Into the minds of ancients: advances in Maya glyph studies

Journal of World Prehistory, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2000 Into the Minds of Ancients: Advances in Maya Glyph Studies Stephen D. Houston1 A decade of Maya glyphic decipherment creates many opportunities for historical, linguistic, cultural, and archaeological interpretation. New evidence points to improvements in understanding decipherment as a discipline and social practice, the origins of Maya script, the use and meaning of glyphs in ancient society, and the language and sociolinguistic implications of Maya texts. The glyphs reveal information about Maya kingship and its relation to supernatural forces along with cues to a synthesis of history during the Classic period (A.D. 250–850). A test case from Piedras Negras, Guatemala, relates such discoveries to the ongoing excavation of a Classic city with abundant inscriptions. KEY WORDS: Maya Lowlands; Classic period; decipherment; Maya archaeology. ‘‘Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.’’ —Dr. Johnson, Rasselas, 1759 Some years ago, I contributed an essay to the Journal of World Prehistory that described the impact of hieroglyphic decipherment on Maya archaeology (Houston, 1989a). An invitation to contribute another essay on a half-period anniversary (half of the 20-year span beloved of the Maya) is highly welcome. It also invites self-scrutiny: What did I think then that I no longer believe or find useful and important? What is commonly held today that never remotely entered my mind in 1989? The objective of that earlier piece was to highlight contributions that Maya glyph studies might make to archaeology. This article focuses 1 Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602, USA. 121 0892-7537/00/0600-0121$18.00/0  2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation 122 Houston more directly on the rich epigraphic data, and relates them where possible to archaeology, but as a secondary aim. The assertion here is that the epigraphic evidence should first be understood on its own terms, before premature correlations are established with material patterns. The task is large, for the 1990s have been among the most important in the history of Maya glyph studies. Maya epigraphy made monumental advances throughout the 1990s. Texts can no longer be regarded as an incidental instrument in illuminating Classic Maya civilization (ca. A.D. 250 and 850, as found throughout the Yucatan peninsula and adjacent areas of Central America and Mexico). Rather, with decipherment, texts speak from the minds of ancients. Whether the glyphs are ‘‘lying’’ (the common libel, as we shall see) or whether they reflect only elite thoughts and preoccupations are almost beside the point. The inscriptions crystallize representations of ancient realities from a period in the New World when no other indigenous people left a clearly legible record. It is seldom stated so bluntly, for fear of offending esteemed colleagues, but neither Zapotec texts nor Isthmian writing yield information that can be regarded as completely or even partly deciphered (cf. Marcus, 1992a; Justeson and Kaufman, 1992, 1993). A good illustration is the Zapotec calendar, which remains controversial (Urcid, 1992). Attempts to interpret noncalendrical portions of Zapotec inscriptions demonstrate, despite intensive and insightful efforts, a disquieting inexactitude about appropriate word order, spelling principles, or linkages with Zapotec speech, the presumed but still unproved tongue of the texts (Marcus, 1992a; Masson and Orr, 1998; Urcid, 1992, 1993b; Urcid et al., 1994; Whittaker, 1992). The heavily logographic or word-based nature of this script continues to present obstacles to even the most determined researchers. For example, specialists have found no convincing instances of rebus, the cornerstone of many decipherments (Javier Urcid, personal communication, 2000). More recently, signal advances have been made in understanding other Mesoamerican scripts, to which Maya glyph experts can contribute their comparative expertise in the future (Berlo, 1989; Chinchilla Mazariegos, 1996; Taube, 2000b). What, then, did I (and others) believe in 1988, when the earlier review of Maya writing and archaeology was written? Bloodletting was thought to be a dominant theme of the texts. Polities of the Classic period seemed to be relatively small, with only glimmerings of higher-order hierarchies. Objects and buildings were known to be important in glyphic nomenclature, but details were still lacking. There was little attention to variability in the script. Grammar and syntax were assumed to involve split-ergative languages of varying affiliation, Yukatekan to Ch’olan: Ch’ol, spoken in the general area of Palenque, Mexico, seemed the most likely Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 123 language for many of the inscriptions.2 Historical linguistics was still relatively uninvolved with decipherment, not least because of controversies about readings of particular signs. Precise translations were generally unavailable, and epigraphers relied heavily on paraphrases and loose semantic equivalents in English or Spanish. Some influential monographs of the 1980s presented readings that diverge considerably from recent ones (e.g., Schele and Miller, 1983). Discussions of kingship and religious belief and practice tended to follow evidence from Palenque, where such matters were comparatively well understood. The underlying concepts of architecture and indigenous notions of existence were only beginning to attract attention, building on superb and deep ethnographic research by the Harvard project in Chiapas (Vogt, 1994). As of the year 2000, there is much that is new and different, although resting on solid foundations fashioned since the 1960s. This paper divides its subject into two major headings. The first discusses decipherment as a process and social practice, with the objective of explaining the nature of such issues, ethical and otherwise, to nonspecialists suspicious of epigraphic craft. The attempt here is to improve self-understanding among Mayanists—namely, to forge what has been described as ‘‘sociological literacy,’’ which should, as in any healthy discipline, begin at home (Shapiro, 2000, p. 68). The second heading advances the author’s views on improvements in glyphic knowledge since the 1980s. Among these changes are more developed understandings of the origins of Maya script, its role and use in Maya society, the language of the inscriptions and its bearing on vertical and horizontal social bonds (if such can ever be truly defined in the socially asymmetric universe of the Maya), the nature of rulers and their relation to divinity, ‘‘history’’ and ‘‘politics’’ as interpretive challenges, and the nature of the ancient political economy. A final section reports on an example of epigraphically informed excavations at a pivotal Maya city, Piedras Negras. The tone of the essay is meant to be direct and provocative, so as to rouse more focused discussion of the issues forced on all Mayanists by glyphic decipherment. 2 A note for the linguistically averse: Ergativity refers to a system of transitivity. In ergative systems, verbs attach prefixed (ergative) or suffixed (absolutive) pronouns for various purposes: the prefixed pronouns mark the subject of transitive verbs (‘‘He scatters incense’’) and the possessor of nouns (‘‘his stela’’); the suffixed pronouns serve as the subjects of intransitive verbs (‘‘he dies’’) and the objects of passive verbs (‘‘he is captured’’). Splitergativity shifts this system slightly. Prefixed pronouns now mark the subject of transitives and intransitives in what is called the incompletive aspect (i.e., the state of noncompleted action). In contrast, suffixed pronouns are only used for passive verbs in the incompletive. It is clear from comparative linguistics that split-ergativity came into existence after the breakup of earlier forms of Mayan languages (Robertson, 1992, pp. 53–54). 124 Houston DECIPHERMENT AS DISCIPLINE AND SOCIAL PRACTICE First I address Maya epigraphy as an academic field, which, for all its esoteric content, involves more engaged amateurs than professionals: handwringing about a lack of interaction with the public is moot in this branch of archaeology (Fagan, 1993). It also focuses on the sociology of the field and the difficult issues of disciplinary practice and moral obligation. Determined efforts are now being made to involve Maya epigraphy and archaeology in ethnic politics, with unclear results in the long term. Decipherment: Practices, Practitioners, and Products Since 1989, there have been great strides in decipherment, building on techniques pioneered decades before by, among others, Hermann Beyer, Heinrich Berlin, Tatiana Proskouriakoff, and the so-called Mesa Redonda group, especially Linda Schele, Peter Mathews, and Floyd Lounsbury, along with linguistically sophisticated scholars such as Victoria Bricker (1986), John Justeson (1978; Justeson and Campbell, 1997), and Barbara MacLeod (1987). We have come a long way from Gelb’s statement that the Maya had no ‘‘full phonetic writing system’’ (Gelb, 1975, p. 82). Useful treatments of the history of decipherment may be found in Stuart (1992), Coe (1992, 1999), and Houston, Chinchilla Mazariegos, and Stuart (2000); a full-length, cross-referenced bibliography is also under preparation by Houston and Zachary Nelson (for early sources, see Cazes, 1976; for a limited, working bibliography, consult J. Harris, 1994; Bricker, 1995, provides a useful but conservative review of recent decipherments). Stuart’s treatment presents unmatched scholarship on the beginnings of Maya epigraphy, and Coe offers a vigorous and entertaining narrative with a cast of heroes (Y. Knorosov) and villains (J. E. S. Thompson), and, after publication, with its own set of critics (Daniels, 1996, pp. 154–155; Hammond, 1993). There is little doubt that Coe correctly perceived the problems in Thompson’s career, which, after initial, brilliant work that focused on calendrical and rebus spellings, limited glyphic decoding for at least two decades. To some extent this was attributable to Thompson’s unparalleled reputation and force of personality, which brooked little disagreement. However, there was also the effect of his idiosyncratic understanding of writing systems and penchant for mystical exegesis—an example of interpretative virtuosity gone sadly awry. Later works by Thompson left little sense of future direction or productive openings, although most epigraphers retain great respect for his erudition, particularly with respect to the Maya calendar. [On scanning Thompson’s (1950) opus for the first time, the author can attest first- Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 125 hand to feelings of futility and abject incomprehension. In contrast, Lounsbury’s (1973) classic study of an important glyphic title showed with utmost clarity the reasoning behind a particular reading.] In turn, Knorosov, whose legacy of phonetic research in the 1950s stands untarnished, ended his career in sad denouement, beating a full retreat from his most trenchant conclusions, and with politicized and publicly voiced derision for epigraphic advances made by North Americans (Victoria Bricker, personal communication, 1995; Knorosov and Yershova, n.d.). The next step in epigraphic historiography is plain. We must go beyond review of published sources, the gist of most studies of decipherment, to unplumbed stores of personal correspondence, of which a central repository of letters, interviews, and unfinished manuscripts is urgently needed, perhaps on the model of personal papers of scientists preserved by the American Philosophical Society. David Lebrun of Nightfire Films, which is preparing a two-part documentary on decipherment based on Coe’s book Breaking the Maya Code, has compiled dozens of hours of interviews with active epigraphers. The hallmark of current research is its strongly international flavor, with vibrant groups in Germany (Colas, 1998; Graña-Behrens et al., 1999; Grube, 1999; Grube and Nahm, 1990, 1994; Nahm, 1994, 1997; Voss, 1995; Voß and Eberl, 1999; Wagner, 1995), and smaller circles in Belgium (Lefort, 1998; Lefort and Wald, 1995), Canada (Zender, 1999), Denmark (Nielsen, 1998; Wichmann and Lacadena, 1999), France (Davoust, 1995, 1997), Holland (Boot, 1997; Schele et al., 1998), Russia (Beliaev, 1998), Japan (Yasugi, 1999a,b), along with an especially active focus in Spain (Garcı́a Campillo 1992, 1995a, 1996, 1997, 1998a,b, 1999; Garcı́a Campillo and Lacadena Garcı́a-Gallo, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992; Lacadena, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1997a,b, 1998). The limited job opportunities in Europe are a source of concern in the long term, although there is now a vibrant annual meeting that parallels self-consciously the growth of a pan-European identity (Colas et al., 2000). The European approach tends to be strongly philological, humanistic, and regionally oriented, without, for better or worse, the anthropological and theory-building stance in some North American work. The United States continues at a strong clip, with several recent dissertations and theses, of which the majority come from art history departments (Christy, 1995; Herring, 1999; Looper, 1995, 1999; MacLeod, 1990; Nelson, 1998; Newsome, 1991; Sanchez, 1997; Stuart, 1995; Vail, 1996; Villela, 1993). The recent passing of Linda Schele, a key figure in Maya research, will surely have an impact on epigraphy and its popular appeal in this country (England, 1998); by unhappy coincidence, Knorosov and Lounsbury died within a short time of their respected colleague (Grube, 1998a; Grube and Robb, 1999; Houston, 2000). Unfortunately, the future of epigraphy in North American departments of anthropology is murky because there seems to be compara- 126 Houston tively little institutional interest in supporting this research at the doctoral or professional level. Harvard, Tulane, the University of California at Riverside, and Brigham Young are notable exceptions to a trend that sees epigraphy as regionally important but intellectually narrow and insufficiently engaged in broader issues of social theory (see below). An example of this might be a recent statement that Mayanists and their funding sources are suspect because they largely address ‘‘the literate ruling classes of buffer races,’’ a memorable if inaccurate summation (Patterson, 1995, p. 116). From Mexico and Guatemala comes high-quality work from a few energetic researchers (Arrellano 1998; Ayala Falcón, 1995, 1997; Chinchilla Mazariegos and Escobedo Ayala, 1999; Escobedo, 1991, 1992, 1997a; Escobedo Ayala and Fahsen, 1995; Grube et al., 1992; Morales Guos, 1995; Valdés and Fahsen, 1995, 1998; Valdés et al., 1994, 1999), yet general or even academic interest in those countries seems, after a promising start, to be limited, despite the presence of expert epigraphic instruction at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, and the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. A few basic texts on Maya glyphs exist in Spanish, but they are out of date, insufficiently disseminated, or prepared by nonspecialists (Alaniz Serrano, 1999; Berlin, 1977). The large number of glyph workshops in the United States and, increasingly, in Europe make the need for a textbook on ancient Maya writing somewhat less pressing. A challenge in preparing such a volume is our present difficulty in achieving consensus on the most basic of matters, including spelling rules and grammar (see below). Unfortunately, the few books on the market are now out of date or inaccurate (Harris and Stearns, 1997; Houston, 1989b). In the past, one could speak of ‘‘schools’’ of interpretation, such as that of Tübingen or Yale and Leningrad (Barthel, 1977; Houston et al., 2000). A sign of health in Maya epigraphy is a growing, collective awareness that some directions have proved more fruitful than others, and that scholars have now forged a common basis for discussion. In-bred ‘‘schools’’ can no longer exist in our era of internet communication and a populous community of independent-minded scholars. The ‘‘new synthesis’’ accepts syllabic glyphs of consonant–vowel (CV) value (a sore point with some scholars until the 1970s), promotes a clear understanding of the relation of language to orthography, examines the biographies of historical actors, conceptualizes indigenous categories where possible, builds on a large number of signs with commonly accepted readings, and operates according to shared methods and principles of decipherment. Decipherment is held to be a full explanation for a sign in terms of its iconic referents, its meaning and sound, and its development through time. Of necessity, it must concern the minutia of signs and their behavior. Not all specialists agree on this Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 127 point: one feels that such details can be bypassed in favor of a more ‘‘anthropological framework pioneered by . . . Thompson’’ (Marcus, 1992a, p. xix), as though attention to spellings and language represent an optional detour for students of ancient script. This is surely not the case, because precise knowledge of glyphs allows us to mine anthropological meaning. Peter Daniels distinguishes between primary decipherment, which proposes entirely new principles, and minor ‘‘filling in’’ (Daniels 1996, p. 142), as in the Maya case. Nothing could be less applicable to Maya glyphs. Every new decipherment of a logographic or syllabic sign is as vital and incrementally progressive as the last. Syllables have to be teased out one at a time, as do logographs, which depend on individual semantic and phonetic constraints for their elucidation. Thus, code breaking for Maya glyphs comes, not rapidly, but in fits and starts. For some signs there are insufficient contexts in which to test readings (the problem of hapax legomena, ‘‘things said only once’’), or they may spell opaque terms that seem not to have survived in daughter languages. This means that certain signs will not easily deliver their sound or sense. Complete decipherment is unlikely, given our tattered, if slowly expanding, epigraphic record (see below), and scholars must, for reasons of truth in advertising, curb triumphalist declarations about the state of glyphic readings. Aside from the celebrated ‘‘alphabet’’ of Bishop Diego de Landa (Coe, 1999, pp. 145–166), the key to decipherment has proved in large part to be internal, consisting of distributional patterns with apparent substitutable signs. The epigrapher can presume with a high margin of certainty that such substitutions constitute equivalent glyphs or, at least, signs in close, alternating relationship (Lounsbury, 1984, 1989); the most incisive demonstration of this approach was Stuart’s detection of large numbers of substitutable u signs in a verbal expression meaning ‘‘it happened,’’ uti:y (1990b). A distinction between logographs (word signs) and syllabic glyphs leads to a more incisive understanding of patterns in such substitutions. Moreover, by inserting signs of known or suspected reading, phonic or semantic values can be tested repeatedly in different contexts. If there is a large set of documented texts, defective readings become rapidly untenable, whereas those with merit yield insights into hitherto unexplained sign clusters. Still a milestone and the best example of this approach is Stuart (1987), a study of enduring insight with interlocking conclusions that remain basically unmodified despite 15 years of subsequent research (cf. criticism in Hopkins, 1997). It is important to understand that broad consensus is not the same as total agreement. An appropriate model for understanding Maya epigraphy—or any other rigorous discipline—is the tension between ‘‘core’’ and ‘‘frontier’’ knowledge (Cole, 1992, pp. 229–230). The core comprises a 128 Houston body of ideas and methods that are held by all members of the epigraphic community; gains in the positivist sense of confident decipherment are impossible without these joint ideas. The frontier embraces those ideas still being probed and evaluated, with only a relatively small number ever likely to pass from this tentative state to the security of the core; the core itself may, however, undergo change as a result of some probing on the frontier. Some scholars seem to believe that epigraphers do not distinguish between the two, and that changing views reflect badly on the whole enterprise, being little more than a reflection of dubious practices, self-delusion, and reciprocal back-scratching (e.g., Baudez, 1999, p. 948; Porter, 1999). Such criticisms are illogical, for what discipline, other than a doctrinal one, is expected to validate itself by remaining the same? Maya epigraphy will always be