DOCSLIB.ORG

UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO the US Imagination of Maya

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO the US Imagination of Maya UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO The U.S. Imagination of Maya Ruins: Critical Reflections on Art and Architecture, 1839-1972 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Art History, Theory, and Criticism by Elizabeth Deen Miller Committee in charge: Professor Mariana Wardwell, Chair Professor William Norman Bryson, Co-Chair Professor Grant Kester Professor Elizabeth A. Newsome Professor William Arctander O’Brien 2018 Copyright Elizabeth Deen Miller, 2018 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Elizabeth Deen Miller is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________________ Co-chair _____________________________________________________________ Chair University of California San Diego 2018 iii DEDICATION I dedicate my trek down the rabbit hole to my Uncle Stanley and my writing to the Flaming Creatures. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page…………………………………………………………………………………………...iii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………………………………iv Table of Contents………………………………………………………………..…………...…….….....v Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………..……..vi Vita……………………………………………………………………………………………………..….vii Abstract of the Dissertation.…………………………………………………….………...…….……..viii INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………..……………………….…………….1 CHAPTER 1. Ruins Naturalized: Frederick Catherwood’s Architectural Landscapes..……...….15 CHAPTER 2. Indigenous Modernism: Frank Lloyd Wright and Mayan Revivalism…………..….61 CHAPTER 3. Confronting the Ruinscape: Robert Smithson’s Mexico Projects………..………112 CONCLUSION. Ruins Reckoned……………………………………………...……………...……..165 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………………….…181 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to first and foremost acknowledge the unwavering support and guidance of my mentor and the chair of my committee, Professor Mariana Wardwell, who has encouraged my work more than any other individual I have encountered thus far in my lifetime of education. I would also like to thank my co-chair, Professor William Norman Bryson. Meetings with Professor Bryson have provided me with the consistent feedback and intellectual inspiration to complete my academic work here at UC San Diego. I would also like to extend thanks to the other members of my committee—Grant Kester, Elizabeth Newsome, and William Arctander O’Brien—for sharing their expertise and offering direction when and where I needed it. My dissertation would not have been possible without financial support from: the UC MEXUS Dissertation Research Grant, the UC Institute of Arts and Humanities Summer Fellowship, the UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts Russell Foundation Grant, the UC Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) Studies Consortium Award, the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library Study Award, the UC San Diego Friends of the International Center Ruth Newmark Scholarship, the UC San Diego Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies (CILAS) Travel Grant, and one quarter each of research and writing support from my home department—the UC San Diego Department of Visual Arts Dissertation Completion Fellowship and Field Research Fellowship. Additionally, the opportunities to present my work over the years at Tufts University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Georgia Museum of Art have provided helpful feedback during the drafting process. I am indebted to my colleague and friend, Sascha Crasnow, for her constructive feedback along the way, as well as the other members of my cohort, Tim Ridlen, Kristen Gallerneaux Brooks, and Samara Kaplan, without whom I may not be here. Finally, I want to thank my parents, who have provided emotional (and, on occasion, much needed financial) support throughout the process of the advanced degree. vi VITA 2008 Bachelor of Arts, Art History, Arizona State University, Tempe 2008 Bachelor of Arts, Global Studies, Arizona State University, Tempe 2010 Master of Arts, Art and Museum Studies, Georgetown University, Washington D.C. 2018 Doctor of Philosophy, Art History, Theory and Criticism, University of California, San Diego vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The U.S. Imagination of Maya Ruins: Critical Reflections on Art and Architecture, 1839-1972 by Elizabeth Deen Miller Doctor of Philosophy in Art History, Theory, and Criticism University of California San Diego, 2018 Professor Mariana Wardwell, Chair Professor William Norman Bryson, Co-Chair Divided into three episodes between the 1830s and 1970s, the dissertation explores the U.S. imagination of Maya ruins vis-à-vis the works of three salient figures in American cultural history. The first point of interest is the nineteenth-century expeditionary tradition and the politics of ruin gazing in southeastern Mexico, concentrating on the illustrated texts of the citizen- diplomat and travel writer, John Lloyd Stephens, and his counterpart, the English architect and draftsman, Frederick Catherwood. Stephens and Catherwood were the first to thoroughly document Maya ruins for a U.S. audience with the two-volume Incidents of Travel in Central viii America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1841), Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (1843), and Catherwood’s self-published folio of lithographs, Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan (1844). Mayan Revival (also known as “Neo-Mayan”) architecture is the second subject, focusing on Frank Lloyd Wright’s use of ancient American aesthetics in the 1910s and 1920s to create an “indigenous” modern