by Stephen Houston, Brown University

The fun of comparison is that it turns the familiar into the unfamiliar. It forces us to re-consider what we think we understand. So it is for me. A recent trip to Cambodia led, by luck, to the storeroom of the National Museum in Phnom Penh. The Museum is, for those who have not been there, a colonial “take” on traditional Khmer architecture by its designer, the extraordinary George Groslier. A tragic figure, tortured to death by Japanese troops, Groslier did much for the country where he was born, doing pioneering research in all aspects of Khmer civilization. As if that were not enough,  he founded the Royal University of Fine Arts. Among his many interests, Groslier was fascinated by classical Khmer dance and music. In fact, the University was founded in part to preserve that tradition. The museum still holds many of his black-and-white photographs, documenting, if I remember correctly, close to 2500 distinct poses of dance (photographs by Groslier)

Our kind host, Bertrand Porte, local representative of the École Française d’Extrême-Orient (EFEO), spoke about the ordeals of Cambodian sculpture, showing us pieces that could be repatriated and reconstituted after their theft from the country. Then, to my surprise, he pulled a cloth away from a rather bulky object. Underneath lay a set of large “lithophones,” stones which, when struck, clang and resonate (Figure 1). Their varying size and how they were struck affect pitch and sonority, much like gamelan percussion in other parts of southeast Asia.

Figure 1. Lithophones in National Museum, Phnom Penh (photograph by Stephen Houston). 

Such lithophones have been known for some time, if largely from Vietnam. The most influential study remains that of George Condominas, a figure renowned for his ethnology of the M’Nông people of Vietnam and his early use of terms like “ethnocide.” Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen would probably not know it, but his recording of M’Nông music enlivens the final scene of mayhem and butchery in Apocalypse Now (soundtrack). A set of such lithophones was found in orderly pattern, c. 1947, at the site of Ndut Lien Krak, about 350 km due east from Phnom Penh (Condominas 1952: fig. 42). The material is a metamorphic schist, and the dating somewhat unclear. Condominas, an associate of André Leroi-Gouhran, wanted them to be old indeed, many millennia in the past. The intervals of this set were worked out a bit earlier by André Schaeffner (1951: 16–17; see also Trần Văn Khê 1982: 233). Subsequent finds, the only ones in secure context, seem to narrow the date to about 500 to 1000 BC and perhaps some centuries before (Trần Văn Khê 1982: 226). All share certain features. The blades (lames) are oblong, mostly rectangular, with rounded ends (Trần Văn Khê 1982: 226). Only a few sets have been found. One scholar goes so far as to wonder if they were truly played in a group, like a xylophone, or struck individually. But they were certainly found clumped together, including a fortuitous discovery brought to light during bulldozing at the outset of the Vietnam war. In his superb book on Angkorian civilization, Michael Coe specifies a more precise date of c. 1240 BC, from a better-studied context at the Groslier site near Memot, on the border between Vietnam and Cambodia (Coe 2003: 52). He also mentions that “a few are still in use by aboriginal Mon-Khmers in the highlands in ceremonies that include rainmaking or buffalo sacrifice” (ibid: 52, citing unpublished work by Pham Duc Manh; see also Albrecht et al. 2001: 41, 42, pl. II). A few are shown here from Ndut Lien Krak (Figure 2), followed by one of the stones in various profiles (Figure 3). Note the lateral knapping and impressive size.

Figure 2. Blades from Ndut Lien Krak (from Condominas 1952:pl. XLII).

Figure 3. Stone II  from Ndut Lien Krak (from Condominas 1952:fig. 56).

Today, it appears that the Vietnamese delight in this (reinvented?) legacy, devising lithophones for more ambitious performances. Take a moment to listen:

 

Since that discovery, lithophones have been attested in Africa, including several in fixed position, massive boulders to be struck with hands or mallets (Fagg 1956:pl. b). Smaller, portable ones occur throughout the Sahara (Gonthier 2005). Particularly refined examples come from dynastic China, which have explicit notations on them about notes and where to strike (Bagley 2004; von Falkenhausen 1994). A persuasive and well-researched review of evidence from New England finds rounded lithophones that were formerly interpreted as “whetstones” or food-processing equipment (Caldwell 2013:520). The Cherokee, too, were said to have used “stone turtles” as drums (James Mooney, cited by Caldwell 2013:522.

A year or two ago, Karl Taube speculated to me that the Maya might have had lithophones. I vaguely recall James Brady making the same point years ago, but in that instance about stone features in caves.

I agree. We may well have been overlooking them, especially near the great chert deposits of northern Belize. An array of recent finds reveals “macroliths” (large knapped stones) that look eerily like those in the National Museum of Phnom Penh and those from Vietnam. These include blades from Hats Kaab, Belize (Brouwer Burg et al. 2016:fig. 9).

Figure 4. Hats Kaab macroblade (Brouwer Burg et al. 2016:fig. 9).

Jaime Awe and his colleagues have been no less assiduous in reporting on massive blades from elsewhere in Belize (Stemp et al. 2014:figs. 2, 3), including an imposing example from El Chiquero in the Upper Macal River Valley (Figures 5–6; Stemp et al. 2015:fig. 1; see also a rich tomb at Tamarindito, in which a ruler, ready for music-making, clasps a macroblade to his chest; Valdés 1997:fig. 9). Some may occur in caves, also studied by Awe, as at Actun Tunichil Muknal (Awe et al. 2005:figs. 9.5–9.7). Such tight spaces would have obvious properties as echo-chambers.

Figure 5. Comparison of macroblades: a, El Chiquero, b, Lamanai (probably a different category of object), c, Hats Kaab, and d, Santa Rita Corozal (Stemp et al. 2014:fig. 3). 

Figure 6. Unprovenanced example (Stemp et al. 2015:fig. 1).

