Urcid Written

THEIR WAY OF W R ITING

Scripts, Signs, and Pictographies in Pre-Columbian America

ELIZABETH HILL BOONE and GARY URTONEditors

DUMBARTON OAKS RESEARCH LIBR ARY AND COLLECTION

WASHINGTON, D.C.

© 2011 Dumbarton Oaks

Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Their way of writing : scripts, signs, and pictographies in Pre-Columbian

America / Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gary Urton, editors.

p. cm.—(Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian symposia and colloquia)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-88402-368-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Indians of Mexico—Languages—Writing. 2. Indians of Central America—Languages—Writing.

3. Indians of South America—Peru—Languages—Writing. 4. Picture writing—Mexico.

5. Picture writing—Central America. 6. Picture writing—Peru.

7. Mayan languages—Writing. 8. Nahuatl language—Writing.

9. Quechua language—Writing.

I. Boone, Elizabeth Hill. II. Urton, Gary. III. Dumbarton Oaks.

f1435.3.w75t74 2011

497—dc22

010050788

General Editor: Joanne Pillsbury

Art Director: Kathleen Sparkes

Text Design and Composition: Melissa Tandysh

Jacket Design: Kathleen Sparkes

Managing Editor: Sara Taylor

Volume based on papers presented at the Pre-Columbian Studies symposium “Scripts, Signs, and Notational Systems in Pre-Columbian America,” organized with Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gary Urton and held at Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C., on October 11–12, 2008.

Cover illustrations: Inka khipukamayuq, drawing 137 of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva corónica y buen gobierno, 1615, photograph courtesy of The Royal Library, Copenhagen. Mixtec scribe, detail, folio 48v of the Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus.

www.doaks.org/publications

1 1 1

T he paradigm that informs this chap-ter owes much to the work of Roy Harris (1995,

2000), who, in two seminal publications, outlined an integrational semiological theory of writing. Among the premises underlying his approach is that writing does not necessarily constitute a set of meta-signs for spoken language. From an inte-grational perspective, speech and writing are coex-istent forms of communication that both compete with and complement each other in social life (Harris 2000:78). I posit that, to some extent, the scripts from southwestern Mesoamerica coded speech. But since clues to unravel their phonetic riddles are as of yet unavailable, the integrational model allows for an inquiry into their nonlinguis-tic communicative aspects and the exploration of semantic decipherments.

The integrational model also advocates the culturally and historically contextualized nature of the sign instead of a surrogational (as in the semiotics of Peirce, where the sign stands for something else [Hartshorne and Weiss 1932:228])

or a structural, systemic view (as in the semiol-ogy of Saussure [1959:114–120], where signification derives from the contrastive nature of the constitu-tive units). This means that the sign is not necessar-ily a preexistent given but generates, when needed, the grounding for bringing together a host of social practices (Harris 1995:50–55, 2000:69). One advan-tage of such a premise is its ability to account for semantic polyvalence in signs, which is contingent on context. It also accounts for spatially coeval and diachronic changes in sign systems.

An emphasis on contexts implies the analysis of syntagmatic relations at different levels (Harris 1995:45–49, 2000:84–90). In spoken and writ-ten language, the syntagm, or set combinations of signs that constitute meaning, is temporally or spatially sequential, but in other semiologi-cal systems such combinations are not similarly bounded, and the way they are put together adds additional layers of signification (Harris 2000:88). Since the support of the written sign is mostly spa-tial, focusing on the uses of the written surface is

6

The Written Surface as a Cultural CodeA Comparative Perspective of Scribal Traditions

from Southwestern Mesoamerica

j a v i e r u r c i d

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a profitable way to tackle macrosocial dimensions of meaning.

The focus of this chapter is, therefore, on the written surface, a leitmotif that will enable me to explore three themes revolving around the rela-tionship between writing, performance, and place-making; the relationship between writing, notions of personhood, and the body; and the semiology of scribal error. In the course of this exploration, I will compare cases drawn from several of the scribal traditions that developed differentially in south-western Mesoamerica throughout a span of some two thousand years.

By construing a writing system as a set of social practices associated with an inventory of written signs (Harris 1995:56), I can currently

identify at least six scribal traditions in south-western Mesoamerica (Figure 6.1). The Zapotec scribal tradition is the earliest. It endured some thirteen hundred years from the fifth century bc through the ninth century ad and spread over a large portion of central Oaxaca. The script, seem-ingly logosyllabic, has mostly an iconic signary, and in certain localities recourse to the homopho-nic principle based on an ancient version of the Zapotec language is most likely. The use of a sylla-bary appears to be confined to the spelling of per-sonal names and toponyms. Texts exhibit different formats and reading orders, but linearly aligned sequences seemingly map the syntax of the ancient Zapotec language(s). During the early uses of the script, events were temporally situated by means of

Monte Albán

Quicopecua/Cuilapan YagulLambityeco

Macuilxochitl

Cerro de la Campana

San José Mogote

Eloxochitlan

Chichicapan

Xoxocotlán

Ixcaquixtla

Río Grande

Piedra Labrada

Cola de Palma

Cerro Bernal

FracciónMujular

López Mateos

Zanacatepec

Tehuacan

MatatlanEl Palmillo

San Pedro Quiatoni

Cerro del ReyCerro de losTepalcates

AtzompaNazareno

La CiénegaZimatlan

Yogana

Etla

Noriega

Tututepec

Teotihuacan

Tepeaca

Veracruz

Puebla

Estadode México

Morelos

Guerrero

Oaxaca

Chiapas

Tabasco

0 50 100 km Pacific Ocean

Gulf of Mexico

Tequixtepec del Rey

San PedroAñañe

Cerro Ñuyoo

Huamelulpan

Cerro de la Caja

Santa María CamotlanCerro Yucuniza

Santo DomingoTonala

Tlaxiaco

Tilantongo

ÑUIÑE SCRIBAL TRADITION

COASTAL SCRIBAL TRADITION

CHIAPANEC SCRIBAL

TRADITION

Nejapa

Jalapa del Marqués

ZAPOTEC SCRIBAL TRADITION

POST–MONTE ALBÁN SCRIBAL TRADITION

LATER OAXACAN SCRIBAL TRADITION

Zaachila

figure 6.1 Known geographical extent of the scribal traditions from southwestern Mesoamerica and sites mentioned in the text. (Drawing by Elbis Domínguez.)

The Written Surface as a Cultural Code 1 13

year dates and day dates of a lunar count (Justeson and Kaufman n.d.), but the practice shifted during later uses to situating events temporally in terms of year dates only.

The Ñuiñe scribal tradition was seemingly derived from the Zapotec script and was used for some four hundred years, from the fifth to the ninth centuries ad (Moser 1977; Urcid 1996). Geographically, it encompassed southern Puebla and northwestern Oaxaca. The script appears to be logophonic, and the signary—which partakes predominantly of conventions from the Zapo-tec, and to a lesser extent the Teotihuacan, tra-dition—is mostly iconic. Texts are short and exhibit nonaligned, agglutinated formats. These usually include as the most prominent glyph the rendition of a royal headband that, depending on specific contexts, provides annual dates or sig-nals the calendrical names of rulers. Events were temporally situated by year dates and may have involved at some point a shift from set II to set III year bearers.1 The logophonic nature of the script implicates its use by diverse linguistic communi-ties, including Popoloca and Mixtec.

The Coastal scribal tradition also appears to have derived from the Zapotec script. It spanned some three hundred years, from the seventh through the ninth centuries ad, and spread through the eastern littoral of Guerrero and the western half of coastal Oaxaca (Urcid 1993; Urcid and Joyce 2001). The script is logophonic and its signary—which predominantly shares conventions from the Zapotec, and to a lesser extent the Teotihuacan, tradition—is mostly iconic, making it possible to encode and decode lexemes in various languages, including Chatino. No texts have been detected, and most glyphs appear to be name tags. The use of a temporal marker to specify year dates has been attested in coastal Guerrero only and is rendered in the style of the post-Teotihuacan Central Mexican tradition referencing set II year bearers.

