have eight. The body (Figure 3a) shows three major sections, consistent with the three major sections of insects (head, thorax, abdomen). The head of the insect represented by CS4 shows two mandibles and a central triangular element. These traits are all consistent with the morphology of an ant (Figure 3b). Bees, to my knowledge, lack mandibles, and while they have a proboscis, which could be argued to match the central triangular element seen on CS3, the fact is that some ants have a section between the mandibles, the clypeus, that is very pronounced in some types of ants, and could be represented as a triangular element (Figure 3c).

 

Table 1

Figure 3

This paper regards CS5 (Table 2) to be a depiction of a human or human-like eye, a suggestion also offered by Magni (2012). The shape of the outline is not (Figure 4a), at first, very consistent with the outline of a human eye (Figures 4b–c), which is typically almond-shaped. However, some examples of human eyes in Olmec art, resemble a backward-curving thumb (Figures 4d–e), and are thus consistent with the shape of CS5.

 

Table 2

 

Figure 4

 

I also support the possibility that CS24 and CS25, each occurring only once on the Cascajal Block,  represent “banded eyes” (Tables 3–4). The difference lies in the absence of circles within the bands in CS24 (Figure 5) and their presence (Figure 6) within the band in CS25.

Tables 3–4 provide summaries of the proposals regarding CS24 and CS25.  Rodríguez M. et al. (2006:1613) consider both CS24 and CS25 (their CS23 and CS24) to represent, together, “paired sets of eyes.” I regard CS24 (Figure 5a) to be a depiction of the Olmec banded eye motif identified by Joralemon as his motif #7 (Figures 5b–c), and CS25 (Figure 6a) to be a depiction of the Olmec banded eye motif also classified by Joralemon as motif #7, but a version that shows dots or circles placed along the length of the band (Figures 6b–c). In the iconographic examples, the circles may appear outside the band (Figure 6b) or contained within a band (Figure 6c); the latter version agrees with  CS25 more closely, for it shows the circles contained within the band.  The shape of the eye depicted in CS24 and CS25 is closely matched by the shape of the eye in the example from the Las Limas figurine (Figure 6b).

Table 3

 

Figure 5

 

Table 4

 

Figure 6

 

Table 5 provides a summary of proposals regarding CS6. This paper regards CS6 (Figure 7a) to be a depiction of the skin/pelt of a mammal, like all other authors commenting on the matter have to date, and thus a PELT motif. And like most of the other authors have observed, CS6, although highly simplified, can be compared to the Atlihuayan clay figurine (Figure 7b), a representative of Joralemo’s Motif 66. Taking into account the neck and head, the four extremeties, and the tail, we can count six projections. Epi-Olmec writing exhibits a sign, MS33 (Figure 7c) (Macri and Stark 1993), that also depicts an animal hide with six projections, and like the example from Atlihuayan, Morelos, it bears a diamond-shape element that could represent a hole in the hide (Justeson and Kaufman 1993:1707, Fig. 8B). The possible Mayan counterpart, ZZ3/T628 (Figure 7d), proposed to function as a logogram for ‘blood’ by David Stuart, bears general outline similarities, but also important differences.

 

Table 5

 

Figure 7

Table 6 summarizes the proposals for the iconicity of CS7, and Figure 8 illustrates all three instances.  Here, no proposal is favored, and no new suggestion is offered.  Although a few authors offer suggestions for its iconicity (see Table 6), there exist no close iconographic parallels to support such suggestions.

 

Table 6

 

Figure 8

Table 7 provides a summary of proposals regarding CS8.  This paper regards CS8 (Figure 9a) to be a depiction of “a strung bead or plaque,” as proposed by Rodríguez M. et al. (2006:1613), and plausibly of the type seen in earring assemblages, for which the evidence from Epi-Olmec writing is suggestive but not completely in agreement; at least three types of earring assemblages are visible in the iconography of Epi-Olmec writing, two of them shown here (Figures 9b–c). The closest correspondence to the putative example represented by CS8 would be a combination of two of the three types seen in Epi-Olmec writing (Figure 9d). CS8 may also resemble Mayan T62/ZBF yu, but the central component in the Mayan grapheme is always rounded and typically contains a circular element in the middle, rather than a diagonal band.

 

Table 7

 

Figure 9

The evidence presented in this note, based on an unpublished paper (Mora-Marín 2010) that has been cited in a few works (Freidel and Reilly 2010; Carrasco and Englehardt 2015), further supports the consistency of the Cascajal signary, from a stylistic-iconographic standpoint, with contemporary Olmec art and subsequent Epi-Olmec writing, and offers new insights into some iconographic identifications for such signs, as well as supports for identifications proposed by others. Future installments will provide similar assessments for the remaining signs in the Cascajal signary.

 