I now suspect that not all of these were knapped. In their peerless excavations at Aguateca, Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan uncovered, in royal contexts, rectangular objects that might well have been struck by mallets. Inomata observes that they were “relatively smooth, but not completely flat, surfaces and do not seem to have been used for grinding” (Inomata 2014: 76, fig. 5.42, a, b). If archaeologist look again, they may well detect similar objects, some of which might have been gongs. I have long thought, for example, that Maya belt celts should be evaluated for their phonic properties. Clearly, they were meant to move and hit one another.

 

There is long-standing debate about whether the celebrated Maya marimba came from Africa. Tikal Burial 10, thought by some to belong to Yax Nuun Ahiin, an important Early Classic ruler, has a set of three turtle carapaces in a row, mounted between two sticks (Coe 1990: fig. 160). For others, however, the matter is settled. There is the word itself, marimba, which is of evident Bantu origin, and the use of gourd or wooden resonators, also African in inspiration (origin). But this is not the same as insisting that the Maya had no such instruments, no tradition of sonorous music from stone.

Postscript:  My good colleague, Andrew Scherer, sends me to the following: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aA6duGBMewA.  Lithophones are, it seems, everywhere, and, in stray stones, everywhere to be found.

Acknowledgments

Karl Taube got me thinking about this over a year go, and Zachary Hruby is now undertaking amusing experiments that point to even more varied instrumentation. Mike Coe drew my attention to the dating mentioned in his fine book on Khmer civilization. My trip to Cambodia was facilitated by good friends John Bodel and Michèle Brunet through their Visible Words initiative.

References

Albrecht, Gerd, Miriam Noel Haidle, Chhor Sivleng, Heang Leang Hong, Heng Sophady, Heng Than, Mao Someaphyvath, Sirik Kada, Som Sophal, Thuy Chanthourn, and Vin Laychour. 2001. Circular Earthwork Krek 52/62: Recent Research on the Prehistory of Cambodia. Asian Perspectives 39: 20–46.

Awe, Jaime J., Cameron Griffith, and Sherry Gibbs. 2005. Cave Stelae and Megalithic Monuments in Western Belize. In In the Maw of the Earth Monster: Mesoamerican Ritual Cave Use, edited by James E. Brady and Keith M. Prufer, pp. 223–248. University of Texas Press, Austin.

Bagley, Robert W. 2004. The Prehistory of Chinese Music Theory. Proceedings of the British Academy 131: 41–90.

Brouwer Burg, Mareike, Astrid Runggaldier, and Eleanor Harrison Buck. 2016. The Afterlife of Earthen Core Buildings: A Taphonomic Study of Threatened and Efface Architecture in Central Belize. Journal of Field Archaeology 41(1): 17–36.

Coe, Michael D. 2003. Angkor and the Khmer Civilization. Thames and Hudson, London.

Coe, William R. 1990. Excavations in the Great Plaza, North Terrace and North Acropolis of Tikal. Tikal Report No. 14, Vol. IV. University Monograph 61. University Museum, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Condominas, George. 1952. Le lithophone préhistorique de Ndut Lieng Krak. Bulletin d’École Française d’Extrême-Orient 45(2): 359–392.

Fagg, Bernard E. B. 1956. The Discovery of Multiple Rock Gongs in Nigeria. Man 56: 17–18.

Gonthier, Erik.2005. Des lithophones Sahariens au Musée de l’Homme. Archéologia 418: 10–11.

Inomata, Takeshi. 2014. Grinding Stones and Related Artifacts. In Life and Politics at the Royal Court of Aguateca: Artifacts, Analytical Data, and Synthesis, edited by Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan, 54–83. Monographs of the Aguateca Archaeological Project, First Phase, Volume 3. University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

Schaeffner, André. 1951. Une importante découverte archéologique: le lithophone de Ndut Lieng Krak. Revue de Musicologie 33: 1–19.

Stemp, W. James, Jaime J. Awe, and Christophe Helmke. 2014. The Macrolith of El Chiquero, Belize. Mexicon 36(5): 145–150.

Stemp, W. James, Jaime J. Awe, and Christophe Helmke. 2014. A New Maya Macrolith Located. Mexicon 37(4): 83–84.

Trần Văn Khê. 1982. Du lithophone de Ndut Lieng Krak au Lithophone de Bac Ai. Revue de Musicologie 68: 221–236.

Valdés, Juan Antonio. 1997. Tamarindito: Archaeology and Regional Politics in the Petexbatun Region. Ancient Mesoamerica 8:321–335.

Von Falkenhausen, Lothar. 1994. Suspended Music: Chime Bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China. University of California Press, Berkeley.

by Stephen Houston, Brown University

Among the most violent organized sports in the world is the Calcio Storico, now held in Santa Croce Square in Florence, Italy. If it could, the crucifix by Cimabue in the basilica nearby would weep at the sight: a bloody, testosterone-fueled melee, players (are any without tattoos or steroids in their system?) punching, gouging, going after a ball and, in some cases, going to court after an especially brutal game. In 1570, the French king Henry III, who saw a match, declared it “too small to be a real war and too cruel to be a game” (Powell 2015).

Yet the Maya had them beat, as Karl Taube and and Marc Zender (2009) have shown in their pioneering study of “American Gladiators,” the boxers, sap-wielders, eye-gougers, hair-pullers, and eye-socket crushers who combined any and all forms of fierce contact. These contests took place in what we presume to be the arenas par excellence, the ballcourts of Maya cities. The muscled bruisers of the Calcio Storico seem rather to enjoy their punching and smashing, all of them eager recruits to the pain and punishment at hand. But was this true of the Classic Maya?