The Chiapanec scribal tradition is a short-lived manifestation of some one hundred years, spanning from the fifth through the sixth centu-ries ad and geographically confined to the south-ern portion of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and

western coastal Chiapas (Navarrete 1976).2 The script appears to be logophonic and may have implicated several languages. The signary—which partakes of conventions from the Zapotec and Teotihuacan traditions—is mostly iconic. Signs exhibit at times a linear vertical arrangement, but these sequences do not seem to reflect a linguistic syntax. Some of the glyphs seemingly function as name tags. As of yet, no temporal marker for year dates has been attested.

The Post–Monte Albán scribal tradition also appears to be a short-lived script dating to the ninth through perhaps the eleventh centuries ad. The few known inscriptions have been found in the central valleys of Oaxaca and the Mixteca Alta (Urcid 2001:142–143). The script was most likely logophonic, and the signary involves Zapotec con-ventions that also foreshadow graphic practices of the subsequent scribal tradition, including the rendition of an interlaced royal headband to signal year dates, the mixed use of bars and dots and only dots to express coefficients, and set III year bear-ers. The signary is iconic, and most likely the script was used by speakers of various languages. No lin-early aligned texts are known, and glyphs appear predominantly as name tags and as toponyms. In addition, events were temporally situated by means of year dates only.

The Later Oaxacan scribal tradition, com-monly known as “Mixteca-Puebla” (Nicholson 1982; Nicholson and Quiñones Keber 1994) or “Mixtec” (Smith and Heath-Smith 1980:31–35), seems to have endured through some four hun-dred years, from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries ad, and exhibits the widest geographi-cal distribution. It is a logophonic script with a mostly iconic signary shared by speakers of dif-ferent languages. However, the local variant used in the Mixteca Alta is known to resort at times to the homophonic principle and thus encodes the Mixtec language (Jansen and Aurora Pérez 1983; Smith 1973). The users of the script did not ren-der linearly aligned texts, and glyphs were used predominantly as name tags and for rendering toponyms. Furthermore, events were temporally situated in terms of year and day of occurrence.

114 urcid

Writing, Performance, and Place-Making

The participants in most, if not all, of these scribal traditions wrote on monumental architecture, either on single or multiple surfaces. Facades cov-ered with inscribed orthostats; enclosures em -bellished with carved jambs, lintels, columns, or friezes; and open spaces punctuated by stelae formed ensembles that integrated a host of prac-tices. Apprehending the messages in such con-texts required movement; thus, the inscriptions symbolically reiterated past performances while at the same time served as a “script” for subsequent reenactments.

A most intriguing case of multiple carved sur-faces set in monumental architecture is that of the orthostats from Building L-sub, one of the earli-est known structures from Monte Albán, which dates to the beginnings of urban life around the fifth or fourth centuries bc. A heuristic reconsti-tution of their probable architectural context—based on the physical characteristics of the few carved megaliths found still in primary context in the southeastern facade of the basal platform, the position and orientation of the human figures carved on them, the extant corpus of similarly carved stones that have been found so far through-out the urban core, and the known characteristics

of the structure—evinces a composite narrative that most certainly was put together as part of the construction of the building, bespeaking a poly-semic message that, among other things, mimics the kinesis of the built space (Figure 6.2, bottom).3

The reconstruction shown in Figure 6.2 indi-cates with a thick line the orthostats that were found in primary context at the turn of the twenti-eth century. The gray area refers to a section of the wall that has not been explored and that most likely contains carved orthostats still in situ. The human figures carved on individual stones proceed in a boustrophedon sequence as if rendering the ascent of personages along the staircase that gave access to the top of the platform. Thus, we can put to rest the pervasive notion among scholars that the native cognitive apprehension of the carvings was like seeing from above the outline of a dead body in a crime scene. While there are precedents for native representations of all-encompassing scenes, like one in the Codex Añute (Selden) of a ritual circular dance (Figure 6.3), the scanning from the point of view of the scribe is not from above. Otherwise the representational mode would have rendered the top of the dancers’ heads and the projection of their upper and lower extremities in different planes. Rather, the perspective is that of the drummer in the center of the circle of dancers,

figure 6.2 Hypothetical reconstruction of the southeastern basal facade and of a structure on top of Building L-sub at Monte Albán (ca. 400 bc). (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)


scanning simultaneously from different points of view (Uspensky 1972). Hence the profiled figures around 360 degrees.

The boustrophedon sequence of the narra-tive in Building L-sub is equally evident in the recontextualization of the cornerstones inscribed with texts (Figure 6.4). The one in the bottom row, carved on three contiguous orthostats, displays a well-known syntactical structure that begins at the top of the cornerstone with a year date and ends at the bottom of the third block with the iconic sign of a tied bag. A reversed textual sequence of three columns, this time carved on two contiguous stones in the middle row, is evident from the plac-ing of the glyph of the tied bag at the bottom of the corner stone. From this placement, one can deduce that an inscribed monolith is still missing, whose text must start at the top with another year date. In the monolith on the top row, the year date indexes the continuation of the boustrophedon reading; its occurrence at the bottom most likely enhanced the viewing of the year sign, given the higher position of the carved stone. Because of its two columnar

inscriptions, one can surmise that there is another as of yet unfound orthostat that has the rest of the text ending at the top with the sign of a tied bag.4

The reconstruction of the basal facade of the building by no means exhausts the available cor-pus of similarly carved stones. One of several additional yet distinct groups is characterized by figures with attributes of old age, such as wrinkles in the cheeks, beards, and hunchbacks (see Figure 6.2, top). Some of the carved orthostats in this group have two and even three of their surfaces carved with elder personages displayed in overall upright position. The carving of such multiple sur-faces hints at their function as cornerstones and as jambs that framed an entrance. Thus, these stones probably formed part of an enclosure built some-where on top of the platform, suggesting that the ascent of the figures shown in the facade, all with physiognomic features of younger adults, is not just performative but signals age-related promotions.

The composition of rows in both the basal wall and the hypothesized structure at the summit alternates figures rendered in vertical postures at

a ba ba b

figure 6.3 Scenes from codices where a centrally embedded perspectival view scans simultaneously in multiple radial directions: a) Codex Añute (Selden), page 7-I; and b) Codex Tonindeye (Zouche-Nuttall), page 76. (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

116 urcid

D139 D140 D141/104(reconstructed)

D142

M21

unattestedorthostat

unattestedorthostat

figure 6.4 Hypothetical placement of the corner monoliths from the southeastern facade of Building L-sub at Monte Albán and the boustrophedon reading sequence of their texts. (Drawing by Elbis Domínguez.)


the bottom with figures shown in horizontal posi-tions at the top. Such a syntagmatic relation con-forms to the pan-Mesoamerican representational trope that counterpoises the ontological status of the living with the ontological status of ancestors. Nowhere in the available figural corpus is there a hint of the contrasting strategy of rendering the prominence of a captor and the submissiveness of captives, although the nominative signs in the texts appear to identify as many as three of the early rulers from Monte Albán, and iconic allusions to decapitation are present in four smaller orthostats whose context within the narrative is uncertain. Elsewhere, I (n.d.) have proposed that the narrative in this building, rather than displaying sprawled, slain captives, renders members of the different constituencies that made up the political structure of the pristine state institution, including warrior sodalities whose members are shown symbolically in the act of bloodletting from the genitals (sig-naled by scrolls in the groin areas), as a prelude to engaging ancestral beings for the purpose of war-related oracles. Thus, this narrative served primar-ily the purpose of fostering community identity in the face of a new development of urban life amid regional factionalism and competition.