References

Anderson, Lloyd. 2007. Cascajal: an Old System of Writing in Mesoamerica. Unpublished paper circulated by the author.
Anderson, Lloyd. 2012. Understanding discourse: beyond couplets and calendrics first. In Parallel Worlds: Genre, Discourse, and Poetics in Contemporary, Colonial, and Classic Period Maya Literature, edited by Kerry M. Hull and Michael D. Carrasco, pp. 161–179. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.
Carrasco, Michael, and Joshua Englehardt. 2015. Diphrastic Kennings on the Cascajal Block and the Emergence of Mesoamerican Writing.  Cambridge Archaeological Journal 22:1–22.
Coe, Michael, and Karl Taube (editors). 1995. The Olmec World, Ritual and Rulership. The Art Museum, Princeton University, Princeton.
Englehardt, J., Insaurralde Caballero, M., Melgar Tísoc, E., Velázquez Maldonado, L., Guzmán Torres, V., Bernard, H., & Carrasco, M. 2020. Digital Imaging and Archaeometric Analysis of the Cascajal Block: Establishing Context and Authenticity for the Earliest Known Olmec Text. Ancient Mesoamerica, 31(2), 189-209. doi:10.1017/S0956536119000257
Freidel, David A. & F. Kent Reilly III. 2010. The flesh of god: cosmology, food, and the origins of political power in ancient southeastern Mesoamerica. In Pre-Columbian Foodways: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Food, Culture, and Markets in Ancient Mesoamerica, edited by J. Staller & Michael D. Carrasco, pp. 635–680. New York: Springer.
Joralemon, Peter David.  1971.  A Study of Olmec Iconography.  Studies in Pre-Columbian Art and Archaeology, Number Seven.  Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.
Justeson, John S. 2006.  Sign Comparisons.  Unpublished manuscript used with permission of author.
Justeson, John S. 2012. Early Mesoamerican Writing Systems. In The Oxford Handbook of Mesoamerican Archaeology, edited by Deborah L. Nichols and Christopher A. Pool, pp. 830–844. Oxford University Press.
Macri, Martha J. 2006. The Cascajal Block: Sign Ordering. Glyph Dwellers 22:1-4.
Magni, Caterina. 2012[2008]. Olmec Writing. The Cascajal Block: New Perspectives. Arts & Cultures 9: 64–81. Éd. Somogy, Musée Barbier-Mueller, Genève/Barcelone. Electronic document, http://research.famsi.org/aztlan/uploads/papers/OlmecCascajalBlockNewPerspectives.pdf, accessed 8/6/19.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2009. Early Olmec Writing: Reading Format and Reading Order. Latin American Antiquity 20(3):395–418.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2010. Further Analysis of Olmec Writing on the Cascajal Block: Sign Inventory, Paleography, Script Affiliations. Unpublished manuscript distributed among several authors.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2016. Orígenes de la escritura en Mesoamérica: Una revaluación de los rasgos formales, conexiones interregionales y filiaciones lingüísticas entre 1200–400 a.C.
Ponencia presentada el 26 de octubre del 2016, en el XXXVIII Coloquio de Antropología e Historia Regionales, Colegio de Michoacán A.C.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2019. Problems and Patterns in the Study of Olmec Hieroglyphic Writing. In The Chinese Writing System and Its Dialogue with Sumerian, Egyptian, and Mesoamerican Writing Systems, edited by Kuang Yu Chen and Dietrich Tschanz, pp. 239-269. Rutgers University Press.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2020. The Cascajal Block: New Line Drawing, Distributional Analysis, Orthographic Patterns. Ancient Mesoamerica 31:210–229. doi:10.1017/S0956536119000270.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. Drawings of Three Olmec Celts / Dibujos de tres hachas olmecas. Notes on Mesoamerican Linguistics and Epigraphy 25. https://davidmm.web.unc.edu/2022/05/15/note-25/.
Mora-Marín, David F. 2022. The Cascajal Block: Iconographic Motivations, Part 1. Notes on Mesoamerican Linguistics and Epigraphy 26. https://davidmm.web.unc.edu/2022/05/15/note-26/.
Ortiz C., Ponciano, María del Carmen Rodríguez M., Ricardo Sánchez H., Jasinto Robles C. 2007. El bloque labrado con inscripciones olmecas. Arqueología Mexicana 83:15–18.
Rodríguez Martínez, María del Carmen, Ponciano Ortiz Ceballos. 1999. Informe de inspección en la zona de El Cascajal, Mpio. De Jaltipan, Veracruz, Archivo Técnico del Centro INAH Veracruz, mecanoescrito.
Rodríguez M., María del Carmen, Ponciano Ortiz C. 2007. El bloque labrado con símbolos olmecas encontrado en El Cascajal, municipio de Jaltipan, Veracruz. Arqueología 36:24–51.
Rodríguez Martínez, María del Carmen, Ponciano Ortiz Ceballos, Michael D. Coe, Richard A. Diehl, Stephen D. Houston, Karly A. Taube, and Alfredo Delgado Calderón. 2006a. Oldest Writing in the New World.  Science 313:1610–1614.
Rodríguez Martínez, María del Carmen, Ponciano Ortiz Ceballos, Michael D. Coe, Richard A. Diehl, Stephen D. Houston, Karly A. Taube, and Alfredo Delgado Calderón. 2006b. Supporting Online Material. Electronic document, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5793/1610/DC1, accessed on 8/6/19.

 

Note 32

Of Flies and Vultures: An Explanation of the Origins of 3M2/T59 ti

 

David F. Mora-Marín and Amy Glenn Mora

8/17/23, 9/30/23

 

The present note pertains to the Early Classic (CE 200-600) examples of the VULTURE grapheme (Figure 1A), generally cataloged as BV2 in Looper et al. (2022) (Figure 1B), and functioning as a logogram (“word sign”) ʔUSIJ ‘vulture’ during the Classic period. More specifically, this note pertains to a graphic element that is commonly affixed to the beak on Early Classic examples (see arrow in Figure 1A), an element that strongly resembles the syllable sign or syllabogram ti (Figure 1C), cataloged as grapheme 3M2 in Looper et al. (2022) and T59 in Thompson (1962). In fact, during the Late Classic, the juxtaposition of 3M2 ti and BV2 VULTURE functioned as a syllabogram ti, and as such it receives its own code, BV3/T747b (Figure 1D), though such juxtaposition may not have borne such function in earlier times, as shown below.

 

Figure 1

Because of this close association between the VULTURE grapheme and 3M2 ti, some scholars have assumed that 3M2 originally functioned, in some way, to disambiguate the bird depicted by BV2 as a vulture. One of these proposed functions of the 3M2-like sign juxtaposed to the VULTURE grapheme relates to the most common function of 3M2 ti in the script: it was used to represent reflexes of the generic preposition *tya of proto-Mayan in the vast majority of its contexts, reconstructed as *tä in proto-Ch’olan by Kaufman and Norman (1984), and presumably acquiring the shape ti in all Ch’olan languages except for Yokot’an only later, perhaps under the influence of Yucatecan *tiʔ. For such reason, authors like Fox and Justeson (1984a, 1984b) have regarded 3M2 as originally bearing a value ta that subsequently derived a value ti through internal linguistic change.

 

Several authors have also explained the presumed original value ta by proposing that it depicts “a flaming torch,” which would mean that 3M2 was derived acrophonically as ta based on a reflex of proto-Mayan *tyaaj ‘torch’ (Justeson 1984:320). Based on such presumed value ta, some authors (Floyd Lounsbury, Peter Mathews, Berthold Riese, cited in Justeson 1984:355) have even suggested that 3M2 functioned to indicate the logographic value of BV2 as TAʔHOL (i.e. TAʔJOL) based on Ch’ol taʔ=hol (i.e. taʔ=jol) ‘vulture (lit. excrement=head)’, alongside the already demonstrated value K’UCH ‘vulture’ in the Postclassic (CE 900-1521) codices.