American architecture in examples like the Ennis House (1923-1924). The third and final subject centers on the long sixties and the configurations of ruination (and ruin gazing), landscape, and the indigene in selected projects and writings of the celebrity of American land art, Robert Smithson. I address examples like “Incidents of Mirror-Travel in the Yucatan,” a 1969 photographic travel essay, and Smithson’s comedic slide lecture, Hotel Palenque (1969-1972). The recuperations of Maya architecture in U.S. contexts provide insight into the ways the imperial behaviors of the nineteenth-century United States can be traced through the aesthetics of modernity that emerged in the early to mid-twentieth century. The import of indigenous aesthetics and subject matter on Anglo-American aesthetic traditions—whether in Catherwood’s illustrations of the continent’s ruins, Wright’s Mesoamerican revival architecture, or the putatively radical de- sublimation at work amongst the American neo-avant-gardists like Smithson—sheds light on the unusual and occasionally overlooked relationship between ruination, U.S. art and architectural modernism, and the hierarchies that in many ways define the American landscape. ix INTRODUCTION The word “history” stands written on the countenance of nature in the characters of transience. The allegorical physiognomy of the nature-history . is present in reality in the form of the ruin. In the ruin history has physically merged into the setting. And in this guise history does not assume the form of the process of an eternal life so much as that of irresistible decay . Allegories are, in the realm of thoughts, what ruins are in the realm of things. - Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, 1925 Landscape is neither inert nor neutral. Rather, it is subject to various cultural and social processes, a reminder of the etymological ties between the morpheme, “-scape,” and the Old English sceppan or skyppan, meaning “to shape.”1 In Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics, Emily Eliza Scott and Kirsten Swenson observe that landscapes taken as the property of “nature” often “sanitize, obscure, and/or naturalize spatial conflicts.”2 Architectural landscapes are no exception to this; for example, the depiction of ruins in the history of art—a “ruinscape,” if you will—has strong ties to conceptions of the natural world. And, as Raymond Williams reminds us in Keywords, “nature,” “native,” and “nation” are all words derived from the Latin natus, “to be born.”3 It may then come as no surprise that nascence and rebirth, life and death are also tangled in the constellation of landscape, nature, and the architectural ruin. Perched in a liminal state between permanence and decay, ruins communicate the desires and power struggles in man’s relation to both the natural world and fellow man. Ruins, however, are entities that occur long before they appear; that is, they—bosom friends of landscape—are the province of the gaze. The “ruin gaze”4—a process, according to Gustavo Verdesio, through which ruins come to be seen as objects of study—remakes architecture-as-image. As such, ruins are actively evoked and shaped by their spectators. Symptomatic of hegemonic structures, ruin images are continuously renegotiated—caught in a distant past as frozen, nostalgicized remnants of “archaic”5 civilizations or repositioned (as needed) as harbingers of epochal change tied to conflict and war, industry and modernization. 1 Historically, architectural ruins supplied affirmation of the processual nature of the human event.6 By the nineteenth century, ruins became malleable to the purposes of the nation- state—built into the majestic territory of national memory or, conversely, rendered obsolescent as ideological obstructions to “progress” and/or expansion.7 Their performance as and rehabilitation through ruinscapes—those
Load more

Recommended publications
  • UC Merced TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World
    UC Merced TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World Title A Return to the Past and the Elaboration of an Indo-Hispanic Identity in Modern Honduras Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/01603447 Journal TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 5(2) ISSN 2154-1353 Author Lara, José Publication Date 2015 DOI 10.5070/T452027737 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California A Return to the Past and the Elaboration of an Indo-Hispanic Identity in Modern Honduras ________________________________________ JOSÉ LARA GRAND VALLEY STATE UNIVERSITY Historical icons and heroes were essential to the creation of many, if not all, Latin American nations. Honduras is no exception. During the latter decades of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century, Honduran leaders and intellectuals began to create a national imaginary by elaborating an “official history” based on a common Indo-Hispanic past. This essay illustrates the different ideologies and processes that were enacted to form at a discursive level a racially and culturally uniform nation. I focus, in particular, on the cultural, political and socio-scientific reasoning for the celebration of what I describe as inclusionary and exclusionary discourses of ladinaje and mestizaje. I detail the Hispanicization and environmental strategies elaborated by the State to correct the racial and cultural composition of Indian and Black populations who were considered a threat to the integrity of a homogenous national image. I also explain the transformation of two icons from Honduras’s past into symbolic capital1–the pre-Columbian Mayan city of Copán and the sixteenth century indigenous cacique Lempira, who opposed the Spanish conquest–and their relation to the debate on Honduran identity.