The use of writing as a prop to performances revolving around inscribed monuments and to choreograph ritual movements can also be dem-onstrated with a peculiar stone from the Zapotec scribal tradition (Figure 6.5). The monolith is a square parallelepiped with a quadrilateral aperture in the center. Six of its ten well-dressed surfaces are inscribed. The inscription includes a year date and the calendrical names of three persons, one of whom has in the adjacent lateral surface a glyphic compound that depicts a human lower body seated cross-legged. Given the way the stone is now dis-played, this glyphic compound is seen inverted. A comparative analysis of other occurrences of the sign “Lower Body Seated Cross-Legged” strongly suggests that it indexes accession to high office (Van Meer n.d.), and the naming of two additional persons in the stone may constitute a record of dynastic succession or identify the parents of the installed ruler. In its architectural context, the

monolith was most likely the capstone to a quad-ripartite memorial erected in the center of a plaza, within what scholars refer to as a Temple-Plaza-Altar (Winter 1986) (the “altar” being the basal remnants of quadripartite memorials like the one reconstructed in Figure 6.5). The way the glyphs are carved (some as if wrapping around adjacent surfaces) implies that in order to visually scan the inscription, the viewer had to perform circumam-bulatory movements that began inside, at the cen-ter of the memorial and underneath the opening on the stone and roof, and proceeded outward to each of the four quarters.

An analysis of a carved slab from Monte Albán rendered on a single surface, but whose external syntagmatics are unknown, provides a clue to interpreting composite architectural narratives in other scribal traditions from southwestern Mesoamerica, which also implicate ritual perfor-mances (Figure 6.6). The slab depicts a ruler, shown as a jaguar-lord named 11 Rain, pronouncing a statement encoded by the signs “Serpent Rattles–Mat–Roots–Lower Body Seated Cross-Legged.” He appears standing on the sign representing the quadripartite division of the earth with fire and smoke scrolls on either side, and each corner is marked by the butt of a dart. Pre-Hispanic and early colonial documentary evidence attests that when rulers acceded to high office, they kindled a new fire, shot arrows or darts to the four corners of the world to symbolically demarcate the terri-tory under their control, and sent four lords to the four ends of such claimed territory to distribute the land among nobles (Oudijk 2002). The year 13 Deer inscribed on the left side of the slab undoubtedly marks the date of enthronement of 11 Rain.

Such a symbolic expression of the ruler’s role in centering the world and claiming territory in ceremonies of enthronement appears to be alluded to in several now out-of-context carved stones from Cerro de la Caja near San Pedro y San Pablo Tequixtepec, in the Mixteca Baja of northwest-ern Oaxaca (Rivera 2000, 2002) (Figure 6.7).5 The monoliths in question, some of them with two surfaces carved and evidently set as cornerstones, either render jaguar-lords with their calendrical

118 urcid

inverted

glyphs “Lower Body Seated Cross-legged”

a

b

c

d

figure 6.5a) Capstone of unknown provenience carved with Zapotec inscriptions (ca. ad 600); b) its display in the Museo Regional de Oaxaca, Oaxaca; c) its hypothetical architectural context; and d) a diagram of the circum-ambulatory movements needed to scan its inscribed surfaces. The stone is now stored in the cloister of the convent at Cuilapan, Oaxaca (cat. no. 10-4379). (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

a

b

c

d


figure 6.6Slab 1 from Mound II at Monte Albán and the glossing of its inscription (ca. ad 500). (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

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c da b

e f g

wallwall

cornercorner

c da b

e f g

wallwall

cornercorner

figure 6.7 Carved stones from Cerro de la Caja and its environs and their hypothetical setting in monumental architecture (ca. ad 600): a) Stone 18, unknown provenience, Museo Comunitario Memorias de Yucundaayee, San Pedro y San Pablo Tequixtepec; b) Stone 24, unknown provenience but said to come from the environs of San Pedro y San Pablo Tequixtepec, Museo de Tehuacan, Tehuacan; c) Stone 19, unknown provenience, Museo Comunitario Memorias de Yucundaayee, San Pedro y San Pablo Tequixtepec; d) Stone 17, unknown provenience, Museo Comunitario Memorias de Yucundaayee, San Pedro y San Pablo Tequixtepec; e) Stone 7, Cerro de la Caja, in situ; f) Stone 2, Cerro de la Caja, in situ; and g) Stone 1, unknown provenience, plaza of San Pedro y San Pablo Tequixtepec. (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

a

e

b


c da b

e f g

wallwall

cornercorner

c da b

e f g

wallwall

cornercorner

c da b

e f g

wallwall

cornercorner

f g

c d

122 urcid

identifiers or depict personages whose figures are mostly subsumed by their glyphic names but whose hands, projecting from the nominal car-touches, hold warfare paraphernalia. Some of the imagery on other carved monuments from Cerro de la Caja and its environs explicitly shows such synecdochical renditions of rulers vanquishing captives with clubs or jaguar-lords devouring cap-tives, a symbolic visual substitution for the enact-ment of human sacrifice. The actual construction of these commemorative platforms was probably ritualized when the inscribed basal cornerstones were set in place, but the symbolic act of center-ing those four quarters and thus demarcating the polity’s boundaries by graphic allusions to con-quest and sacrifice would have been performed at the time rulers took office. This practice of carv-ing composite narratives set in monumental plat-forms to publicly validate access to political power was geographically and temporally widespread throughout southwestern Mesoamerica, as may be seen in similar examples from Huamelulpan in the Mixteca Alta (200 bc–ad 200) and Río Grande 2 in coastal Oaxaca (ad 600–900) (Urcid 1993:146–148 and 151, fig. 12). We also know that at least by the sixth century bc, writing in certain parts of southwestern Mesoamerica served the purpose of guiding movement within architectural spaces and regulating ritual performances while simulta-neously inscribing social memories through their reiterations.

Such uses evince the role played by writing in the cultural construction of spaces. Place as expe-rienced space is constituted through interactions and thus is relational. Being a product of embedded material practices, place-making is a never-ending process. It is also the “simultaneity of stories-so-far” (Massey 2005:9). The examples discussed earlier have already illustrated the relationship between writing and human-made temporal spa-tialities, but it is worthwhile to single out two other cases because of the way in which the written sur-face was used and because of the implications that can be derived from their broader contexts.

Writing in southwestern Mesoamerica was displayed not only in the built environment, as I

have amply shown, but also in largely unmodi-fied landscapes. Localities such as caves and open spaces are known to have inscriptions.6 These must have integrated a host of activities related to, among other things, the consecration of spaces, the marking of territorial boundaries, and the promo-tion of anamnesis aimed at creating and reinforc-ing identities and social memory.

The earliest known example of the use of writ-ing in southwestern Mesoamerica involves Monu-ment 3 from San José Mogote, a carved stone found atop a large pyramidal platform that symbolically replicated a hill. Space limitations prevent me from fully justifying the argument for deducing the probable original context of the monument shown in Figure 6.8. Suffice is to say that independently of the debate over its dating (ca. 600 bc [Flannery and Marcus 1990:42–50, 2003:11803] or 200 bc–ad 200 [Cahn and Winter 1993]), the monolith—although found in situ—must have been reused because as it lies in a horizontal position, it seems to lack a portion of its left side (behind the figure’s head). The iconicity of the imagery appears transpar-ent: it depicts a human figure with closed eyes and the Heart glyph on its chest, from which a flow of blood emanates, ending in two drops that drip over the front narrow surface of the block. The Heart glyph is marked on each one of its three lobular extensions by the iconic rendition of nose plugs, a graphic convention that indexes the notion of “pre-ciousness” (for similar examples of Zapotec graph-ics, see Urcid 2003c:82, fig. 10). The calendrical sign 1L (1 Eye) is carved between the legs. The latter may mark the identity of the sacrificial victim or that of the captor.

Given the centrality of human sacrifice in ancient Mesoamerican ideology, it seems unlikely that the primary context of the carved megalith would have been a secondary transit over Build- ing 1. Rather, the stone could have been originally associated with a temple in order to mark the place where human immolation was enacted or where certain postsacrificial bodily transformations of the victim(s) were performed. In this location, the stone would have had a similar function as the much later circular monument of Coyolxauhqui

The Written Surface as a Cultural Code 123

placed at the base of the staircase for the shrine dedicated to Huitzilopochtli in the Templo Mayor of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. The similarity in body postures in both representations may denote the act of falling from stairs, graphically replicating the treatment of the victims after their sacrifice.