 

More recently, Macri (2021:9–10) supports such association with Ch’olan reflexes of proto-Mayan *tzaaʔ ~ *taaʔ ‘excrement’ (Kaufman with Justeson 2003:293), and argues that the earliest examples of BV3 ti were actually read ta.

 

Along the similar lines as previous authors, Kettunen (2018:287), has argued that in the context of BV3 ti, the juxtaposition of 3M2 ti and BV2 VULTURE, the 3M2 component represents an anatomical part of the vulture, specifically, “a caruncle attached to the cere of the King Vulture” (Kettunen 2018:287). Unlike previous authors, Kettunen appears to assume that 3M2 only bears a syllabographic value ti, not ta, and his acrophonic derivation for 3M2 ti and BV3 ti is based on the assumption that, as a depiction of the vulture’s caruncle, 3M2 is a pars pro toto (part-for-the-whole) abbreviation of the BV3 grapheme, associating the vulture’s eating of carrion with the Tzeltal verb tiʔ ‘to eat flesh’, a reflex of proto-Mayan *tiʔ ‘to eat/bite (meat/flesh)’.

 

Below, we suggest that, in fact, 3M2 bore the value ti throughout its history, and that early examples of BV3 (i.e. 32M.BV2) did not bear a value ti or ta at all, but most likely simply ʔUSIJ for ʔusiij ‘vulture’, or other logographic values that the seemingly polyvalent VULTURE grapheme could bear, such as ʔAJAW for ʔajaw ‘ruler’ (with or without the headband determinative).

 

Before proceeding, though, a disclaimer: There are other possible ways of thinking about the association between 3M2 and the VULTURE sign, not all of them requiring a direct relationship between 3M2 and the VULTURE sign. For instance, an anonymous reviewer of the lead author’s paper on acrophonic derivations (Mora-Marín 2003) suggested the possibility that 3M2 represents “strands of hair above an ear spool,” while Nick Hopkins (personal communication, 2022) has recently suggested that 3M2 represents the tip of a point brush, and that its value may be based acrophonically on ti’ ‘mouth’ with a derived meaning ‘tip’, a matter to which we return toward the end of the paper. These ideas also seemed quite reasonable, up until we uncovered a set of iconographic relationships that we now believe offer a better explanation.

 

The evidence indicates that the 3M2-like element is not a caruncle! The key to realizing this, that 3M2 does not depict a part of a vulture, and specifically not a caruncle, was the recent discovery of an Early Classic pottery bowl from the site of Caracol, described by Chase and Chase (2014:26–27, Figs. 122a, 123). On that bowl, the glyphic collocation spelling the term y-uk’-ib’ ‘his/her container’ shows a unique rendering; rather than using a simple syllabic sequence yu-k’i-b’i with the WING sign, BX2/T77, the syllabogram k’i (Mora-Marín 2000), as the second sign in the sequence (Figure 2A), the example on this bowl is depicted in full-figure fashion as a vulture, as BV2, with the vulture’s wing displayed very prominently (Figure 2B). Not only does the wing make up about 50 percent of the whole vulture, but the the vulture’s head is also turned back toward the wing, as if pointing to it with its beak, and the syllabogram b’i was infixed within the wing. Whether this example indicates that BV1 could exhibit yet another value, as a syllabogram k’i, or whether we are simply witnessing an idiosyncratic, playful elaboration by a scribe, is unclear. What is worth highlighting here is that the graphic element that appears to be the precursor of 3M2 ti in Early Classic depictions of BV3 (Figure 2C) is found in two locations (Figures 2D-2E): above the vulture’s beak, and to the left of its feet. In other words, it is not depicting a vulture’s caruncle, an anatomical component it does not even resemble to begin with (Figure 2F).

 

Figure 2

 

What is it then? We propose that the 3M2-like element juxtaposed to the VULTURE sign is a FLY or more generally a FLYING.INSECT. This is based on its presence by the vulture’s beak and feet, for one, as well as the similarity between the depictions of the 3M2-like element and flying insects. Indeed, we draw attention to three depictions of flying insects on three different pottery vessels, one (K2993) likely from the Early Classic period (Figure 3A), and two (K2794, K2284) from the Late Classic period (Figures 3B–3C).

 

Figure 3

A more detailed look is warranted. When we compare the examples of the 3M2-like element on several Early Classic VULTURE signs (Figures 4A-5D) to the graphic elements by the beak and feet of the vulture on the Caracol bowl (Figure 4E), and in turn we compare these to the motifs on the pottery vessels (Figures 4F-5H), the same overall shape is in evidence (Figure 5): a graphic design consisting of two major sections (Figure 5A), a bottom section consisting of a circle that sometimes bears a dot inside (Figures 5A–5C, 5G and 5I), and a top section consisting of two sets of elements, a central “main body” that sometimes contains an internal central element, and two “wings” on either side of the central element. In at least two of the pottery vessels, the designs in question can be interpreted as flying insects (Figure 4): the example on K2794 depicts a dying man with a paunch and what seem like flies buzzing around him (Figure 5F); the example on K2284 was described by Justin Kerr (http://www.mayavase.com/tran/trans.html) as showing bees emerging from the mouth of a pot (Figure 4G). The Early Classic example (Figure 4H) shows the 3M2-like element near the beak of a bird, though it is not obviously a vulture, resembling instead a quetzal, as suggested by the crest. Although quetzals typically eat fruit, they also eat insects and small vertebrates (Reid et al. 2010:105), and thus, the example in question could be a depiction of a quetzal trying to catch a flying insect. The example of the full-figure VULTURE sign on the Caracol bowl (Figure 4E) shows the 3M2-like element on two locations ear the vulture, consistent with flies buzzing around the vulture.