    [Show full text]
  • George Grove and the Establishment of the Palestine Exploration Fund
    Chapter One George Grove and the Establishment of the Palestine Exploration Fund David M. Jacobson Abstract This article surveys the growing thirst for factual evidence relating to the world of the Bible in mid-19th century Britain and early tentative efforts to address this demand. It was against this background that the polymath George Grove sought to establish a secular institution devoted to the multidisciplinary study of the southern Levant based on scientific principles. Evidence is marshalled to show that it was Grove’s exceptional combination of talents—his organizational and networking skills, natural intelligence, and wide interests, including a profound knowledge of the geography of the Bible—that enabled him to recruit some of the most illustrious figures of Victorian Britain to help him realize this ambition in 1865, with the establishment of the Palestine Exploration Fund (PEF). Keywords: James Fergusson; George Grove; history of Levantine studies; Palestine Exploration Fund; Arthur Penrhyn Stanley Introduction undertaking, and it was Grove who took on the role of PEF Honorary Secretary (Lipman 1988: 47). In 1865 George Grove (1820–1900), the secretary Twenty-four eminent figures of Victorian of the Crystal Palace, sent out formal invitations society attended the meeting (Lipman 1988: to selected public figures, asking them to 47–9), which was chaired by the Archbishop of attend the preliminary meeting of the Palestine York, William Thomson (1819–1890), a church Exploration Fund (PEF) at the Jerusalem Cham- ber,1 Westminster Abbey, at 5 pm, Friday, 12 disciplinarian who had also distinguished him- May (Conder and Kitchener 1881: 3–4; details self as a logician, earning him election as a are also recorded in the manuscript PEF Minute Fellow of the Royal Society in 1863 (Carlyle Book, Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • CRÓNICAS Mesoamericanas Tomo I CRONICAS MESOAMERICANAS (TOMO I) © 2008 Universidad Mesoamericana ISBN: 978-99922-846-9-8 Primera Edición, 2008
    CRÓNICAS MESOAMEricanas TOMO I CRONICAS MESOAMERICANAS (TOMO I) © 2008 Universidad Mesoamericana ISBN: 978-99922-846-9-8 Primera Edición, 2008 Consejo Directivo: Félix Javier Serrano Ursúa, Jorge Rubén Calderón González, Claudia María Hernández de Dighero, Carlos Enrique Chian Rodríguez, Ana Cristina Estrada Quintero, Luis Roberto Villalobos Quesada, Emilio Enrique Conde Goicolea. Editor: Horacio Cabezas Carcache. Traducción de textos mayas-quichés: Marlini Son, Candelaria Dominga López Ixcoy, Robert Carmack, James L. Mondloch, Ruud van Akkeren y Hugo Fidel Sacor. Revisor de estilo: Pedro Luis Alonso. Editorial responsable: Editorial Galería Guatemala. Consejo Editorial: Estuardo Cuestas Morales, Egemberto Alvergue Oliveros, Carlos Enrique Zea Flores, María Olga Granai de Zoller, Mario Estuardo Montes