interpretive on some levels, as we organize glyphic evidence and discern therefrom the society and underlying ideas that engendered it. It would be wrong to deny the existence of what Brannigan calls ‘‘mediators,’’ dominant figures who socialize younger scholars and determine the nature and importance of discoveries (Brannigan, 1981, p. 167). This essay is my attempt at mediation in the special, hegemonic sense of this term. However, certain readings are now set, regardless of personal whim and inclination, as reconstructed confidently by us and as intended explicitly by the Maya. Present-day decipherment, then, has passed its physical. The representational context is becoming well known (Miller, 1999). The syllabic ‘‘grid’’ has been partly filled in by intensive work that peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s (e.g., Grube and Nahm, 1991), although certain glottalized consonants and Ce syllables are still unattested or insecurely identified. Common logographs continue to reveal their secrets, albeit at slower pace than before: A recent advance is David Stuart’s important proposal of the ch’e:n or ‘‘cave, rocky outcrop’’ glyph (Vogt and Stuart, 1999), now shown to express a ubiquitous, indigenous concept of place (Stuart and Houston, 1994, Fig. 9; see also Boot, 1999) and the probable locus of pilgrimages attested hieroglyphically (Stone, 1995). Spelling rules are coming into clearer focus (Justeson, 1989b), although prompting further controversy. For example, Bricker (1989) suggests that orthographic irregularities of Yukatek Maya written in Roman script reveal hieroglyphic antecedents. The difficulty with this intriguing hypothesis is that few of the proposed patterns accord with present understandings of glyphic orthography: Colonial ahau uob and mul lil, thought to be reflections of ‘‘logosyllabic rules for word division’’ (Bricker, 1989, p. 41), correspond to no known pattern in the hieroglyphs, which would have spelled such words AJAW-O:B’, mu ⴙ lu ⴙ IL, MUL-IL, and so forth. Nonetheless, the main and fully valid point is that hieroglyphic and European literacies could overlap in the same person. This was undoubtedly so in early Colonial Yucatan. More Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 129 debatable is the proposition that Colonial documents represent direct translations of hieroglyphic originals (Tedlock, 1992, pp. 236–237, 1996, pp. 28–29). This idea has a strong allure to those who wish to see particular documents as unadulterated, pre-Columbian productions that have shifted into a new code, contents intact (see Miram and Bricker, 1996, for effective counterarguments). Another proposal concerns the syllabic hypothesis itself. Long ago, Knorosov demonstrated the presence of synharmony, in which appended syllables contain the same vowel as the syllable or logograph they modify. What he could not explain, however, were instances of disharmony, in which the vowels differ. Houston et al. (1998) make a case that disharmony was a device signaling ‘‘complex vowels’’ (long, glottalized, or accompanied by h) in preceding logographs or in words spelled by two or more syllabic signs. There are suggestions that these rules can be further refined and that certain instances of h may not have been spelled by Maya scribes (Alfonso Lacadena and Søren Wichmann, personal communication, 1999). These proposals are still being debated and require sophisticated explorations in historical linguistics before they can be resolved. Some issues may never be resolved because of gaps in our data. One development is Houston, Stuart, and Robertson’s (2000b) proposal of a third category of sign, the morphosyllable, namely, a set of postfixes of -VC form that convey both sound and morphological meaning; their exact pronunciation or surface expression remains in doubt, but they seem to trigger vowel harmony or vowel variation with fixed consonants, rather like most signs in Egyptian or Semitic scripts. The vocalic flexibility in these morphosyllables may have accommodated Mayan dialects that handled vowels differently, a feature also used to explain the vocalic imprecision in Egyptian script (Parkinson, 1999, p. 52). The presence of morphosyllables implies a rigorous grammarian tradition among the ancient Maya, perhaps along the lines of the morphophonemic classes compiled by Pānini in his renowned grammar of ˙ Sanskrit (Bright, 1990, p. 143). A crucial methodological advance has been the palaeographic study of sign use through time and space, although such studies are still incomplete (Lacadena, 1995, 1999; see also Satterthwaite, 1938). It has become apparent that such research will lead to refined understandings of grammatical elements and their spread (Hruby and Child, 1999) and the politically conditioned nature of sign use (Brewer, 1996). In contrast, palaeographic attempts to revise the correlation between European and Mayan calendars—presumed, continuous rates of stylistic change supposedly point to an abbreviated Postclassic period—have generated disagreement (Lacadena, 1995, pp. 413–424) because such changes are likely to involve many variables. The value of the palaeographic approach is methodological in that it helps to combat what might be called the 130 Houston ‘‘synoptic fallacy’’ in studies of Maya script—the presumption that we are dealing with a single, frozen script that fails to change over space and time (see below). Historical, linguistic, and cultural conclusions are also described below, but suffice it to say that the dynastic reconstructions that characterized much of the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Houston, 1993; Mathews and Willey, 1991) have been revitalized by masterful historical syntheses from Martin and Grube (1995, 1999) and close and effective correlations between epigraphic and archaeological finds in large-scale archaeological projects (e.g., Demarest et al., 1997; Escobedo, 1997a; Sharer, 1999). Work on the four Mayan codices or screenfold books builds on a long and distinguished foundation in glyphic studies, going back to the early years of decipherment. For many years, Maya epigraphy was the study of these books. Notable contributions throughout the 1990s include Love’s (1994) treatise and facsimile edition of the Paris codex, a commentary on the Dresden (Davoust, 1997), a series of edited papers on the Madrid Codex (Bricker and Vail, 1997; see also 1994, and Lacadena, 1997a), studies of evident Ch’olan and Yukatek bilingualism in the Dresden and Madrid codices (Lacadena, 1997a; Wald, 1994a), and a plethora of articles on selected topics (Bricker and Bill, 1994), many archaeoastronomical [e.g., Justeson, 1989a; Aveni, 1992; Bricker and Bricker, 1992, 1997; Love, 1995; see also Malmström’s (1997) attempt to link the calendar with an origin in specific sites]. This work, although addressing Postclassic materials, has proved immensely useful in refining more ancient Maya concepts of ethnoastronomy (Tedlock, 1999). It suggests new ways of understanding the layout of buildings in Classic Maya cities. Architects at Yaxchilan, for example, appear to have attended to solstitial alignments (Tate, 1992, pp. 111–115). An influential volume on ‘‘creation’’ and cosmology as documented in Classic Maya art and writing rests in part on zodiacal information in the Paris Codex (Freidel et al., 1993, Fig. 2.33). Nonetheless, the opacity of many texts in the codices, both in their reading and deeper, inferential meaning, makes this work at once challenging and incomplete. A focus on numbers and their properties cannot replace closer study of hieroglyphic captions and glosses (Houston, 1997c). Related to Maya decipherment is the recent work on Isthmian writing. It must be addressed for two reasons: First, because Isthmian has been regarded by some as a precursor to Maya script (see below); and second, because the decipherment has been described as the most rigorous and compelling work ever done on a New World writing system (Kelley, 1993, p. 29). However, published reports raise concerns about the proposed decipherment (Justeson and Kaufman, 1993, p. 1711; see also Justeson and Kaufman, 1992). The decipherment rests on a number of premises: that crucial signs are iconically transparent (‘‘hide, skin,’’ ‘‘boss, lord,’’ ‘‘in- Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 131 cense,’’ ‘‘water,’’ ‘‘moon,’’ ‘‘liquid, drops,’’ ‘‘sky’’) and thus relatable to words in the target language for decipherment (‘‘pre-proto-Sokean’’); that concepts and signs from Maya writing also apply to this script (‘‘accede,’’ ‘‘let blood,’’ ‘‘pierce’’); that quotative expressions and other aspects of speech should occur in a monumental text, often with a puzzling absence of references to the agent; and that the resulting readings are inherently ‘‘complete, coherent, and grammatical’’ (Justeson and Kaufman, 1997, p. 210). Whether this is so can be judged against a recent translation: ‘‘Behold, there/he was for 12 years a (title). And then a garment got folded . . . ‘What I chopped is a planting and a good harvest.’ (A) shape-shifter(s) appeared divinely in his body’’ (Justeson and Kaufman, 1997, p. 210). It is fair to say from this translation and the nonsequiturs it contains that there are at least some grounds for doubt that progress has been made. Moreover, such statements are unlike others from monuments in Mesoamerica. The Maya themes introduced in the decipherment are arresting, for they appear to reflect readings and emphases of the mid- to late-1980s, when the authors were more intensively involved in Maya epigraphy. (For example, bloodletting signs are now thought to be rare in the inscriptions; a glyph for ‘‘shapeshifter’’ was deciphered in the late 1980s but appears infrequently in monumental texts, except as a root for an architectural term, Houston and Stuart, 1989.) A few years ago, Michael Coe called into question an attempted decipherment of Indus Valley script, noting the absence in that writing system of a large database, bilingual texts, well-understood cultural context, and pictorial clues from images accompanying texts (Coe, 1995, p. 393). None of these are present in the Indus Valley, nor, unfortunately, do they characterize the archaeology of the Isthmian zone. Not even the local artistic style—the iconographic ‘‘crucible’’ from which script emerged—is abundantly documented or well explained. It is all the more striking that Justeson and Kaufman have produced 21 syllables and dozens of logographs from a total of 10 inscriptions, of which only 2 are long or clear enough to be readily usable. The Maya corpus is vastly larger as a testing ground for readings. A reasonable estimate of the total number of texts, including those on fragmented pottery from excavations, would exceed 15,000. The Maya corpus can be augmented by three means: additional fieldwork and excavation, devising tools for accessing data, and new imaging techniques. An important epigraphic find is marked by three things: the preservation, length, and content of the text. The longer the text, the more likely that it will contain new information. Throughout the 1990s major finds have been made at Palenque, in stuccos and a lengthy throne text found in Temple XIX (Stuart, 2000b); finds from concentrated parts of the small site of Pomona, Tabasco; a throne, panel, and hieroglyphic stairway from Dos 132 Houston Pilas (Palka et al., 1991; Houston et al., 1991a,b); Tikal Stela 40, a long but slightly eroded text from the latter half of the Early Classic period (Valdés and Fahsen, 1998); a variety of ‘‘Terminal Classic’’ altars from Caracol (Chase et al., 1991); fragmented but historically valuable stuccos and miscellaneous texts from the same site (Grube, 1994b); a new stela from Nimli Punit with an unambiguous, local Emblem glyph (see also Wanyerka, 1996, and Grube, 1994a); full publication of the painted (and now partly destroyed) glyphs from the Naj Tunich ritual cave in Guatemala (Stone, 1995); and a trove of stelae, monuments, and stuccoed texts from Tonina, Chiapas, Mexico, that are both pivotal to decipherment and, to judge from available evidence, inadequately documented (Yadeun, 1993). The Tonina work receives a medal of lead or tin; the gold must go to the sustained and meticulous excavations at Copan, which have systematically recovered, reassembled, and recorded texts, many now placed in the sculpture museum at the site (Fash and Fash, 1996). The monuments at Copan, so long and recondite in content, sparked major advances in understanding the names and titles of monuments and the rituals used in dedicating them. A smattering of new texts from La Corona have indicated the probable, original location of unprovenanced monuments from the northern Peten (Graham, 1997; Mayer, 1995, pl. 161; Schuster, 1997b). Challenging but informative inscriptions from Calakmul have augmented in small measure the large but lamentably eroded corpus of this, debatably the largest Maya city of the Classic period (Martin, 1997, 1998; Pincemin et al., 1998). A stunning altar in pristine condition has been excavated at the site of El Cayo, Chiapas, and has just as quickly become mired in the chaotic and ugly politics of that zone (Schuster, 1997a). Nearby, probably from Guatemalan territory, comes a large set of looted lintels showing the subsidiary figures and their overlord from Yaxchilan; they have been published in part, but most still seem to be languishing in a bank vault in Europe (Schele, 1990). More such sculptures are likely to appear as settlement burgeons in the upper Usumacinta drainage. The discovery in 1999 of a new monument at the Guatemalan border village of La Técnica suggests that many more may yet be found. Even well-known sites such as Piedras Negras have yielded new texts, as in the recent excavation of Panel 15 in the stairway debris of Pyramid J-4: this inscription contains more than 150 glyphs and refers largely to battles in the reign of Ruler 2 of that city. Another panel, of supreme important to the history of the Pasión region, has been looted from the area of Cancuen (Mayer 1995, pp. 167–169). Nearby, Aguateca has delivered, as of 1999, several new stelae of unusually early and late date for that city (Takeshi Inomata, personal communication, 1999). From the Yucatan there are new texts, of great linguistic interest and replete with secure Emblem Glyph, from the city of Ek Balam (Vargas de Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 133 la Peña et al., 1998; Vargas de la Peña and Castillo Borges, 1999; Voss and Eberl, 1999); in February 2000, the excavator of the site, Vargas de la Peña, reported the discovery of a royal burial with pottery texts, along with a buried mural containing approximately 160 glyphs (Alfonso Lacadena, personal communication, 2000). The Spanish project at Oxkintok uncovered important new texts from this Puuc site and clinched its connection to the so-called Chocholá style of carved vessels, as have discoveries of new ceramics at the ruins in 1998 (Garcı́a Campillo, 1992; Grube, 1990c; Alfonso Lacadena, personal communication, 2000); other inscriptions of that zone are finding their way to scholarly notice (Garcı́a Campillo, 1995a, 1998a). In the meantime, Justin Kerr continues to photograph pots passing through his studio in New York City, organizing them in a relational database that can be consulted freely (www.famsi.org). It is impossible to predict the precise location of future finds, but we can be sure that they will arise from three general contexts: large-scale excavations in site cores; illicit plunderings of unprotected sites, either in remote areas or those in close proximity to new settlements; and the discovery of new sites with monuments on the surface. Financial circumstances will make large excavations rarer, and diminishing areas without settlement will gradually do away with unexplored zones, leaving the second the more likely, and lamentable, source for new texts. At the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project, housed at the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Ian Graham, David Stuart, and their former colleagues, Peter Mathews and Eric von Euw, have worked indefatigably to photograph and draw as many monuments as possible to the highest standard. Looting lends urgency to their efforts. Plans are afoot to increase computer access to these images, although this is made more difficult by limited funds and staff time. So far, 15 definitive folios have appeared. Most epigraphers follow Corpus drafting techniques, not least because line drawings make clean photocopies—a great boon to epigraphers doing structural studies of texts. The technique is even more useful because it requires no exceptional artistic skill and can be used by most draftsmen with a firm hand. The impact of the Corpus on decipherment can hardly be overstated, nor can Graham’s generosity in distributing drawings well before their release in Corpus volumes (e.g., Tate, 1992, p. 194, Fig. 89). One Corpus project in preparation targets a Maya glyphic dictionary that is lexeme- rather than glyph-based; until recently, such a project would have been inconceivable, yet recent decipherments have made it both doable and necessary (Stuart and Houston, 2000). A federally funded project by Martha Macri at the University of California, Davis, is about to release an exhaustive relational database inventory of keyed texts and glyphic 134 Houston images (www.cougar.ucdavis.edu/NALC/SAA.html), although, in all candor, the proposed indexing of Maya glyphs is unlikely to replace Thompson’s compilation of signs (1962). There has also been an effort to compile glyph readings in a single source (Kurbjuhn, 1989), a handy effort because it helps establish authorship for certain readings. Nonetheless, it is safe to say that Maya epigraphy and its tools of access are not yet near the quality or refinement of those for Classical studies (Gordon, 1983; Keppie, 1991; Tracy, 1990; Woodhead, 1981). In comparison, Maya epigraphy is still immature: We need the indexes and prosopographies that Classicists take for granted (e.g., Jones et al., 1971). There have been some improvements. Merle Greene Robertson’s rubbings are now available on CD-ROM from the University of Oklahoma Press (although expensively), and Karl Herbert Mayer (1995) has produced a useful series of volumes recording monuments with or without provenance (although opaquely organized). Mayer in particular has been assiduous in tracking down nearly inaccessible sculptures and making them available to scholars; he has led and sponsored fieldwork under the auspices of the journal Mexicon, a valuable source of fresh information on Maya glyphs. American journals such as Latin American Antiquity have tended to report on calendrical and codical research because of their firm restrictions on the use of unprovenanced materials, a category to which, regrettably, many texts belong (Anonymous, 1992, p. 261; but see Palka, 1996, Fig. 2). Another way of extracting glyphic evidence is through new imaging technologies of painted texts. The Bonampak Documentation Project and engineers at Brigham Young University (BYU) have pioneered field use of high-resolution digital cameras, infrared videography and image capture on Super-VHS tapes, computer enhancement of the resulting images, and multispectral roll-outs of Maya vessels (Kamal et al., 1999; Miller, 1997; Miller and Houston, 1998). At Bonampak, Mary Miller has led a team that has looked comprehensively at documenting and interpreting this vastly informative set of Pre-Columbian paintings (Miller, 1986). Many new texts have been detected, included minutely sized hieroglyphs and crisp images of glyphs that had been murky: within minutes of setting up videographic equipment, glyphs spelling quantities of cacao beads were found on tribute bundles under a painted throne in Room 1 of the murals building (Houston, 1997a; Ware et al., 1996). To date, the murals project has retrieved one of the largest sets of names known from any Pre-Columbian site and determined the dynastic relations between figures in the paintings. Enigmatic microglyphs, no more than 1–2 cm in height, embellish parts of the painting (Fig. 1): only close-up viewing would detect such signs, hinting that the murals were not meant to be seen from one vantage point, but from many. The same team from BYU has also worked with James Brady in the painted Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 135 Fig. 1. Microglyphs from the Bonampak Murals, Room 3 (courtesy Mary Miller, Bonampak Documentation Project). caves of Naj Tunich and Cueva de las Pinturas (Brady et al., 1997; Ware and Brady, 1999), and improvements in equipment have led to markedly superior images. Carbon underpainting, the usual outline of glyphs, come out particularly well, but digital imaging is also discriminating between slight shifts in red. Clearly, painted texts