Ritualized Discourse in the Mesoamerican Codices
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Ritualized Discourse in the Mesoamerican Codices An Inquiry into Epigraphic Practice Caitlin Reddington Davis 1 Caitlin Reddington Davis 68 Zijlsingel, Leiden 2315KG [email protected] +31-06-1881-2691 Image: Black and white representation of the flower and song, Codex Borbonicus p. 2 2 Ritualized Discourse in the Mesoamerican Codices An Inquiry into Epigraphic Practice Student: Caitlin Reddington Davis Student Number: s1531158 RMA Thesis, 1046WTY Supervisor: Prof. Dr. M.E.R.G.N. Jansen Specialisation: Religion and Society in Native American Cultures University of Leiden Faculty of Archaeology Leiden, The Netherlands December 15th, 2015 Final version 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements 6 Chapter 1: Introduction & Postcolonial Theory 1.1 Introduction 7 1.2 Postcolonial theory 10 1.3 Mesoamerica 12 1.4 Ritual & religion 13 Chapter 2: Writing Theory 2.1 Introduction 17 2.2 Writing theory 17 2.3 An argument for the inclusion of pictorial writing 21 2.4 Traditions of knowledge in Mesoamerica 24 2.4.1 Linguistic development 24 2.4.2 Early Mesoamerican writing 26 2.4.3 Approaches to Mesoamerican writing 28 2.5 The Mesoamerican codices 29 Chapter 3: Case Study: Bloodletting 3.1 Bloodletting as a case study 36 3.2 A brief history of the ritual sacrifice of human blood 37 3.3 Statistical analysis 42 3.3.1 Types and subtypes 43 3.3.2 Actors involved in bloodletting 51 3.3.3 Body parts involved in sacrificial behavior 56 3.3.4 Deities involved in bloodletting 65 3.4 Conclusions 66 Chapter 4: Case Study: Difrasismo 4.1 Difrasismo as a case study 68 4.2 Difrasismo & ritual language 69 4.3 Analysis of the codices 73 4.3.1 Flower & song / red & black ink 74 4.3.2 Arrow & shield 75 4.3.3 Mat & throne 79 4.3.4 Day & night 83 4 4.3.5 Food & drink 85 4.3.6 Green/blue & yellow 86 4.4. Conclusions 87 Chapter 5: Discussion & Conclusion 5.1 The intersection of ritual 89 5.2 A review of the data 90 5.3 A choice between traditions 93 Abstract 96 Works Cited 97 Internet Sources 107 Figures, tables, and appendices 108 Appendices Appendix 1: Bloodletting Data Set 114 Appendix 2: Difrasismo Data Set 120 Appendix 3: Guide to Identifying Difrasismo 140 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr. Maarten Jansen, for his guidance during the process of creating this thesis and his encouragement of my intellectual growth. His support has greatly shaped both my academic and emotional understanding of Mesoamerica and its peoples. I would also like to thank Dr. Araceli Rojas Martinez Gracida for her continued encouragement and kindness and Ph.D. candidate Ludo Snijders for his feedback and review of my early drafts. También quiero agradecer el proyecto grupo de Mesoamerica en Universidad Leiden por sus comentarios y contribuciones a lo largo de este proceso y Ph.D. candidato Juan Carlos Reyes Gomez por su ayuda con el capítulo de difrasismo. I am grateful to the Harvard Peabody Museum for allowing me to examine archaeological materials in their collection, and the Faculty of Archaeology at Leiden University for allowing this research. Finally, I would like to thank my parents, Susan and Kenneth Davis, my brother Kenneth Davis, my grandparents Martin and Nora Reddington and Kenneth and Lydia Davis, and my aunt Tanya Davis, as well as the rest of my family, friends, and loved ones for providing me with love, compassion, and coffee during this process. 6 1 INTRODUCTION & POSTCOLONIAL THEORY 1.1 Introduction Modern human life can be attributed to our ability to transmit complex information across time and space. While many inventions allow humans to do this, arguably the most effective and revolutionary of these was and continues to be writing. Writing is the tool with which the experiences, beliefs, thoughts, ideologies, and devotions of a single individual or collection of individuals can be transmitted outside of the immediate community and time period, transcending national and physical boundaries, allowing for the spread of information to peoples across the world. In many ways, writing is fundamentally essential to our understanding and experience of the universe. Writing has only been invented three times across the world, and arguably only twice in isolation. The Sumerians of the Near East created their early logographic scripted based on their use of clay tokens, while the Chinese are thought to have gleaned their idea for a pictographic script from the Near East. These scripts and their descendent writing systems have never been lost to Western history, with many still widely in use. The final development of writing occurred in Mesoamerica, isolated from the rest of the world in an area far less globalized. While the Mayan script is often considered to be the only Mesoamerican writing, an investigation into Mesoamerican history reveals evidence of a long scribal tradition. From the Olmec to the Aztec, Mesoamerica is the home of far