Granai. Diseño y diagramación: QUELSA. Ilustraciones en acuarela: Victor Manuel Aragón. Fotografía proporcionada por Fundación Herencia Cultural Guatemalteca, Fototeca de Justin Kerr de su catálogo Maya Vase Database y Fototeca de Fundación G&T Continental (páginas 119,134,140). Impresión: Tinta y Papel Derechos reservados. La reproducción total o parcial de esta obra sólo podrá hacerse con autorización escrita de la Universidad Mesoamericana. http://www.umes.edu.gt 40 Calle, 10-01, Zona 8, Guatemala, C. A. CRÓNICAS MESOAMEricanas TOMO I CONTENIDO PRÓLOGO 9 FÉLIX JAVIER SERRANO URSÚA INTRODUCCIÓN 11 HORACIO CABEZAS CARCACHE CÓDICES mayas Y MEXICANOS 17 TOMÁS BARRIENTOS Y MARION POPENOE DE HATCH Crónicas DE YAXKUKUL Y CHAC Xulub CHEN 31 ERNESTO VARGAS PACHECO CRÓNICA DE CHAC XULUB CHEN 44 TÍTULO DE LOS SEÑORES DE Sacapulas 59 RUUD VAN AKKEREN HISTORIA DE SU ORIGEN Y VENIDA DE SUS PADRES EN LAS TIERRAS DEL QUICHÉ. 78 PARTE I. FRAGMENTO QUIChé [K’iChe’] 88 TÍTULO DE CAGCOH [KAQKOJ] 93 ENNIO BOSSÚ TESTAMENTO Y TÍTULO DE LOS ANTECESORES DE 100 LOS SEÑORES DE CAGCOH SAN CRISTÓBAL VERAPAZ.
    [Show full text]
  • Adela Breton and the Temple of the Jaguar
    Adela Breton and the Temple of the Jaguar A Victorian perspective on the art of Chichén Itzá. Student no. 1419645 Department of Archaeology and Anthropology University of Bristol 2017 This dissertation is submitted in part fulfilment of the requirements for a degree of Bachelor of Arts in Archaeology. Cover Image: Watercolour quarter-scale copy of wall painting from south end of west wall, Upper Temple of the Jaguars, Chichén Itzá, Mexico (Adela Breton, n.d.) Abstract This study has three aims: to assess the archaeological significance of Adela Breton’s work; to explore the relationship between Breton’s perspective and her paintings; and to evaluate the research potential of the Breton collection in light of this evidence. To date, no investigation has considered the value of the Breton collection in relation to Breton’s own ideals and experiences. This thesis therefore seeks to extend prior work to approach this gap in the literature, putting visual culture theories into practice that have yet to be applied to a Western case. The study uses a qualitative approach, analysing key elements of interdisciplinary research to evaluate how far Breton’s perspective influences the significance of her work. To illustrate these ideas, reproductions of murals from a specific temple at Chichén Itzá is used as a case study to tangibly develop the thesis argument. Following this method of approach, the findings reveal that Breton’s subjective experience of Mesoamerica as a Victorian, woman, artist and traveller is imperative to the importance and understanding of her work. The culmination of this thesis prompts a re-thinking of how visual culture theory can be used to further archaeological knowledge, and there is significant potential for future study.