 

Figure 4

Figure 5

The earliest, clear evidence for the use of 3M2 as a syllabogram points to the value ti. The evidence comes from five dated monuments from the second half of the fourth century and the first half of the fifth century: 1) Tikal Stela 39 (TIKSt39, 8.17.0.0.0, ce 376); 2) Tikal Stela 4 (TIKSt04, 8.17.2.16.17, ce 379); 3) Tikal Ballcourt Marker (TIKBCM, 8.19.0.0.0, ce416); 4) Tikal Stela 31 (TIKSt31, 9.0.10.0.0, ce 445); 5) Uaxactun Stela (9.0.10.0.0, ce 445). The first, Tikal Stela 39, shows two cases: one functioning as a syllabogram ti in the spelling ʔu-ʔUH-ti for ʔu[h]t-i-Ø ‘it got finished; it happened’ (Figure 6A), and the other juxtaposed to BV2, the VULTURE sign, in an iconographically-embedded glyphic spelling TZ’AK-b’u-?ʔUSIJ referring to a captured king from Uaxactun (Figure 6B), as noted by Beliaev et al. (2023). The second inscription, Tikal Stela 4 (Figure 6C), shows one example, juxtaposed to the VULTURE sign in the context of the BVF grapheme for JOY, with the full spelling showing JOY-ja. Although quite often epigraphers have read the 3M2 sign in this collocation as the preposition ti (or ta), we will show below that it is merely an iconographic element associated with the VULTURE sign in this context, whatever its value (whether ʔAJAW or ʔUSIJ or JOY). The third text is Tikal’s Ballcourt Marker, showing an example of 3M2 functioning as a syllabogram ti to spell the preposition ti in the phrase ti-LAJUN-ʔAJAW(AL) ’on 10 Ajaw’ (Figure 6D), suggesting that by this date Ch’olan speakers had already incorporated the variant ti into their repertoire alongside . The fourth text is Tikal Stela 31, with six examples of 3M2 functioning as a syllabogram ti in the expression ʔUH-ti-ya for ʔu[h]t-i-Ø(-[y]a) ‘since it got finished; it happened’ (Figure 6E), and an example juxtaposed to BV1 in the context of BVF JOY (Figure 6F), presumably intended to be read as jo[h]y-aj-Ø-Ø ‘he was surrounded/circumvallated’ (accession). The fifth example, Uaxactun Stela 26, is found again in the expression ʔUH-ti for ʔu[h]t-i-Ø ‘it got finished; it happened’ (Figure 6G). Lastly, for now, an undated portable text from Tikal (TIKMT011) from Problematic Deposit 22 # 12J-191 also bears a very clear example of 3M2 resembling the flying insect motif (Figure 6H). This text bears Design 6 of ZB1/T168 (Mora-Marín 2021), attested on dated texts from ce 437–554, as well as an example of ZBF/T62 yu showing the central O-shaped element instead of the earlier U-shaped element, a shift that took place after the fifth century, suggesting an early sixth century dating. However, it is not at all clear what 3M2 ti would be used for in this last example.

 

Figure 6

It is important to note that the earliest examples of 3M2 used as a syllabogram generally point to the value ti, not ta. The only possible exception, the case from the Tikal Ballcourt Marker (Figure 7D), where it spells the generic preposition in a temporal phrase, could be argued to be an instance where 3M2 functions as ta. Nevertheless, given that languages from both Ch’olan branches (Eastern and Western) attest to the preposition ti, and that the preposition is reconstructible to proto-Ch’olan based on the evidence from Yokot’an and Ch’orti’, as well as the evidence from the Tzeltalan languages (through forward reconstruction from proto-Greater Tzeltalan to proto-Ch’olan), it is  proposed here that proto-Ch’olan should be reconstructed with *tä ~ *ti, with allomorphic variation. The example from the Ballcourt Marker could simply be evidence of such variation. All other spellings spanning ce 376–445 point to either a purely iconographic use of 3M2 (Figures 6B–6C and 6F) or a syllabographic use as ti (Figures 6A, 6D, 6E, 6G).

 

3M2 ti experienced a rapid series of graphic changes during the Early Classic. To trace them it is necessary to identify the graphic elements that compose 3M2. Figure 7 shows a comparison of the main graphic components of the 3M2-like sign iconographically juxtaposed to the VULTURE signs in Early Classic texts (Figure 7A–7E) with examples of 3M2 ti in the earliest inscriptions (Figure 7F–7I). The earliest epigraphic examples (Figures 7F–7I) typically show a simple division into two sections, a top section and a bottom section, just like the iconographic 3M2-like sign (Figures 7A–7E); however, some show additional sections (Figure 7I).

 

Figure 7

Figure 8 illustrates such additions using evidence from a single inscription, Tikal Stela 31, but these are representative of the variation found on other texts during the remainder of the fifth century. Indeed, the six clear examples of 3M2 on this monument show wide variation. One of the examples (Figure 8A) corresponds to the earliest version also attested on earlier inscriptions, consisting of the two major sections, already described earlier for the iconographic precursors (cf. Figures 7A–7E). However, the remaining five examples from Stela 31 show the addition of at least one more section, and one of them adds two sections. The example in Figure 8B, though it occurs only once on Stela 31, would become the basis for the most common design of 3M2 for the remainder of the Classic period: it shows three sections, with an additional section inserted in the middle, in between the two original sections. Three more examples (Figures 8C–8E) illustrate the addition of a section at the bottom, below the two original sections. This design is found in additional Early Classic texts, but it eventually was overtaken by the one in Figure 8B. Lastly, one of the examples (Figure 8F) illustrates the addition of two sections, the middle section in between the two original ones, and the new section at the very bottom. This design was rare and its latest attestation on a dated text is the Menil Collection panel (COLHstPan), dated to ce 498, and which also attests to the design in Figure 8B, which had become the most common design by far already by the beginning of the 6th century.

 

Figure 8

The earliest examples of BV3 are ambiguous, some likely bearing the same value as BV2 (ʔUSIJ for ʔusiij ‘vulture’), others the same value as BV1 (ʔAJAW for ʔaajaaw ‘lord, ruler’), and still others the same value as BVF/T684 (JOY for joy ‘to surround, circumvallate’) without the HEADBAND element. The early cases of BV2 (plain VULTURE sign) plus or minus the appended 3M2-like sign, appear in a variety of contexts where in later texts one finds more consistent distinctions. For example, in Late Classic texts, BV1/T747a (Figure 9A), which shows a vulture’s head with a royal headband wrapped around it, and sometimes also a miniature T533 sign attached to the front of the headband, was read ʔAJAW2 ‘lord, ruler’. It was used with such value in the context of individuals’ titles, and in at least 35 instances, according to the MHD data, also in the context of day counts involving the twentieth day name, ʔajawal. In the day sign contexts, especially, it occasionally lacked the royal headband determinative (Figures 10B–10D). One of these cases, where it bears the value ʔAJAW2 ‘lord, ruler’, comes from Dzibanche (Figure 9B), may date to the end of the fifth century, and shows BV2, the plain VULTURE sign, without the 3M2-like appendage or the T533/Headband determinatives. Another case, from Copan (Figure 9C), shows BV3, the juxtaposition of 3M2 and BV2, in this function, as ʔAJAW2 ‘lord, ruler’ within a day sign cartouche in the context of a day count 12 Ajaw. While it could be argued that the 3M2 component juxtaposed to BV2 is functioning as a syllabogram ti to represent a preposition ti, and thus render a phrase ti-LAJCHAN-ʔAJAW2 ‘on [day] 12 Lord’, this would still mean that BV2, without the 3M2 appendage, bears the value ʔAJAW2 on its own, or in conjunction with the day sign cartouche determinative. A third example, on a looted monument from the Bonampak region at the Denver Art Museum, not illustrated here (MHD code “COLDAM97149”), also shows BV2 in a day sign context with the value ʔAJAW2 ‘lord, ruler’ (Mayer 1991:Pl. 118).

