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Desde La Matriz De Olman: the Birth of Writing in Formative Era Mesoamerica

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Desde La Matriz De Olman: the Birth of Writing in Formative Era Mesoamerica Desde la matriz de Olman: The Birth of Writing in Formative Era Mesoamerica by Stephanie Michelle Strauss B.A. in Anthropology & Latin American Studies, May 2011, Yale University A Thesis submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts May 19, 2013 Thesis directed by Jeffrey P. Blomster Associate Professor of Anthropology © Copyright 2013 by Stephanie Michelle Strauss All rights reserved ii Dedication The author wishes to dedicate this work to Stephen, for love, support, and never losing hope; to Debbie and Dale, for 23 years of encouragement and brave draft reading; to Scott, Aiden, Gregg, Laura, and Nathan, for providing love and levity; and to Dean, for keeping me company along the way. iii Acknowledgements The author wishes to acknowledge and sincerely thank Dr. Jeffrey Blomster for two years of guidance, encouragement, instruction, and support. I have become a better scholar, writer, and thinker under his excellent tutelage, and owe him a debt of gratitude. I would further like to thank Dr. Catherine Allen and Dr. Alexander Dent, both of who have deepened and enriched my theoretical work, and Dr. Linda Brown for her enthusiasm and suggestions. Lastly, I would like to thank Dr. Mary Miller for inspiring me to both begin and formally pursue this journey into Mesoamerican archaeology and epigraphy. iv Table of Contents Dedication..........................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements............................................................................................................iv List of Figures....................................................................................................................vi List of Tables....................................................................................................................vii Chapter 1: Introduction.......................................................................................................8 Chapter 2: The Formative Landscape of Olman...............................................................15 Chapter 3: Evidence of Olmec-style Writing....................................................................21 Chapter 4: The Cascajal Block..........................................................................................32 Chapter 5: The Mixe-Zoquean Language Family.............................................................44 Chapter 6: The Zapotec Writing System...........................................................................57 Chapter 7: The Proto-Maya Writing System.....................................................................64 Chapter 8: The Isthmian Writing System..........................................................................76 Chapter 9: Iconoglyphic Elements at Izapa.......................................................................95 Chapter 10: Conclusion....................................................................................................101 Bibliography....................................................................................................................103 v List of Figures Figure 1: La Venta Monument 13..................................................................................................22 Figure 2: San Andres Seal and Greenstone Plaque Inscriptions....................................................25 Figure 3: Alternate San Andres Seal Orientation...........................................................................27 Figure 4: Chalcatzingo Monument 2 and the San Andres Seal......................................................28 Figure 5: San Andres Double-Merlon Glyph and the Olmec-style Ceremonial Bar......................31 Figure 6: Cascajal Block Inscription...............................................................................................32 Figure 7: Published Cascajal Block Reading Orders......................................................................39 Figure 8: Cascajal Block Signary and Repeated Glyph Sequences................................................41 Figure 9: Mixe-Zoquean Phylogentic Tree.....................................................................................49 Figure 10: Modern Mixe-Zoquean Distribution Map.....................................................................51 Figure 11: Divergence Dates for proto-Mixe-Zoquean..................................................................53 Figure 12: San José Mogote Monument 3 and Monte Albán Orthostats........................................61 Figure 13: Sub-V Glyph Block from San Bartolo..........................................................................66 Figure 14: Comparative Analysis for Olmec-style and proto-Maya Glyphs..................................68 Figure 15: Chalcatzingo Monument 31 and T632..........................................................................70 Figure 16: Documentation of Kaminaljuyu Stela 10......................................................................74 Figure 17: Isthmian Cognates on Kaminaljuyu Stela 10................................................................75 Figure 18: Comparative Analysis of Isthmian and Olmec-style Glyphs........................................78 Figure 19: Comparative Analysis of Isthmian and Zapotec Glyphs...............................................79 Figure 20: Comparative Analysis of Isthmian and proto-Maya Glyphs.........................................80 Figure 21: The Tuxtla Statuette Inscription....................................................................................82 Figure 22: La Mojarra Stela 1.........................................................................................................85 Figure 23: The Chiapa de Corzo Sherd Inscription........................................................................91 Figure 24: Comparative Analysis for Isthmian glyphs and Izapan Iconoglyphs............................98 vi List of Tables Table 1: Olmec-style Inscriptions......................................................................................23 Table 2: Possible Proto-Mixe-Zoquean Loanwords..........................................................56 Table 3: Isthmian Inscriptions...........................................................................................77 vii Chapter 1: Introduction In the oft-competitive world of Mesoamerican archaeology, “firsts” are desperately pursued and vehemently contested. The initial cultivation of maize, the first instance of ceramic production, the earliest claimant for statehood – many archaeologists dream of discovering such a pioneering advance in the archaeological record, while others work tirelessly to ensure the pre-eminency of their region of specialty. As the corpus of Formative era writing samples grows, the concomitant race to pinpoint the birth of Mesoamerican writing is accelerating. Four early Mesoamerican script systems are known: the enigmatic “Olmec-style” script1, the Isthmian (or, alternatively, epi-Olmec) script, the Zapotec script, and the proto-Maya script. The relationship between these hieroglyphic systems is a point of contention among archaeologists and epigraphers alike. New discoveries continue to add fuel to this already fiery debate: successively earlier examples of proto-Maya glyphic texts are coming to light in the Peten (Saturno, Stuart and Beltrán 2006) and fascinating, but at times unprovenienced, new samples of Olmec- style writing (Rodríguez Martínez et al. 2006) and Isthmian inscriptions (Houston and Coe 2003) are surfacing as well. The study of ancient scripts is a consumptive task – epigraphers are, by necessity, more familiar with their own script specialty than contemporary script systems. The temptation to laminate glyphic interpretations from one’s own specialty onto outside systems is great. A survey and synthesis of extant Formative texts – from a neutral epigraphic perspective – is thus sorely needed. This thesis will attempt to provide such a synthesis. I will, further, make a case for the relatedness of the florescent and likely 1 A satisfactory name for this script system – exemplified perhaps most clearly and securely by La Venta Monument 13 – has yet to be coined. Indeed, the use of “Olmec” to describe the Formative lowland Gulf 8 logosyllabic Isthmian script system and the shorter, perhaps more logographic system encoded in Olmec-style inscriptions like those on the San Andres Seal and Humbolt Celt. The telling geographic distribution and comparative complexity of the Isthmian script in the Terminal Formative suggests an epigraphic pedigree that reaches backward in time to the very earliest attempts at writing in the New World; and while calling the Isthmian script “epi-Olmec” is a rather transparent comparative tactic, it may yet be an apt – if deterministic – descriptor of the ways in which the Olmec influenced the development of writing in Mesoamerica. In debating the origin of writing in Mesoamerica, some archaeologists believe that all Mesoamerican hieroglyphic writing styles “can be boiled down to two major legacies, both emerging from iconographic traditions of the Early and Middle Formative periods, in a time roughly coincident with the first half of the first millennium BC” (Houston 2004: 279). Paralleling their ostensible zones of florescence, Houston calls these two branches
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