more than only it’s most famous writing export. Despite the evidence of epigraphic tradition across Mesoamerica, many scholars refuse to accept that Maya writing was not the sole writing system in use. The 16th century saw a change that would affect the entire world with the arrival of Columbus and the subsequent colonization of the Americas. This bloody and dramatic period in history still has lasting effects in the current era, including the continued subjugation of indigenous peoples across the Americas. Examining the period immediately preceding the Spanish invasion illustrates the complexity of these cultures and makes their destruction by the Spanish even more devastating. The PostClassic period saw many distinct cultures flourish, some 7 of whom were the Maya, Mixtec and Nahua. These three groups were culturally and linguistically different, but still shared many pan-Mesoamerican commonalities. One of these commonalities was writing, particularly in the form of screenfold manuscripts made of animal hide or native paper. While unity did exist among these cultures, the type of writing varies greatly. The Mayan writing system was logosyllabographic, combining phonetic and logographic elements within the same script. Since it’s decipherment in the 1950s, Mayan writing has widely been accepted as “true” writing. Central Mexican and Mixtec writing is considered more pictographic, although both involve phonetic elements and refer to linguistic practice. The differences between these scripts has led some scholars to refuse to include these pictographic systems in the same field as more structured and phoneticized writing. Thus, the Maya codices have been traditionally been analyzed from a more epigraphic standpoint, while the Central Mexican and Mixtec codices have had a more art historical approach. These writing systems existed contemporaneously, recording similar beliefs and practices from cultures which shared variations of the same ideology and ritual behaviors. The similarities between these cultures lends themselves to the idea that they also were similar in their use of writing, despite the obvious differences in script. The independent invention of Mesoamerican writing allowed it to grow in a manner drastically different than the writing of anywhere else in the world, which has in some ways led to a negative perception of indigenous American writing systems. Scholars who apply Western frameworks of understanding to these systems find that Mesoamerican writing does not fit into the hierarchical and evolutionary structure which works well in many areas of the world. The philosopher Derrida believed that “writing is not a transparent window onto an established reality: writing in our society has certain structured properties which are employed in such a way as to provide an illusion of a real ‘whole’ world” (Street 1984, 101). Understanding a writing system within the context of the culture which produced it allows for a better reconstruction of how these people saw and created their “illusion” of the world. Rather than approaching writing as something which tells the true story of history, it must be approached as of one way of recording subjective cultural experience. The question this thesis aims to answer is: how did Mesoamerican people understand their writing? What does their use of writing tell us about their cultures? More specifically, are there patterns in their use of writing and do these patterns exist cross culturally or are they culturally 8 specific? In order to investigate these questions, the PostClassic codices found in Mesoamerica have been compared on two axes. The codices were chosen for this study due to their presence in three distinct cultural groups, the Central Mexica, Maya, and Mixtec peoples, during the same period of time in close geographic proximity. By studying documents which already have so much in common, the differences exhibited between them can be better attributed to cultural differences rather than because of some other variable. To preface the following discussion of the case studies of this thesis, it is helpful to introduce them with the understanding that “beautifully executed speech and song are the only substances, with the possible exception of blood, that the human body can produce which are accessible to, and worthy before, divine beings” (Gossen 1986, 7). The elevated importance of ritual speech and ritual blood practice are tied by their association to the divine and thus provide alternative avenues for the exploration of ritualized linguistic and epigraphic practice within the codices. The first axis of comparison is a quantitative approach centered on depictions of a cultural practice seen in all three groups: the ritual offering of blood. The manner in which the codices depict bloodletting has been compared in a quantitative and statistical manner through a number of variables in order to determine if all three cultures used writing to depict the practice in a similar way.