 

Figure 9

The Innovation of BV1: royal.headbandVULTURE = LORDThe Royal Headband lexical determinative was innovated during the sixth century. More specifically, the earliest example of BV1 (BV2 with the Royal Headband) in the MHD is glyph B6 on Los Alacranes Stela 1 (Figure 9D), dated to ce 573, bearing only the Royal Headband, not T533, while the earliest example of BV1 with both T533 and the Royal Headband is seen in glyph O3 on the Chinkultic Ballcourt Marker (Figure 9E), dated to ce 591. This tells us that scribes gradually innovated the use of the Royal Headband, plus or minus T533, as a lexical (“semantic”) determinative of the lexical value ʔaajaaw ‘lord, ruler’ for BV2, hence royal.headbandVULTURE = LORD. This also confirms that the sign is basically polyvalent, and its values (at least ʔUSIJ, ʔAJAW2) minimally distinguished by context for the larger part of the Early Classic period.

 

BV2 as JOYOne last observation regarding the ambiguity of the VULTURE sign in the Early Classic corpus is worth making. As seen in Figure 10A, grapheme BVF could consist of a VULTURE head plus a KNOTTED.ROYAL.HEADBAND sign (T684) with a vertical strap when it functioned as the logogram JOY for joy ‘to surround, circumvallate’, a common accession expression. The logogram could include the VULTURE head, or just KNOTTED.ROYAL.HEADBAND. Interestingly, the VULTURE head on its own, without the KNOTTED.ROYAL.HEADBAND, could apparently also function with this value, as in the case of glyph A10 on Tikal Stela 31 (Figure 10B), which appears in the predicate position immediately after a Calendar Round, and followed by a nominal phrase, transcribed here as ʔu:MAM 2K’UH-ku-la-ʔAJAW YAX-NUN-ʔAYIN, transliterated as u-mäm k’uh-ul kuk-ul ʔajaw yäx nun ʔayin ‘the grandson/nephew of the holy Kukul lord, Yäx Nun ʔayin’. (The ʔu is conflated with the MAM logogram’s hair; this implies that this accession statement is not referring to Yäx Nun ʔayin, but to his grandson or nephew.)

 

Figure 10

 

The MHD transliterates glyph A10 as the equivalent of ti-ʔAJAW, but transcribes it as joyaj? ti aajaawil. We suggest that the VULTURE sign on its own may function with the value of BVF, JOY for joy[aj], and that the 3M2-like element is merely iconographic, one of the flies buzzing about the vulture. It is of course possible that the 3M2-like element was functioning syllabically as ti, in which case the entire collocation would have to be read out of order: ZB1:3M2.BV2 would be read completely in reverse, BV2 first, jo[h]y-aj-Ø-Ø ‘he was surrounded/circumvallated’, 3M2 second, ti, ‘on, at, in’, and ZB1 last, ʔajaw ‘lord’, yielding johyaj ti ʔajaw ‘he was surrounded [acceded] as lord’. Nevertheless, with the joy[aj] accession verbal expression a prepositional complement was not needed, and instead, the title ʔajaw could function as the subject of the passivized verb. For one, Figure 10C proves that in the context of BVF, the VULTURE sign need not include the 3M2-like element, nor does it need to convey the ʔajaw ‘lord’ meaning, which in fact follows two glyph blocks later, as shown in Figure 10D. The same inference can be made based on the opening passage from the Late Classic La Corona Panel 2 (MHD code “CRNPan02”), not illustrated here. There, BVF, including both the VULTURE sign with the 3M2 appendage and the KNOTTED.ROYAL.HEADBAND determinative, is followed one glyph block later by ti-ʔAJAW-wa-le for ti ʔajaw-(a)l-el ‘in lordship’; in addition, in this case, it is clear that the 3M2 ti sign appended to the VULTURE sign need not be analyzed as representing the preposition ti, but could very well be simply an iconographic component of the VULTURE sign itself, since the following glyph block already includes an instance of 3M2 ti in the proper position (not out of order) to convey the prepositional phrase. Regarding the omissibility of the preposition itself with the joy[aj] accession verbal expression, and therefore that BVF, as an accession expression, can be followed by the term for ‘lord(ship)’ without the need of a preposition, we can turn to the examples in seen in Figures 10F–10G, where the verb is followed by the ʔajaw ‘lord’ title, which is therefore the verb’s subject, and not part of a prepositional complement.

No Early Classic Instances of BV3 (i.e. 32M + BV2) as ti. BV3 does not function as either ta or ti in Early Classic texts, as indicated by the fact that no case of the juxtaposition of 3M2 ti and BV2, which together would give us BV3, functions as just ti during this time. The case of glyph E10 on Tikal Stela 31 (Figure 10B), for example, at best would be a case in which the 32M-like element affixed to the beak of the VULTURE sign would function as ti on its own, while the VULTURE sign itself functions as the logogram JOY, but the two cannot be working as a graphemic unit (BV3), to represent ti, because in such a situation no verbal expression would be represented at all.