Another example of writing as place-making is known from Cerro de los Tepalcates in Chacahua, coastal Oaxaca.7 During low tide, the prominent hill forms part of the seashore, but when high tides rise, it becomes isolated by peripheral mangroves. The local name of the place attests to the evidence

of human activities, most of which appear to in -volve a burial ground. Here and there, lifted small slabs attest to much looting at the locality, but the place is also characterized by a concentration of large exposed boulders with extensive horizontal and vertical flat surfaces (Figure 6.9). Some of these boulders are marked with day signs, most likely calendrical names of persons who were memorial-ized in the context of the cemetery (although spa-tially unrelated to actual graves) or by kin members who visited their ancestors and left their personal-ized marks on such a unique landscape.

figure 6.8 Monument 3 from San José Mogote, its probable architectural context, and its comparison to the Mexica monument of Coyolxauhqui. (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

12 4 urcid

N1768905

N1768910

N1768915

N1768920

N1768925

E637370 E637375 E637380

N

Group 3

Group 4Group 7

Group 5

Group 2

Group 1

Group 6

figure 6.9 Exposed boulders at Cerro de los Tepalcates, Chacahua, Oaxaca, inscribed with calendrical names (ca. ad 600). (Photograph by the author; drawing by Elbis Domínguez.)


Writing, Notions of Personhood, and the Human Body

Most of the known inscriptions dating between the fourth and ninth centuries ad, particularly in the case of the Zapotec scribal tradition, come from mortuary contexts within domestic set-tings. Elite tombs were painted with murals, and their jambs, lintels, sealing-stone doors, and roof slabs were inscribed. Some of the material cul-ture placed as mortuary offerings was also used as a canvas for writing. Mausoleums were at times built above tombs, facing the interior patios of houses, or set in their centers as quadripartite memorials. Their facades included entablatures whose friezes were decorated with narratives and inscriptions rendered on stone, fired clay, or mod-eled stucco (e.g., Boos and Shaplin 1969; Urcid 2005b:132–146, 2006). Elsewhere, I (2005b, 2008b) have commented that writing in domestic contexts dealt foremost with genealogical reckonings, argu-ing that such messages served—in the context of differentially ranked corporate groups—as a way to legitimate or contest membership and thus to validate unequal access to the landed estates and offices that conveyed power.8

One question, however, is who were the in -tended audiences when messages rendered in a multiplicity of media were mostly entombed either as part of the mortuary facilities or as part of the offerings meant to memorialize and accom-pany deceased persons. Tombs do not represent single or unaltered snapshots of ritual life; they were dynamic mortuary facilities, opened mul-tiple times not only to bury sequentially the dead but to conduct rituals to propitiate the ances-tors. Thus, such deposits are cumulative yet frag-mented accretions of practices encompassing arenas beyond death rituals and their domestic setting. There are reasons to assume that prior to their placement with the dead, portable genealog-ical slabs, miniature stone versions of tomb and mausoleum facades carved with names of people, and other similarly inscribed objects—including ceramic effigy vessels—were deployed outside the tombs and even beyond domestic contexts, being

circulated, repositioned, and displayed in a vari-ety of as yet unknown settings (Figure 6.10).

Evidence in support of such an assumption is best provided by the genealogical slabs (Figure 6.11).9 Most of the known ones have unattested pro-veniences, and only some of the few that have been found in tombs are intact; the rest were broken and incomplete. One extraordinary example—found tumbled but in a pristine condition inside Tomb 5 from Cerro de la Campana, Suchilquitongo—is sin-gularly carved on four of its five dressed surfaces (Figure 6.11b). Even though it appears that at one point while being inside the tomb it was set in a ver-tical position, the syntagmatic relations between all its carved surfaces bespeak another context in which, as a stela, it would have triggered ample movement in order for a viewer to fully appre-hend its messages. The carved lateral sides provide, based on epigraphic details, additional informa-tion on two of the four personages rendered in the registers on the front surface. The sequence of these lateral texts indicates that the scanning of the messages on the three vertical surfaces of the monument proceeds from bottom to top, broadly mimicking the temporal and spatial domains of the ancestors (before/below) and the living (now/above). In order to see the messages, a viewer would have had to move around the monument once the frontal surface had caught his attention. Yet, the height of the stela is such that to read the inscrip-tions on the top surface it was not enough to stand on one’s toes. Therefore, the previous context of the monument may have been a niche at the base of a staircase, like those documented in the Temple-Plaza-Altar architectural complexes. This way, the inscriptions on the upper surface would have been legible as people descended from the staircase.10

Ceramic effigy vessels, especially those that have signs inscribed on them (including day names), may also be employed to argue for the much broader use of material culture found inside tombs. Their consideration in a discussion of writing is based on the skeuomorphism between glyphs in the script’s signary and attributes of the effigy ves-sels (Figure 6.12). In some instances, these objects were manufactured as sets of five and arranged as

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quadripartite tableaus to reenact the order of things. But because of their particular biographies, in some cases they ended up as single items in mortuary deposits or as offerings dedicated to the consecration of temples and carved stelae. The portability of these aesthetically charged objects favors the idea that they were used to mediate important aspects of a myriad of ritual behaviors.

The study of these ceramic effigy vessels has led to different perspectives about past notions of personhood and the divine. One view posits that they were material instantiations of “supernatu-ral” entities, that is, the vessels were gods. Thus, the signs inscribed on some of them are assumed to be the calendrical names of deities (Caso and Bernal 1952). Another view postulates that they mimicked


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figure 6.10Model of the social dimensions of Zapotec material culture inscribed with genealogical records (ad 400–800): a) entrance to the main chamber of Tomb 5, Cerro de la Campana, Santiago Suchilquitongo, framed by Jambs 9 and 10 and Stucco Bust 2, in situ; b) lintel of Tomb 1, Mound 1, Quicopecua, in situ; c) rollout of painted murals, Tomb 104, Monte Albán, in situ; d) stone slab sealing the entrance to Tomb 28, Terrace C, Yagul, in situ; e) tableau of five effigy vessels, entrance to Tomb 104, Monte Albán, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City; f) hypothetical reconstruction of mausoleum built above Tomb 6, Mound 195, Lambityeco; g) stone miniature replica of a mausoleum’s facade, attributed to the Etla district, central valleys of Oaxaca, Leigh Collection, former Museo Frissell, Mitla (cat. no. 12582); h) stone miniature replica of a tomb’s facade, San Pedro Quiatoni, Ethnographic Museum, Berlin (cat. no. 26837); i) slab of unknown provenience, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City (cat. no. 6-6059); and j) effigy vessel probably from Etla, central valleys of Oaxaca, Dolores Olmedo Museum, Mexico City (Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, cat. no. p.f. 100, lo 32). (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

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humans who invoked “natural forces” through rit-ual, thus misconstruing Zapotec religion as ani-matistic (Marcus 1983a, 1983b). Common to these two interpretative camps is the imposition of a Western binary construct: natural/supernatural. A third opinion is that the effigy vessels repre-sented ancestral beings in the act of personifying divine notions intimately related to the mantic

system embedded in the 260-day calendar (Sellen 2002, 2007).