Taube and Zender provide a key piece of evidence, Tonina Mon. 83 (Figure 1). Mostly found by the French Archaeological Mission on the Fifth Terrace at the site, near Strs. E5-7, -8, and -9, other pieces later came to light in a private collection (Graham and Mathews 1996:113). Additional fragments probably belonged to the same assemblage of carvings (e.g., Mon. 84, 133, Frag. 43). Displaying a series of bound captives, some perched on a running band of their names and dates of capture, Mon. 83  gives more precise information about where they are from (at least one derives from the site of Sak-Tz’i’, in the Usumacinta drainage to the east of Tonina) and who their captor might have been (the very late king known as “Ruler 8” as well as retroactive mention of another ruler, K’inich Baaknal Chahk, about a century before; see Martin and Grube 2000:181–83, 188–289). Probably Mon. 83 was part a composite monument, incorporating an earlier program of sculpture that it strove to copy. The key detail is that the captives are both bound (or bound in part), yet one is abusing the other, pulling his hair while the second figure, a youth (ch’ok), leans back and attempts unsuccessfully to deflect the assault. They seem to be unwilling captives compelled to fight, hampered or restricted by rope. Are they related, as an added misery? The moment is tense, in that fortune has just turned, perhaps, to favor one person over the other. Their bodies, their directed violence–nothing is under their control. They are marionettes of abuse, the outcome amusing or satisfying in some way to their captors.

Figure 1 Tonina Monument 83 (Graham and Mathews 1996:113, copyright Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project, Harvard University). 

There is another twist to the story. The French Mission to Tonina was always prompt in sharing images of new discoveries. It was with some shock to see, in 1981 or 1982, a photograph of Mon. 99, instantly recognizable as a bound woman in the characteristic ripped and cut-out clothing of captives (Becquelin and Baudez 1982:fig. 165). Later, the top of the carving was found, revealing the head of the woman and the verb that describes her “raising” up (to a display platform?), probably during the reign of Tonina Ruler 2 (Martin and Grube 2000:180).

Figure 2  Tonina Monument 99 (Graham and Mathews 1996:99, copyright Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project, Harvard University). 

A final image from Tonina now completes the picture, again to surprising outcome. This is Monument 148, currently on display in the site museum–it is a large altar, at some 1.5 m diameter–and, like most of the recent finds at the site, without evidence or written mention of its original location (Figures 3, 4, 5; Graham et al. 2006:81). In an earlier publication with colleagues, I had conjectured that this was a scene of a very public rape, somewhat evoking the Roman depredation of the Sabine women (Houston et al. 206:207–8). The text has a precise Calendar Round date, but that is so eroded that one can only make out what appears to be a Mol month (in this area, the month often takes a wa subfix, e.g., Tonina Monument 20:D4). The man is not named, but the female, her breast dangling out of the huipil garment, is clearly the main protagonist and a figure of some importance: the presence of two IX signs indicates a personal name, followed by a title. That the inscription covers her thigh seems consistent, however, with captive status.

Figure 3  Tonina Monument 148 (sketch by Ian Graham, inking by Lucia Henderson, Graham et al. 2006:81, copyright Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project, Harvard University).

Figure 4  Tonina Monument 148, close-up for Calendar Round, Tonina site museum (photograph by Stephen Houston). 

Figure 5  Tonina Monument 148, close-up of female personal names, D1, F1, Tonina site museum (photograph by Stephen Houston). 

My impression of erotic violence on this relatively late monument was doubtless correct. But I missed the main point: the format, local visual precedent, the indecorous display of the female, the grappling of hair, and the fact that the elite female holds a sap (a rounded stone) to bludgeon her male opponent force us to an obvious conclusion–that, at Tonina and perhaps elsewhere, females were also compelled to gladiatorial combat. The matching with a male, not, evidently, equipped with a sap, injects some erotic frisson–an added amusement to the captors? Yet her grasp of his hair suggests that she had the upper hand. The moment had turned to her favor.

Long before the Calcio Storico, the Romans opened violent “sport” to women. There is strong evidence, if mostly literary and legal, of female gladiators (ludia [sing.] or “stage performer”). An expensive and ostentatious novelty, prized by emperors, they were far fewer in number than males, yet they shared similar training and expectations (McCullough 2008:197; also Vesley 1998). Many were volunteers, disposed to fight, but there were also some contestants forced into conflict. Both categories of combatant may have existed among the Maya. Nonetheless, at Tonina, the contests projected an air of desperation, wretched for all participants regardless of gender.

References 

Becquelin, Pierre, and Claude F. Baudez. 1982. Tonina, une cité maya du Chiapas (Mexique), Tome III. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les civilisation.

Graham, Ian, and Peter Mathews 1996. Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 6, Part 2: Tonina. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

Graham, Ian, and Peter Mathews 1996. Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volume 6, Part 2: Tonina. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University. Houston, Stephen, David Stuart, and Karl Taube. 2006. The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. 2000. Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Classic Maya. Thames & Hudson, London.

McCullough, Anna. 2008. “Female Gladiators in Imperial Rome: Literary Context and Historical Fact.” The Classical World 101(2):197-209.

Powell, Jim. 2015. “The Calcio Storico, the Most Brutal Sport on Earth–in Pictures.” The Guardian, www.theguardian.com/football/gallery/2015/jun/27/the-calcio-storico-the-most-brutal-sport-on-earth-in-pictures.

Taube, Karl, and Marc Zender. “American Gladiators: Ritual Boxing in Ancient Mesoamerica.” In Heather Orr and Rex Koontz, eds., Blood and Beauty: Organized Violence in the Art and Archaeology of Mesoamerica and Central America, 161–220. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press.

Vesley, Mark. 1998. “Gladiatorial Training for Girls in the Collegia Iuvenum of the Roman Empire.” Echos du Monde Classique 62:85-93.

 

By Stephen Houston, Brown University

Few conflicts begin with blows. First comes talk. Angry words serve to explain and justify an aggression, rallying friends and taunting foes. They advertise hostility to come–indeed, in part, they are that hostility. Among Maya peoples, such crusty talk was not always a good thing. The dictionary of Santo Domingo Zinacantán, a peerless source on colonial Tzotzil Maya, likens “barbed” speech, tz’i’tz’i-k’opoj, to something dirty, dog-like, and rabid (Laughlin 1988, I:179–80).