 

3M2 as ti Only, Never ta, During Early Classic. 3M2 never had a value ta, it has by now been shown that not a single case of the 3M2-like element or early 3M2 must be analyzed as ta. The only potential candidate would be the example of 3M2 as a preposition in the Tikal Ballcourt Marker, in the ti-LAJUN-ʔAJAW ‘on [day] 10 Lord’ expression, given that elsewhere in the same text, as was more generally the case during the time, one finds the syllabogram 3M3/T51 ta used to spell the preposition . Nevertheless, as already explained, proto-Ch’olan almost certainly had both *tä and *ti as variants of the ‘generic preposition’, the second variant probably due to Yucatecan influence, and there is no reason why the early examples of 3M2 ti spelling such preposition could not be evidence of its innovation or introduction. Otherwise, 3M2 is used on its own, independent of the VULTURE sign, only in contexts where a sequence /ti/ is required, with the expression ʔuht-i‘it happened’ seemingly serving as a catalyst for the introduction of this syllabogram into the script. So far, then, there are no clear Early Classic cases of the juxtaposition of 3M2 and BV2 requiring an analysis as a single grapheme, BV3 ti. Instead, all such cases can be analyzed as either an iconographically-motivated 3M2-like element juxtaposed to BV2, or a sequence of 3M2 ti followed by the polyvalent BV2 (ʔUSIJ/ʔAJAW2/JOY) or BVF (JOY).

 

Acrophonic Derivation via Contextual (Metonymic) Association. Finally, regarding point 9), it is proposed here that 3M2, as a syllabogram ti, was derived acrophonically from proto-Ch’olan *tis ‘fart’ (Kaufman and Norman 1984:132) via the association of flies, 3M2’s iconographic referent, with the stench of carrion and vultures. If so, 3M2’s syllabographic value would not be a direct iconic acrophonic derivation, as in the base of AP9/T757 b’a/B’AHbased on *b’ah ‘gopher’, but an indirect indexical (metonymic) acrophonic derivation.

Nevertheless, there is another association to be made: Nicholas Hopkins (personal communication, 2022) commented the following:

David– Here’s a linguistic connection. A wide-spread term for ‘fly’ is /’us/. Western Mayan has terms for ‘buzzard’ based on the same or a similar root, viz.: Chuj /’usej/, Popti’ /’usmij/. Q’anjob’al /’usej/, Chorti’ /’usij/. So they are pointing as /’usej/, not /ta’-jol/.

In other words, if 3M2/T59 is in fact a FLY sign/motif, then it may have served as a way of pointing readers to the term ʔusiij ‘vulture’ via reflexes of proto-Mayan *ʔus ‘fly’ (Kaufman with Justeson 2003:621, 680), given the existence of competing terms, such as Ch’ol taʔjol. This would mean that the FLY sign would offer two associations: it would link vultures to the stench of carrion, their main food source; and it would point readers to the beginning syllable of the intended term for ‘vulture’ out of potentially several lexical options. The drawback to this alternative is that it would not explain the actual acrophonic origin of 3M2 as ti, like the term *tis does. Perhaps both associations are possible at the same time.

These associations lead to the possibility that the 3M2, as a FLY sign, was initially used as a “semantic classifier” (Hopkins 1994; Hopkins and Josserand 1999; Mora-Marín 2008), a category redefined by Mora-Marín (2022b) as an iconographic classifier. As such, as suggested to us by Mark Van Stone (personal communication, 2022), it would have served the optional function of highlighting some aspect of the vulture’s domain (e.g. its habits and common associations), and had no orthographic function per se, much like the use of the K’AN ‘yellow’ logogram whenever it was infixed within the AP9/T757 b’a/B’AH sign, based on b’ah ‘gopher’, pointing to the species of pocket gopher represented iconographically by the sign itself (k’anal b’ah ‘yellow gopher’), rather than serving an orthographic function within the spelling (Mora-Marín 2008, 2020).

 

Final Thoughts. Given the foregoing, there is one word of caution that must be offered. The recent reading of the names of two Uaxactun kings as TZ’AK-b’u-ʔUSIJ by Safronov et al. (2023), based on spellings employing the collocation 3M2.BV2, must be considered more tentatively as TZ’AK-b’u-ʔUSIJ/ʔAJAW2, given the following: 1) as has been shown already in this note, the VULTURE sign was polyvalent, and on its own, as BV2, with or without the 3M2-like element, it could bear the value ʔAJAW2 or ʔUSIJ; and 2) in nominal contexts, whether in titles or personal names, the expression TZ’AK-b’u is more often, though certainly not exclusively, associated with ʔajaw (e.g. Ix Tz’akbu Ajaw, Tz’akbu Ajaw).

 

Acknowledgments. We are very grateful to Nick Hopkins and Mark Van Stone for their email comments on a slideshow from April 2022 proposing some of the ideas presented in this note.

 

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Safronov, Alexandr, Dmitri Beliaev and Camilo A. Luin. 2023. Nuevos datos epigráficos sobre la dinastía de Uaxactun en el Clásico Temprano: el nombre real Tz’akbu Usiij. Paper presented at the XXXVI Simposio de Investigaciones Arqueológicas en Guatemala.

Arte chibchense 2

Análisis de agrupación y jerarquía de los pendientes celtiformes antropomórficos de la Colección de Dumbarton Oaks

 

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

26/12/2022

 

Este blog presenta un ejemplo de cómo utilizar métodos cuantitativos para el estudio de los pendientes de jade chibchenses de Costa Rica. Utilizaré los ejemplos de pendientes celtiformes antropomórficos que estudié en Mora-Marín (2021a, 2021b), que forman parte de la Colección de Dumbarton Oaks. Para el análisis emplearé el calculador de estadísticas DATAtab (DATAtab Team 2022).

 

El Cuadro 1 provee los datos básicos de los 17 pendientes estudiados, mientras que el Cuadro 2 provee las estadísticas descriptivas.

 

Cuadro 1. Datos básicos de los 17 pendientes.

Artefacto Lámina Longitud Hoja/Filo Ancho Espesor Peso Proporción de Hoja/Filo
PC.B.215 21 21.7 9.11 6.67 2.22 500.92 42%
PC.B.216 22 17.3 8.13 5.24 1.76 269.82 47%
PC.B.217 19 12.38 5.26 5.08 1.91 225.41 42.5%
PC.B.219 50 14.29 6.6 1.59 1.27 58.6 46%
PC.B.221 42 13.02 5.6 1.91 0.95 37.25 42.7%
PC.B.222 53 11.43 5.37 2.54 1.59 51.94 47%
PC.B.223 20 9.53 4.0 4.76 1.27 108.99 42%
PC.B.224 18 8.57 4.1 3.81 1.27 67.27 47.6%
PC.B.226 16 8.26 3.63 4.13 1.27 71.43 44%
PC.B.227 23 7.3 2.8 3.49 0.95 31.55 36.6%
PC.B.235 24 5.72 2.21 3.18 0.64 18.38 38.7%
PC.B.262 43 8.26 3.4 2.22 0.74 22.43 41%
PC.B.251 25 5.72 2.0 4.13 1.27 72.4 35%
PC.B.289 17 6.99 2.7 3.3 0.95 35.65 38%
PC.B.290 5 9.31 3.63 4.45 1.35 89.34 39%
PC.B.292 44 10.16 5.5 2.54 1.32 48.11 54%

 

Cuadro 2. Estadísticas descriptivas.

