Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Textbook Maya E Groups Calendars Astronomy and Urbanism in The Early Lowlands David A Freidel Ebook All Chapter PDF
Textbook Maya E Groups Calendars Astronomy and Urbanism in The Early Lowlands David A Freidel Ebook All Chapter PDF
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-figure-of-the-nymph-in-
early-modern-culture-karl-a-e-enenkel/
https://textbookfull.com/product/representation-theory-of-finite-
groups-a-guidebook-1st-edition-david-a-craven/
https://textbookfull.com/product/representation-theory-of-finite-
groups-a-guidebook-1st-edition-david-a-craven-2/
https://textbookfull.com/product/architecture-and-urbanism-in-
the-british-empire-1st-edition-g-a-bremner/
America A Narrative History David E. Shi.
https://textbookfull.com/product/america-a-narrative-history-
david-e-shi/
https://textbookfull.com/product/steroids-and-doping-in-sports-a-
reference-handbook-second-edition-edition-david-e-newton/
https://textbookfull.com/product/interferometry-and-synthesis-in-
radio-astronomy-3rd-edition-a-richard-thompson/
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-cambridge-grammar-of-
medieval-and-early-modern-greek-david-holton/
https://textbookfull.com/product/early-greek-ethics-david-conan-
wolfsdorf/
Maya E Groups
Maya Studies
Edited by
David A. Freidel, Arlen F. Chase, Anne S. Dowd,
and Jerry Murdock
22 21 20 19 18 17 6 5 4 3 2 1
The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System
of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast
University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida,
University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of
South Florida, and University of West Florida.
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xv
Preface: On the Path of the Sun xvii
Acknowledgments xxiii
Abbreviations xxv
7. The Isthmian Origins of the E Group and Its Adoption in the Maya
Lowlands 215
Takeshi Inomata
8. A Tale of Two E Groups: El Palmar and Tikal, Petén, Guatemala 253
James A. Doyle
9. The History, Function, and Meaning of Preclassic E Groups in the
Cival Region 293
Francisco Estrada-Belli
10. Time to Rule: Celestial Observation and Appropriation among the
Early Maya 328
William A. Saturno, Boris Beltrán, and Franco D. Rossi
11. Ordinary People and East–West Symbolism 361
Cynthia Robin
12. E Groups and Ancestors: The Sunrise of Complexity at Xunantunich,
Belize 386
M. Kathryn Brown
13. Of Apples and Oranges: The Case of E Groups and Eastern Triadic
Architectural Assemblages in the Belize River Valley 412
Jaime J. Awe, Julie A. Hoggarth, and James J. Aimers
14. The Founding of Yaxuná: Place and Trade in Preclassic Yucatán 450
Travis W. Stanton
15. Founding Landscapes in the Central Karstic Uplands 480
Kathryn Reese-Taylor
16. More Than Smoke and Mirrors: Maya Temple Precincts and the
Emergence of Religious Institutions in Mesoamerica 517
Anne S. Dowd
17. Epilogue: E Groups and Their Significance to the Ancient Maya 578
Diane Z. Chase, Patricia A. McAnany, and Jeremy A. Sabloff
9.4. Map of Cival at the end of the Terminal Preclassic period 301
9.5. Stucco mask on the northern façade of the Cival main E Group’s
western pyramid 302
9.6. Histogram of sight-line azimuths 305
9.7. Location of the thirteen E Groups in the region surrounding
Cival 306
9.8. Histogram of E Group plaza areas at Cival 308
9.9. Maps of eleven E Groups mapped at Cival 310
9.10. Histogram of E–W plaza width 311
9.11. Histogram of length of eastern platform for twelve E Groups at
Cival and nearby sites 311
9.12. Histogram of footprint areas of western pyramid at Cival and
nearby sites 312
9.13. Histogram of azimuths 313
9.14. Profile of the topography along the Dos Aguadas northern sight
line 314
9.15. Profile of the topography of the Cival region 315
9.16. Artistic rendering of Cival Center E Group 321
9.17. Drawing of low-relief carving on Cival Stela 2 322
10.1. Map of San Bartolo 331
10.2. Plan of Pinturas complex and chart of architectural phases of
Pinturas 335
10.3. Reconstruction of Sub-5 E Group 336
10.4. Early painted hieroglyphic block from Sub-5 and Maize God from
Ixbalamqué doorjamb 337
10.5. Reconstruction of Sub-5 “Hunahpu” radial pyramid 338
10.6. Painted marker on alley floor of Sub-5 “Hunahpu” ballcourt 340
11.1. Map of the Belize River valley 363
11.2. Topography, settlement, and agricultural terraces at Chan 366
11.3. Chan’s community center 367
11.4. Profile of central east structure 370
11.5. Profile of west structure 371
11.6. Cache 9 cutout figures 373
Figures · xiii
and the here and now, because they were concepts that were always
present together in nature. Perhaps the “Maya concept of time,” like
the golden ratio, was seen as an organizing constraint that nature and
the concomitant Mayan deities utilized to unfold, transform, and ul-
timately create the world itself.