Yet, with kings, anger plays a calculated role. Sometimes, a ruler needs to let loose, to flame out. Respect for him should blend with fear. Why? Because a perception of innate aggression keeps people in line, throwing them off-kilter. Subordinates and enemies never quite know what to expect. The Aztecs may have held just this view. Two of its emperors went by Motēuczōma, “Lord frowning in anger,”a name bristling with claimed irascibility (Karttunen 1992:153).

Elsewhere in Mesoamerica belligerence extends explicitly to depictions of speech (Houston et al. 2006:163, 154, figs. 4.5, 4.14, 4.19, 4.20). The Codex Selden, a Mixtec manuscript dating to c. AD 1555, shows two men speaking “words of flint,” apparently while hurling threats at a traveling party (Figure 1, page 7, Band III, Pohl n.d.). Virgules from their mouths denote words; small blades of flints, each half-stained with blood, underscore the truculent message.

Figure 1   Flinty words, Codex Selden, p. 7, band III.

Dating to approximately the same time, the Mapa de Cuahtinchan No. 2, a document from the general area of Cholula, Mexico, displays relatively few virgules. But those that exist, as in Section I, appear to record a “painful moment of schism,” as groups take different paths on their journeys from a cave of origin (Figure 2, Carrasco and Sessions 2007:fig. 15.3). There are violent gestures, pointing, shouting, turned backs–it is quite a row. The scrolls are disconnected, in symmetrical alternation, almost as a sequence of chatter; their color is dark-red. The marks may be, as Davíd Carrasco and Scott Sessions note, “red-hot words” rather than bloody-minded utterances. Yet the color is suggestive.

Figure 2   Mapa de Cuahtinchan No. 2, Section I (from Carrasco and Sessions 2007:fig. 15.3)

A clearer example occurs on Monument 1, Finca San Cristóbal, from the Late Classic Cotzumalhuapa civilization of piedmont Guatemala (Figure 3, Chinchilla Mazariegos 2011:fig. 4.25). An excellent rendering by Oswaldo Chinchilla displays, in his words, a “verbal performance…with beautiful flowers and sprouts,” but a plausible alternative is that this records less a “performance” than an almost vegetal visualization of dialogue, growth that entwines but never fuses: the blade-like elements to upper right could characterize hostile speech.

Figure 3  Speech scrolls with possible flints, Finca San Cristóbal Monument 1 (drawing by Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariego, with colors added for emphasis)

Tough talk from Maya kings may account for an enigmatic title of the Classic period. The best-known of these is an alternative epithet for the Naranjo ruler K’ahk’ Ukalaw Chan Chahk (Figure 4, Martin and Grube 2000:80–81). The title has been glossed as “He of Flint,” “perhaps his childhood moniker,” as Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube suggest in their masterly study of Maya history. But there is another possibility. Long ago, David Stuart deciphered a semblant of the third element as a logograph TI’, for ti’, “mouth” (personal communication, 1995). By extension, ti’ can mean “language” or “speech,” especially in Ch’orti’, to most epigraphers the richest and most relevant resource for decipherment (Zender 2004:Table 5). Beginning as a human head to signal acts of consumption, the glyph soon reached, Stuart discovered, an extreme state of stylization, transforming into T128 in the Thompson catalogue of Maya glyphs (for lucid discussion, see Zender 2004:212–21, figs. 38, 39, Table 5). One version on a panel at La Corona, Guatemala, now at the Art Institute of Chicago, enlists it to spell the title of a secondary lord. Here, the glyph, a truncated face, achieves an even greater stylization, to the extent that it closely resembles the sign at Naranjo (Art Institute of Chicago, Ada Turnbull Hertle Fund, 1965.407, glyph position H1; Schele and Miller 1986:pl. 101a). Thus, for the Naranjo ruler: AJ-TOOK’-TI’, aj-took’-ti’, “he of the flinty speech.” A tough-talking lord, ready for a scrap.

Figure 4   Alternative names of K’ahk’ Ukalaw Chan Chahk, Naranjo

A similar spelling, from a stairway block found at Anonal, near Ceibal, Guatemala (kindly supplied to me by Takeshi Inomata and Jessica Munson), shows a “fiery mouth,” K’ahk-ti’, as part of the name of the person buried (we presume) in a tomb (muknal) that had once existed behind this block. The TI’ is nearly identical to that on Naranjo Stela 19.

Figure 5  Spelling of K’ahk-ti’, Anonal, Guatemala (image supplied by Takeshi Inomata and Jessica Munson).

There is another lord with what may be the epithet. It derives from the site of Chinikiha, on a tributary of the Usumacinta River in Mexico (Figure 6). (Some years past, I had the good fortune to see it on display at the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City.) The name appears on a large panel—the glyphs are just under 30 cm in height—that records the raising of a headband to the forehead of a new lord (K’AL-?-HU’N tu-BAAH, Schmidt et al. 1998:623, #416; n.b., the dates are difficult to place because of a disconnection between the evident Kib day-sign and the coefficient of the month). In short, an accession to highest office. The name appears to be AJ-TOOK’-ti-TI’, Aj-took’-ti’?, with a probable syllabic reinforcement in the form of a rare version of the TI’ glyph. Regrettably, the panel is broken, and other elements may follow to alter the reading, but this is surely a historical figure. A similar spelling recently noted on a series of limpet shells pertains to gods, who may nonetheless have had ferocious or bellicose natures (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Gift of the Harry K. Wright Collection, 2015.479, and Houston Museum of Natural Science, Loan 48.1997.02; Looper and Polyukhovych 2016:figs. 3, 4, 5).

Figure 6 Chinikiha Panel (rubbing by Merle Greene Robertson, enhanced here)

The recipients of such tough talk may also have been represented in Maya imagery. Two doleful captives appear on a cylinder vessel of Caana White Incised from Tonina, Chiapas (Becquelin and Taladoire 1990:fig.142a). The base and rim of the vase correspond to usual place for such people, pressed uncomfortably into small spaces, often under the feet of lords. Yet their earspools attract attention here. Each has a clear marking of flint, a recalcitrant material that is unlikely to have been the actual substance of the ornaments. In general, earspools relate to hearing, vocalization, and exhalation, as shown on many examples from the Early Classic period but applicable to later periods as well (Carter et al. 2012; Early Classic Earspools; see also Houston et al. 2004:figs. 4.6, 4.16, 4.17). Perhaps the captives at Tonina showed their warrior-status, their true being, in this way. Or they had to hear, continually and to their dismay, the martial language of victors.