can no longer be viewed solely by the naked eye, restricted as it is by inherent spectral limitations (e.g., Chase and Chase, 1987, Figs. 10 and 37). The technique should be extended to all painted surfaces with hieroglyphs, such as the capstones and murals from the Yucatan, Peninsula (Fettweiss-Vienot, 1981, 1984; Mayer, 1987, 1990) and the unparalleled richness and iconographic diversity of tomb paintings from Rı́o Azul, Guatemala (Adams, 1999, Figs. 3-14, 3-17, and 3-44). The addition of generous funding from a new charity, the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI), has begun to have a profound impact on the direction and practice of Maya archaeology and epigraphy because of its emphasis on ancient images and writing (www.famsi.org); to an extent unacknowledged by many, research follows funding. For the moment, the large amounts injected into Maya research will play foil to the scientific and processual style of research associated 136 Houston with funding from the National Science Foundation. FAMSI has also been instrumental in providing a digital platform for a joint bibliographic effort with the library of the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania. Ethics, Standards, and the Public Since the early 1980s, before her untimely death, Linda Schele organized and promoted an annual series of conferences and workshops at the University of Texas, Austin (e.g., Schele and Mathews, 1993; Schele and Grube, 1994). These have had an enormous impact on the general public and on professionals, who could glean the latest decipherments and interpretations within months (or days) of their formulation. Her own presentations were vivacious and at times non-academic, yet highly effective in communicating the excitement of decipherment. Through Schele, the subject of Maya decipherment, inherently an esoteric discipline, achieved broad and inclusive appeal, with the implicit promise that amateurs too could make breakthroughs, just as Schele herself did soon after entering the field in the early 1970s (Coe, 1999, pp. 201–203). Understanding the general attraction of the Maya comes easily. The visually stunning nature of Maya glyphs and their architectural setting, along with the glamour of modern decipherment, contribute to popular interest through books, television specials, and magazine articles (e.g., Lemonick, 1993; G. Stuart, 1997). More to the point, Maya ruins lie relatively close to the United States. Tourists can travel inexpensively and in tolerable comfort to savor the exotic and mysterious in photogenic settings. However, in reaching out to the public (Fagan, 1993), we must be wary of sensationalizing the ‘‘otherness’’ of the Maya, accentuating the peculiarity of their glyphically attested rituals, or most crucial, glossing over interpretive difficulties or disagreements. Public interest can even lead to odd situations, so that, for example, scholars may find themselves conducting simultaneous popular and academic discussions on the same topic. One of my articles (1986) was prompted by seeing an Emblem Glyph I identified but had not yet published in a map from a popular magazine. We have many responsibilities—to a public that craves accurate information; to colleagues that deserve a grace period to publish before their readings filter into common knowledge (see below); and to the ancient Maya themselves, through portraits and narratives that show them comprehensively and contextually, to the best of current abilities. This raises the matter of ethics and standards. ‘‘Accountability’’ should be our byword to fellow specialists, the modern public, the evidence, and the texts as artifacts. In many cases, later viewers will not see the monuments Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 137 in the same state of preservation as we do (Bell, 1987, p. 43). The texts deserve the greatest attention. In recording and studying them, specialists are morally enjoined to be accurate, to operate as physicians who, above all, ‘‘do no harm,’’ and to disseminate their records as rapidly as possible. Accuracy is necessary because monuments may be destroyed, stolen, or effaced by forces of nature after the record is made, as has been the case with an important altar recently found at Zacpeten, Guatemala (Don Rice, personal communication, 1997). Incomplete or inaccurate documentation actively prevents others from understanding the text. This means that inscriptions must be photographed and drawn according to the highest standards (Jones and Satterthwaite, 1982; Graham, 1975), not by an artist, but by a trained epigrapher who can identify relevant information, and in such a fashion as to anticipate epigraphic needs of the future (Bell, 1987, p. 44). Unfortunately, drafting is a difficult and time-consuming skill that is rarely taught formally in archaeological programs. It will soon undergo rapid shifts as computer drafting and digital imaging grow to dominate epigraphy. The time spent on renderings is rarely valued as a legitimate use of professorial energy, and many if not most professional archaeologists leave their drafting needs to specialists. A final aspect of accuracy is that monuments should not be moved before adequate account is taken of their archaeological context. Above all, an inscription is an artifact as well as a text (Houston, 1993, p. 69). Some accounts of new finds have, despite studio-lit photography, proved unsatisfactory as archaeological records (Yadeun, 1993), with little sign that further information is to come, as in the case of finds at Yaxchilan (Garcı́a Moll, 1996, p. 39). This becomes a highly sensitive issue when North Americans, the unwilling heirs of problematic political relations with Latin America, criticize archaeological work by neighbors to the south. Quite simply, the matter cannot be discussed without triggering historical antagonisms, nor is prior work by North American archaeologists without flaws or ethical lapses (Black, 1990). Justifiably, some Mexican archaeologists have questioned the use of archaeology in their country for professional advancement in another (Lorenzo, 1981). Tact and more contact, not less, is the solution to resolving such tensions because all share similar goals of elucidating inscriptions, as facilitated by talents and resources from many countries. The second ethical duty is to do no damage. It is grossly negligent to record a text at the expense of its long-term viability, through abrasive rubbings, molds, and other methods of ‘‘direct reproduction,’’ or to fail in preserving the text after discovery or documentation. Panel 7 at Piedras Negras, Guatemala, has a coating of indelible epoxy left by a botched attempt to cast the sculpture. To be sure, direct reproduction has its advo- 138 Houston cates (Gordon, 1983, pp. 30–31; Keshishian, 1988, p. 29; Woodhead, 1981, pp. 78–83, 135–136; see also Greene, 1966) because it avoids the intercessions, interpretations, and errors of draftsmen. It has also served a vital role in preserving information through, for example, the casts made by Alfred P. Maudslay in the late 19th century, sometimes of monuments that have subsequently eroded (Joyce, 1938). Nonetheless, preserving a text after discovery and recording can be surprisingly difficult to accomplish, and a good case can be made that most monuments, particularly stuccoed or painted ones, should be reinterred or removed from contact with the public and the elements (Valdés, 1993, p. 96). Every country with Maya remains must walk a difficult path as populations increase and open communication erupts in complaints about historical inequities. For example, in the aftermath of the Guatemalan ‘‘peace accords,’’ local villagers have begun to lay claim to archaeological sites and monuments in ways that countermand national law. The results, especially in the Pasión drainage of Guatemala, have been calamitous, as villagers hack monuments into pieces for sale and, in aggressive assertions of local sovereignty, prevent government authorities from patrolling sites or protecting inscriptions. Political realities make any countermoves impractical at present. In this light, Ian Graham’s intrepid efforts at removing sculptures from danger deserve the highest commendation, as have subsequent efforts, including mold-making, by the Institute of Anthropology and History in Guatemala. The creation of the new sculpture museums at Tikal and Copan (Fash and Fash, 1996) is probably the only solution to protecting important sculptures from long-term damage. Yet, these buildings too will require sturdy construction, especially in earthquake zones, along with government commitments to continued maintenance and museum improvement. As ethnopolitics intrude (see below), the removal of sacred objects from their original settings may prove increasingly controversial. The final injunction, rapidity of dissemination, poses a joint responsibility. As epigraphers, we are mere stewards of information, with no rights to hoard evidence (Chippindale and Pendergast, 1995, pp. 45–46). The socalled Copan Notes and Texas Notes, a series of photocopied manuscripts distributed by the late Linda Schele, represented the most rapid if uneven communications in Maya epigraphy; more finely crafted reports have come from the editorial hand of George Stuart and his Center for Maya Research in a series that is beginning again after a hiatus of some 8 years (e.g., Hammond et al., 1999). By the same token, those receiving unpublished drawings or photographs must be sensitive to rights of first publication and to legal sensitivities resulting from government permits in countries of origin. The growing problems of ‘‘gray literature,’’ government reports filed in limited-access archives, and of nonacademic, restoration-oriented Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 139 attitudes toward excavation, do not bode well for the future. To some Old World epigraphers (Caminos, 1976, p. 24), commentary must ideally accompany drawings and photographs. Yet, that is inherently unrealistic because of the delays that would result. Definitive publications of the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project will, because of their elevated standard, inevitably appear at a stately pace (see above). If commentary is to appear, then it must meet ever-higher standards. These days, an acceptable transcription, transliteration, and translation involves: (1) explicit acknowledgment of ideas and readings developed by others; (2) competence in Mayan chronology, orthography, and grammar; and (3), at the least, adequate drawings and photographs. Unfortunately, these standards are not always met (e.g., renderings in Adams, 1999, Figs. 3-14, 3-17, 3-32, and 3-44; Marcus, 1987, Fig. 27; Pincemin et al., 1998, p. 323), and the field is of sufficient complexity and swift development to demand full-time attention. Dabblers and dilettantes should beware: Maya epigraphy is a treadmill set at high speed, very much intensified by samizdat email correspondence and the tight-knit networks at the core of this research. Formal publications often lie years behind the cutting edge, although the opposite can be the case with workshops (see above). Another problem, often discussed in private and infrequently in public (Justeson, 1995, pp. xiv–xvi), is perhaps more acute in Maya epigraphy than any other domain of archaeology. Credit for readings or interpretations can become an uneasy issue. Three things make this so: the compact nature of individual decipherments, which can be readily absorbed in ways that most archaeological interpretations cannot; the public limelight in which glyphic studies operate; and the inescapable fact that decipherment is a competitive race—a particular sign will, after all, be deciphered only once. This hothouse atmosphere can lead to citational imprecision, or, because of the peculiarly public discourse of Maya epigraphy, casual comments can be unconsciously assimilated and reformulated as one’s own. Most such cases are unintentional, coming from active discussions underway in our field, in which authorship may not always be crystal clear as ideas ebb and flow. Yet, unless epigraphers are careful, a collegial atmosphere may be exchanged for one of mistrust. Another ethical concern in glyph studies is the use of unprovenanced texts (Dorfman, 1998). A strong sentiment exists in archaeology that ‘‘very little archaeological material has sufficient richness in itself to be of any use without detailed information about context’’ (Wylie, 1995, p. 19), suggesting, to some, ‘‘prohibition on the use of looted . . . material, recognizing that this will have a cost in terms of loss of information’’ (Wylie, 1995, p. 21; cf. Donnan, 1991, p. 498). No one who has seen a trenched site in the Maya region or shattered stelae destroyed by inept looters can remotely approve of such activities, or mouth absurdities about looters and 140 Houston collectors as idealistic preservationists (Coggins, 1970; Griffin, 1989). At the same time, there is probably no active epigrapher who fails to look at such data, or who truly believes that texts on looted pottery or stone monuments contribute little to decipherment (see Cook, 1991, p. 536, for a parallel debate in Classics; cf. Coggins cited in Dorfman, 1998, p. 30). The inconvenient truth is that looted texts unequivocally provide key data (Wiseman, 1984, pp. 68, 77), particularly from the many vessels photographed in roll-out fashion by Justin Kerr (1990; www.famsi.org). In fact, further study can lead to reprovenancing, repatriation, or creative approaches to joint ownership (Graham, 1988; Greenfield, 1996). Realistically, exhortations from other Mayanists or critics of the art market to ignore such data are unlikely to meet with enthusiastic cooperation. Yet, there are difficult moral negotiations involved in using this material, and the thoughtful specialist should, at a minimum, confront such matters of conscience on a routine basis. The Maya glyph scholar, then, must deal with a variety of responsibilities—to the public, to the texts, and to other scholars. More recently, another group has compelled our collective attention: the modern Maya, especially the cultural activists among them (Fischer and Brown, 1996, pp. 2, 14). Increasingly the focus of Maya ethnographers (Fischer, 1993; Warren, 1998), cultural activism represents attempts by modern Maya to create or reclaim cultural identities in opposition to dominant Ladino ones; from this comes a tension with Marxist Ladino scholars who value, not indigenous rights, but the awakening of mixed groups united in class struggle against the ‘‘ruling class’’ (Vargas Arenas, 1995, pp. 62–63). A cultural as opposed to a class activism draws on deep wells of indigenous tradition, particularly in Highland Guatemala, and on essentialist, near-mystical notions of cultural continuity (Fischer, 1999, p. 476), which may nonetheless be firmly based not so much as ‘‘invented traditions’’ as traditions that are inventive (Sahlins, 1999, p. 408). We can be certain that the movement will continue to play a role in Guatemalan and Mexican politics and, provided that compromises can be found, in the study and management of what are described by activists as sitios sagrados, or ‘‘sacred sites.’’ Increasingly, these centers include not only the religious centers of the Highland but also the Classic Maya cities of the Lowlands as well (Cojtı́ Cuxil, 1996, pp. 19, 43). In May 1998, I witnessed a symbolic appropriation of the Tikal central plaza by a large group of Highland Maya. The leaders wore traditional garments; those following behind, dressed in polyester, carried boom-boxes and picnic bags. All refused to pay the standard admission fee, evidently a symbolic gesture stating special claims to the ruins. As the leaders, a group of six or so, performed directional rites in the plaza, their followers wandered about as Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 141 tourists, notably uninterested in the rituals that seem to have motivated the trip. More recently, activists claiming to represent a ‘‘Council of Elders’’ have demanded the repatriation of Maya objects in North American collections, including some with inscriptions, to be returned, not to an ‘‘illegitimate’’ Ladino government, but to their own care as the culturally appropriate custodians of [sic] ‘‘oxidian skulls’’ and ‘‘amethyst’’ artifacts (Englishlanguage manifesto in possession of Houston). Indigenist rhetoric triggers the question of who ‘‘owns’’ the past or, more precisely, who possesses the authority to interpret antiquity (Deloria, 1992; Montejo, 1993). A reasonable opinion might be that anyone and everyone ‘‘owns’’ the right to interpretation, but that technical or specialized training lends greater authority to the interpreter. To deny this is to embrace a purely relativistic or faith-based notion of knowledge, a move unlikely to attract most readers of this journal. Nonetheless, according to two non-Maya scholars, our loyalty should adhere not to evidence or to pretensions of scholarly apoliticism and objectivity, but to facilitating Maya attempts to ‘‘regain control over their linguistic and cultural destinies’’ (Brown, 1996, p. 165) and to revitalizing ‘‘their ethnic identity in the most politically effective and autonomously developed form possible’’ (Sturm, 1996, p. 129). Archaeologists should, according to one activist, ‘‘accomodate [sic] themselves to the politics of the native communities they study’’ (Montejo, 1993, p. 16). In the interests of ‘‘rectifying the injustices of a colonial past’’ (Sturm, 1996, p. 128), scholars will be asked to guide their studies or interpret their results according to the needs of modern Native Americans. Glyphs lie at the core of these discussions, consisting as they do of authentic (if statistically skewed) voices from the Mayan past. A workshop format has been used to teach modern Maya the nature and content of Maya writing (Schele and Grube, 1996), and some Maya have eyen begun to modify Lowland glyphic syllabaries to accommodate Highland Mayan phonemes (Sturm, 1996, pp. 119–121), although this appears to be a passing effort. As an aside, one must note that there is no evidence that Highland Maya ever used Lowland Maya logosyllabic script (cf. Tedlock, 1996, p. 28); a tiny number of early, undeciphered texts from Kaminaljuyu, Guatemala, do not help in solving this problem (Coe and Kerr, 1998, pp. 66–67; Fahsen, 1996). Some epigraphers will wish to strengthen contact with activists beyond the more traditional interaction that exists between glyphic scholars and linguistic informants. Others will ask uncomfortable questions of their own. For example, can we responsibly impart conclusions from epigraphic research without explaining the contingent and evolving nature of glyphic knowledge? Moreover, most Guatemalans are of Maya descent. Why, then, should the majority be excluded from a cultural dialog about features of 142 Houston the Maya past? Some North American anthropologists and cultural activists have a tendency to romanticize the modern Maya, as though these groups represented ethnic isolates whose purity must be defended and refined. This model of ethnicity derives unconsciously from North America, with its federal reservations, legally acknowledged, card-carrying tribal affiliation, and limited genetic input from the First Nations into the population as a whole. Such conditions manifestly do not apply to the peoples of northern Central America and southern Mexico. At the same time, there is a tendency to construct a moralizing fable that disregards, devalues, and detaches the Ladino world from any intersection with Maya existence. (Some of these attitudes recall the leyenda negra, ‘‘black legend,’’ of the evil, phobically cruel, and exploitative Spaniard; Elliott, 1970, pp. 95–96; Merrim, 1993, p. 154.) This is in overreaction to what has been described as the ‘‘constructivist’’ account of modern Maya society that ‘‘views Maya identity as nothing more than the product of counterhegemonic resistance’’ (Fischer, 1999, p. 476). Nonetheless, on one point all can agree. More epigraphic works must be translated into Spanish and contact reinforced with interested people, regardless of ethnicity, in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Savador, and Honduras. In addition, the Maya as a congeries of different peoples and interests, possibly condensing into a larger identity, will not go away. In Guatemala, especially away from the capital, they continue to insist on recognition of their cultural and linguistic rights (Federico Fahsen, personal communication, 1999). A congress on cultural patrimony convened in April 2000 by the Guatemalan Ministry of Culture and Sport indicated that broader reconciliation between Maya activists and other groups may still be within reach (Héctor Escobedo, personal communication, 