The collaboration among the authors of the ensuing chapters has been
enabled and inspired by the wonderful hospitality of the Santa Fe Insti-
tute and its president, Jeremy A. Sabloff. Murray Gell-Mann, one of the
founders, and distinguished archaeologist George Gumerman first invited
David Freidel to participate in a working group at the institute, and he met
Jerry Murdock in that setting in the fall of 2008. When Jerry asked that
David organize a working group on Maya origins and astronomy, David
suggested a session on E Groups with the goal of recruiting Tony Aveni.
Flanked by Tony’s friends and collaborators Susan Milbrath and Anne
Dowd, we called him. He generously agreed to come. We continued to be
lucky: the two working group sessions brought together the remarkable ar-
ray of archaeologists and archaeoastronomers represented in this book. It
was Arlen Chase, also expert in E Groups, who first suggested that we write
such a book and has been an energetic collaborator in seeing it through to
completion. The give and take around that table at the Santa Fe Institute
was memorable for us and is reflected in the syntheses presented by the
participants.
Although Maya archaeologists have been researching E Groups for gen-
erations, it turns out to be a topic on the present frontiers of our knowl-
edge, with many recent and exciting discoveries made and reported on
by the working group participants. Once E Groups manifest in the Maya
Lowlands (the temporal benchmark for this is now 1000 BCE at the site
of Ceibal, as described by Takeshi Inomata in Chapter 7 in this volume),
there are many ways to situate them in the ensuing development of Maya
place-making, time-reckoning, religion, politics, and economics. These
discussions are the substance of the book. But Jerry Murdock in correspon-
dence in the fall of 2014 pressed his companions on this path once again
to look back over their shoulders to its beginnings. The way back, at least
in the Maya Lowlands, leads metaphorically into standing forest with few
blaze marks or bent twigs to guide us. There are preceramic Archaic period
(7,500–1,000 BCE) remains in some places, but not all (for example, not
at Ceibal so far), and these offer few insights into the remarkable develop-
ments that follow.
xx · Preface: On the Path of the Sun
Jerry’s big questions about how spiritual leaders and close observers of
nature like village shamans gave way to the earliest rulers and their ritual
advisors presiding over E Group centers require us to widen our perspec-
tive in the Mesoamerican world of the time. When we do that two things
become clear: the Maya were not the first to have rulers, but they were
participants in a close second that brought in E Groups. The Lowland Maya
were not, to our knowledge, the first people to establish monumental cen-
ters or material symbol systems that expressed precepts of power, earthly
and cosmic. The Olmec center of San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán is earlier by
centuries, and the society there is intimately related to other early Preclassic
period (1,000 BCE–250 CE) societies to the southeast in Chiapas. Deter-
mining the direction of emulation among these early Preclassic communi-
ties, and others in Highland Mexico, remains a contentious matter among
archaeologists. But no one can contest the ability of the San Lorenzo Ol-
mec to move enormous basalt monuments across swampy riverine terrain
from quarries in the Tuxtla Mountains or doubt that the symbol-system ex-
pressed on those monuments, as a sophisticated cosmologically grounded
one, was deeply influential in subsequent middle Preclassic period (1,000–
350 BCE) regional religious practices. Furthermore, the earliest use of pol-
ished greenstone celts, a middle Preclassic signature of regional interac-
tion, is currently dated to 1,600 BCE at Laguna Manatee near San Lorenzo
in the Olmec heartland, more than half a millennium earlier than in the
Maya Lowlands. What Takeshi Inomata now proposes, in his contribution
to this book and elsewhere, is that in the two centuries or so between the
denouement of San Lorenzo and the florescence of the first Olmec center
to have a major pyramid, La Venta to the east, a regional interaction sphere
incorporating Ceibal in southwest Petén, and centers in Chiapas emerged
with the E Group as a signature expression.