In ancient Mesoamerica, the constructed notion of personhood did not place exclusive emphasis on—among other values—free will, positivism, and assertiveness. The ontology of the person was not individual or centered in the self. Rather, personhood was construed in terms

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figure 6.11 Examples of portable Zapotec slabs carved with genealogical records (ad 600–800): a) slab from a cist in Mound 4, Noriega, Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, Oaxaca (cat. no. 10-104365); b) stela in the main chamber of Tomb 5, Cerro de la Campana, Santiago Suchilquitongo, in situ; c) slab attributed to San Baltazar Chichicapan, present whereabouts unknown (after photograph by John Paddock); d) incomplete slab, unknown provenience and whereabouts (after photograph in Sotheby’s Parke Bernet auction catalog, 1972); e) incomplete slab, Tomb 6, Mound 195, Lambityeco, Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, Oaxaca; f) slab embedded in the wall of a house in Matatlan, probably from El Palmillo; g) slab from La Ciénega, Zimatlan, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City (cat. no. 6-6060); and h) left half of slab, unknown provenience, storeroom of the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, Oaxaca (cat. no. unknown). (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

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of contextualized relationships with other forms of “being” (López Austin 1996, 2004). Such rela-tional epistemologies generated notions of persons as “dividuals,” that is, as entities whose existence is based on extensions or transformations of the self (Bird-David 1999; Fowler 2004). The resulting ontological taxonomies thus significantly changed the way concepts such as “person,” “ancestor,” and “deity” were constructed.

Given the mortuary context in which Zapo-tec effigy vessels are frequently found, one may assume that their use mediated relationships between persons living in the earthly plane and persons living in parallel ancestral planes. And since the effigies in these vessels embody “other than human” beings, their use seemingly medi-ated as well relationships between mortals and the divine. Thus, effigy vessels formed part of

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a b c d e ffigure 6.12 Zapotec effigy vessels inscribed with calendrical names (ad 500–800): a) seated woman named 13 Alligator (glyph 13V), Atzompa, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City (cat. no. 6-388); b) standing man named 3U, Yogana, former Museo Frissell, Mitla (cat. no. 928); c) seated man named 12 Maize (glyph 12J), unknown provenience and whereabouts (after Kerr 1992:K6458); d) seated man named 12 Night (glyph 12F-Owl), unknown provenience, former Museo Frissell, Mitla (cat. no. 13010); e) seated man named 5 Eye (glyph 5L), unknown provenience, Museum für Volkerkunde, Hamburg (cat. no. 51.59.17); and f) seated woman named 1 Night (glyph 1F-Owl), cistern no. IV at Monte Albán, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City (cat. no. 6-78). (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

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technologies of communication that served criti-cal purposes in validating the sociopolitical inter-ests of the elite and that were efficacious means of creating memories in the context of conflicting orders generated by a social hierarchy of unequal power relations.

The great majority of known effigy vessels rep-resent masked persons, and one of the most fre-quent personifications is that of the dual-gendered rain deity. Others depict humans partially or fully transformed into diverse beings such as jaguars, bats, opossums, or owls, powerful symbolic com-mutations that suggest classificatory substitutions between certain entities and social institutions as well as notions of “parallel egos” and “alter-egos.” One of these “co-essences” concerns the visual conflation of humans and felines. The latter served as, among other things, symbols of aristocratic sta-tus and marked the political paramountcy of rul-ers as sacrificers of human and animal dividuals (Urcid 2005a). In the eyes of followers, such a role made rulers into social benefactors.

Focusing on a different kind of written surface allows me to explore other aspects of how person-hood was construed, particularly in terms of the cognitive categories of the living and the dead. The representation of ancestors in mortuary visual narratives is not lifeless. On the contrary, it is as if the ontological status of being dead was irrelevant when it came to issues of validating, promoting, or contesting membership in social groups and claiming the transgenerational transfer of property and rights. A distinctive trait of some of the writ-ten props in tombs is the rendering of inscriptions on lintels that have two of their surfaces carved in such a way that the message on the narrow frontal surface appears inverted in relation to the carvings executed on the underside, that is, the surface that encompasses the entryway into the tombs (Figure 6.13). The narrow surface of the lintels evidently broadcasted their contents to whoever approached the tombs upon entry. But to view the undersides—which span very low and narrow entryways—one has to be lying down, facing up, and with one’s head toward the posterior end of the funerary chambers, exactly the way ancestors were put to rest. That texts

inscribed inside the tombs were intended at times for the ancestors is also evident in the placement of carved surfaces of sealing door slabs toward the interior rather than the exterior of the entrances.

A comparison of how the written surface was treated in Zapotec mortuary contexts with analo-gous evidence from the Ñuiñe and Coastal scribal traditions is revealing. Tombs furnished with carved jambs and lintels are known in the Mixteca Baja, and some have painted narratives on their walls (Figure 6.14). There is also tantalizing evi-dence for friezes decorating mausoleums, although no such features built above tombs have been found so far. Yet portable carved slabs recovered from tombs do not contain genealogical reckonings. Rather, each one renders a single calendrical name with a host of agglutinated signs. These names most likely stand for ancestral beings, probably apical ancestors of groups that traced descent from them. While effigy vessels were also manufactured, at times with calendrical or noncalendrical signs, there is no evidence for sets that may have been used to form tableaus. The composition of narra-tives painted in tombs follows the same structure as in similarly placed Zapotec murals, with per-sonages on the lateral walls facing toward a main figure on the back wall. Such a structure evidently focuses attention on the apical ancestor. In the tomb from Ixcaquixtla in southern Puebla (Figure 6.14i), such an ancestral figure is shown as a rain-maker, brandishing bolts of lightning symbolized by obsidian eccentrics in the shape of undulating serpent bodies. While the accompanying lateral personages are devoid of their calendrical names, most of them are seemingly identified by personal appellatives indexed by helmets supported over wooden tripods or held by the personages with a hand placed inside them.11

No tombs with inscriptions have been reported for coastal Oaxaca, but a few stone monuments of unknown contexts appear to have short genealogi-cal records including triplets of calendrical signs (Figures 6.15a and 6.15e). One of them (Figure 6.15a), carved on a tall multiton monolith set as a stela (which we know because of a tenon in the lower portion), presents the three calendrical signs


figure 6.13 The carved lintel from Tomb 158 in Terrace 27 at Monte Albán (ca. ad 700). (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

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figure 6.14 Examples of inscribed Ñuiñe material culture from confirmed and suspected mortuary contexts (ad 500–700): a) slab of unknown provenience, Völkerkundemuseum, Frankfurt (cat. no. 34656); b) fragment of slab, Cerro Yucuniza, near Huajuapan de León; c) slab from Tomb 5, Cerro Nuyoo (Cerro de las Minas), Huajuapan de León; d) slab of unknown provenience, Leigh Collection, former Museo Frissell, Mitla (cat. no. 12588); e) slab purchased in Tepeaca, Puebla, Ethnographic Museum, Berlin (cat. no. 3595); f) effigy vessel purchased in Huajuapan de León, former Museo Frissell, Mitla (cat. no. 7419); g) effigy vessel from Tomb 5, Cerro Nuyoo (Cerro de las Minas), Huajuapan de León, Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, Oaxaca; h) bipod effigy jar, Cerro Nuyoo (Cerro de las Minas), Huajuapan de León; and i) rollout of painted murals, main chamber of Tomb 1, Ixcaquixtla, southern Puebla, in situ. (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

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figure 6.15Examples of inscribed coastal material culture probably associated with mortuary contexts (ad 600–800): a) Stela 3, Cola de Palma, near El Ciruelo, in situ; b) Stela 3, Piedra Labrada, near Ocelotepec, in situ; c) Stela 1, Cerro del Rey, Río Grande, in situ; d) stela of unknown provenience, Museo Comunitario Yucu Sa’a, Tututepec; e) Stela 11, Piedra Labrada, near Ocelotepec, next to the basketball court in the community; f) Talum carved vessel, unknown provenience, Gentling Collection, Fort Worth; g) Talum carved vessel, unknown provenience (after Kerr 2002:K8596); and h) fragment of Talum carved vessel, unknown provenience, Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton (cat. no. 1607). (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

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in an unusual epigraphic context that includes at the top a starry sky band, a symbolic reference to a comet in the form of a descending serpent, and an allusion to a powerful alter-ego equivalent to the Zapotec Xicani, the Mixtec Yahui, and the Nahuatl Xiuhcoatl.12 This latter representation, with jag-uar paws, is shown with inward split imagery (see Taube, this volume, for Teotihuacan examples of the same constellation of traits). Another differ-ence in the Coastal scribal tradition is the predom-inance of carved stelae, although it remains to be seen if these formed part of mortuary contexts. The pervasive theme in these monuments is the depic-tion of rulers identified by their calendrical names (Figures 6.15b–d), who are often shown as jaguar-lords and paramount sacrificers (Urcid 1993; Urcid and Joyce 2001).