Figure 7. Incised cylinder vase from Tonina, Chiapas, Mexico (Becquelin and Taladoire 1990:fig. 142a). 

An ideal Maya ruler was not just splendid…he was, on occasion, cantankerous, proud in anger, best left appeased.

Acknowledgements  Takeshi Inomata and Jessica Munson generously shared their photo of the hieroglyphic stairway block from Anonal, Guatemala.

References

Becquelin, Pierre, and Eric Taladoire. 1990. Tonina, une cité Maya du Chiapas (Mexique). Études Mésoaméricaines, vol. VI, Tome IV. Centre d’Études Mexicaines et Centraméricaines, Mexico City.

Carrasco, Davíd, and Scott Sessions. 2007. “Middle Place, Labyrinth, and Circumambulation: Cholula’s Peripatetic Role in the Mapa de Cuahtinchan No. 2.” In Davíd Carrasco and Scott Sessions, eds., Cave, City, and Eagle’s Next: An Interpretive Journey through the Mapa de Cuahtinchan No. 2, 426–54. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Carter, Nicholas P., Rony E. Piedrasanta, Stephen D. Houston, and Zachary Hruby. 2012. Signs of Supplication: Two Mosaic Earflare Plaques from El Zotz, Guatemala. Antiquity 86:Project Gallery; http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/carter333/.

Chinchilla Mazariegos, Oswaldo. 2011. “The Flowering Glyphs: Animation in Cotzumalhuapa Writing.” In Elizabeth H. Boone and Gary Urton, eds., Their Way of Writing: Scripts, Signs, and Pictographies in Pre-Columbian America, 43–75. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.

Houston, Stephen, David Stuart, and Karl Taube. 2006. The Memory of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the Classic Maya. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Karttunen, Frances. 1992. An Analytical Dictionary of Nahuatl. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Laughlin, Robert M. 1988. The Great Tzotzil Dictionary of Santa Domingo Zinacantán. 3 vols. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, Number 31. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, DC.

Looper, Mathew, and Yuriy Polyukhovych. 2016. “Two Maya Inscribed Limpet Pendants.” Glyph Dwellers Report 42. http://myweb.csuchico.edu/~mlooper/glyphdwellers/pdf/R42.pdf

Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. 2000. Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Classic Maya. Thames & Hudson, London.

Pohl, John. n.d. John Pohl’s Mesoamerica. http://www.famsi.org/research/pohl/ jpcodices/selden/index.html.

Schele, Linda, and Mary Miller. 1986. The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art. Fort Worth: Kimbell Art Museum.

Schmidt, Peter, Mercedes de la Garza, and Enrique Nalda, eds. Maya. New York: Rizzoli.

Zender, Marc U. 2004. A Study of Classic Maya Priesthood. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Calgary, Alberta.

 

Stephen Houston, Simon Martin, and Karl Taube

In the Ming dynasty of China, one document attracted much amused interest. This was the Luochung Lu (臝蟲錄), a treatise on “naked creatures” or barbarians that sold widely at the time (Yuming He 2011:45­–46). Not surprisingly, readers and editors in the later Qing dynasty, itself of foreign origin, found it displeasing in parts.  Intended to be comprehensive, the Luochung Lu organized information about exotic humans into a zoological schema. People could be categorized like so many “bugs, worms, insects, reptiles,” including, as one set of “critters,” those living in the “Country of Japan” or “Dwarf Land,” a place much inclined, it seems, to banditry (Yuming He 2011:50).

The preface of one edition explains the nature of all such exotics: “[b]ecause they do not have ethical principles, love war and battles, take life lightly, and delight in death, they share the nature of tigers and wolves. Because they…are fond of licentiousness, just like the behavior of incestuous deer, their nature and disposition are truly distant from the human” (Yuming He 2011:71).

The pejorative categorization of foreigners is nothing new.  There is, in the recent past, a doubled xenophobia in references, by John Oliver, the comic, to “Drumpf.” Oliver ridicules a xenophobe for the odd-sounding origins of his family name. Or, in the nineteenth century, there are Thomas Nast’s monstrous representations of drunken Irishmen, seen by many in newspapers of the day. We can dig deeper, all the way back to New Kingdom Egypt. The difference is that these depictions mingle contempt for conquered or foreign peoples with an evident pleasure in their exotic beauty.  The canes in the tomb of Tutankhamun show a Nubian and an Asiatic, neither grotesque but obviously non-Egyptian (Figure 1). Tutankhamun probably needed these canes—the pharaoh was not, by latest report, a very healthy person. But even he could rub and squeeze these captives as though he had taken them himself.  A few centuries later, beautiful foreigners of all sorts marched, in terracotta form, across a frieze at Ramses III’s temple at Medinet Habu (Hölscher 1941).  The exotic can be hateful, repulsive but also, in artful hands, appealing and even sympathetic. Their rich clothing and ornament elevated their captor. Such people were worth conquering. Or, as in the Luochung Lu, they might be figures of fun.

Figure 1   Tutankhamun’s walking stick, 18^th dynasty, KV62, Egyptian Museum, Cairo (photograph copyright Kenneth Garrett).

Classic Maya relations with foreigners mostly concern Teotihuacan (see Stone 1989, Stuart 2000, and Taube 2003; contacts with Tajín civilization are grossly understudied, perhaps because the evidence of that contact is, by contrast, material and stylistic, without historical detail).  These references fall into three categories: (1) contemporary contacts between still-vital civilizations (Tikal Stela 31); (2) retrospective accounts of contact long after Teotihuacan went up in flames (Piedras Negras Panel 2); and (3) fusions of royal Maya identities with martial elements of a long-gone city (Bonampak Stela 3).  The positive, even prestigious features of that contact receive most of our attention, with good reason. The accounts are textual, vibrant, and imbued with personality.