2000). ADVANCES AND PROSPECTS Origins and Change Maya glyphs had a trajectory of use and development that ostensibly lasted for nearly 1700 years, although, apart from calendrical glyphs and barand-dot notation (recently found on a colonial manuscript; David Stuart, personal communication, 1999), the system essentially died out by the late 16th century. The suggestion that one of the codices, the Madrid, is Colonial in date is intriguing but inconclusive without physical dissection of the manuscript (Michael Coe, personal communication, 1998). Yet, only the Classic inscriptions represent a coherent, securely dated block of evidence for examining changes in script. By now it is commonplace that glyphs come Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 143 about through the ‘‘excising of visual forms from their normal relations to pictorial art’’ and that they appear ‘‘to have evolved within the Olmec iconographic tradition,’’ which approached ‘‘the verge of a rudimentary logography’’ (Justeson and Mathews, 1990, p. 92; see also Prem, 1971; Coe, 1976). Others appear to see such juxtapositions less as linear sequencings of, among other things, kinesic ‘‘manual actions’’ (Justeson et al., 1985, pp. 35–37; Justeson, 1986, p. 442; Justeson and Mathews, 1990, p. 91) than as cosmic models whose disposition of internal elements was determined by spatial rather than linguistic patterns (Reilly, 1996a, p. 38; cf. Justeson, 1986, Fig. 3). One supposed ‘‘text’’ of Early Formative date is almost certainly iconographic, despite attempts to interpret it as early glyphic writing (Kelley, 1966). Nonetheless, there can be little doubt that writing came into existence, as it does in most societies, during moments of intense transition or social rupture. Excellent examples of this are the ‘‘secondary scripts,’’ such as the Cherokee syllabary or Silas John script, found in colonial contexts and revivalist settings around the world. In Mesoamerica, this moment of turbulence took place at the end of the Olmec civilization. These early texts are nominal or titular, with little evidence of verbalization or syntactic sophistication. They exist to specify people whose portraits, it seems, had to accompany the text. As such, they probably had their roots earlier still, among the iconic signs in headdresses that seem to have distinguished individuals in Olmec art. The difference was that, in Terminal Olmec texts, such as on San Miguel Amuco Stela 1 and La Venta Monument 13, the names were physically detached from their owners and placed elsewhere in the visual field. This is the first unambiguous writing in Mesoamerica. Other features of Maya glyphs date back to this Olmec crucible. The pars pro toto principle, involving segments abstracted from and standing for wholes, expresses itself in the form of progressively more schematic icons in the Olmec system of conventions.3 Later Maya glyphs make frequent use of this principle because the eye of a feline or the ear of a toad can convey the same reading as the head of such creatures . An Olmec-era linkage between stelae and polished stone celts (Justeson and Mathews, 1990, p. 125; Porter, 1992), perhaps with ultimate origins in corn-cob fetishes (Taube, 1997, 2000a), continued well into the Classic period, when a celt glyph unambiguously refers to stelae. Similarly, a glyph for ‘‘cloud,’’ read muyal in Classic Mayan, appears with a similar meaning in Olmec settings a millennium before (Reilly, 1996b). Whether the top-to-bottom; columnar 3 Attempts to see Olmec icons as purely local motifs rather than as constituents of a coherent, pan-regional system are still favored by some scholars (e.g., Flannery and Marcus, 1999, p. 13). Recent studies of Olmec material tend to reject this notion, which appears to be based on a flawed categorization of iconographic elements (Taube, 1995). 144 Houston format of most Mayan glyphs comes from these elongated forms is untestable (Justeson and Mathews, 1990, p. 94), but one wonders whether textual layout followed the shape of organic, perishable precursors. Gaur (1992, p. 5) made this argument for the columnar format of Chinese writing, proposing its origin in notations on bamboo sticks, but this too is hypothetical. Some writing systems, such as oracle-bone script and runic, have an angular, pointed quality that may come from their use on rough or irregular surfaces of wood and, in the earliest known runes, stone and metal (Fu et al., 1986, p. 17; Moltke, 1985, p. 32; Snædal, 1994, pp. 9–11). In contrast, Maya glyphs are highly calligraphic. This hints at a painterly origin mirrored in the close relation between terms for writing and painting in Mayan languages (Kaufman and Norman, 1984, p. 134; Tedlock and Tedlock, 1985, p. 124). The most valuable account of Maya script development comes from Grube’s doctoral research (1990a, 1994d; see also Chinchilla Mazariegos, 1990, 1999). His main arguments are: (1) that the writing system should not be viewed synoptically, as a single, synchronous system—in fact, no more than 400 signs were used at any one time; (2) that the period after about A.D. 650 witnessed a sudden influx of new syllabic signs, apparently as an impulse to greater phonic clarity; and (3) that ‘‘the basic principles of Maya hieroglyphic writing remained unchanged over the entire time of its use’’ (Grube 1994d, pp. 184–185). For much of the Classic period his observations are probably correct. Unfortunately, the earliest years—those most relevant to the origins of Maya writing—cannot be linked to firm dates, nor is the sample large enough to discern precise patterns. As with many early writing systems, there appears to have been a period of initial, intransigent opacity, at least from the vantage of modern attempts to read the texts. Glyph-by-glyph connections with another Preclassic script, Isthmian, are likely to be spurious and seem to rest on eye-of-faith suppositions (cf. Justeson and Mathews, 1990, Fig. 8; see above). Nonetheless, the Isthmian script is, to judge from our tentative inventory of signs, likely to be logosyllabic, like Maya writing. The earliest Maya texts are datable by their style and accompanying iconography. Few have any good evidence of provenience (Hansen, 1991; Thompson, 1931). Hieroglyphs tend to fill an entire glyph block, with relatively little suffixation (Coe, 1973, p. 25). ‘‘Head variants,’’ signs representing heads, occur in great diversity. Possibly the heads represent lists of gods, brought together as patrons of a particular site (see below; Easby and Scott, 1970, Fig. 26; Gibson et al., 1986; Schele and Miller, 1986, pl. 10a). With the exception of some signs, most glyphs are not readable and do not follow any clear syntactic pattern (e.g., Thompson, 1931, pl. 33), although two may show dedicatory phrases known as the ‘‘Primary Standard Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 145 Sequence’’ (Coe, 1973, p. 26; MacLeod, 1990; Schele and Miller, 1986, p. 120). This suggests an early concern with the presentation of objects because this was the primary function of the Sequence. Logographs were certainly present in the late Preclassic period (ca. A.D. 1–150), during a time of script development that might be called Period IA, just after the inception of Maya writing (Table I). However, it is only in slightly later texts that ergative (prefixed) pronouns emerge, a sure sign that we are dealing with Mayan languages (e.g., ya-AK’AB’ ⬎ y-ak’ab’; Schele and Miller, 1986, pl. 33). By the end of the Preclassic, Period IB in the sequence of glyph development, texts are recognizably close to later examples. The difficulty of reading these texts requires some comment. It is possible that the inscriptions reflect, as do many early writing systems, a looser relation to language and syntactic ordering. This is what makes them inherently more resistant to study (Nissen et al., 1993, p. 20), and most early scripts, Egyptian and cuneiform included, become syntactically and morphologically clear only several generations after their inception. [Such clarity may have resulted from the influence of bilingual conditions, as in the joint use of Semitic and Sumerian languages by writers of cuneiform (Cooper, n.d.); perhaps the changes came about when the original scribes died and could no longer be asked to clarify particular documents, or when Table I. Periods of Maya Writing Period Period IA (A.D. 1–150) Period IB (A.D. 150–250) Period IIA (A.D. 250–550) Period IIB (A.D. 500–550) Period IIIA (A.D. 550–650) Period IIIB (A.D. 650–700) Period IIIC (A.D. 700–800) Period IIID (A.D. 800–900) Period IV (A.D. 900–1600?) Period V (A.D. 1600–?) Features Glyph ⫽ glyph block; minimal suffixation; lists of head signs; minimal syntactic transparency; lack of monumentalism; emphasis on portable objects; inception of codification, alongside great variety of signs Enhanced grammatical transparency; slight increase of monumentalism Full range of use; heightened glyphic monumentalism Innovation of signs; cross-script transfer, from Teotihuacan contact (?) Inception of heightened epigraphic legibility; advent of pseudo-glyphs Period of innovation; enhanced complementation; full syllabic substitution for logographs; increased range of content; influenced by operation of Calakmul hegemony Greatest number of Maya texts Pronounced regionalisms; localized disintegration and grapholectal innovation; cross-script transfer Codical and painterly emphasis; near-absence of monumentalism; content largely nonhistorical? Script death: sudden or gradual depending on region, as literates died or discontinued glyphic craft (Campbell and Muntzell, 1989, p. 181) 146 Houston burgeoning legal and administrative systems found it necessary to achieve greater precision in their accounts and precedents.] It may also be that in Period IA the script was a highly localized phenomenon, with small script communities and restricted zones of mutual intelligibility. If writing began as a priestly skill, then esotericism may have been prized as well (Harbsmeier, 1988, pp. 256–259). It is noteworthy that depictions of kings long preceded explicit, monumental, textual descriptions of them (McAnany, 1998, Fig. 5). Complex societies, even states, flourished centuries before writing in the Maya Lowlands, and writing does not seem to have been an indispensable resource of early royal representations. The first, datable stela with unambiguous royal names—in this instance, within the headdress of a floating ancestor—remains Tikal Stela 29, at A.D. 292, some considerable time after the development of acute social inequality and preferential burial practices at that site. Syntactic and phonic clarity improved greatly by the beginnings of the Early Classic, Period II in script development (ca. A.D. 250–550). At this time, syllables of CV (consonant–vowel) come into existence. (An early date for the so-called Hauberg stela, which has such signs, is not credible on stylistic grounds; cf. Schele, 1985; independently noticed by Alfonso Lacadena.) In part, their innovation may have come from a need to record complex vowels (Houston et al., 1998a). What is likely is that they were created in sudden episodes of scribal innovation, one basic syllabary at the beginning of the Classic period, and another somewhat after the initial years of the Late Classic (Grube, 1994d, Fig. 3). This later episode might be labeled ‘‘Period III,’’ by far the time with the most legible inscriptions. When large claims are made for the number of signs deciphered, it is almost always in reference to this period of Maya script. It is logical to extend understandings of that period to earlier examples of Maya writing, but the results can be mixed. Elsewhere, the concept of an ‘‘adapter’’ or ‘‘innovator’’ has been suggested for the alphabet and other scripts (Powell, 1991, pp. 10–12). Such individuals are known historically, ranging from King Sey-kong of Korea to Sequoyah and Silas John in North America (Walker, 1981; Walker and Sarbaugh, 1993). In contrast to the gradualist models of script development, which favor long-term, cumulative changes, a credible case can be made that rapid innovations are the norm and that they imply the existence of individuals or groups responsible for such innovations (e.g., Boltz, 1994, p. 39; S. Fischer, 1997, pp. 367–376). For example, logographic scripts can be incremental and accretional, because a writer can devise word-signs according to need, provided that a collective acceptance of that innovation is forged within a particular script community. (Innovations without conventional acceptance operate as little more than private codes.) However, syllables encompass an overall sound system. Just as alphabets expand to Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 147 cover consonants and vowels, so do syllabaries, once conceived, logically expand to record all of their CV or VC possibilities. A slowly accreting syllabary is no more believable than an accretional alphabet. This makes it likely that the creation of the initial syllabary (other elaborations took place later) was an event rather than a slow process. To a striking extent, all known glyphic syllables are explicable in terms of Mayan and even Ch’olan words (Houston et al., 2000), demonstrating that non-Maya origins for the syllabary are implausible, although, to be sure, the idea for syllables may have come from Isthmian script. In addition, morphosyllables represent a fine-tuned analysis of morphophonemic and inflectional categories and strongly hint at a breakthrough understanding of linguistic structure. The identity of glyphic innovators is irretrievable on present evidence, although the Maya may have conceptualized them retroactively as euhemerized deities (see below). What is more pressing is understanding the social conditions in which inventions were adopted and disseminated. In this we approach the paradox of Maya civilization: of distinct dynasties and holy lords that nonetheless shared similar beliefs and practices (Sabloff, 1986, p. 110). One imagines that similarities were reinforced by conflict and the subsequent enslavement of foreigners, court exchanges (including page systems, visits, and marriages), and the key contribution of scribes and sculptors, whose large glyphic and iconographic repertory suggests training in only a few centers capable of assembling such knowledge. As for changes in writing, it is likely that innovations were regarded as in part revelatory (Basso and Anderson, 1975, pp. 8–9; Harbsmeier, 1988, p. 272), introduced in conditions that were not merely technical but supernatural in inspiration. There is some evidence that later scribes no longer understood the original motivation for a glyph (e.g., the WAY glyph), and so stylized it into a form that departed dramatically from its initial, iconic referent. Such reinterpretations suggest that glyphic literacy was not an entirely continuous tradition. Rather, it experienced significant breaks and disruptions as hieroglyphic knowledge passed from site to site and generation to generation. Maya Writing and Society Another recent development has been a more complete understanding of the social context, use, and ideology of Maya script (Garcı́a Campillo, 1995b). Coe (1978) demonstrated some time ago that Maya script had a close linkage to supernatural monkey beings, or its’a:t, ‘‘sage,’’ the dextrous simians linked throughout Mesoamerica with scribes (Stuart, 1989). This has been demonstrated with additional data that link writing to a variety of supernaturals and courtiers, some female, but mostly male, with brushes 148 Houston and quills of sundry width stuck in their headdresses (Coe, 1977; Coe and Kerr, 1998, pp. 90–110). An important feature of these indigenous concepts of notational systems is that the Classic Maya appear to have distinguished between ‘‘writing’’ in the sense of phonic records and ‘‘numbering,’’ a point made also for early cuneiform by Michalowski (1990). That is, writing was not so much a unitary graphic system as a packaging of different elements, something that may even have been true of Inka khipu (Urton, 1998). Metaphorically, one can see it less as a single cord of fused parts than a coaxial cable of discrete elements, its strands woven together yet originating in distinct kinds of records. The use of the same numbering system in different scripts throughout Mesoamerica points strongly to the separability of phonic signs from numeric systems of graphic encoding. Most likely, numbering preceded ‘‘true’’ writing that recorded language. Maya numbers themselves appear to consist in their most basic form of, quite literally, ‘‘sticks’’ and ‘‘stones,’’ even of shells and single fingers, perhaps a distant recollection of their origin as concrete, manipulable objects or body parts used in counting (Lounsbury, 1978; Lambert et al., 1980). The connection throughout Mesoamerica between the casting of stones, divination, and acts of reading may hint at further nuances behind the use of numbers in Maya civilization (Monaghan and Hamman, 1998). There is compelling evidence that the Maya observed a distinction between two kinds of code. One ceramic vessel appears to show a scene in which deities offer the gifts of civilization to a primordial couple emerging from a hole or altar, in turn under a tree and stylized incense burner (Coe, 1978, pl. 16). Seated nearby is an elderly creator couple, the female a goddess (conventionally labeled ‘‘Goddess O’’) associated with midwifery (Taube, 1994, p. 657). The monkey scribe takes pride of place, but behind him is a deity connected with numbers on vegetation, which sprouts from his sides (Fig. 2); another object from the area of Tikal shows this same deity writing with a stylus on leaves (Berjonneau and Sonnery, 1985, pl. 364). It is tempting to view this as a representation of highly perishable writing on bark and palm leaves, of the sort well attested in other parts of the tropical world (Gaur, 1992, pp. 50–51). The monkey scribe pertains to one kind of notation, the glyphs or woj (a sign deciphered by David Stuart), and the ‘‘accountant’’ scribe to another. Moreover, this script may have been largely dedicated to ephemeral transactions and numeric tabulations with limited shelf-life. One is reminded of Linear B. Examples survived because of the fortuitous burning of archives, which baked the clay tablets in Mycenaean archives into a more permanent form (Bennet, 1988, p. 23; Chadwick, 1976, p. 18). The Maya evidence is both tantalizing and frustrating, for it hints at the existence of economic or numeric records that have not survived to the present. Poor conditions of preservation in the Maya Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 149 Fig. 2. Deities associated with two kinds of notation (after Coe, 1978, pl. 16). Lowlands intimate that such notations will not easily be found. Nonetheless, it is advisable to avoid unproductive speculation about the contents of lost records. Elsewhere, sampling arguments have led to overstated claims about the purely utilitarian function of early writing, as in a recent comparison of scripts in China, the Near East, and Mesoamerica (Postgate et al., 1995). Tangible evidence of scribes is stronger than ever before (see also Wyllie, 1994). In spectacular finds at the Terminal Classic city of Aguateca, Takeshi Inomata has found a building, Structure M8-10, with a full range of in situ scribal equipment, including implements for grinding pigment, sectioned conch shells used as ‘‘inkwells,’’ and rich regalia of scribal status: one incised shell reveals that a scribal ‘‘sage’’ was a junior or youthful member of the royal family (Inomata, 1995, Figs. 8.31–8.40; 1997, Fig. 14; Inomata and Stiver, 1998). ‘‘Bark-beaters’’ used in making paper may indicate the presence of book production (Sharer, 1994, pp. 599, 708), although it is well to remember that paper had many functions in Mesoamerica, including service as a material for absorbing blood and as an offering for sacrificial fires (Wyllie, 1994). A number of buildings at Aguateca and other sites were almost certainly ‘‘houses of writing’’ (ts’ibal na:h), perhaps the official residences or 150 Houston receiving quarters of scribes, or buildings dedicated to training in script, rather like the Egyptian ‘‘houses of life’’ (Roccati, 1990, p. 75; Fash, 1991, p. 120; Kerr, 1990, p. 255). One pot may even show a probable mythologic ‘‘charter’’ in Malinowski’s sense of a myth that provides a model and explanation for current practices (Strenski, 1992, pp. xviii–xx): God D, a prominent Maya divinity, provides instruction in the ways of numbers to a group of deferential youths (Coe and Kerr, 1998, Fig.70). Unpublished drawings by the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project of a glyph band on the Osario building at Chichén Itzá suggest that it, too, was a ‘‘house of writing’’ (Fig. 3). This band may represent the only known explicit inventory of Maya phonetic syllables. It is organized into minimal pairs that share a vowel but differ in their consonants (nu/k’u, cha/b’a, but also nu/b’i, ?