    [Show full text]
  • Early Explorers and Scholars
    1 Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, and Labná http://academic.reed.edu/uxmal/ return to Annotated Bibliography Architecture, Restoration, and Imaging of the Maya Cities of UXMAL, KABAH, SAYIL, AND LABNÁ The Puuc Region, Yucatán, México Charles Rhyne Reed College Annotated Bibliography Early Explorers and Scholars This is not a general bibliography on early explorers and scholars of Mexico. This section includes publications by and about 19th century Euro-American explorers and 19th and early 20th century archaeologists of the Puuc region. Because most early explorers and scholars recorded aspects of the sites in drawings, prints, and photographs, many of the publications listed in this section appear also in the section on Graphic Documentation. A Antochiw, Michel Historia cartográfica de la península de Yucatan. Ed. Comunicación y Ediciones Tlacuilo, S.A. de C.V. Centro Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del I.P.N., 1994. Comprehensive study of maps of the Yucatan from 16th to late 20th centuries. Oversize volume, extensively illustrated, including 6 high quality foldout color maps. The important 1557 Mani map is illustrated and described on pages 35-36, showing that Uxmal was known at the time and was the only location identified with a symbol of an ancient ruin instead of a Christian church. ARTstor Available on the web through ARTstor subscription at: http://www.artstor.org/index.shtml (accessed 2007 Dec. 8) This is one of the two most extensive, publically available collections of early 2 photographs of Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, and Labná, either in print or on the web. The other equally large collection, also on the web, is hosted by the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnography, Harvard Univsrsity (which see).
    [Show full text]
  • A Distinctive Maya Architectural Format: the Lamanai Temple
    8 A Distinctive Maya Architectural Format: The Lamanai Temple . H. Stanley Loten Introduction At Lamanai, as at Tikal, the ancient Maya maintained and repeated the same distinctive temple form over a Towering pyramidal temples, arresting dynastic significantly long time span at different locations portraits, fantastic.mythological figures; they leap to within the site. This review outlines the Lamanai our eyes from the forest canopy, from incised stelae example and considers comparable patterns of and from sculptured mask panels. 1l1ese are the great variation in architectural forms of pyramid-temples at signature pieces of Maya artistic production. They other sites in the Maya area. cap the ruins that initially attracted archaeological attention, and they continue to draw world-class As a secondary theme I am concerned with the con­ tourism to the Maya area. A constant· stream of ceptual role played by the pyramid, and with the vacationers shuffles past these great works, now underlying reasons that impelled the Maya to include cleared and restored. But they are seen merely as such costly and time-consuming features as prominent curiosities touted to sell excursions from Caribbean parts oftheir major temples. It is generally taken more resorts. In ancient times, however, they were certainly or less for granted that Maya pyramids were employed not for holiday amusement; they .were central to the to raise the "temples" at their summits to a civic and political life of Maya communities. Over commanding position of height (see, for example, centuries the Maya invested an enormous amount of Stierlin 1968:96). This view of the structures is time, energy, skill and resources in their production, certainly correct, and the idea has obvious value; I and their functioning is generally acknowledged to suspect, however, that it may not be the whole story.
    [Show full text]
  • Maya Architecture
    1 Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, and Labná http://academic.reed.edu/uxmal/ return to Annotated Bibliography Architecture, Restoration, and Imaging of the Maya Cities of UXMAL, KABAH, SAYIL, AND LABNÁ The Puuc Region, Yucatán, México Charles Rhyne Reed College Annotated Bibliography Maya Architecture . This is not a general bibliography on Maya Architecture. This section lists publications on Maya Architecture that include attention to the Puuc Region. Publications on individual Puuc sites are usually listed only in their own sections of this subject matter bibliography. Publications by and about early explorers and scholars are listed in that section, even though they sometimes deal extensively with Puuc architecture. A Abrams, Elliot Marc How the Maya Built Their World: Energetics and Ancient Architecture. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Based on a study of the residential architecture at Copán, the author attempts to demonstrate the usefulness of “architectural energetics” in understanding ancient civilizations. As the author writes: “By converting buildings into the energy and labor expended in their construction, a series of reconstructions concerning social power, labor organization, and economics can be generated.” Thus, the book includes 12 tables with titles such as “Operations, Tasks, and Costs per Task in Construction”, “Cumulative Energy Cost per Major Construction Episode”, and Hierarchic Social structure based on Residential Cost”. The few conclusions reached regarding the Maya at Copån do not seem to need the elaborate structure of the book. For example, the first conclusion states that “in addition to their greater symbolic value, improved 2 residential structures provided their occupants with an enhanced biopsychological quality of life, particularly in terms of health and comfort.