In terms of portable inscribed objects, peoples from the western half of the Pacific littoral devel-oped around the eighth century ad a ceramic tech-nology similar to that of the region of Río Blanco in Veracruz. Dubbed “Talum carved,” this craft-ing tradition involved the production of different shapes of vessels molded with scenes. The molds to produce them were carved using graphic con-ventions similar to those followed by scribes from the central valleys of Oaxaca. The molded panels show scenes with single personages or with male-female or male-male couples facing each other and presenting or exchanging vessels and other items (Figures 6.15f–h).13 The personages are named, sug-gesting the depiction of short genealogical state-ments or the arrangement of marriage and other social alliances. Quite possibly, the scenes reference the actual vessels, implying that these items served similar functions as the different kinds of inscribed objects that in the central valleys of Oaxaca pro-moted legitimating claims to property and rights. Producing these vessels not only involved distinct biomechanical procedures to inscribe surfaces but also a particular mode of scanning the scenes. Most vessels repeat the same scene two or three times, a detail that substantiates their use to bond in some kind of contractual agreement two or more parties.

Throughout southwestern Mesoamerica a wide range of objects found mostly in mortuary

contexts was inscribed, suggesting the uses of writing to mark personal identity and to index real or attributed ownership (Figure 6.16). Exquisitely crafted vases, jaguar paw and bat claw vessels, stirrup-spouted jars, spatulas made of deer bones, stone manoplas for the ball game, shell trumpets, and dart throwers are but some of the examples of inalienable possessions used in ceremonial con-texts. For others, we do not have as yet a clue as to their purpose (Figures 6.16g–h). Objects made of prized materials, such as human bone, alabas-ter, polychrome ceramics, and (once metallurgi-cal technologies were implemented) metal alloys, carried additional layers of meaning on their in -scribed surfaces (Figure 6.17). Apprehending mes-sages in these portable materials was different than reading narratives in monumental architec-ture, tombs, and mausoleums because they did not necessarily elicit movement around the objects but provoked several other practices of manipulation and display.

The case of carved human bones illustrates another biomechanical procedure for inscribing surfaces, and such treatment required working with remains from recently deceased persons who had been defleshed (before the bone became devoid of collagen and lost its malleable properties). Based on the allusion to the taking of a captive on a com-plete carved skull of the Late Oaxacan scribal tra-dition, some of these examples may have derived from sacrificial victims, but graphic representa-tions and individuals buried with human man-dibles attached to their arms or used as pendants equally suggest that revered ancestral bones were also inscribed. The glyphic formats on some of the available mandibles that were used as pendants contain one or a triplet of calendrical names.14 These carved mandibles are additional evidence for the deployment of genealogical statements outside mortuary contexts.

Alabaster was a much prized material, undoubt-edly because of its origin in water depositions and its translucency. The scanning of the carved surfaces in alabaster vessels inscribed in the Zapotec, Ñuiñe, and Later Oaxacan scribal traditions most likely involved rotating the vessels, a mode of apprehension


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figure 6.16Objects from southwestern Mesoamerica bearing signs with numerals, most of which may be the calendrical names of their owners (ad 500–1500): a) ceramic vases, Atzompa, near Monte Albán; b) stirrup-spouted vessel, Tomb 104, Monte Albán; c) jaguar-claw vessel, Monte Albán, Museo Regional de Antropología Carlos Pellicer, Villahermosa; d) carved stone manopla, Monte Albán, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City (cat. no. 6-77); e) carved baton or spatula made of a deer tibia, Tomb 11, Mound 185, Lambityeco; f) carved wooden dart thrower, unknown provenience (probably from the Mixteca Alta), Pre-Columbian Collection, pc.b.144, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C.; g) stone cylindrical basin attributed to Zimatlan, Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, Oaxaca (cat. no. 10-104393); and h) ceramic plaque, house in Terrace 79, Monte Albán, Museo de Monte Albán. (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

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figure 6.17Inscribed human bones and alabaster vases (ad 500–1500): a) fragment of carved human right parietal attributed to Zimatlán, present whereabouts unknown, plaster cast in the American Museum of Natural History, New York (cat. no. 30/10729); b) carved human skull, unknown provenience, Oficina de Registro Arqueológico, Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, Mexico City; c) fragment of carved human mandible used as a pendant, Macuilxochitl, central valleys of Oaxaca; d) carved human mandible modified as a pendant, Santo Domingo Tonala, Mixteca Baja (after Rivera 2008:128, fig. 10); e) carved human mandible found as pendant, burial from Eloxochitlan de Flores Magón, Sierra Mazateca; f) alabaster vessel attributed to Yogana, former Museo Frissell, Mitla (cat. no. 13012); g) alabaster vessel, San Pedro Añañe, Mixteca Alta, present whereabouts unknown; and h) alabaster vessel, Tlaxiaco, Mixteca Alta, Musée du quai Branly, Paris (cat. no. 71.1924.13.2062). (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

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figure 6.18Inscribed miniatures from southwestern Mesoamerica (ad 500–1500): a) miniature ceramic slit-drum, unknown provenience, former Museo Frissell, Mitla (cat. no. 6303); b) miniature ceramic drum, unknown provenience, former Museo Frissell, Mitla (cat. no. 6306); c) miniature stone mano, Nazareno, eastern slope of Monte Albán, present whereabouts unknown; d) miniature stone yoke, unknown provenience, former Museo Frissell, Mitla (cat. no. 21466); e) incomplete baton made of a deer femur, unknown provenience but attributed to Zapotec Oaxaca, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library, Princeton (cat. no. 2); and f) miniature weaving baton carved from a nonhuman bone, Tomb 7, Monte Albán (bone no. 172i), Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca, Oaxaca. (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

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figure 6.19 The human skin as a medium for writing in southwestern Mesoamerica (400 bc–ad 1500): a–c) orthostats D55, D59, and D74, found tumbled in front of southeastern facade of Building L-sub at Monte Albán, Museo de Monte Albán (drawings by Elbis Domínguez); d) hollow ceramic effigy, unknown provenience, Leigh Collection, former Museo Frissell, Mitla (cat. no. 7756) (drawings by Elbis Domínguez); and e) mummified remains from a cave near Santa María Camotlan, Mixteca Baja, Musée du quai Branly, Paris (cat. no. 71.1894.66.1) (reprinted from Batres 1889).

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that provided much flexibility for reading the mes-sages. Storytelling could proceed forward or back-ward or begin at any point in the narrative sequence, depending on the position of the vessel and the direction in which the item was rotated.15 The type of material used, the way the surface was inscribed, and the content of the inscriptions suggest that these alabaster bowls were commissioned to influence social constituencies through competitive generos-ity and to function as mnemonic aids in the perpet-uation of memories.

Some inscribed objects are miniature versions of other items or, in the case of some effigy vessels and terracotta figures, larger-than-life representa-tions of human/animal “dividuals” (Figure 6.18; see Figure 6.12). Such variable scaling, as argued by Claude Lévi-Strauss (1966:23), results “from a sort of reversal in the process of understanding.” We often make sense of the totality of nonscaled entities by analysis, breaking them down into their constitu-ent parts. The strategy of miniaturization reverses that process.16 “The object as a whole becomes less formidable. By being quantitatively diminished, it seems to us qualitatively simplified” (Lévi-Strauss 1966:23). Being homologues of the actual entities they represent, miniaturization transforms triads of objects-makers-users into subjects. Lévi-Strauss further comments that miniatures are not simply projections or passive substitutes but active ele-ments in “a real experiment.” In other words, “as we come to understand what has been left out of the miniature, we also come to understand what is essential in the original” (MacCannell 2005:96).