/wa, lo/?; cf. the Akkadian ‘‘Syllabary A,’’ Cooper, 1996, Table 3.2). Preservation is poor, yet the frieze retains great value as the possible remnants of a Maya syllabic primer. More important still, it offers a glimpse into indigenous concepts of linguistic form. Finally, a small group at Copan, 9M-22, near the renowned ‘‘scribe’s house,’’ Group 9N-8 (Webster, 1989; Fash, 1989, 1991), offers evidence that it was a ‘‘house of sculpture,’’ because a carving on it shows the use of a sculpting tool and an emblem for sculpture (k’an tu:n) (Karl Taube, personal communication, 2000; see also Sheehy, 1991, Fig. 6). This may be one of the few such structures ever identified, and it is noteworthy that its quality of architecture is substantially less than that of the scribe’s house (Karl Taube, personal communication, 2000). Another example may have been detected by Kazuo Aoyama at Structure M8-8, Guatemala, a building containing a set of 18 polished axes with usewear indicating stone carving (Aoyama, 1999). The proximity of scribal skills to royal courts, both physically and in terms of overlapping personnel, argues that written productions were only partly like the ‘‘craft literacy’’ described for the Classical world by Eric Havelock (1982, pp. 187–188), who saw reading and writing, particularly for logosyllabic systems, as a skill mastered by a few specialists under elite control. However, for the Maya, it would seem that the scribes and sculptors were members of the elite (Stuart, 1989; Reents-Budet, 1994, pp. 55–56). An unsubtle view—the insistence that humans operate only as self-interested strategists—would perceive hieroglyphs as little more than instruments for producing ‘‘wealth finance,’’ or as propagandistic bombast and reservoirs of symbolic capital (Earle, 1987, pp. 68–69). Clearly, the restriction of writing marked it as special and thus desirable, so one cannot pass over the competitive aspects of glyphic use. The pseudo-glyphs, or sign-like forms painted or incised on some Classic pottery, are a case in point: They represent evocations or simulacra of luxury, much like the painted imitations of jaguar hide or the colors and textures of valuable textiles Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 151 Fig. 3. Possible glyphic syllabary from the Osario, Chichén Itzá. Blocks are approximately 10–15 cm high (after sketches from the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Peabody Museum, Harvard University). that occur on Maya ceramics. However, the obsession with finery existed alongside jockeying for status and Veblenesque excesses of consumption. That appetite reflected aesthetic and sensory preoccupations, with pottery scenes that show lords sniffing bouquets of flowers or surrounded by plates heaped with food (Houston and Taube, 2000). Conceptually, many Maya tombs were banqueting chambers with an ‘‘eternal’’ supply of food and drink (cf. Coe, 1988, pp. 234–235), and glyphs for feasts—essentially mouths gulping food and drink—have been found by Stuart in the inscriptions (Houston and Stuart, 2000), including a few in door jambs or capstones in 152 Houston Yucatan, presumably a clue that certain rooms or buildings were feasting chambers (Garcı́a Campillo, 1998b). The Colonial Spanish motto had it, Más y más y más y más, ‘‘More and more and more and more’’ (Elliott, 1970, p. 53), but for the Maya there was also a sense of restraint and exacting decorum rather than any pronounced indulgence of extravagance for its own sake. (Interestingly, displays of affect and abandon are noteworthy for their rarity, and occur thus far only in images of ritual drunkenness or mourning, Barrera Rubio and Taube, 1987.) There is ample evidence that Classic courts emphasized sensory pleasure, eloquence, and hyperrefinement (Houston and Taube, 2000), just as courts do in many parts of the world (Elias, 1983; Inomata and Houston, 2000). An approach that ignores the conceits and strivings of societies with ‘‘high culture,’’ defined by Baines and Yoffee as the ‘‘production and consumption of aesthetic items’’ (1998, p. 235), misses a large part of past motivation. Coe and Kerr (1998) are entirely correct in locating Maya writing within a calligraphic sensibility that was as much aesthetic as practical. The epigraphic record contains many references to Maya literati (Stuart, 1989). Despite the calligraphic excellence of the Maya, however, scribal signatures are comparatively rare. Only a few are known (Fig. 4), and those that have solid historical information point to find-spots in a small part of the department of Petén, Guatemala, centered on the site of Naranjo and other cities to the west and south. The dates are highly limited, bracketing a period of little more than a century. The paucity of references at other sites cannot be readily explained. Did scribes in this area enjoy unusually high status, or were there other restrictions on mentioning scribes that we do not yet understand? Sculptor’s signatures are far more common (Stuart, 1989), and have been studied by several scholars, most exhaustively by Montgomery (1994, 1995). A plotting of their distribution places them in the very center of northern Guatemala and the southern Yucatan peninsula, wiht a preponderance in the Usumacinta and Pasión areas (Houston, 1993, p. 135). It is possible to chart their productive lifetimes because the names occur on several carvings, particularly at the site of Piedras Negras (Fig. 5), with rather more limited data from Yaxchilan. Not surprisingly, a few sculptors were active for more than 20 years. This may express a relatively short ‘‘professional’’ life, because training and initial work are likely to have begun at a relatively young age (cf. royal lifespans, Houston, 1989a, Table 1), with the proviso that the historical record of such activities may be incomplete. For some time, epigraphers have known that many sculptures were joint productions, involving eight or more sculptors (Stuart, 1989, Fig. 18c). This fact casts doubt on any incautious attempt to detect ‘‘hands’’ or individual styles in Maya carvings. A final detail is the evidence at Piedras Negras that one sculptor was known as the ‘‘head’’ or ‘‘foremost’’ Advances in Maya Glyph Studies Fig. 4. Scribal signatures, organized by approximate date. Fig. 5. Sculptor’s careers, Piedras Negras, Guatemala. 153 154 Houston carver, possibly the term for the leader of the local atelier (Houston and Stuart, 1998). Piedras Negras is one of the few cities with remains of ‘‘practice pieces’’ by apprentice sculptors (Satterthwaite, 1965). The stones were found as building material in the Acropolis, or royal palace, and the recent Brigham Young/del Valle project has uncovered nonglyphic carvings on deeply buried stones nearby, in Structure J-7. The discovery of such pieces away from workshops is regrettable, but it may be that such activity zones were never fixed in one location. They may have materialized in an ad hoc fashion, near the place intended for the sculpture. David Stuart points out that Machaquila Stela 3 refers to the dedication or ‘‘wrapping’’ of a monument, which, 220 days later, is ‘‘seen’’ (ilaj); another sculpture at the same site, Stela 7, is similarly ‘‘wrapped,’’ and within 35 days the ruler ‘‘sees himself’’ (ilba; Houston and Stuart, 1992, p. 591). These inscriptions may record the amount of time elapsed between the in situ placement of a roughed stone and its final presentation as a finished piece to the ruler, who ‘‘saw’’ his portrait in something like an unveiling ceremony. Secondarily, the texts reveal some sense of carving time, in this instance, 220 and 35 days, respectively. Patterns in sculptors’ names are not entirely clear, but there does appear to be a large sample with Cha:k names, after the rain god who wields an axe (Taube, 1992, p. 22). The connection between sculptors and a deity clutching a cutting tool is unlikely to be fortuitous. Little has been published about the lithic technology involved in producing hieroglyphs. The marks of chisels, perhaps of peccary tusk, are plain to see, as are polishing marks (Stuart, 1990a, p. 13). Proportions generally followed finger- or handwidths, and colors were applied broadly, like the daubing on figurines rather than the delicate paintwork evident on Maya murals and ceramics. There seems little doubt that carvers were also painters, to judge from names (ts’i-b’a-CHA:K-ki ⬎ ts’i:b’ cha:k, ‘‘painting (?) Cha:k) and the presence of painted guidelines for carvings at Palenque. What is still unclear is whether the sculptors could move from site to site, rather like ‘‘free agent’’ Leonardos or Michaelangelos lured by promises of wealth and fame, or whether they operated within systems of tight personal control and patronage. The second seems likely. Several references in the area of Bonampak and Yaxchilan suggest that sculptors were loaned or bestowed by foreign lords (the expression in question reads ya-na-IB’-IL, ‘‘his anab’’), either from subordinates to overlords, as at Yaxchilan, or from the overlord to underlings; the same has been found in the area of Piedras Negras (Houston, 1993, p. 135). The problem of literacy is difficult to address, although a preliminary effort has been made in another publication (Houston, 1994; see also Re- Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 155 stall, 1997a). At the outset, it is useful to understand that literacy concerns two things, ‘‘production’’ (the creation of writing) and ‘‘response’’ (its reception and exegesis). In some parts of the world, as in the Fayum Basin in the Roman period, production values can be high and response low because the scribes were mere copyists. The ‘‘mandarin’’ emphasis on exquisite calligraphy and textual parsing lies at another extreme, or an individual may traverse this range of effective production and response within a single lifetime (Houston, 1994, pp. 28–29). The Maya tradition of literacy accords with what has been called recitation literacy, in which oral performance of texts was taken as a given: here, the oral and the written are not so easily distinguished (Havelock, 1982, pp. 5, 45; Stoddart and Whitley, 1988, pp. 762–763). Estimating the number of literate Maya in the Classic period is fraught with uncertainty, as it is in other parts of the world (Baines, 1983). Comparative data show that rates above 10–15% of the population occur only when there is considerable state or philanthropic involvement in pedagogy, printing presses, and rural schooling (Harris, 1989, p. 15), none of which seem conceivable in the Maya case. Moreover, there is likely to be considerable variability across the landscape. Literate graffiti suggest exceptionally low rates at Becan and relatively high rates at Tikal (Houston, 1994, p. 39). Quantifying such impressions is virtually impossible, and we are left only with the probability that literacy in the full sense of effective production and response was low. Limited response may have been higher, enabled in part by the hieroglyphic, iconic nature of many signs (Houston, 1994, p. 40). A final point in reception concerns subtler shadings of ‘‘response’’ in glyphic literacy. A useful distinction is drawn in discourse analysis between ‘‘transactional,’’ or content-oriented approaches, and ‘‘interactional,’’ or relational modes of study (Brown and Yule, 1983, pp. 1–4). The first transmits facts and propositions; the second touches on interactions between people in a social setting that is intended to be reinforced or subverted. The pivotal importance of context for the speaking or reading act involves what linguists call pragmatics, and this in turn addresses intentions, implications, audience, message-form or genre, ‘‘code’’ or language style or dialect, and evaluation as to the quality of the performance. Only one study so far has begun to deal with the interactional properties of Mayan glyphs (Sanchez, 1997), but there is much that remains to be done, especially in terms of the physical placement and accessibility of texts. Here, the archaeologist and epigrapher must work in collaboration because an interactional emphasis requires that inscriptions be seen as part of an overall system of architecturally framed monuments at a particular site, and not as discrete or isolated texts. The carefully delimited courtyards and viewing lines in Maya sites clearly relate to perceptual fields identified in the glyphs as yichnal (Stuart, 156 Houston 1987), to which the Classic Maya attached great hierarchical meaning (Houston and Taube, 2000). It is obvious to most epigraphers that small texts had different audiences from stuccoed glyphs on building facades, but other examples must be understood text-by-text and city-by-city. One text, inscribed on the rim of an alabaster bowl from Yaxchilan, is 4 mm high and could only be read with extreme difficulty (David Stuart, personal communication, 1992), others painted on tomb capstones seem to have been designed for a supernatural audience. In such cases, especially in the hurried tomb paintings at Caracol, writing-as-process was more important, perhaps, than writing-asproduct, as though the painting were itself a ritual of entombment (Chase and Chase, 1987, Fig. 14). By walking up certain hieroglyphic stairways, readers figuratively tread backwards in time, in a kinetic respooling of dynastic succession; glyphs would be reversed from their normal orientation because they needed to ‘‘address’’ or face a reader entering a room (Houston, 1998, 356–357, Fig. 10). The performative, oral dimensions of literacy discussed above underscore the social nature of reading, just as the creation of images and texts can be seen cross-culturally as a magical or fetishizing act that accords rare powers to sculptors and scribes (Kris and Kurz, 1979). The ontology or ‘‘being’’ of Classic sculpture and hieroglyphs, which had for the Maya near-vital and animate qualities, must also form part of this discussion (Houston and Stuart, 1998). If an image shares in the identity of the thing it represents, then conventional divisions between objects and interlocutors, animate beings and inanimate forms, become less meaningful, at least to Maya minds. The world of objects and material things was keenly important to the Classic Maya, as was shown a decade ago by collective work on the ubiquity of ‘‘nametags’’ or statements of possession in Maya texts (e.g., Houston, 1989a, pp. 12–15; Houston et al., 1989; MacLeod, 1990; for fuller review, see Coe, 1999, pp. 244–252). The number of terms for things in the Maya world is now large (Grube, 1990b; Stuart, 1998): stela, u lakamtu:nil; bone, u ba:k; drinking vessels, yuch’ib’ (?) and u ja:y; plates, u lak; tripod plates, u jawte’; clothing, u b’uk; collar ornaments, yuhil; earspools, u tu:p; lintels, u pakb’utu:n or u pakab’; doorways, u pasil; thrones, u te:m; ballcourt rings, u chi-? tu:n; quills, che:b (Boot, 1997); stairways, ehb; portable altars, u hachb’utu:n? (David Stuart, personal communication, 2000); tombs, u mukil (distinguished from muknal, ‘‘cemetery’’?); temples, u wayib’il, and other terms, including some that can be interpreted semantically but not deciphered. Many of the objects were important in a partial gift economy that involved feasting with tamales, chocolate drinks, and pulque, the fermented sap of the maguey plant, which was probably more commonly consumed than Mayanists believe (chih, David Stuart, personal communication, 1996; Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 157 see also Parson and Parsons, 1990, pp. 2–3, 294–297). Classic-era chocolate recipes have been studied by MacLeod (1990), and there is some evidence that connoisseurs named varieties of cocoa bean by location, rather like the fine wines in France (one kind of chocolate bean was apparently grown in the area of Naranjo, Guatemala, yutal-‘‘Naranjo’’-kakaw; see Kerr 6813, www.famsi.org). Some labels or nametags were used as personal names for buildings (Stuart and Houston, 1994), and recent excavations at Copan have shown the stunning continuity of semantic themes and, one presumes, building designations through time (Taube, 1999). Glyphic terms indicate that another class of objects related to ‘‘wind jewels’’ worn as pectorals and to physical tokens of ancestral presences (Houston and Taube, 2000; see below). Language of the Classic Maya In recent years a growing body of research has led to a more refined understanding of language in the Maya inscriptions, with important implications for understandings of ancient Maya society and its discourse. A history of this work is presented elsewhere (Houston et al., 2000), but suffice it to say that the modern linkage of language to writing conforms to two general stages: (1) a ‘‘prelinguistic’’ or ‘‘presyntactic’’ period, and (2) a set of ‘‘affiliational’’ arguments, some in wide disagreement with one another. Moreover, the two stages make use of several lines of evidence, one external and two internal. The external data are ‘‘distributional,’’ namely, where the glyphs occur should determine what language was being recorded; if in a region where Yukatek Maya or Ch’olan occurs today, then that was the local language in the past, too. The two internal approches are ‘‘lexical,’’ in which words specific to a particular language or group of languages establish affiliation; and ‘‘morphological,’’ involving elements of grammar, such as inflection and syntax. It has become fairly clear that the last approach is by far the most powerful in settling the question of language affiliation. Distributional arguments assume little to no language movement over the past millennium, an unlikely claim given, for example, the extraordinary homogeneity of Yukatek across its broad zone of use (thus implying relatively recent and rapid diffusion), or the fact that many social crises and displacements have convulsed the Maya region over the past 1000 years. Nor are lexical data intrinsically decisive as evidence: words often transgress language boundaries as loan terms (cf. Chase et al., 1991, pp. 7, 14), a fact even true for use in English of Mayan terms like ‘‘shark’’ (xok), ‘‘cacao’’ (kakaw), ‘‘cockroach’’ (xk’uruch), and probably ‘‘cigar’’ (sik’al) 158 Houston (Jones, 1985; Stuart, 1988; Pierre Ventur, personal communication, 1982). In contrast, morphology pinpoints features that are found only in certain languages, as shared innovations that can be understood through the rigorous methods of the comparative historical method (Robertson, 1992). This method has been considerably enhanced in recent years by the preparation of invaluable new resources on Mayan languages (Bricker et al., 1998; Hofling and Tesucún, 1997; Josserand and Hopkins, 1988; Wichmann, 1999). Until recently, most proposals have combined distributional and lexical arguments (e.g., Ayala Falcón, 1997, p. 75, commenting on ‘‘Tzeltal’’ terms at Tonina, Mexico), along with a trust in glottochronology, a statistical means of dating language change according to several questionable assumptions (Justeson et al., 1985, pp. 14, 58, 61–62; Grube, 1994d, p. 185). Archaeology, too, is often thrown into the mix, as correlations are sought between cultural periods and language change, particularly for shifts before, during, and after the Classic period (e.g., Josserand, 1975; Kaufman, 1976). Methodologically, there seems an increasing possibility that such correlations are tautological. In any attempt to date such shifts, hieroglyphic texts must assume a position of interpretative priority because, to an extent unique in ancient America, they provide direct evidence of language change. So far, the results do not appear encouraging for glottochronological estimates, which seem generally to be far too ‘‘short’’ or compressed for key developments such as splits in the Mayan family tree. Glottochronology, for example, indicates that Ch’olti’ (‘‘Eastern Ch’olan’’) split off from ‘‘Ch’olan– Tzeltalan’’ at the end of the Early Classic period (Justeson et al., 1985, p. 5), and yet all available data from hieroglyphs affirm a split many centuries before, if not well into Preclassic times. The tenacity of glottochronology in Mayan linguistics, long after its repudiation elsewhere (Nurse, 1997, p. 366), is perplexing. It probably stems in part from the formative role that Swadesh, the innovator of glottochronology, played in Mesoamerican linguistics (Swadesh, 1967); the preëminent reputation of glottochronology’s most eloquent and forceful advocate, Terrence Kaufman (see Kaufman, 1974); and an understandable need to relate Mayan languages to the material remains of their speakers. Despite calls for caution in the past (e.g., Campbell, 1984, p. 4), scholars must still recognize that, for all its seductive allure, glottochronology is more likely to be misleading than helpful. Prelinguistic or presyntactic models reflect a largely discredited mindset that Maya glyphs are merely collections of symbols that, if they reflect words at all, do so in rough orderings that owe little to Mayan syntax. In large part, such research belongs to earlier stages of decipherment, when Mayan languages and their historical relationships were poorly known or to a time when scholars were hardly aware of the problem of determining Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 159 which languages were recorded in script; it may not even have been clear that glyphs did reflect language. Examples of this period include works by Rafinesque-Schmaltz, who, in 1827, stated that the script recorded ‘‘TZENDAL, (called also Chontal, Celtal, &c)’’ (Stuart, 1989, p. 16). This was a perceptive remark, close to current ideas, but Rafinesque also located ‘‘Tzendal’’ as far south as Panama (!), declaring it to be ‘‘the ancient speech of Otolum’’ (Palenque), from which derived the ‘‘dialects of Chiapa, Yucatan and Guatimala’’ (Stuart, 1989, p. 16), an interpretation that laid comprehensive (and, in retrospect, ludicrous) claim to virtually all Mayan languages. For Rafinesque, clearly, these were mere labels, not languages with specific features to be isolated and studied by philogists. Ideographic, nonlinguistic interpretations of glyphs continued in subsequent generations, so that, as late as 1945, Paul Schellhas could declare that the script contained little grammar and ‘‘no verbal ideograms representing actions.’’ The next phase of research was the ‘‘affiliational,’’ when linguistic and epigraphic tools began as dull instruments that later sharpened to surgical precision as scholars became aware of possibilities inherent in full, linguistically sophisticated decipherment. The intellectual culmination of the early ‘‘affiliational’’ period was the long and distinguished career of J. Eric S. Thompson, who was among the first to articulate what might be described as a ‘‘distributional’’ argument for language affiliation. (In fairness to Thompson, it was ‘‘distributional’’ thinking that led in the first place to the correct connection between the hieroglyphs and Mayan languages of the Yucatan pensinula and adjacent regions.) That is, the location of glyphic texts implicated groups ‘‘very close to (the) modern Yucatec and . . . Chol-Chorti-Mopan’’ who now occupy such lands (Thompson, 1950, p. 16). Later, perhaps, the script began to spread ‘‘to the territories in which Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and Chaneabal now live, and never reached the highland peoples’’ (Thompson, 1950, p. 16; see also Campbell, 1984, p. 5). However, people often forget that Thompson’s long career, still a model of intellectual catholicity and interdisciplinary enterprise, showed not so much intellectual ossification as development and change, including swings between what seem to be contradictory points of view. For example, he later refined his views by limiting the glyphs to ‘‘Choloid’’ and Yucatec speakers (1972, pp. 23–24), but could also state that no ‘‘tense’’ markers were represented in the Mayan script (Thompson, 1972, p. 55). For Thompson, who had relatively little control over Mayan languages in their totality—he seems to have relied strongly on the Yukatek specialist Ralph Roys, in a collegial relation that requires further study by historians of Maya decipherment (Ventur, 1978, pp. 23, 60–61, 74)—this might have been a comforting claim because it effectively absolved epigraphers of attaining linguistic expertise or of looking for things that, after all, were 160 Houston unlikely to be present. Yet Thompson was also one of the first to use internal evidence, both lexical and grammatical, which suggested to him that ‘‘the inventors of glyphic writing spoke a language closest to sixteenthcentury Yucatec’’ (Thompson, 1950, p. 16). The Yukatek school has long dominated Pre-Columbian Maya studies (as, separately, have ethnographies of Highland Maya), because of the richness of its historical and linguistic sources and its long and excellent tradition of study. Recent advances in affiliational research rest on two fundamental premises: (1) that the script recorded many elements of language, including features we may call ‘‘verbs,’’ ‘‘pronouns,’’ ‘‘nouns,’’ and ‘‘adjectives,’’ although in Mayan languages these categories share overlapping qualities unfamiliar to speakers to Indo-European languages [for example, the noun ba:k-ø (CAPTIVE / BONE-ABS3SG) can be translated, ‘‘It is a captive/bone’’]; and (2) that these elements can be placed in an historical and comparative framework that highlights certain Mayan languages and excludes others because of their distinguishing properties. There is little doubt, too, that this research could only have matured in the 1990s, after epigraphers had achieved convincing decipherments of signs used as morphological particles. Such began with the crucial discovery of prevocalic pronouns by Bricker and Stuart (Bricker, 1986, pp. 63–83; Stuart, 1987; cf. Hopkins, 1997, p. 82), a probable completive (now thought to be a tense) ending by Stuart (1987, p. 42), prepositions (Macri, 1991, pp. 271–272; Mathews and Justeson, 1984), and positional endings by MacLeod (1987, p. 16; see also Bricker, 1986, p. 186; Garcı́a Campillo and Lacadena Garcı́a-Gallo 1990, p. 164), but has since extended to work on verbal suffixes and their various permutations (Lacadena, 1997b, 1998, in press; Houston et al., 1998a, pp. 292–293), along with a wide variety of discourse particles and rhetorical devices (Grube, 1998b; Stuart et al., 1999). (Contributions by Josserand to discourse analysis of Maya texts were a welcome development but suffered from the inexactitude of readings at the time: in effect, her analyses were of English-language paraphrases rather than of the Maya itself; Josserand, 1997.) If ‘‘God is in the details,’’ then persuasive linguistic arguments rely utterly on these decipherments and the precise sounds they convey, many of which are still undergoing detailed review (Wald, 1998; Wald and MacLeod, 1999). This research has also led inevitably to the imposition of higher standards for epigraphers. Specialists can no longer ignore language or ‘‘read’’ the glyphic texts as loose paraphrases or ad hoc and ungrammatical conjunctures of words, some taken from disparate Mayan languages (e.g., Folan et al., 1995, p. 324). A translation must now imply a particular model of language affiliation and defend its precise, language-specific claims on data. Hieroglyphic research has reciprocally influenced historical linguistics, and some long-accepted views of Mayan language descent are now under intensive Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 161 debate: One possible conclusion would be the inclusion of Chontal as an offshoot of so-called ‘‘Eastern Ch’olan’’ languages (Ch’olti’ and Ch’orti’) and the removal of Ch’ol to a remote, highly innovative branch of its own (Stuart et al., 1999, p. 39). More recent ‘‘affiliational’’ arguments thus exist in a more exacting atmosphere of proof and disproof. Several kinds of argument are now on the table. The first is the ‘‘unitary’’ claim—that one language is recorded in the script, be it an early form of Ch’olan prior to its differentiation into daughter languages (Justeson et al., 1985, Table 17) or a single line of descent in the Ch’olan or Yukatekan branches. Few specialists today believe that Highland Mayan languages, those spoken in the upland and mountainous zones to the south of the Yucatan peninsula, had much of a direct involvement in glyphic writing (Justeson and Campbell, 1997; cf. Justeson, 1978, pp. 245–273; Lounsbury, 1989, pp. 88–89, 1997; Macri, 1983, p. 56). A subspecies of the unitary claim is the ‘‘prestige’’ or ‘‘diglossic’’ model, which allows for multiple vernaculars but only one language in script (Macri, 1988, p. 33; Houston et al., 2000). The second claim is for a scribal ‘‘mosaic’’ or ‘‘multiple’’ model that sees many languages in the script, including Ch’ol and Yukatek, or all branches of Ch’olan (Schele, 1982). The multiple model has prevailed until recently (e.g., Bricker 1986, 1995). It carries the undeniable appeal of preserving the direct relevance to decipherment of all so-called Lowland Languages (named for their general occurrence in low-lying areas of the Yucatan peninsula and neighboring zones). This multiple focus, which countenances many languages in script, is quite distinct from a method that uses such languages for comparative and historical data. It is certain that debate will continue for some time to come, perhaps discordantly. However, there is a strengthening movement, gathering speed throughout the 1990s (and before) in work by Houston (1997d), Lacadena (1997b, 1998, in press), Robertson (Houston et al., 1998, 2000; Robertson, 1998; Stuart et al., 1999), Stuart (Houston et al., 1998, 2000; Stuart et al., 1999), and Wald (1994b, p. 88), that proposes one principal language in the inscriptions. This was, in the opinion of Robertson, an ancestral form of Ch’olti’, a Colonial language that is now extinct, and its probable descendant, a living language known as Ch’orti’ (Robertson, 1998), now spoken by some 52,000 people in and around the Departments of Chiquimula and Zacapa, Guatemala (Warren, 1998, p. 16). Alternative proposals for heavy use of Yukatekan cannot be sustained because of weaknesses now apparent in the glyphic evidence used to support such claims (e.g., Bricker, 1986, p. 125; Closs, 1987; Justeson et al., 1985, p. 13; see also Houston et al., 2000, for further discussion). Nonetheless, Yukatek words do percolate up into the scribal language, alongside words of demonstrable Ch’olti’an provenance (Houston et al., 2000; Stuart et al., 1999, p. 162 Houston 38). Moreover, as Wald and Lacadena show (see above), the language of the Postclassic codices is a strange, possibly creolized admixture of Ch’olan and Yukatekan. Houston, Robertson, and Stuart call this glyphic language Classic Ch’olti’an and identify it as a prestige language spoken or written throughout the area of Maya inscriptions by elites, and by elites and nonelites alike in its homeland, an area linked speculatively to Peten, Guatemala, and surrounding areas. There are indications from the inscribed texts that, during the Classic period, the script expressed a living language undergoing regular changes, such as vowel shortening and ‘‘simplification’’ (Houston et al., 1998, pp. 284–285), a systematic shift in some contexts from e to i (Stuart et al., 1999, p. 37), and the loss of velarization in some aspirates, possibly at different times in the Late Classic period (Nikolai Grube, personal communication, 1999). By the Terminal Classic to Early Postclassic, the language most likely became rather like Sumerian, Middle Egyptian, or post-15th-century Coptic, a written, almost liturgical language that ostentatiously preserved archaic features, especially ‘‘complex vowels,’’ and differed strikingly from vernaculars. To judge by Egyptian parallels, the relation of written language to vernacular is likely to have been quite complex historically (Parkinson, 1999, pp. 48–49; Vernus, 1996), and details of this are being researched by a number of epigraphers, who have begun to discern possible dialect zones (Lacadena and Wichmann, 1999). Data on this language, although spectacular and unparalleled for the New World, do not match the long-term evidence from Egyptian or Mesopotamian languages. For example, forms of Middle Egyptian were used over a 2,000year span, whereas Maya glyphs in securely dated, monumental contexts occur over less than a 600-year period, and the majority of those date to a time of less than 200 years’ duration. A striking feature of Mayan writing is how closely it records the nuances of language, to a degree unimaginable even a decade ago. In the first place, and contrary to earlier expectations, the script apparently transcribes not a ‘‘split-ergative’’ language in the incompletive aspect, the pattern in some Lowland Mayan languages (see above), but a ‘‘straight ergative,’’ in which intransitives do not take an ergative, or prefixed, pronoun (Bricker, 1986, Fig. 142; Macleod, 1982, pp. 420–421; Schele, 1982, pp. 9–10). The splitergative itself now appears relatively recent, a linguistic offspring of the progressive in verbs (Robertson, 1992, p. 145). A full range of transitive, intransitive (both root and derived intransitives), and positional verbs occurs in script, including passives (MacLeod, 1984, 1987; Lacadena, in press), antipassives (Lacadena, 1997b, 1998), mediopassives (Houston, 1997d), ‘‘causatives’’ on positional verbs (Stuart et al., 1999, p. 32), and active transitives. All ergative (prefixed) pronouns are attested, among them first- Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 163 or second-person references in records of putative conversations (Houston and Stuart, 1993; Stuart et al., 1999, pp. 18–21), as well as some rare absolutive (suffixed) pronouns [a-winak-e:n, ‘‘I am your servant’’ (Stuart et al., 1999, p. 22)]. Quotative expressions alternatively precede and follow such statements (Grube, 1998b; Houston and Stuart, 1993). Clearly, several distinct registers existed in Mayan script. Some are almost folkloric in their tales of trickster rabbits and bamboozled trader gods (Stuart, 1993). But for all such evidence, disagreement persists to a disturbing extent about the most basic of topics: How the script communicated tense (the relation of an act to the ‘‘here-and-now’’) and aspect (the state of ongoing or completed action). There are two opposed views: (1) that the default, ‘‘foreground’’ of glyphic texts record the incompletive aspect, ‘‘background’’ restatements occur in the completive (Houston, 1997d; Stuart et al., 1999, p. 28); and (2) that all texts are in the completive aspect, but some verbs—‘‘background’’ retrospections—discursively mark changes in narrative time (Wald and MacLeod, 1999, pp. 88–96). This issue is crucial to translation, but epigraphers have yet to shape a consensus. The advantage of the second hypothesis is that it accords with patterns in modern Mayan discourse and with certain interpretations of glyphs; the advantage of the first (I must express an open predilection here) is that it accounts more effectively for glyphic orthography and historical linguistics. Moreover, Robertson recently made a compelling case that the Classic period experienced a dramatic shift in verb morphology that accounts both for historical antecedents and daughter languages. It is highly probable that, during Classic times, the script reflected a language in which an adverbal tense system had displaced a verbal aspect system (Robertson and Houston, 2000). Whatever the eventual outcome, this debate will be helpful in refining our understanding of script and Mayan languages. To judge from some linguists’ reactions, the coming years will see much vigorous discussion (e.g., comments to Houston et al., 2000, pp. 338–341). A question for archaeologists might be: Why should we care about the problem of language affiliation? For epigraphers the problem could hardly be more pivotal, because it places parameters on future decipherments and points to certain languages and lexical sets as being more useful than others. Changes did occur in these languages, but they have now been dated and can, with suitable reserve, be correlated with larger events reflected in archaeology; dramatic changes in the vowel system, for instance, seem to occur just prior to the Maya Collapse, perhaps as part of larger shifts in speech and scribal communities. Resolving the issue of affiliation will also result, for the first time, in highly accurate translations that capture nuances of what the Maya wished to say and how they wished to say it. Historical linguists also have much to gain, for in Maya script they recover 164 Houston a research tool roughly equivalent to the discovery of Hittite and Tocharian for Indo-European studies: a language from at least 1200 years before the Spanish conquest and, along with checks on historical reconstructions, challenges aplenty in the form of unexpected patterns that should stimulate comparative review of Mayan languages. What archaeologists gain, as students of Maya society, is a glance into the hierarchical nature of script use, in which certain registers that pertain to Maya courtly and temple practice dominate (unsurprisingly) the most enduring records of speech. The existence of such a language undergirds and favors lateral bonds between elites over vertical bonds between elites and nonelites. The increasingly esoteric nature of the writing would have positive implications for scribal status and reinforce the transcendent courtly culture of the Classic period (e.g., Sabloff, 1986, p. 110). Kings, Gods, Ancestors, and Ontology Another development in Maya epigraphy involves a deeper understanding of the relation between ontology (the nature of ‘‘being and existence’’) and the practice of power by Maya royalty (Houston and Stuart, 1996, 2000). It has been known for some time that Maya rulers were labeled as ‘‘holy’’ (k’uhul) lords of particular locations (Mathews, 1991). This descriptive adjective was usually applied to one person in every generation. It seems likely the title of lord similarly applied only to offspring of a ‘‘holy’’ lord, with a self-conscious link, affirmed hieroglyphically and iconographically, to one of the so-called Hero Twins of Maya myth (Coe, 1989). The notion of ‘‘eliteness’’ in Classic Maya society hinged on recognizable descent from holy lords through complex, ramifying networks. Simple, twoclass, endogamous models do not capture the complexity of such variable systems of status as determined by genealogic distance (cf. Marcus, 1992c, p. 221; see Stuart, 1997a, for a full discussion of kinship terms in the inscriptions). There is a little evidence that social groups were organized into vaguely defined ‘‘houses’’ or ‘‘great houses’’ of the sort described by Lévi-Strauss (1987; see also Carsten and Hugh-Jones, 1995, pp. 8, 10; Houston, 1998b, p. 521; Inomata and Houston, 2000; cf. the Aztec calpolli, ‘‘big house,’’ Lockhart, 1992, pp. 16–20) and attested ethnographically among the localized patrilineages of the Tzotzil Maya (Vogt, 1983, Fig. 6.4). Such concepts may have included people with fictive descent or other, looser ties and organized spatially as distinct or contiguous mound groups known as plazuelas. The royal court itself may have been conceived as a distinct kind of ‘‘great house,’’ but with more varied membership than those at a lower level (Inomata and Houston, 2000). Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 165 The ruler then was not so much a divine king as a sacred one, with a status unique to his person during his lifetime. (But note that one site, Caracol, has strong evidence of preëmptive accessions and co-rule during the latter years of certain rulers; see Structure B-19 stuccos excavated by the University of Central Florida team.) A very few queens are known to have had this status, and seem to have played a role principally at moments of dynastic rupture (Martin, 1998b), as in the well-known instance of the ‘‘Lady of Dos Pilas,’’ who married into the royal family of Naranjo. Rulers could absorb divinity in three ways. One was by taking the names of verbalized aspects of gods, in epithets that could be consistently held within a single family (Houston and Stuart, 1996, p. 296; a pattern extended by Grube, n.d.). At Naranjo, most rulers were variants of Cha:k, the storm and rain god; at Tikal, they expressed connections to K’awi:l, an enigmatic deity that is both complex and poorly understood. A second tactic was to conjure or summon deities through certain rituals. The Maya rulers appear to have had intensely personal relations with certain deities, connections that they commemorated in many texts (Houston and Stuart, 1996). The third stratagem was more episodic, through impersonations of gods in masking and dance ceremonies that probably took place in the large plazas at the center of Maya cities (Grube, 1992; Houston and Stuart, 1996). These impersonations could also involve subordinate lords, and it could be that the masking ceremonies formed part of elaborate tableaux and reiterations of mythical events, or of recapitulations of historical episodes commemorated in song and dance (Houston et al., 1991b). The interpenetration of mythic and historical worlds with present ones reveals that, for the Classic Maya, those best documented by hieroglyphs, the civic community of a Maya center involved personages of varying sorts, including deities, ancestors (the mam, ‘‘grandfathers’’; David Stuart, personal communication, 1996), and flesh-and-blood actors (McAnany, 1995, 1998). At times the glyphs tell us that deities could be ‘‘lost’’ or their cults interrupted by war (Grube, 1996). It is probable that further research at Maya sites will find increasing evidence of such dynastic reversals, as seems to be the case at Dos Pilas (Houston, 1993; Martin and Grube, 1999), more speculatively at Yaxuná (Suhler and Freidel, 1998), and possibly at Piedras Negras, where glyphic and archaeological evidence show major burnings and disruptions at the end of the Early Classic period, followed by strong recovery. (Piedras Negras Stela 12 hints that the antagonist was Pomona, with whom Piedras Negras and its proxies again battled at the end of the Late Classic, this time successfully.) As Freidel and colleagues suggest (1998, p. 135–136; see also Suhler, 1996), most large Maya sites experienced significant disruptions throughout their existence. One suspects that Late to Terminal Classic period warfare left a more obvious record, 166 Houston not so much because hostile acts became more intense at that time, but because, in contrast to earlier phases, fewer people remained to clean up the destruction (cf. Demarest et al., 1997). Whatever mechanisms restored and healed Maya cities after earlier wars no longer operated by the end of the Classic period. Gods had both pan-Maya and highly localized characteristics. Each site appears to have possessed distinct gods or sets of gods venerated and housed, as effigies, in temples known as wayib’, or ‘‘sleeping places’’ (Houston, 1996; Stuart, 1998). Some of these gods could be linked personally to rulers: at Copan, Honduras, kings had gods who were ‘‘seated’’ or enthroned on the same day as the ruler, or who might be taken captive, as apparently happened when 18 b’a:h k’awi:l was seized by Quirigua (Houston and Stuart, 1996, Fig. 15; Stuart et al., 1999). Others, such as those at Palenque (Stuart, in press b), transcended particular rulers and may have helped shape the singular ‘‘ethnic’’ identity of individual Maya polities. Communities appear to have been consecrated to certain deity cults; contrasts in belief and ritual practice would have been as effective a mechanism as any in distinguishing such communities from their neighbors; the notable variability in Maya elite culture may have existed both for historical reasons and as a means of reinforcing such differentiation between dynasties. The civic relationships at the core of these societies can be understood as ‘‘covenants,’’ binding, supernaturally charged agreements in which ‘‘ritual,’’ as conceived by the ancient Maya, negotiated interactions between distinct ontological orders within the community (Fischer, 1999; Monaghan, 1995, in press). (It is important to emphasize the term negotiated, for factions and distinct interest groups undoubtedly existed within an ancient Maya community.) Ancestors could be accessed, too, through tomb-openings and ancestral cults that configured most of the epicentral, built environment in Maya cities (McAnany, 1998); in this manner, the temples, palaces, tombs, and processionals served as the essential equipment of an ontologically varied but bonded community. Even much Maya jewelry can be identified as embodiments of ancestors reified in material form and suspended as bodily displays (Stuart et al., 1999, p. 63). The images in Maya representations, known as ba:h, ‘‘self, forehead, person, image’’ (Houston and Stuart, 1998), extend the notion of personal essence to depictions of people, suggesting that stelae were in part set up as permanent presences of rulers. A difficult question is resolving the linkage between rulers and ruled, for there are precious few data about the processes of governance. One trope likens the business of rulership to that of tilling, manuring, or tending fields (Houston and Cummins, 1998), an appropriation of common, every- Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 167 day activities of the sort documented for royal rituals elsewhere in the world (Bloch, 1985). However, the nature of kings was clearly different from other mortals, and some use what appears to be term for pure ‘‘force’’ or ‘‘power’’ in their names (ip, Houston and Stuart, 2000). A few dynastic founders have names that suggest supernatural or stellar origins, as at Naranjo and Tamarindito (Hieroglyphic Stairway 3, Step VII:B1, Houston, 1993, Fig. 4-17), although this is not always the pattern. A more typical device is to emphasize Maya rulers as ‘‘stranger kings’’ in the Polynesian sense described by Sahlins (1985, pp. 73–103). These are lords who are both within society and outside it, as introduced royalty, and the ultimate justification for the separation of rulers from subjects (Houston and Stuart, 1996, pp. 289–290). This essential ‘‘otherness’’ of Maya rulers has been discussed by Stone (1989) with respect to evocations of distant, founding civilizations, especially that of Teotihuacan and, for earlier Maya perhaps, of the Olmec. The idea here is plainly that of a pan-Mesoamerican notion of ‘‘Tollan,’’ a place of civilizational genesis (Freidel, 1999), as much a state of mind or timeless locus as an historically situated location. At Copan, Honduras, there seems even to be a Maya–Teotihuacano ‘‘biscript’’—a text in two different writing systems—on Temple 26, a building associated with the succession of rulers, although a better description might be that the second text is Teotihuacano in ‘‘font’’ but fundamentally Mayan in structure (Stuart, 1997b). However, the ‘‘biscript’’ has not yet thrown much reciprocal light on writing at Teotihuacan (Taube, 2000b). However, that is not to say that the connection was solely conceptual. Stuart (2000a) argues that the Tikal dynasty was both disrupted and partly replaced by exalted personages from Teotihuacan or Kaminaljuyu, and similar evidence has been presented recently for the founder of the Copan dynasty (Sharer, 1999). The interplay of structure, event, process, and myth is extremely complex, but there is a strong sense that dynastic foundations, particularly those of later, Early Classic date, were ‘‘epitomizing events.’’ They served as reference points for change and frameworks for actors who filled and discharged mythologic roles (Fogelson, 1989; Rappaport, 1994, p. 170). It is doubtful that any Maya ruler would have been seen outside of this mythic frame, as much as scholars try to separate political realpolitik from indigenous understandings of those maneuvers. Founder’s buildings, evidently known as wi-TE’-NA:H (‘‘root house’’?, Stuart, 2000a; cf. Schele, 1992) and, to judge from iconographic substitutions, regarded by the Maya as houses of kindling and fire, seem to occur at sites with specifically Teotihuacano connections. The person identified by Stuart as a ‘‘stranger’’ was known to the Maya as siyaj k’ak’, ‘‘(he is) born from the fire,’’ and there are strong indications that Teotihuacano ritual involved a robust fire-making component (Karl 168 Houston Taube, personal communication, 2000), a theme elaborated in abundance by Classic Maya lords (Stuart, 1998; Taube, 1998). ‘‘History’’ and ‘‘Politics’’ The nature of Classic Maya historical records has prompted much discussion in the last few years. There is a committed undertone to some of these debates. Epigraphers naturally wish to see faithful accounts of past activities in hieroglyphic inscriptions, whereas archaeologists unschooled in, or critical of, epigraphy are comfortable dismissing these accounts as ‘‘propaganda’’ and therefore irrelevant to their investigation of an ‘‘objective’’ past. Conceptually, these discussions are complicated by intellectual orientation. One tendency is concerned with finding ‘‘truth’’ and ‘‘facts.’’ This can be done directly, by accepting the total veracity of ancient records, or more cautiously, by using the procedures of ‘‘historiography,’’ the careful weighing and evaluation of authors and sources (Nicholson, 1971). From this process comes ‘‘history’’: an interpretive narrative by Western scholars that is molded into an authoritative, professional account stripped free of the propagandistic representations that discredit indigenous documents (Marcus, 1992a, p. 7, 1995; Price, 1980, pp. 159, 177). Hard effort alone ensures that ‘‘truth’’ emerges from native distortions (Michalowski, 1983, pp. 237–238; Vansina, 1985, pp. 129, 199–200). Yet even that goal may be unreachable: The only real objectivity, some assert, comes from archaeological data and its processing by trained, dispassionate scientists working with hard facts extracted from the ‘‘point of a trowel’’ (Marcus, 1992a, p. 445). There is much that is questionable in these views, as pointed out by modern historians of post-modernist bent. Consider the following rejoinders: Many accounts of the past are possible; historical accounts are always tentative, personal constructs; no direct engagement with the past is possible, nor is empathy with past mindsets (cf. Collingwood, 1946); descriptive categories are inherently those of modern analysts (‘‘states,’’ ‘‘kingship, ‘‘chiefdoms’’), who are writing for someone and for particular reasons; bias is unavoidable; and all interpretation must be ideologically positioned, thus tossing ‘‘objectivity’’ and its pretensions into well-deserved oblivion (Gell, 1992, pp. 10, 267; Jenkins, 1991, pp. 7, 9, 10, 12, 17, 44, 70). Yet these postmodern positions can also become outlandish, insofar as they reduce the truth claims of history to a set of privileged positions that shift only according to power relationships and viewer bias. For the pure post-modernist, knowledge becomes little more than an internal projection of the selfabsorbed researcher, or some fuzzy by-product of hermeneutic ‘‘dialogism’’ that blurs past and present (Outhwaite, 1985, pp. 29–31). Empathy with Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 169 past people may be impossible in a direct sense, nor can we hope for any full knowledge of what it was like to function in Classic Maya society— inevitably, we bring ourselves to that experience as clumsy, uninvited guests. However, anthropology in general has demonstrated that beliefs and practices are accessible to structured explanation (e.g., Sahlins, 1985). The question for epigraphers is how to address historical evidence in an openminded, methodologically sophisticated manner. Conventional categories, such as ‘‘history,’’ ‘‘religion,’’ and ‘‘politics,’’ carry associations that veer away from the finer shadings of Maya views. If epigraphy is in part about engaging ancient minds or understanding ‘‘the history of mentalities’’ (l’histoire des mentalités, a genre distinct from the ‘‘high road of intellectual history,’’ Darnton, 1999, p. 3), then those shadings must be our interpretative preference. David Stuart (1995) has shown that Maya texts emphasize not genealogical information or interdynastic interaction, as some Mayanists seem to believe, but esoteric rituals such as the dedication of sculpture or completion of calendrical events (see also Stuart, 1996). Time itself could be embodied in stone, as reifications of a phenomenon that we regard as experiential but not concrete. Texts fall into distinct genres (‘‘death texts,’’ ‘‘accession texts’’) that reflect higher-order selections and reworking of day-by-day accounts that the Maya must have kept. The only surviving instance of such a ‘‘day-planner’’ comes from an unusual context, a wallpainting from Structure B-XIII at Uaxactun (Smith, 1950, Fig. 47): a horizontal sequence of day signs attaches an occasional historical notation, suspended in vertical texts, but mostly it displays blank spaces. Presumably, those were the days in which nothing of interest happened. The very notion of ‘‘propaganda,’’ treated by some scholars as an appropriate description of Maya texts, reflects a modern mindset that recalls the blatant manipulations of Goebbels, Lord Haw Haw, and Tokyo Rose. We can not know for certain, but it is more likely that Maya elites and nonelites shared a collective worldview (Houston, 1999). The calculated, tactical duplicity implied by a term like propaganda is prone to be anachronistic when applied to the ancient Maya, for whom even mythic events rang as true and valid (Boone, 2000, p. 15; Veyne, 1988, p. 22). In a Western setting, when propaganda was held to be an expression and divulgation of essential truths, as in the works of the Roman Catholic Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, or Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?, the intention was always to counter something else of equal, compelling force, be it Lutheran heterodoxy or capitalistic mystification. Propaganda operates when there is the possibility of choice between different systems, or at least the threat of opposing systems. Moreover, it is difficult to understand what political advantage would accrue from changing the date of a stela dedication or 170 Houston from blatantly falsifying parentage (a system so focused on blood pedigree probably had little room for Roman-style, imperial adoption that might distort such statements). Even defeats are known in the epigraphic record, as of Dos Pilas by Tikal, or of Caracol by Naranjo, if usually in terms of some later, more glorious success (Nikolai Grube, personal communication, 1992); indeed, the sense one gets is of almost Sicilian vendetta and blood feud. The historical sins seem more to be sins of omission than commission, in which inconvenient events are either passed over in silence or framed in narratives of ultimate victory. The cross-ties between dates, names, and archaeology are, at sites with extensive textual records, so elaborate as to defy large-scale fabrication. The positing of a dynastic founder at Copan (Yax K’uk’ Mo’) and the subsequent discovery of his tomb vindicate the view that the texts are, within their limits, relatively accurate (Sharer, 1999; Stuart, 1997). In no instance can it be proved that the texts are ‘‘lies’’ in the sense of bald fabrications. Some scholars have suggested that such evidence might come from discrepancies between the hieroglyphic dates of Pakal the Great at Palenque and his purported age as determined by physical anthropology (Marcus, 1992c, pp. 235–237). Nonetheless, the original assays have now been discredited (Hammond and Molleson, 1994; Urcid, 1993a), and this critique is no longer taken seriously by epigraphers. Much of its initial impulse seems to have come from the patent animosity that Alberto Ruz, the excavator of Pakal’s tomb, felt toward younger, upstart epigraphers who had questioned his reconstruction of certain glyphic dates. (Generational tensions are doubtless inevitable in any rapidly advancing discipline.) Accounts of dynastic founders and the ‘‘creation’’ events at the beginning of the Long Count may seem like obvious inventions (Schele, 1992; Freidel et al., 1993), yet to the Maya they were probably as believable as the book of Genesis to a fundamentalist Christian or a territorial irredentist in the Holy Land. At the same time, there is evidence for the obliteration of historical accounts, a process well known in Classical archaeology as damnatio memoriae, in which the reasons for disfigurement could be varied and difficult to reconstruct (Keppie, 1991, p. 22). Most of the Tikal’s early monuments have been smashed or reset, possibly as part of a dynastic disruption in the later years of the Early Classic period (Martin, 2000). Other sites have many examples of shattered monuments retrieved from fill (Grube, 1994b, Fig. 9.14), recarved at a later date, as with Yaxchilan Stela 27 (Martin, 2000), or set into buildings as decapitated fragments (Houston, 1993, Fig. 3-5). It is not possible to establish how some of these pieces found their way into such locations, but some, such as Naranjo Hieroglyphic Stairway 1, may have been transported from Caracol, some Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 171 43 km away, as apparent war booty (Martin, 2000); Ian Graham found another fragment of this stairway at Ucanal (1980, p. 153). The most convincing case for the general veracity of Maya texts is the remarkable historical synthesis prepared throughout the 1990s by Martin and Grube (Grube, 1996; Grube and Martin, 1998; Martin, 1996, 1997, 1998c, 1999; Martin and Grube, 1996, in press; see also Looper, 1996). Studies of Maya political organization have veered between two positions, with various shadings in between: the first is the ‘‘large polity’’ model, the second a ‘‘small polity’’ perspective (Escobedo, 1991; Houston and Escobedo, 1997). (Readers should keep in mind that even ‘‘large polity’’ models involve areas at most 250 miles across, and usually less than that.) Histories of these discussions may be found elsewhere (Grube and Martin, 1998, pp. 1–19; Houston, 1993, pp. 141–148, 1997b; Houston and Escobedo, 1997; Lucero, 1999, pp. 211–216). At present, there is complete consensus among epigraphers that conflict and alliance between royal dynasties took place against a backdrop of long-standing enmity between Calakmul and Tikal, two centers of great age, sustained growth, and unusually large size. Of the two, Calakmul comes across as the most aggressive and inventive, orchestrating wars by proxy against the interests of Tikal, overseeing accessions and other activities through formal visits, taking the children of subordinate lords as court pages and hostages (Houston and Stuart, 2000; see also Webster, 2000). During most of the latter half of the Classic period, the result was encirclement of Tikal’s domain by Calakmul through campaigns of concerted pressure against an ancient but embattled rival; Calakmul’s strategies seem to unravel only when one of its rulers submitted to Tikal as the result of a conflict. Martin and Grube’s narrative is comprehensive and its patterns evident at a large-scale level. [Earlier large-scale studies by Marcus were useful at the time, but do not, because of their early date, benefit from more recent readings that elucidate the content and context of historical statements (Marcus, 1976); for another example of this ‘‘top-down’’ approach, see Marcus, 1992b, pp. 406–409]. From that broad perspective, it effectively explains isolated events that would otherwise seem random. There is another advantage to this integrated approach. Ordinarily, the absence of corroborative information would undermine assertions that a particular battle or war or royal visit must have taken place—declarations of faith carry little weight with critics of Maya epigraphy. Yet the overall configuration of hegemonic interaction, only vaguely noted until recently (Houston and Mathews, 1985; Houston et al., 1991b), justifies an historiographic approach because the patterns can only be inferred from competing records at antagonistic centers. Debate still exists, however, as to the nature of these hegemonic structures (Houston, 1997b). Local dynasties seem to have been left intact, 172 Houston somewhat on the model of the informal incorporation described by Doyle for empires, in which a controlling polity dominates decisions made by a subordinate one, whatever the purported status of that subordinate as a politically autonomous entity (Doyle, 1986, p. 8; Hassig, 1988; Smith and Berdan, 1996, p. 8; see also Luttwak, 1976, Fig. 1.2). In this schema, Calakmul and Tikal were true ‘‘metropoles’’ at the center of hegemonic rather than ‘‘territorial’’ polities, which involved far closer control of subordinates. They would have been organized on different orders of complexity and size from smaller, ‘‘client’’ sites, with, for example, a contrasting signature in terms of the number and elaboration of palaces (Martin, 2000). Epigraphers remain unsure what was at stake, however: Was Calakmul’s hegemonic polity extractive of resources, or did it simply curry political allegiance? Answers to these questions remain unclear. In some regions, such as the Usumacinta, Calakmul’s imprint is faint at best, and the principal axis of conflict appears to be between the dynasties of Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan, its smaller neighbor to the south. In all areas, the hegemonic patterns beg a pressing question: namely, the degree to which ‘‘clients’’ sought ‘‘patrons’’ rather than the other way around, through alliances of mutual convenience. A schoolyard analogy is apt: A large bully or ‘‘enforcer’’ might be sought outside a particular playground so as to confer some material advantage in local struggles. The evidence from the Pasión and Petexbatun regions underlines the nuances and local scale of these conflicts, albeit as part of a long-term cycles of antagonism and incorporation, tempered by the intrusion of an aggressive dynasty (Houston, 1993; Escobedo, 1997a). Most fortifications in the Petexbatun are clearly quite late, as I discovered in my fieldwork in 1984 and 1986 sponsored by Yale (1987, pp. 384–392) and as confirmed by subsequent excavations (Demarest