    [Show full text]
  • John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood: Mayan Explorers. SPONS AGENCY Center for International Education (ED), Washington, DC
    DOCUMENT RESUME ED 398 093 SO 026 310 AUTHOR McDermott, Michael TITLE John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood: Mayan Explorers. SPONS AGENCY Center for International Education (ED), Washington, DC. PUB DATE 94 NOTE 12p. PUB TYPE Guides Classroom Use Teaching Guides (For Teacher) (052) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC01 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *American Indians; Area Studies; *Culture; Ethnic Groups; Foreign Countries; *Geography; Global Education; *Latin American History; Latin Americans; *Mexicans; Secondary Education; Social Studies IDENTIFIERS *Catherwood (Frederick); Maya (People); Mexico; *Stephens (John Lloyd) ABSTRACT This mini-unit focuses on the lives and accomplishments of John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood and their contacts with the Maya. This project deals specifically with how Stephens' published accounts and Catherwood's drawings became the basis from which all further Mayan research developed. These two explorers were the first to describe and chronicle fully their discoveries in Mexico and Central America. Topics discussed include: (1) "The Yucatan, Location, Climate and Basic Geography"; (2) "Earliest References to the Yucatan Peninsula";(3) "Early Maya History";(4) "Mayan Language"; (5) "John Lloyd Stephens"; (6) "Frederick Catherwood"; and (7) "Modern Research Regarding the Maya." Contains 12 references. (EH) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *********************************************************************** Im oo JOHN LLOYD STEPHENS AND FREDERICK CATHERWOOD MAYAN EXPLORERS FULBRIGHT-HAYS SUMMER SEMINAR 1994 I I I 1 1 I I MICHAEL MCDERMOTT I hp 24 HUNT STREET WATERTOWN, MA 02172 1 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Once of Educational Resnarch and ImOrovornont EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) pkThis dc.:witent has been reproduced as 1 received from the person or organization originating it.
    [Show full text]
  • First Baptist NRHP Nomination Form
    Draft NPS Form 10-900 OMB No. 1024-0018 (Oct.1990) United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Registration Form This form is for use in nominating or requesting determinations for individual properties and districts. See instructions in How to Complete the National Register of Historic Places Registration Form (National Register Bulletin 16A). Complete each item by marking "x" in the appropriate box or by entering the information requested. If any item does not apply to the property being documented, enter "N/A" for "not applicable." For functions, architectural classification, materials, and areas of significance, enter only categories and subcategories from the instructions. Place additional entries and narrative items on continuation sheets (NPS Form 10-900a). Use a typewriter, word processor, or computer, to complete all items. 1. Name of Property historic name First Baptist Church of Ventura other names/site number none 2. Location street & number 101 S. Laurel Street not for publication city or town Ventura vicinity state California code CA county Ventura code 111 zip code 93001 3. State/Federal Agency Certification As the designated authority under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1986, as amended, I hereby certify that this nomination request for determination of eligibility meets the documentation standards for registering properties in the National Register of Historic Places and meets the procedural and professional requirements set forth in 36 CFR Part 60. In my opinion, the property meets does not meet the National Register Criteria. I recommend that this property be considered significant nationally statewide locally. ( See continuation sheet for additional comments.) In my opinion, the property meets does not meet the National Register criteria.
    [Show full text]
  • E-Groups”: Monumentality and Early Centers in the Middle Preclassic Maya Lowlands
    REGROUP ON “E-GROUPS”: MONUMENTALITY AND EARLY CENTERS IN THE MIDDLE PRECLASSIC MAYA LOWLANDS James A. Doyle For nearly a century, scholars have used astronomical evidence to explain the Lowland Maya architectural type known as “E-Groups” as solar observatories and, by extension, as locations for rituals related to solar and agricultural cycles. This article departs from the usual focus on the observational properties of E-Groups and places them in the context of early Maya monumentality during the Middle Preclassic period. Specifically, E-Groups are seen as the earliest monumental social spaces in the Maya Lowlands, with multifaceted functions and placements that indicate a shared social map of the land- scape. Geographic information systems viewshed analysis of Middle Preclassic E-Group sites demonstrates that popula- tions constructed E-Groups in places that maximized visibility of the nearby landscape. Viewsheds conducted at sites with Middle Preclassic E-Groups in the central Maya Lowlands suggest that the large plazas and similar monumental archi- tecture represent the centers of comparable, mutually visible communities. Settlers founding these communities consciously created distance from neighboring monumental centers, perhaps as means of defining and buttressing group identity and undergirding spatial claims to political authority. Recent archaeological evidence affords clues that such spaces were civic, allowing architectural settings for social gatherings and access to resources. Por casi cien años, diversos estudios se han basado en evidencia arqueoastronómica para tratar los complejos arquitectóni- cos del “Grupo Tipo E,” propio de las Tierras Bajas Mayas, como observatorios solares y, por consiguiente, como centros rituales relacionados con los ciclos solares y agrícolas.