Although the few known examples pertain to the Later Oaxacan scribal tradition, skeletal rem-nants of nonhuman species were incised with pat-terned sequences of day signs. Such patterning indicates that these bones contain mantic formulas based on the 260-day calendar and that they were used as charters for descrying and divination (Pohl and Urcid 2006). Most of the known examples are miniature versions of weaving batons, suggesting a metaphorical linkage between the production of tex-tiles and intricacies in the foretelling of outcomes.

At present, little can be said about the rela-tionship between writing and the perception of

the human body. Yet although the available evi-dence is sparse and mostly indirect, it appears that the human skin was also used for rendering inscriptions (Figure 6.19). Several of the figures carved on the orthostats that formed the narrative in Building L-sub at Monte Albán have inscrip-tions partially overlapping their bodies, although this may be akin to the name tagging of person-ages in Maya writing. Another outstanding exam-ple involves a small hollowed terracotta figure of unknown provenience that renders a Zapotec-style text on its back, on the posterior side of the neck, and on the anterior surface of the upper arms. The back of the head may have been inscribed as well, but at some point in the recent cultural biogra-phy of the object, the broken head was replaced by another one incised with pseudo-writing. Direct evidence of the use of human skin as a canvas for writing comes from the naturally mummified remains of several persons found in a cave near Santa María Camotlan in the Mixteca Baja. Their tattooing includes signs that belong to the Later Oaxacan scribal tradition. But the actual number of mummies, the full variety of the signs that were inscribed on their skin, and the specific anatomical places where they were executed remain unknown (Batres 1889).

Scribal Error

In our own scribal tradition, we commonly crum-ple the written surface and toss it into a wastebasket (if inscribing on paper using varied biomechanical means) or obliterate our mistakes with the elec-tronic pulses of digital technologies (if using a word processor). We ignore the full range of possible responses that ensued when scribes in southwest-ern Mesoamerica wrote on perishable media and then made a mistake. But the treatment of writing on stone in such cases helps us not only to under-stand the semiology of scribal error (allowing us to detect inscriptions that were rendered invalid or unrelated to subsequent messages), but also to make sense of the inversion of signs in otherwise unblemished inscriptions.

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Although unique, the corpus of Zapotec in -scriptions provides us with a telling case: one of the cornerstones that in a secondary use ended up being placed in the northeast corner of the basal body of the South Platform at Monte Albán (Figure 6.20). This megalith is carved on three of its surfaces. An unfolded view evinces that one surface has a draft-ing of what is rendered on the opposite side. A close comparison of the two carvings discloses not only the process of carving but also the mistake. The carver began by making the outline of the entire imagery and of the accompanying text. The mis-take was omitting a pair of human footprints in the middle of the vertically aligned inscription. There is no doubt that a pragmatic consideration, that is, the ready availability of a large block of stone, nar-rowed down possible responses. But instead of eras-ing the mistake by chiseling the surface, the scribe used the opposite surface to redo the carving. Yet we can see that the configuration of the stone could not have prevented the scribe from reinscribing the monument by simply turning over the large mega-lith on its own vertical axis. Rather, once the stone was turned over, the scribe proceeded with the new carving so that the faulty attempt was inverted in relation to the final version. Thus, the invalidated inscription ended up upside down, and once the orthostat was set as a cornerstone, the error was hidden from view.

There are two similar examples of carved orthostats from Building L-sub (D57 and D72; see Scott 1978), except that in these instances the carvings on the opposite sides of the megaliths are different. What may have triggered the rotation of the blocks on both the vertical and horizontal axes was their reuse at a later time, but it is evident that the intent was to leave testimony of the pre-vious messages.17 A similar process was followed in the case of the slab that sealed the entrance of Tomb 104 at Monte Albán (see Urcid 2005b:50–51, fig. 4.3). The stone has three of its surfaces carved, but the inscriptions on each surface display differ-ent orientations. Each time the stone was carved, the preceding inscription was not chiseled away. Rather, the block was simply rotated and carved on another surface to signal that the previous

text—by then turned sideways—contained an unrelated message.

Since inversion of inscribed surfaces seeming ly alludes to contrasting properties (valid/invalid, distant/near, forward/backward), the semiology of scribal error provides a hint as to the semantic value of inverted signs that occur in otherwise uncom-promised texts (Figure 6.21). In several instances the inversion involves glyphic compounds and is partial. For example, some calendrical names include the main sign in customary reading posi-tion, but the bent ends of one of the numeral bars or the dots—as evinced by the upside-down U-shaped notches within them—appear inverted (Figures 6.21c–d). In certain contexts, such inversions likely disambiguated references made to ancestral beings, some perhaps more distant than others.

Another relevant example includes the inverted heads, at times with closed eyes, inscribed on most of the orthostats that were reused in the con-struction of the three major architectural phases of Building J at Monte Albán and whose original setting is now lost (Figure 6.21h). Given the semio-logical implications of scribal error, the hypothesis of Alfonso Caso (1947) that these representations carry the semantic value of “death” seems substan-tiated. Yet contrary to the pervasive view among scholars (exceptions are Buigues 1993 and Carter 2008), there is no reason to extend metonymically such a value to that of “conquest.” Considering the interpretation that has been posited for the earlier narrative program in Building L-sub, one can also assume that the visual program originally consti-tuted by these orthostats made a grand statement honoring dead rulers and high-ranking warriors who provided their services on behalf of the polity centered at Monte Albán (their demise not being necessarily connected with death on the battlefield or with capture and sacrifice). The different attri-butes of the rendered faces, including facial marks and headgear, may index the rank or place of ori-gin of the honored heroes. The inscribed toponym in these orthostats, always the same, appears to name a particular locality at Monte Albán, and the signs above the hill glyphs and below the inverted heads provide the nominal identity of the deceased


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figure 6.20An example of scribal error on Monument SP2, northeast corner of the South Platform at Monte Albán, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City. (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

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figure 6.21 Examples of inversion of signs in the Zapotec scribal tradition (200 bc–ad 800) (a–d: standard and inverted collocation of numeral bars): a) glyph 13F (13 Owl) carved on the lintel of Tomb A from Xoxocotlan, present whereabouts unknown; b) glyph 10P (10 Xipe) carved on a ceramic vase, unknown provenience, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (cat. no. 1974.36.2); c) glyph 11B (11 Jaguar) incised on a ceramic cylindrical pedestal, unknown provenience, Museo Amparo, Puebla (cat. no. 1307); d) glyph 7Ñ (7 Ball Court) composed of cut blocks covered with stucco, remnants of a mausoleum associated with the houses of Tombs 139–141 in Terrace 21 at Monte Albán, in situ; (e–f: standard and inverted collocation of glyph J in the personal name Heart-Maize): e) glyphic compound carved on Monument SP9, South Platform, Monte Albán, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City; f) glyphic compound carved on Monument SP8a, South Platform, Monte Albán, Museo de Monte Albán; g) inversion of an entire linear text, Fragments S16 (top) and S11 (bottom), South Platform, Monte Albán, northeastern and northwestern facades, in situ; and h) inversion of a profiled head, inscription on Orthostat J105/106, embedded broken and incomplete in a wall from the second phase of construction of Building J at Monte Albán, in situ. (Drawings by Elbis Domínguez.)

b d

a

e

g h

f

c


personages. The narrative, rather than enumerat-ing towns subjugated by Monte Albán or delimit-ing its territorial boundaries, may describe a score of local people and those from neighboring com-munities who formed alliances with Monte Albán in the interests of the state.