Yet not all was positive in the Maya perception of Teotihuacanos. There are hints of xenophobia or, much like the Luochung Lu, a comical distaste for foreigners. The first is on the lid of an Early Classic vessel (Binoche and Giquello 2016:#44; also Berjonneau and Sonnery 1985:pl. 350; said to have been in a private collection in Brussels by 1960). The vase appears to be Balanza Black from northern Peten, Guatemala, but with bright polychromed stucco of an avian in Teotihuacan style. What attracts our attention is the head on the lid. Notably non-Maya, it has dark skin, a broad face with flattened head like so many Teotihuacan masks, matted hair sticking upright, snub nose and open mouth.  Grooves run between the brows, the eyes sit far into their orbits. The lips open slightly in song—in fact, the tossed-back position is more bestial than human.  Because of its date, this pot fits into category #1, evincing contact between a still-vital Teotihuacan and the Maya.

Figure 2.  Stuccoed vessel, northern Peten, Guatemala, c. AD 500 (Binoche and Giquello 2016:#44).

A second image comes from some 200 years later, on a vase owned by a youth or ch’ok (K6315). There is repainting on parts of this vessel, which comes from the Ik’ kingdom near Lake Peten Itza in northern Guatemala. By this time, Teotihuacan was long past its prime. A Late Classic Maya ruler sits on his throne, conversing with a standing lord. To the front are three other figures. One, in full Maya dress, holds two rattles. Behind him prance two dancers, singers too, to judge from their open mouths. They are slathered in black paint from toe to thick, spikey hair. Hands splay out, the brows are bulbous, noses snubby or retroussé. Their heads and body twist in almost yogic discomfort. The awkward movements are anything but the norm in Maya dance postures. Aside from a red element in the short, dark feathers, the effect is bichromatic, a severe black-and-white. A Teotihuacan emblem, a k’an cross, repeats on their hip-cloths. The glyphs above are difficult to read, but the final element may be ch’o’, perhaps “rat” or “rodent.”

Figure 3a. Late Classic chocolate vessel with scene of dance, Ik’-kingdom, Peten,  Guatemala, c. AD 730 (Jay Kislak Foundation, Miami, K6315, photograph copyright Justin Kerr).

Figure 3b.  Close-up (Jay Kislak Foundation, Miami, K6315, photograph copyright Justin Kerr).

A third dates to about the same time, consisting of, among other figurines, two boxing dwarves (Figure 4; Freidel, Rich, and Reilly 2010). One has broken-off limbs; the other, more complete figurine, shows a dwarf in blocking motion with its left hand extended. His right hand clutches a round sap or bludgeon. Otherwise identical, the dwarves differ in their headdresses. In Figure 4 one has a simple panache of feathers.  The example on the left displays unmistakably Teotihuacan head-gear, with goggle-eyes and a curving obsidian blade in the style of that city. Perhaps a Maya boxer was matched up against a “Teotihuacano,” in allusion to some broader conflict between east and west in Mesoamerica. To viewers, boxing dwarves were likely to be droll, a diversion at court.

Figure 4.  Boxing dwarves from Burial 39, El Peru, Guatemala.

For the Classic Maya, Teotihuacan represented, according to most evidence, a refined and forceful polity. It was envied, remembered, extolled, and probably feared.  Yet these images offer another view. In them, Teotihuacanos are notably non-Maya, but unattractively, even repulsively so.  Their faces run counter to all Maya standards of beauty; their movements lurch in awkward, almost clownish twists—the motion comes close to Aztec depictions of the disabled, the “vagabonds” tossed cruelly from home and hearth (see the Codex Mendoza, folio 70r). If performers, were they thought comical? Were they ancient counterparts to stock roles like the Spaniard or lecherous bishop in Highland Maya festivities? Did they babble and speak unintelligibly like the bárbaros of ancient Greece?  At the least, in Maya minds, not all Teotihuacanos were majestic or regal. Some could be grotesque, laughable, to be mocked more than feared.

Acknowledgements

Justin Kerr showed his customary generosity by sending along a high-resolution image of a rollout.

References

Binoche, Jean-Claude, and Alexandre Giquello. 2016. De l’ancienne collection Vanden Avenne, importante collection d’art précolumbien, Mercredi 23 Mars 2016. Paris: Drouot.

Berjonneau, Gérald, and Jean-Louis Sonnery. 1985. Rediscovered Masterpieces of Mesoamerica: Mexico-Guatemala-Honduras. Boulogne: Éditions ART 135.

Freidel, David, Michelle Rich, and F. Kent Reilly III. 2010. “Resurrecting the Maize King.” Archaeology 63: 42–45.

Hölscher, Uvo. 1941. The Mortuary Temple of Ramses III, Part I. Oriental Institute Publications, Vol. LIV. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Stone, Andrea. 1989. “Disconnection, Insignia, and Foreign Expansion: Teotihuacan and the Warrior Stelae of Piedras Negras.” In Richard A. Diehl and Janet C. Berlo, eds., Mesoamerican After the Decline of Teotihuacan AD 700-900, 153–172. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks.

Stuart, David. 2000. “‘The Arrival of Strangers’: Teotihuacan and Tollan in Classic Maya History.” In David Carrasco, Lindsay Jones, and Scott Sessions, eds., Mesoamerica’s Classic Heritage: From Teotihuacan to the Aztecs, 465–513. Niwot, CO: Colorado University Press.

Taube, Karl. 2003. “Tetitla and the Maya Presence at Teotihuacan.” In Geoffrey Braswell, ed., The Maya and Teotihuacan: Reinterpreting Early Classic Interaction, 273–314. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

Yuming He. 2011. “The Book and the Barbarian in Ming China and Beyond: The Luo chong lu, or ‘Record of Naked Creatures’.” Asia Major 24: 43–85.