This intriguing period, roughly 1,000–800 BCE, straddles the early and
middle Preclassic chronological divide; we have no better nomenclature for
it, but it will clearly be featured regularly in future discussions of the origins
of civilization in the region. What we can say with Inomata’s breakthrough
and the work of the other scholars in this book is that the E Group phenom-
enon began as part of an era of major social change embracing Lowland
Maya and other Lowland peoples of southeastern Mesoamerica. On the
other side of that temporal divide we have increasing evidence that the
Middle Preclassic Lowland Maya peoples participated in the development
of formal rulership, what Freidel identified in the 1980s as Divine Kingship
by the late Preclassic period (350 BCE–0 CE). It has been affirmed as likely
Preface: On the Path of the Sun · xxi
References Cited
Arnold, Philip J., III
2009 Settlement and Subsistence among the Early Formative Gulf Olmec. Journal of
Anthropological Archaeology 28(4):397–411.
VanDerwarker, Amber M., and Robert P. Kruger
2012 Regional Variation in the Importance of Maize in the Early and Middle For-
mative Olmec Heartland: New Archaeobotanical Data from the San Carlos
Homestead, Southern Veracruz. Latin American Antiquity 23(4):509–532.
Figure 0.1. November 6,
2011, Santa Fe Institute
Working Group plan-
ning session: (from left
to right) Jerry Sabloff,
Paula Sabloff, Jerry
Murdock, Anne Dowd,
Susan Milbrath, David
Freidel.
Figure 0.3. August 25, 2013, Santa Fe Institute Working Group participants: (from left to
right, back row) James Doyle, Takeshi Inomata, David Freidel, Travis Stanton, Fran-
cisco Estrada-Belli; (middle row) Patricia McAnany, Diane Chase, Arlen Chase, Jerry
Murdock, Anne Dowd, Peter Harrison; (bottom row) Prudence Rice, Kathryn Brown,
Murray Gell-Mann, Kathryn Reese-Taylor.
Acknowledgments
The Santa Fe Institute hosted the Maya Working Group program of con-
vivial and rewarding discussion at its research facility in New Mexico. The
free exchange of ideas in such a sustaining and nurturing environment has
been a central tenet of the vision of Murray Gell-Mann, one of the found-
ers, and Jeremy A. Sabloff, a former president, who are both, we are proud
to say, participants in the Maya Working Group sessions. Each of us is
beholden to a wide array of funding institutions, students, colleagues, and
family members in the realization of the research presented and analyzed
in the following chapters. We have become closer friends and comrades
on a shared mission and are honored and privileged to participate in the
crafting of knowledge about the ancient Maya in the context of this most
special and exemplary retreat.
Jerry, Anne, Arlen, and I have enjoyed the process of bringing together
such a talented group of scholars to participate in the Santa Fe Institute
working groups held during August 2012 and 2013 and are pleased that this
book is the result (Figures 0.1, 0.2, 0.3). We trust that you, the reader, will
be interested in our latest thoughts on this fascinating subject.
Abbreviations
E Groups
Historical Perspectives
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
—Kaik! doar loopt ’n klodder maide, hullie aige d’r
stain-dood.… ikke konsteteer van da je op dâ terain
mit die brand-beweging [341]d’r nie deurhakt! wai binne
te loat! merkeer de paa’s. Hee Dirk! Hee Rink je mag
d’r toekaike!
—Sien ie! Sien ie! daa’t is.… is.… nou main soon!..
die.… die knakt.… jou.… en en.… en.… en.… en.. de
heule wai … aireld aa’s worst! hee?… aa’s die d’r
goàr … [345]wil!.… en.… en.… en.… de heule mikmak
hee?.…
—Die kerel, hep d’r gain broek an, gilde plots Marie
Pijler uit, schaterend haar beenen in kramplach de
lucht insmakkend, dat ze bijna achterover viel van
Rink’s schoot.