Conclusion

The macroregional comparison of most of the now-identified scribal traditions of southwestern Mesoamerica evinces both the sharing of com-monalities and the existence of distinct practices that were contingent on differences in ethos and varied historical trajectories. We are far away from disentangling the web of connections in the intricate genealogy of these scribal traditions or the social processes that led to their prestige and, except for the Later Oaxacan scribal tradition, their eventual extinction. An analysis centered on the written surface attests to the rich semiological dimensions of inscribed materials that go beyond the contents of the rendered messages, opening a window into the role that writing played in a host of culturally constructed notions, including per-formance, place-making, personhood, and the body. The macrosocial uses of writing inferred thus far include, in the case of inscriptions anchored to monumental architecture, claims privileging the monopoly of political power. Although my dis-cussion of carved stones in monumental settings emphasized their primary context, these monu-ments were also imbued with values and meanings throughout their ancient biographies, either as a means to perpetuate or to disclaim political agen-das. An array of inscribed portable objects dis-played in a variety of nonhousehold settings and of inscribed mortuary fixtures within domestic con-texts was the outcome of a major preoccupation

with reckoning descent, disambiguating group membership, and claiming or contesting access to the means of production and to social positions that conveyed knowledge and power. Varieties of portable objects, some of them miniaturized, were inscribed to index personal identity and actual or attributed ownership. Other inscribed items, charged with much aesthetic value because of their materials and degrees of crafting, mediated group alliances and dyadic agreements, their exchange aimed at influencing the involved parties through competitive generosity. Other inscribed objects contained mantic formulas used as charters for prognostications, and the human skin may have been used as another movable prop for convey-ing messages or influencing inner states of being. Ultimately, these diverse uses imply that the gen-eral function of writing was to create and per-petuate social memories, with many examples of inscribed material culture used to promote, inte-grate, and guide a variety of ritual performances.

Acknowledgments

I am most grateful to several foundations for their support in the documentation of inscribed material culture from southwestern Mesoamerica (in the field, museums, and private collections) through-out the past three decades, including the Social Science Research Council (1986–1987), the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research (1987), the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies (2004), and the Latin American and Latino Studies Program at Brandeis University (2000–2008). A special note of grati-tude goes to Elbis Domínguez for crafting the illustrations included in this chapter. Thanks also to Elizabeth Boone for her insightful editorial comments.

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1 “Set II year bearers” refers to the names of the years drawn from day names 2 (Lightning/Wind), 7 (Deer), 12 (Soap plant/Grass), and 17 (Earthquake/Motion). “Set III year bearers” refers to the names of the years drawn from day names 3 (Owl/House), 8 (Rabbit), 13 (Reed), and 18 (Flint).

2 Examples of this scribal tradition are discussed by Taube, this volume, under the rubric of Teotihuacan writing, and include inscriptions from Cerro Bernal and Fracción Mujular, both in Chiapas. The extent of the scribal tradition shown in Figure 6.1 is further based on inscribed monuments from López Mateos, Chiapas, and Zanacatepec, Oaxaca.

3 The reconstruction of the platform’s facade shown in Figure 6.2 includes—following the catalog des-ignations of Scott (1978) and Urcid (1994)—stones D1–D18, D45, D47, D50–D53, D55–D60, D65, D66, D69–D71, D74–D77, D79/133, D84, D87/89/99, D90/J125, D91/WL9, D92/101/122, D93/146, D96/130, D105, D107, D108, D110/103, D112, D117–D121, D124, D125/128, D131, D132, D135, D137, D139–D140, D141/104, D142, I3, I6, J45a, J46, J63, J64, J66, J67, J69, J71, J72, J74, J76, J80, J85, J88–J90, J93, J95, J100, J109/113, J111/138, J115, J116, J120, J121, J124, J128, K1, K3–K7, M1–M16, M19–M21, N1, N2, N5, N8, N13/21, N18, N20, N23, N26, N30, N31, N40, Q5, Q6, S1, S2, VGE1, and VGA4. The reconstruction of the struc-ture atop the platform includes stones D48, D49, D54, D64/80/81, D68, D72a, D73a, D73b, I5, J61/123, N10, and N15.

4 As noted by Elizabeth Boone (personal commu-nication 2009), the glyphs in these three texts do not consistently face toward or against the read-ing order as they do in the mantic codices or in Aztec manuscripts. The closest analogue to such peculiarity occurs in the La Mojarra Stela, with its inward split of image-text along the central verti-cal axis of the monument (cf. Winfield Capitaine 1988:16–17). In a sense, the suggested reconstruc-tion of the facade of Building L-sub at Monte Albán exhibits an off-centered outward split between text and image.

5 For a similar argument applied to the composite architectural narrative assembled during the sec-ondary use of the carved orthostats that were even-tually set in the South Platform at Monte Albán, see Urcid 2001:ch. 5, 2005b:19–26.

6 For a discussion of inscriptions in the Ñuiñe scribal tradition rendered on the walls of a through-cave in the valley of Coixtlahuaca, see Urcid 2004.

7 These inscriptions were originally published by Jorrín (1974:fig. 19a) without much reference to their context. My visit to Cerro de los Tepalcates in 2003 yielded more glyphs, but I failed to locate those labeled 2, 5, 8, and 9 in her figure. The GPS readings that enabled a recording of the spatial dis-tribution of the inscriptions shown here were made by Arthur Joyce and Peter Kröeffes.

8 Since Zapotec genealogical records found in tombs and mausoleums were often rendered on a multi-plicity of carved surfaces, the generational sequence is not straightforward. For a model to ascertain genealogical sequences based on the identification of apical ancestors, see Urcid 2005b, 2008b.

9 The pervasive view among scholars is that these slabs focus primarily on recording marriage alli-ances. Yet there is ample evidence to demonstrate that the genealogical records inscribed on them are framed within imagery that alludes to diverse ritual practices besides marriage (Urcid 2003c).

10 A detailed exegesis of the slab from Tomb 5 at Cerro de la Campana and of its larger funerary and epigraphic context appears in Urcid 1992, 2005b:67–114. For detailed commentaries on other genealogical slabs, see Urcid 1995, 2000, 2003c, 2008c; Urcid and Winter 1989.

11 For detailed studies of a Ñuiñe carved slab, an inscribed Ñuiñe effigy vessel, and a Ñuiñe-style narrative painted in a tomb, see, respectively, Urcid 1996, 2003b, 2008a.

12 Despite temporal and spatial variations in south-western Mesoamerica and the central high-lands, the full-bodied graphic representation of this alter ego included a zoomorphic face with upturned nasal appendage, a turtle carapace or sectioned serpent’s body, and a stepped, compos-ite tail. In early colonial native documents, the Mixtec word Yahui appears glossed in Spanish as “Necromancer” (a sorcerer who practiced divi-nation through communication with the dead [i.e., with ancestral spirits]) (Smith 1973:63). The Nahuatl word Xiuhcoatl literally means “Comet-Serpent” or “Turquoise-Serpent” (Molina 1977 [ca. 1571]:27v [“Cometa grande que parece gran

n o t e s


llama”], 159v [“Xiuitl”]). Among the Mexica, the term was an epithet for the blue insignia (a dart thrower) of Huitzilopochtli and was also used to designate the burning dart or torch in the shape of the serpent with which this war deity slew his sister Coyolxauhqui (Sahagún 2000 [1577]:1:302).

13 For an earlier discussion of “Talum carved” ceram-ics and an illustration of fragments, see Urcid 1993:156–159 and 162, fig. 26.

14 See Winter and Urcid 1990 for a detailed discussion of a human mandible carved in the Ñuiñe scribal tradition.

15 The semiology of a short narrative incised on a ceramic cylinder in the Zapotec scribal tradition is discussed in Urcid 2003a.

16 Some grand-scale objects, as argued by Lévi-Strauss, can be construed as miniatures in terms of the messages they convey. To him, the paintings in the Sistine Chapel are small because of their theme (the end of time). In addition, because their physi-cal setting places most viewers at a distance, the images actually appear smaller.

17 There are two other examples of megaliths from Building L-sub (N8 and N13/21; see Scott 1978) that were also carved on opposite surfaces with dif-ferent images and without them being inverted. The fact that these monuments were intended as orthostats demonstrates that these are not cases of scribal error but instantiations of later reuses that purposefully left evidence of the original carvings.

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