 

by Stephen Houston, Brown University

Among the great surprises of epigraphy was the discovery of “parentage statements” by Christopher Jones (1977). With this breakthrough, relationships of descent between dynastic figures could be identified and strung into longer sequences. Yet much remains unclear. A more recent study questions the broad distribution of such relationships—was there only one, rather static Maya system (Ensor 2013:57-58)? There is always, too, a set of fundamental uncertainties. Did such terms correspond to real or fictive relations? Did they extend laterally or by generations?

Answering these questions is well-nigh impossible. But at least we have some new data. Royal kinship among the Classic Maya became a bit clearer, and another sprig added to the family tree, when David Stuart (1989:5–7, 8, fig. 7) noted a term for “maternal uncle” in glyphic texts at Yaxchilan. The possessed form, spelled yi-cha-ni, y-ichaan, descended, according to one reconstruction, from Common Mayan *ikaan (see Kaufman and Norman 1994:120). At Yaxchilan, this term for collateral kin most likely appeared for unusual dynastic reasons. The uncle probably served as an éminence grise, acquiring unusual prominence for someone of sajal (high noble) rank. His sister was the mother of the king, his nephew a mere teenager at time of accession to the throne. Under these circumstances, a calculating uncle could rise far indeed.

Two other bonds (or claims to them) can now be discerned in glyphic texts.

One is a rare and highly localized expression that is nonetheless repeated on nearly identical, molded texts from the Alta Verapaz of Guatemala (Pérez Galindo 2006; also Dieseldorff 1926–1933). It occurs in a little-studied corpus of glyphs on broken ceramics collected over a century ago by Erwin Dieseldorff. A German immigrant to Guatemala, Dieseldorff was the scion of a family with longstanding mercantile ties to Central America (Náñez Falcón 1970:36–63). His own business concerned coffee cultivation and export. (A descendant firm still operates, with an aptly named website, kaffeekup.com.) In the 1880s, travels with the explorer and linguist Karl Sapper awakened Dieseldorff’s interest in archaeology, leading him to do a grubbing sort of archaeology to the east of Cobán, Guatemala. There he found “a series of broken idols during the excavation of a temple (cúe) in Chajcar, to the east of San Pedro Carchá, Alta Verapaz” (Pérez Galindo 2006:9). Evidently, most if not all came from a single building.

I first saw this collection of texts in 1984 while exploring the stygian basement of the Museo Nacional de Arqueología y Etnología (MUNAE) in Guatemala City. In a later, well-documented study, Mónica Pérez Galindo [2006:fig. 35], then employed at the MUNAE, presented an admirable record of that collection, noting, as part of her research, that other such glyphs occur in the (former) Museo Príncipe Maya in Cobán. As I understand it, that collection has since passed to the Fundación Ruta Maya.

Glyphs on these fragments range from pseudo-writing to legible signs (Figure 1). Many refer to literate skill. There are glyphs for “raising up” (t’abayi) and “molding/carving/shaping” (the so-called lu-“BAT,” which eludes, I believe, any confident reading), SAK-wo-jo, sak woj, “white, pure signs,” tz’i-ba, tz’ihb, “painting”; ma-xi, ma’x, “spider monkey; AJAW-wa, ajaw, “lord”; u-wi-WINIK, u winik, “his man, servant”; ya-na-bi-IL SAK-CHUWEEN, probably specifying the “owner” or master of a particular sculptor. There is even a Calendar Round, 10 Imix 19 Yaxk’in, perhaps assignable to 10.0.0.4.1, a date close to a momentous Period Ending and the “end of Yaxk’in” position that fascinated the Classic Maya (I have long wondered if this had something to do with seasonal observances, such as the beginning of the rainy season; for images, see Pérez Galindo 2006). To judge from style, the general date of these texts is at the very end of the Late Classic period, extending into the 9^th century AD.

Figure 1. Legible texts in the Dieseldorff Collection, MUNAE (top row, photographs by Stephen Houston, 1984; bottom row, photographs by Mónica Pérez Galindo; not to scale but widest fragment is ca. 4-5 cm).

Several molded texts embellish small ceramic thrones. These votive objects measure—at least in surviving elements—16 cm long, 12.5 wide, and about 14 high (Grube and Gaida 2006:#24). The presence in MUNAE of broken-off embouchures, all of about the right size for edge breaks on some thrones, raises the chance that the effigies were in part musical. They could have been “performed” as whistles with keening notes. Otherwise, their dimensions, well beyond that of most figurines, suggests a more steady repose, perhaps in small shrines or other places of cult veneration. A few bear vestiges of paint. There are bold yellows, intense Maya blues, all post-fire. At first glance, several go so far as to resemble plumbate, so-called because of its similarity to lead-based glazes. Their surfaces glisten with a metallic sheen. But that appearance is more likely to result from spot scorching of post-fire pigments, a point I have discussed with plumbate experts like Hector Neff and Katie Williams.

At one time, all thrones had at least one seated figure on top, perhaps a young lord, of which fragments occur in Berlin’s Museum für Völkerkunde, the other repository for many of Dieseldorff’s pieces (Figure 2). To the side, almost at the top and front corner, sits a male companion in cross-legged, “tailor” position. Shattered pieces of larger figures are in the Dieseldorff collection, and it seems reasonable to link them to the thrones. Each side of the thrones shows a seated figure. Both have fire or solar attributes. The long sides feature a blunt-nosed person. Bordering on the grotesque, he leans over with a double-headed centipede “bar.” As noted by Karl Taube, the Classic Maya equated centipedes with beams of sun-light, a trait readily seen in the ancestral solar cartouches on stelae at Yaxchilan, Mexico. The figure wears a distinct headband with extruded curls. These traits help to identify a ch’ajoom,“incenser” (Scherer and Houston 2014). The shorter side of the throne, its figure now in profile, has the solar, centipede attributes highlighted in the depiction of 18 Ubaah K’awiil on Copan Stela A. The spear and shield hint that this is a more martial aspect of the Sun God. Heat and fire inflect the iconography. The later indications of scorching point to similar emphases in the ritual use of the thrones.

