| Traditional
High Cultures |
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| Oral and Written
Traditions and Rock Art as the Histories of Both Ancient and Living Peoples,
Especially of the Americas before the Arrival of Europeans |
Mayan and Mespotamian Written Records Confirmations and Checks on Validity |
| Abstract of session as a whole The session co-chairs are Manuel Gerber (Switzerland) and Marc Zender (Canada) Session is scheduled for 22 June, 4:00 to 6:00 pm |
With ancient written records, there are of course multiple problems of interpretation in cultures foreign to us. This session presents successes and problems in two parts of the world, with particular emphasis on the level of detail which can and cannot be filled in, and questions of reliability of interpretation. The goal is to be able to use more of the information which has been preserved down to our times, to recover parts of history. |
| Historiography and the Classic Maya Monumental Tradition by Simon Martin, UK |
The decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing offers unique insights into the Pre-Columbian past, opening hitherto unsuspected vistas on ancient Maya mentalities and histories. But with the new-found wealth of knowledge comes a range of epistemological concerns familiar to students of written traditions worldwide. Necessarily, we must distinguish between the past as represented to us, and a far more elusive "objective" past to which it ostensibly refers. This paper summarizes the current state of Maya historiography, with emphasis on how multiple lines of textual data might be combined with archaeological and other sources to paint a more complex, and ultimately more credible, version of the Maya past. [See his recent book with Nikolai Grube: Chronicle of Maya Kings and Queens] |
| From Celestial Divination to Horoscopes: Extracting Datable Correlates of Cultural Change in Cuneiform Historiographic Texts, ca. 700-400 BCE. by Manuel Gerber, Univ. of Berne Univ. of Berne (with a contribution to analysis by L. Anderson) |
Early celestial divination in Babylonia was based on the concept of dynamic divine intervention. With very few exceptions texts attesting to its practice gradually disappear in the 7th century BCE to reappear in the late 5th century in the entirely new form of horoscopy - a form that implies a deterministic model of physical or, at least, astronomical reality. In this paper I consider two recently identified and superficially unrelated events around 600 BCE as precise chronological proxies for this fundamental change in the Babylonian belief system: 1) a change in the Babylonian Chronicles from the compilation of historical information from astrological compendia to true historiography, and 2) a change in the calendar system from partial to full periodicity. Based on a review of the philological, historical and astronomical context as well as the statistical evidence for such an early transition to full periodicity in the Babylonian calendar, I argue that both events are causally related to the evolution of predictive astronomy which, in turn, led to to the abandonment of celestial divination in favour of the deterministic world-view apparent in the early horoscopes. This case study underlines the general potential of statistics as a tool for extracting datable correlates of cultural changes that are otherwise difficult to position in time from a variety of superficially unrelated sources. [includes data on new year's dates and new moons in 19-year cycles] |
| Systems of Month Mounting in Classic Mayan Lunar
Calendars by John Justeson, SUNY Albany |
The hieroglyphic inscriptions from the Classic period of Lowland Mayan civilization include a large number of dates associated with a record of which of a set of six lunar months was current on that date. At any given time, records at different sites usually, but not always, agree or differ by one month with respect to the identification of the current lunar month. Two "uniform" systems of month counting, in which every pass through the lunar calendar took exactly six months, were in place for much of the Classic period. This paper reviews the temporal and geographic scope of the uniform systems, assesses the nature of non uniform lunar month systems, and addresses the possible relation of shared/distinct lunar calendar systems to higher-level political organization. |
| Recent Work on the Historical Geography of Old Babylonian Sites in the Khabur Basin by Doug Frayne, University of Toronto |
The very large archive of Old Babylonian administrative texts from the royal palace at Mari, supplemented by the Old Babylonian archives found at Tell Chaghar Bazar and Tell al-Rimah has provided scholars with a very large number of toponyms situated in the Khabur basin. Various small studies of the historical geography of this region have now been greatly enriched by the publication of M. Wäffler's monumental study Tall el-Hamidiya 3. Wäffler has meticulously determined the complex "Vernetzung" of the various sites mentioned in the Mari tablets for the Khabur area. While I have serious reservations about the utility of his mathematical model for determining site locations in this particular case, his book is a gold mine of information for Khabur area sites, and he is to be highly lauded for the thoroughness of his "Vernetzung" study and the impeccable bibliography he has provided in his monograph. By utilizing the information of Wäffler's book and carefully comparing it to modern site names in the Khabur basin, I have been able to posit tentative locations for a large number of sites in the Khabur region. A summary of this work is presented in this communication. |
| [A GIS approach to ancient sociopolitical geography in the Usumacinta region of the Maya area] |
[an updated gravity model, adjusted for terrain and accessibility (via the addition of added/subtracted 'frictional' values); tentative, compare work of Armando Anaya] |
| The Place of Toponyms in Studies of Ancient Maya
Sociopolitical History by Marc Zender, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada |
The discovery of toponyms in Maya hieroglyphic writing less than a decade ago transformed scholars' views of the Maya past. For the first time, ancient conceptions of place were available for scrutiny, and scholars could plot the locales of battles, burials and kingly ceremonies, and begin to build approximations of the spatial arena of ancient sociopolitical interaction. But the study of ancient Maya toponyms is still very much in its infancy, and there is little consensus on even such central issues as the scale and scope of toponymical references, and the relationship of place names with contemporary ethnicities and polities. This study summarizes current knowledge of Maya toponymy, with emphasis on the threefold distinctions of place, polity and ethnicity, and suggests avenues for the resolution of some perplexing questions concerning ancient views of space and the place of humans in it. |
| The Chronicles from the Books of Chilam Balam (Yucatan, Mexico): An Epigraphic and Archaeological (Re-)Assessment By Erik Boot, The Netherlands [Speaker will unfortunately not be able to present this paper at WAC5] |
Since the first publication of a chronicle from one of the Books of Chilam Balam in the middle of the nineteenth century the contents of the various chronicles has been used to provide a framework for the political history of the Yucatan peninsula. The available five chronicles in the Books of Chilam Balam of Mani, Tizimin, and Chumayel describe historic events placed within recurring cycles of a sequence of 13 so-called k'atun periods, each with a duration of circa 256 years. Recent epigraphic and archaeological research in both the Southern and Northern Maya Lowlands may provide evidence for the placement of the first k'atun period named 8 Ahaw in these chronicles at circa A.D. 672-692. Using additional historical sources from the Colonial period as support, the surviving chronicles seem to describe the most important historical events of the Itza Maya between circa A.D. 672-692 and A.D. 1441-1461. These events for instance describe the foundation of Chichen Itza and several periods of time defined by large scale migrations from Northern Yucatan to the Southern Maya Lowlands, especially close to Lake Peten Itza. Email Erik Boot |
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