et al., 1997). Nonetheless, there are grave doubts as to whether the massive Punta de Chimino moat is as late as its excavators claim, because its more likely date is Late Preclassic (cf. Demarest et al., 1997, pp. 238–242; see Escobedo, 1997b, p. 392). A single posthole well-removed from the base of the defensive ditch is treated as firm evidence, when the strong presence of Late Preclassic materials at the site points to its true date, in accord with similar features elsewhere in the Maya area (see Webster, 1999, p. 344). In all likelihood the interactions involved complex motives and dynastic calculations, and there is small evidence that all clients were conquered or vanquished by Tikal or Calakmul. The basic component of the Classic Maya political landscape remains the dominion of a ‘‘holy lord’’ (Mathews, 1991). Certain dynasties emphasize exceedingly long lines of holy lords (e.g., Altar de Sacrificios, Naranjo, Tamarindito, Tikal); others have far shallower roots or elect not to record notations of succession. It is possible Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 173 that these comparatively late dynasties ‘‘hived off’’ or were ‘‘seeded’’ as cadet lines from older, more established dynasties, a process well attested at Dos Pilas (Houston, 1993) and perhaps at Yaxchilan, whose dynasty may have come from the area to the southwest of Tikal (David Stuart, personal communication, 1995). In a few instances, such as at Altar de Sacrificios, royal titles appear to change, hinting at subtle adjustments of status (see Stela 10:C9, Stela 11:C11, J. Graham, 1972, Figs. 31 and 32). Terms for ‘‘kingdoms’’ or polities continue to be elusive, although an expression for ‘‘earth-cave’’ (kab, ch’e:n) apparently refers to land or even the property of rulers (Yaxchilan Lintel 25:V1; Vogt and Stuart, n.d.); it is possible that the concept relates to the Mexican sense of an ethnic polity, an altepetl, or to the Yucatec notion of the cah, which defines identity and serves as an arena of local and regional politics (Restall, 1997b, pp. 13–19). A good deal is now known of Classic Maya geographic terms but relatively little of polity borders or their spatial extension (Stuart and Houston, 1994). Rather, the focus seems to have been on the person of the ruler and the royal court that surrounded him (Inomata and Houston, 2000). As places, Maya cities were organized as locations dedicated to ancestor veneration, housing royal courts (in palaces) and god effigies (in temples, or wayib’), accommodating the services and people necessary to their maintenance, and performance of political theater, including the reception and display of captives and tributes (see above; Houston and stuart, 1996; McAnany, 1998; Stuart, 1998). A recent discovery has been that hieroglyphs refer to a tributary economy in which goods of a special sort flowed into the royal court, and probably into lower-level courts as well (Stuart, 1998; see also Houston and Escobedo, 1997; Le Fort and Wald, 1995, for work that amplifies Stuart’s breakthrough, first developed in the early 1990s). Tribute was shown as heaps of textiles or neat packages that contain green feathers (usually bound as single fistfuls), paired Spondylus shells, and bundles of chocolate beans. These last were first detected at Bonampak, where a bundle painted on the west wall of Room 1 exhibits a text saying 5 pih kakaw (Houston, 1997a). According to David Stuart, the pih glyph refers to units of 8,000, a common sum for chocolate beans in Mesoamerica: thus, 5 pih kakaw equals 40,000 beans. Other bundles, as on K5453 in the Kerr catalog of Maya pots (see above), show numbers such as 3 pih, for 24,000 beans. Although much fainter, bundles with Spondylus shells occur to the side of the Bonampak reference, just under a throne where the ruler sits. A distinctive tributary garment seems to be worn by those offering such items. At Bonampak they consist of white cloaks and Spondylus collars; similar costumes occur on Yaxchilan Stela 7 and a painting on a ceramic from Tikal Burial 116 (Fig. 6; Culbert, 1993, Fig. 68a). Although 174 Houston Fig. 6. Tributary scene from Tikal (Culbert, 1993, Fig. 68a; courtesy of the University Museum, University of Pennsylvania). the image would seem slightly comical, these figures appear quite literally to be walking tribute bundles, including cotton cloth or mantas with richly embroidered selvage, feathers in the headdress, and shells. The demands of growing cotton and the effort in weaving it represented a considerable outlay of energy. On another monument, from the Guatemalan side of the Yaxchilan polity, a lord receives captives as tribute from a subsidiary lord (U-BA:K-ki/ti-ya-AJAW, u ba:k ti yajaw, ‘‘his captives for his lord’’; Schele and Miller, 1986, pl. 86). On the Tikal pot it is as if two of the lords have divested themselves of these treasures; they then kneel to present them to the overlord. Other tributary items were known as ika:ts, usually possessed as y-ika:ts, ‘‘his burden,’’ and could consist of jade objects or other bundles. The principal location for such tributary displays were the massive stairways that occur in most Maya sites (Stuart, 1998). These were less about movement up and down the stairway than dramaturgical pageants of wealth and tributary clout: stairways were more stationary points than mere routes of ingress or egress. The description of these lords seems to have been y-ebe:t (ye-b’e-ta [early] or ye-b’e-te [late]) or ‘‘his messenger’’ (David Stuart, personal communication, 1997), implying that they were sent by another, unseen and higher-ranking tributary who wished for some reason (perhaps self-preservation!) not to be present at the rendering of objects. The term for ‘‘messenger’’ may also have applied to deities with avian characteristics, rather like a Mercury concept of a winged emissary. Some supernaturals of this sort were likely to have been way or ‘‘companion spirits’’ (coessences or shared souls) of gods who did not ordinarily sprout wings. The connection Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 175 between these spirits and ‘‘sleep’’ (way) and dream visions reveals something of how the Maya understood the mechanism of communication between gods and humans. It is possible that another glyphic term used by messengers, mu:t or ‘‘bird’’ (a term in Yukatek for ‘‘fame’’ or ‘‘news’’), expresses an overlap between the notion of winged news, the motion of birds as metaphors for long-distance speech, and tribute embassies. The subject of tributaries raises the question of subroyal elites. This has been dealt with in other work (e.g., Villela, 1993; Houston and Stuart, 2000), but suffice it to say that there is now solid epigraphic evidence for such elites at many sites, especially in the western part of the Maya Lowlands. The sajal title is well-documented at this point (Schele and Freidel, 1990, pp. 262–305), yet it has been noted that the behavior of such individuals varies by kingdom: At Yaxchilan, the sajal seem more tightly bonded to their overlord, who often makes an appearance on monuments at subsidiary centers; in contrast, the sajal at Piedras Negras are more distant rhetorically from their lords, suggesting greater degrees of independence (Chinchilla and Houston, 1993). Research by Charles Golden indicates very different patterns of settlement: La Pasadita, patently under the control of Yaxchilan, appears to have been settled in deliberately defensive positions, spread over hilltops, possibly in response to its location close to a political border, whereas El Cayo and similar sites were more vulnerable and probably older in age (Golden et al., 1998; Lee and Hayden, 1988; Mathews and Aliphat, 1997). It may be that the heavy concentration of these titles in the Usumacinta drainage somehow reflects the folded, karstic landscape of the region, with its difficult routes of communication (Aliphat, 1994, pp. 176–185, 1996, pp. 28–29). Another site with an unusual abundance of identifiable secondary lords is Palenque (Schele, 1991). Excavations at the site, including some in the 1990s, have retrieved a number of stone supports for incensarios, many from the Temple of the Cross (Easby and Scott, 1979, pl. 175; Mayer, 1997; Schele and Mathews, 1979, pp. 281, 282, 303, 391). They show portrait heads with glyphs on stone flanges to the sides or on the back. Those texts that are complete refer without exception to subordinate figures and usually to their deaths. In addition, they seem to have been called portable stones (the exact translation still eludes us, but a causative suffix on a positional root is surely present), and may be paralleled by small altars found at Edzna and, possibly, at Piedras Negras (Mayer and Garcı́a Campillo, 1997). It is probable that these monuments represent death cults associated not with rulers, but with lesser figures at court, much like smaller mortuary altars documented at Tonina (Graham and Mathews, 1996, p. 103; Yadeun, 1993, p. 92). The portability of these monuments is intriguing, as is their connection to death and fire rituals. Subroyal elites may have been vener- 176 Houston ated through censing (a form of food for the dead? Stuart, 1998), in monuments that lend themselves to flexible use, in shifting settings. At Palenque, the monuments were probably placed on terraces in the Cross group, looking outward to the plaza below, as extensions of the perceptual fields known to have been identified and valued by the Classic Maya for their kings and lords (Houston and Taube, 2000; see also Hanks, 1990). They were deliberately situated in a context linked to the patron deities of Palenque, at some distance from the royal mortuary structures to the west (Schele and Mathews, 1998, pp. 95–132). This is not the place to present an overall synthesis of Classic Maya history, which has been attempted elsewhere (Culbert, 1991; Martin and Grube, in press; Proskouriakoff, 1993; Schele and Freidel, 1990). A related topic that is not yet settled to satisfaction is a distinct historical tradition connected to Yucatan and adjacent Mexican states (e.g., Garcı́a Campillo, 1998a, on Jaina; Voss and Kremer, 1998, on a singular sculpture with text and hunting scene). In the 1990s, much work has been done on the inscriptions of this zone, especially at Chichén Itzá (e.g., Garcı́a Campillo, 1995a, 1996, 1997, 2000; Graña-Behrens et al., 1999; Grube, 1994c; Krochok, 1991; Ringle, 1990; Schele et al., 1998; Schele and Mathews, 1998, pp. 197–204). Efforts have been made to link some of these Late to Terminal Classic dynasties to the central Peten of Guatemala. The reason, often explicitly stated, is to confirm continuities between the rich historical traditions of Classic sites in the southern Lowlands and records to the north, in an area that continued to maintain indigenous historical notations through the Postclassic, Colonial, and Modern periods. There is some merit to the suggestion that continuities and connections exist. For example, a term closely associated with a group of later migrants to Yucatan, Itsa, seems to occur far earlier in the central Peten, within an Emblem glyph title (‘i-tsa) used near Lake Peten Itza. Does this indicate, as some would suggest, that the Itsa of Chichen Itza came from the central part of the southern Lowlands? Should much later accounts of the Itsa be tied to Classic histories of that area? The Peten also has Classic-era instances of the name Kanek’. This epithet, too, is well documented in early Colonial sources that relate to the Yukatekan-speaking Itzaj of the central Peten—a people, incidentally, that surely came as late immigrants from a homeland to the north (Jones, 1998, pp. 89–96; Schele and Mathews, 1998, p. 203). Nonetheless, the results thus far of attempted correlations between Yucatec and Peten epigraphy and the Colonial-period Books of Chilam Balam (prophetic and historical documents) seem too loose to inspire great confidence. Often, names are repeated in Maya inscriptions, without clear evidence of contact between particular sites. For example, the term itsa may be one of many such terms attested in different parts of the Maya Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 177 Lowlands, of which another example would be the name Ek’ B’ahlam, attached in the Colonial period to a site in northern Yucatan but also found in a southern painted text from the area of Tikal (Tozzer, 1941, p. 60). There have been compelling studies pointing to similarities between later collective systems of rule—the so-called multepal pattern—involving coequal lords, perhaps some as primus inter pares (Schele and Freidel, 1990, pp. 346–376). The problem, however, is the recent discovery by Stuart that many of these ‘‘historical personages’’ appear to be deities (Stuart et al., 1999, p. 61). Some names are clearly the same as historical figures attested in later, Colonial-era documents, such as Koko:m and Hun Pik To:k’ (Grube and Stuart, 1987), but what is most striking is the difficulty of linking such promising data to what should be ready and easy fits. These difficult texts will continue to puzzle researchers. The enormous variability of glyphs and expressions, not all capable of being linked to better-understood southern texts, will make this the vanguard of Maya epigraphy in coming years. Glyphs and Archaeology at Piedras Negras, Guatemala Many archaeological projects at larger centers are operating with a historical sensibility, especially those at Caracol, Copan, and the Petexbatun region. Another such project is the Brigham Young/Universidad del Valle work in and around the city of Piedras Negras (Escobedo and Houston, 1997, 1998, 1999; Houston and Escobedo, 1998; Houston et al., 1998a,b, 2000). This work was inspired in part by earlier excavations by the University of Pennsylvania (Satterthwaite, 1937, 1943, 1954), Proskouriakoff’s (1960) epochal work on Maya history, which owed much to the close correlations between dates, stelae, and buildings at Piedras Negras, a useful ceramic study prepared long after the close of excavations (Holley, 1983), an excellent historical study of Piedras Negras’ neighbor and continual antagonist, Yaxchilan (Mathews, 1988, 1997), and some innovative archaeogeographic studies of the upper Usumacinta basin, where Piedras Negras lies (Aliphat, 1994, 1996). Finer studies of the ceramics now suggest that smaller phases can be linked with fair certainty to particular reigns, with implications for linking buildings and archaeological strata to royal patrons, or at least to particular reigns (Houston et al., 1998b). Building programs and urban expansion indicate counterintuitive patterns: The city as a dynastic seat seems to have come into existence before the development of a heavily settled landscape (Houston et al., 1999). This population is likely to have come from elsewhere, rather than as a reduction of preexisting local settlements, as part of a strategy of deliberate urbanization. Moreover, the city experienced massive leveling and platforming events that connect 178 Houston with Rulers 1 or 2: What had been individual platforms or buildings at the site, often perched on or near exposed bedrock, were articulated into a single flowing mass over a relatively short interval (Houston et al., 2000, p. 11). Child (e.g., 1998) found analogous evidence of systematic royal patronage in his studies of sweatbaths at the site. More detailed correlations between historical figures, events, and archaeology are also becoming clear at Piedras Negras. Certain buildings, such as Structure O-13, are described in a manner that explains enigmatic deposits. In this light, Burial 13, located in a plaza directly on front axis with the pyramid, can be seen as the reentered and burned tomb of Ruler 4, discussed in terms of fire-rituals and subsequent architectural modifications on Panel 3 from the site (Barrientos, 1997; Escobedo and Alvarado, 1998). Another royal tomb identified by glyphs was excavated in 1991 under Structure L5-1 at Dos Pilas. Despite spirited publicity, evidence from the tomb itself proved to be inconclusive hieroglyphically, although there remains a good chance that it contained the remains of Dos Pilas’ Ruler 2 (cf. Demarest et al., 1991); other royal tombs cued by hieroglyphic references occur at Copan, under Temples 16 and 26 (Sharer, 1999; Stuart, 1997b). The end of Piedras Negras can equally be understood in epigraphic terms. A reference to the capture of Ruler 7 of Piedras Negras by a ruler at Yaxchilan may explain the destruction of much of the palace, including the shattering of monuments commissioned by Ruler 7 (Houston et al., 1999). Chronological information is still under review, but there is reliable evidence that the city as a dynastic center came to an end as a result of a destructive, intrusive battle, to be resuscitated a generation later by squatters with distinct material culture. In short, the greater the degree of historical data, the more likely archaeologists are to see not gradual processes, but rapid shifts, growth, and dislocations. The historical filter paces change in ways that emphasize the workings of actors and specific decisions. The risk of historical evidence is that it may overdetermine explanation, involving as it does a strong ideological commitment to the ruler as individual and to his potentialities as an agent. REFLECTIONS The 1990s have been a decade of advance and consolidation on a scale of research unprecedented in glyphic scholarship. Major players in these discussions have passed on, and new ones arrived within an international community bonded by meetings and internet dialog but occasionally riven by tensions in a field influenced by intense public interest. Relations with archaeology have matured, despite a preoccupation with texts as propa- Advances in Maya Glyph Studies 179 ganda and an intermittently agonistic view of the methods and results of epigraphy (e.g., Henderson and Sabloff, 1993, pp. 457–459). The ‘‘conjunctive approach,’’ much lauded by Mayanists (Willey, 1982), has involved the combining and weighing of different categories of evidence, each with its own challenges. The conjunctions have not and will not always be successful, nor can epigraphy be expected to solve all archaeological mysteries, because the experiences related in glyphs may not be commensurate with the finds retrieved and studied by archaeologists. To insist that glyphs explain all material remains is to presuppose royal or elite control over most aspects of ancient Maya society. That circumstance would be most unlikely, given what we know of Maya polities and their apparently amorphous and indirect grip on ancient economies. Epigraphy is a social practice as well as an intellectual one. Anthropology departments in North American universities may perceive epigraphers as ‘‘overspecialized’’ with negative consequences for employment. This is exacerbated by the esoteric nature of glyphic evidence in relation to the philosophical and evolutionary materialism that predominates among an older, more established generation of gatekeepers in anthropological archaeology (Little, 1991, pp. 114–135). In Maya studies, ceramics and settlement patterns traditionally carry high prestige, and the leading practitioners have chosen these specialities as their focus. In Oaxaca and central Mexico, mediators in a hegemonic sense are more likely to be settlement pattern theorists, or those with explicitly scientific and theory-building orientation. Prestige systems operate differently in other countries with Mesoamericanists and Mayanists, but it will be interesting to see how institutions and departments nurture glyphic research over the next decade. A far-sighted view would see Maya glyphs as another valuable category of evidence, to be challenged and probed as students of the past prepare to engage the minds of ancients. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS As ever, I owe much to Dave Stuart for a decade of collegial and productive collaboration. My thanks go also to Federico Fahsen, Takeshi Inomata, Alfonso Lacadena, Patricia McAnany, John Monaghan, John Robertson, Andrew Robinson, Karl Taube, David Webster, Norman Yoffee, and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments. Jerry Sabloff helped with permissions. Because this is an essay of personal opinion, no one but the author should be held responsible for its judgments and idiosyncratic perspectives. Angela Close deserves gratitude for her editorial comments and patience with an overtardy submission. The excava- 180 Houston tions at Piedras Negras were codirected with my close colleague, Dr. Inf. Héctor Escobedo of the Universidad del Valle, under a permit authorized by the Instituto de Antropologı́a e Historia de Guatemala and its various directors, including Dr. Juan Antonio Valdés and Licenciada Liz Lemus. 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