Figure 2. Sides of fragmentary ceramic throne collected by Dieseldorff, Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin, Ident.-Nr IV Ca 21058 (photograph, Grube and Gaida 2006:#24).

Most relevant here, however, are the molded glyphs below the ch’ajoom figure: ba tz’a-ma yi-cha-k’a SAK-ki-nu-chi k’u K’UH ? (Figure 2). The first glyph is surely baah tz’am, “head [person of the] throne,” a title elucidated in other contexts by Marc Zender. The reference reveals an unambiguous tie to the molded throne. What follows is y-ichak’ along with a second name. Widespread in Mayan languages, ichak’ corresponds to “nephew” or even “cousin,” with attestations in all Ch’olan languages (Kaufman 2003:120). The unusual spelling of sak, which implies vowel complexity, is harder to understand, although a comparable spelling occurs on a Tepeu 1 plate in the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art (#G83.1.120, Zender 2000:1044, fig. 10, fn. 7). The k’u syllable may reinforce the term for “god,” k’uh, but that is less clear. As on other texts in the assemblage, the strong degree of syllabicity draws our attention. Logographs exist, yet the overall tendency is to emphasize phonic transparency. In a comment to me, David Stuart wonders if rarer terms such as ichak’ needed to be spelled out precisely because they were uncommon. By contrast, logographs served as effective markers of parent-child relationships. It may also be that a high level of syllabicity reflected the challenges of recording a Ch’olan/Ch’olti’an language–the local speakers may have been Q’eqchi’.

Figure 3. Close-up of throne text in the MUNAE (photograph, Stephen Houston, 1984).

A second collateral relation occurs on a Tepeu 1 text from the area of Tikal (K5452, Figure 3). Dating to the reign of Wak Chan K’awiil (fl. AD 537-562), it appears on a pot that may record a rare example of multiple possession. The second owner is a royal youth, with a less likely possibility that this name simply referred to the first. (In my view, the presence of a full, second “dedicatory” text makes this unlikely.) What follows the name of Wak Chan K’awiil is yi-TAHN-na. I interpret this as spelling y-ihta’n, “her brother,” preceding the titles of a female. Ihta’n is the possessed form of a word reconstructed by some scholars as “man’s sister” (e.g., Kaufman and Norman 1985:121). However, in Ch’orti’, the term was “used between a man and a woman and vice-versa, but not between men nor between women” (my translation Pérez Martínez, García, Martínez, and López 1996:66). “Cross-sex sibling” fits the reference on the vase.

Figure 4. Vase from area of Tikal, Guatemala, c. AD 550 (K5452, photograph copyright Justin Kerr).

Such expressions are useful, even intriguing. But their rarity is obvious. Explicit labeling of collaterals seemed of little interest to scribes of the Classic period.

Postscript, Nov. 21, 2016:  Simon Martin urged me to study a higher resolution version of K5452, which I have just obtained from Justin Kerr. The sign in front of TAHN is, I now believe, an unusual version of 1, preceded by an equally rare u sign (note its resemblance to the u in spellings of u tz’i ba li, all free-standing glyphs). This would make the woman on the vase the mother of the first owner, her relation being specified by u 1-TAHN-na.

 

References:

Dieseldorff, Erwin P. 1926–1933. Kunst und Religion der Mayavölker im Alten Und Heutigen Mittelamerika. 3 vols. Berlin/Hamburg: J. Springer.

Ensor, Bradley E. 2013. Crafting Prehispanic Maya Kinship. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.

Grube, Nikolai, and Maria Gaida. 2006. Die Maya: Schrift und Kunst. Berlin: SMB-DuMont.

Jones, Christopher. 1977. Inauguration Dates of Three Late Classic Rulers of Tikal, Guatemala.” American Antiquity 42:28-60.

Kaufman, Terrence S. 2003. Preliminary Mayan Etymological Dictionary. Report to the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. On-line resource at http://www.famsi.org/reports/01051/pmed.pdf.

Kaufman, Terrence S., and William M. Norman. 1984. “An Outline of Proto-Cholan Phonology, Morphology, and Vocabulary.” In John S. Justeson and Lyle Campbell, eds., Phoneticism in Mayan Hieroglyphic Writing, 77-166. Publication No. 9. Albany: Institution for Mesoamerican Studies, State University of New York at Albany.

Náñez Falcón, Guillermo. 1970. Erwin Paul Dieseldorff, German Entrepreneur in the Alta Verapaz of Guatemala, 1889-1937. Ph.D. dissertation, Tulane University.

Pérez Galindo, Mónica. 2006. Colección Dieseldorff: Corpus de cerámica del Clásico Terminal proveniente de Moldes. Report to the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. http://www.famsi.org/reports/03074/03074PerezGalindoImages.pdf).

Pérez Martínez, Vitalino, Federico García, Felipe Martínez, and Jeremías López. 1996. Diccionario Ch’orti’, Jocotán, Chiquimula. Antigua Guatemala: Proyecto Lingüístico Francisco Marroquín.

Scherer, Andrew, and Stephen Houston. 2015. “Blood, Fire, Death: Covenants and Crises among the Classic Maya.” In Smoke, Flames, and the Human Body in Mesoamerican Ritual Practice, organized by Vera Tiesler and Andrew Scherer, Dumbarton Oaks Fall Symposium, Oct. 9.

Stuart, David. 1997. Kinship Terms in Mayan Inscriptions. In Martha J. Macri and Anabel Ford, eds., The Language of Maya Hieroglyphs, 1–11. Pre-Columbian Art Research Institute, San Francisco.

Zender, Marc. 2000. “A Study of Two Uaxactun-Style Tamale-Serving Vessels.” In Barbara and Justin Kerr, eds., The Maya Vase Book: A Corpus of Rollout Photographs of Maya Vases, 1038–1055. New York: Kerr Associates.