Longitud Hoja/Filo Ancho Espesor Peso Proporción de Hoja/Filo
Mean 10.62 4.63 3.69 1.3 106.84 42.69
Median 9.42 4.05 3.65 1.27 62.94 42.25
Modal 5.72 3.63 2.54 1.27 18.38 42
Std. Deviation 4.33 2.05 1.37 0.42 126.37 4.85
Minimum 5.72 2 1.59 0.64 18.38 35
Maximum 21.7 9.11 6.67 2.22 500.92 54
Number of valid values 16 16 16 16 16 16

 

La primera pregunta que quise investigar es la de posibles agrupaciones en base a las dimensiones físicas de los pendientes. Para ello utilicé el calculador de agrupaciones jerárquicas de DATAtab, específicamente mediante el método de enlace completo y de distancia euclidiana. La Figura 1 muestra el resultado en base a dos dimensiones: longitud y ancho. La Figura 2 muestra el resultado de añadir el espesor y la longitud de la hoja/filo del pendiente. La gran similitud entre los modelos de las Figuras 1 y 2 sugieren que longitud y ancho bien podrían ser suficientes para establecer agrupaciones de utilidad. Estas agrupaciones podrían ser el resultado de una variedad de causas: subregionalismos, distintas tradiciones de artesanos a través del tiempo, distintas materias primas, distintos temas artísticos, etc. Por supuesto, dado el hecho de que estos artefactos carecen de procedencia, no es posible investigar ninguna de las primeras dos posibilidades.

 

Figura 1. Dendograma de agrupaciones por longitud y ancho. (Las imágenes de los pendientes no están mostradas a escala.)

Figura 2. Dendograma de agrupaciones por longitud, ancho, espesor y longitud de hoja/filo. (Las imágenes de los pendientes no están mostradas a escala.)

Se puede utilizar el dendograma de la Figura 1 para hacer una inspección visual de las agrupaciones con respecto a la variable de composición. Se dividieron los pendientes en tres grupos: jadeíta (jadeite), combinación de jadeíta (con otros minerales) (jadeite mix) y piedra verde (greenstone). Como se puede ver en la Figura 3, cuatro de los 7 ejemplos compuestos de piedra verde forman una agrupación algo estrecha. La Figura 4 muestra el diagrama de dispersión correspondiente a la misma información utilizada para el análisis de agrupación jerárquica; los ejemplos de piedra verde se muestran dentro de rectángulos.  Tal distribución podría sugerir una relación entre las dimensiones de longitud y ancho, por un lado, y la composición del pendiente, por el otro.

 

Figura 3.

 

Figura 4. Diagrama de dispersión con ejemplos de piedra verde dentro de rectángulos.

También, el dendograma de agrupaciones, visto desde el punto de vista de los motivos de los tocados (gorro = cap, doble penacho = double tuft, doble zoomórfico = double zoomorphic), como en la Figura 6, pareciera mostrar una agrupación densa del motivo de gorro, especialmente con respecto a la longitud de los pendientes, con cuatro de los siete ejemplos mostrando valores similares, como se aprecia en la Figura 7.

 

Figura 5.

 

Figura 6. Diagrama de dispersión con ejemplos de motivos de gorro dentro de rectángulos

 

Para determinar si estos patrones aparentes tiene alguna significancia estadística, se realizaron varias pruebas. Las pruebas de Kruskal-Wallis realizadas no mostraron significancia estadística, con valores p por encima del valor mínimo de .05. Sin embargo, un análisis de regresión logística con la composición como variable dependiente y la longitud y ancho como variables independientes sugiere algo distinto: el modelo (Cuadro 3) muestra que un incremento en longitud se asocia con un incremento en la probabilidad de que el pendiente sea de jadeíta, y que tal asociación posee significancia estadística (valor p = .045). Aunque el análisis mostró una correlación negativa entre los pendientes de “piedra verde” y la longitud, tal asociación no muestra significancia estadística (valor p = .065). El ancho de los pendientes no mostró ninguna relación con la variable de composición.

 

Cuadro 3. Regresión logística para variante Jadeite (variable Composition)

a. Resultado para predicción de variante Jadeite (variable Composition)

Total number of cases Correct assignments In percent
16 12 75%

b. Cuadro de clasificación

Predicted
not Jadeite Jadeite Correct
Observed not Jadeite 7 2 77.78%
Jadeite 2 5 71.43%
Total 75%

c. Chi2

Chi2 df p
7.67 2 0.022

d. Resumen del modelo para variante Jadeite (variable Composition)

-2 Log-Likelihood Cox & Snell R2 Nagelkerke R2 McFadden’s R2
14.26 0.38 0.51 0.35

e. Modelo para variante Jadeite (variable Composition)

Coefficient B Standard error z p Odds Ratio 95% conf. interval
Length 0.5 0.25 1.97 0.049 1.64

1 – 2.7

Width -0.37 0.59 0.64 0.525 0.69

0.22 – 2.18

Constant -4.09 3.15 1.3 0.194

 

En lo que respecta a los motivos de los tocados, se realizaron también varias pruebas Kruskal-Wallis. La primera analizó si las variantes de la variable Tocado muestran una diferencia significativa con respecto a la longitud. La Figura 7 muestra la distribución de los tres motivos de los tocados con respecto a la longitud de los pendientes. El Cuadro 4 presenta los resultados de esta prueba, los cuales sugieren significancia estadística (valor = .015), y por ende, que hay una diferencia significativa entre las categorías de la variable Tocado con respecto a la longitud; las pruebas Dunn-Bonferroni señalan que la diferencia significativa es la que distingue al motivo de Doble Penacho (con valores medios más bajos) y Gorro (con valores medios más altos).

 

Figura 7. Distribución de Longitud con respect a tres tipos de Tocado.