    [Show full text]
  • 119 Between Death and Divinity. Rethinking The
    BETWEEN DEATH AND DIVINITY. RETHINKING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF TRIADIC GROUPS IN ANCIENT MAYA CULTURE JAN SZYMAńSKI Centre for Precolumbian Studies, University of Warsaw RESUMEN: En este artículo se intenta reunir una lista lo más completa posible de los grupos triádicos registrados en el área maya para, posteriormente, analizar diversos aspectos de su presencia y cronología, su arquitectura, contextos urbanos e icono- grafía, a fin de poder re- ‐evaluar las dos teorías existentes y proponer una nueva. La conclusión final establece que ambas propuestas, a saber, la concepción de los grupos triádicos como réplicas terrenales del “hogar cósmico” o como escenarios arquitectónicos de ritos de adhesión al trono, no pueden descartarse por completo. Sin embargo, estas teorías demuestran posibles funciones y significados secunda- rios de los grupos triádicos, limitados a cierto número de los conjuntos conocidos actualmente. Se presenta una interpretación más general según la cual los grupos triádicos pueden ser percibidos como escenarios arquitectónicos y réplicas de la mí- tica “montaña florida” en el preciso momento de la resurrección del dios del maíz. PALABRAS CLAVE: grupo triádico, dios del maíz, Montaña de las Flores, arquitectura maya, conjuntos especializados. ABSTRACT: This paper aims to gather the most complete list of recorded Triadic Groups from the Maya Area, and subsequently analyze various aspects of their spatial and temporal occurrence, as well as their architecture, urban context, and iconography, in order to re- ‐evaluate the existing theories and, possibly, arrive at a new one. The final conclusion states that both previously existing theories, namely those inter- preting Triadic Groups as either earthly replicas of the Cosmic Hearth, or architec- tural stages for king’s accession rituals, cannot be entirely dismissed.
    [Show full text]
  • GC 1323 Historic Sites Surveys Repository
    GC 1323 Historic Sites Surveys Repository: Seaver Center for Western History Research, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Span Dates: 1974-1996, bulk 1974-1978 Conditions Governing Use: Permission to publish, quote or reproduce must be secured from the repository and the copyright holder Conditions Governing Access: Research is by appointment only Source: Surveys were compiled by Tom Sitton, former Head of History Department, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County Background: In 1973, the History Department of the Natural History Museum was selected to conduct surveys of Los Angeles County historic sites as part of a statewide project funded through the National Preservation Act of 1966. Tom Sitton was appointed project facilitator in 1974 and worked with various historical societies to complete survey forms. From 1976 to 1977, the museum project operated through a grant awarded by the state Office of Historic Preservation, which allowed the hiring of three graduate students for the completion of 500 surveys, taking site photographs, as well as to help write eighteen nominations for the National Register of Historic Places (three of which were historic districts). The project concluded in 1978. Preferred Citation: Historic Sites Surveys, Seaver Center for Western History Research, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History Special Formats: Photographs Scope and Content: The Los Angeles County historic site surveys were conducted from 1974 through 1978. Compilation of data for historic sites continued beyond 1978 until approximately 1996, by way of Sitton's efforts to add application sheets prepared for National Register of Historic Places nominations. These application forms provide a breadth of information to supplement the data found on the original survey forms.
    [Show full text]