 

Cuadro 4. Prueba Kruskal-Wallis para Longitud y variable Tocado.

a. Rangos

Groups N Mean Rank
Double Tuft 5 3.4
Double Zoomorphic 4 10.38
Cap 7 11.07
Total 16

b. Estadísticas

Values
Chi2 8.42
df 2
p 0.015

c. Pruebas Dunn-Bonferroni

Test Statistic Std. Error Std. Test Statistic p Adj. p
Double Tuft – Double Zoomorphic -6.98 3.19 -2.19 0.029 0.086
Double Tuft – Cap -7.67 2.78 -2.76 0.006 0.018
Double Zoomorphic – Cap -0.7 2.98 -0.23 0.815 1

 

Ni la anchura ni la proporción de la hoja/filo del pendiente mostraron asociaciones de significancia estadística con la variable Tocado.

 

Para resumir, es posible que los artesanos chibchenses hubiesen preferido: 1) trabajar la jadeíta en formas de pendientes de mayor longitud, a comparación con otras materias primas; y 2) el motivo de Gorro con pendientes de mayor longitud. Pero para concluir, este blog simplemente propone una metodología para investigar los pendientes de jade chibchenses de Costa Rica. No es posible proponer que 17 ejemplos sean representativos de decenas de miles, pero estos mismos métodos se pueden emplear para investigar bases de datos más extensas. Sería importante comenzar con una base de datos de ejemplos con contexto arqueológico, por ejemplo, para intentar de detectar patrones estilísticos, temáticos y composicionales en base a región y período.

 

Referencias

DATAtab Team. (2022). DATAtab: Online Statistics Calculator. DATAtab e.U. Graz, Austria. URL https://datatab.net.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2021a. Artifact Descriptions. En Pre-Columbian Art of Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks, editado por John Hoopes y Colin McEwan, pp. 80-175. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2021b. The Anthropomorphic Celtiform Pendant Theme of the Jade Tradition in Costa Rica. En Pre-Columbian Art of Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks, editado por John Hoopes y Colin McEwan, pp. 47-60. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Hoopes, John, and Colin McEwan, editors. 2021a. Pre-Columbian Art of Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Hoopes, John, and Colin McEwan, editors. 2021b. Pre-Columbian Art of Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador: Toward an Integrated Approach. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

 

 

Arte chibchense 1

Orejas en forma de “c” y el prejuicio fotográfico

David F. Mora-Marín
davidmm@unc.edu
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill

31/7/2022, 25/12/2022

 

Los lados anversos y reversos de los pendientes celtiformes de “jade” chibchenses de Costa Rica muchas veces son fotografiados desde un ángulo perpendicular a la superficie del artefacto. Esto es indudablemente el resultado de un factor práctico: el hecho de que las publicaciones generalmente permiten un número limitado de imágenes, ya sean dibujos lineales o fotografías, y generalmente los pendientes celtiformes se pueden calificar como relativamente planos, por lo que un par de imágenes mostrando por delante y por detrás captarían la mayoría de la información artística del artefacto. El problema es que tales pendientes no son completamente planos como lo tienden a ser, por ejemplo, las placas de jade mayas. Más bien, los pendientes celtiformes chibchenses suelen mostrar una combinación de grabado plano y tridimensional. Por ello, las fotografías convencionales suelen ignorar rasgos importantes de tales artefactos.

 

Este es un hecho que confronté al tener la oportunidad de examinar los pendientes celtiformes antropomorfos del Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection en enero del 2014, gracias a la invitación por John Hoopes and Colin McEwan para participar en un proyecto de documentación, descripción y análisis del corpus de artefactos de la región de Istmo-Colombia que forman parte de esa Colección (Hoopes y McEwan 2021a, 2021b). En total, examiné 17 pendientes, descritos en detalle en Mora-Marín (2021a), y contextualizados en su marco histórico-cultural más amplio en Mora-Marín (2021b). Dos de los 17 pendientes exhiben orejas en forma de “c,” un rasgo que no se podía apreciar en las fotografías complemente frontales que eran las únicas disponibles en aquel entonces, ya sea en la página web de la Colección o en los archivos impresos de la misma. De hecho, la práctica estándar en colecciones digitales es mostrar solamente el frente: https://collections.lacma.org/node/238041, https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/313013?ft=costa+rica+jade&amp;offset=40&amp;rpp=40&amp;pos=58, https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/object/1994.820.

 

Por ejemplo, el pendiente catalogado PC.B.217 (Figura 1A) muestra orejas en forma de “c” cuando se observa desde un ángulo diagonal (Figuras 1B-C).

 

Figura 1

 

Otro ejemplo es el caso de PC.B.292 (Figura 2A), cuya vista lateral, necesaria dada la característica más tridimensional de este pendiente, permite ver la forma “c” de la oreja de la mujer representada en este pendiente (Figura 2B).

 

Figura 2

 

Como ya se observó, hoy en día, la versión digital de la Colección de Dumbarton Oaks sí provee fotografías de tres ángulos distintos para los pendientes celtiformes de jade chibchenses: anverso, reverso y diagonal. La ficha de PC.B.217, con sus fotografías, se puede encontrar en el siguiente enlace: http://museum.doaks.org/objects-1/info/22817. La de PC.B.292 en el siguiente: http://museum.doaks.org/objects-1/info/22819.

 

La moraleja es simple: es necesario publicar fotografías diagonales o laterales para los pendientes del tipo descrito aquí. Algo tan simple como la forma de las orejas de los personajes representados podría ser un rasgo útil para estudiar la variación sincrónica y el cambio diacrónico de los jades chibchenses de Costa Rica. Sin embargo, este rasgo no ha sido documentado sistemáticamente por la práctica convencional de publicar fotografías directamente anversas o reversas.

 

 

Referencias

Mora-Marín, David F. 2021a. Artifact Descriptions. En Pre-Columbian Art of Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks, editado por John Hoopes y Colin McEwan, pp. 80-175. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Mora-Marín, David F. 2021b. The Anthropomorphic Celtiform Pendant Theme of the Jade Tradition in Costa Rica. En Pre-Columbian Art of Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks, editado por John Hoopes y Colin McEwan, pp. 47-60. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Hoopes, John, and Colin McEwan, editors. 2021a. Pre-Columbian Art of Central America and Colombia at Dumbarton Oaks. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Hoopes, John, and Colin McEwan, editors. 2021b. Pre-Columbian Art of Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador: Toward an Integrated Approach. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

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