Zapotec Writing

2 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 3 Part I- THE ZAPOTEC SCRIBAL TRADITION KNOWLEDGE, WRITING, AND CALENDRICS 5 ALTERNATIVE METHODS IN THE STUDY OF THE ZAPOTEC SCRIPT 9 STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF THE ZAPOTEC WRITING SYSTEM 12 THE ANCIENT ZAPOTEC CALENDAR 15 Part II- WRITING IN MONUMENTAL CONTEXTS RULERSHIP, POWER, AND PUBLIC DISPLAYS 19 FELINES AND THE ROYAL DYNASTIES FROM MONTE ALBÁN 21 JAGUAR LORDS AND THE PRIMORDIAL COVENANT 26 Part III- WRITING IN DOMESTIC CONTEXTS MEMORY AND THE CONTINUITY OF CORPORATE GROUPS 27 ZAPOTEC MORTUARY PRACTICES 28 ZAPOTEC SOCIAL ORGANIZATION DURING THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD 44 THE RITUAL CALENDAR, NAMES OF INDIVIDUALS, AND GENEALOGICAL RECORDS 46 Tomb 104 from Monte Albán 49 Tomb 5 from Cerro de la Campana, Suchilquitongo 67 The Exterior Façade 81 The Interior Vestibule 82 The West Room 83 The East Room 87 The Entrance to the Main Chamber 91 The Main Chamber 92 The Stela and Text II 98 Other Epigraphic Materials in the Tomb 106 The Programs in the Tomb as an Integrated Narrative 107 PORTABLE GENEALOGICAL SLABS 115 The Carved Slab MNA-6-6059 116 Previous Studies of the Slab 118 An Alternative View of the Slab 124 GENEALOGICAL RECORDS DISPLAYED IN MAUSOLEUMS 132 A Carved Stone in a Private Collection 133 The Imagery on the Stone 134 The Carved Block as Part of a Larger Composition 143 Part IV- DISCUSSION 147 Part V- CONCLUSION 154 Acknowledgements 157 Bibliography 158 List of Figures 184 List of Tables 195 Tables not inserted in the text 197 Appendix 1 214 3 INTRODUCTION Since the publication of “Zapotec Hieroglyphic Writing” (Urcid 2001) prevailing methodological constrains in pursuing issues concerning the phonetic decipherment of the script has prompted me to extend a broader semiotic cast onto the available inscriptions, focusing on their semasiographic component and exploring not only semiological relations between image and text but also paying particular attention to the physical backdrops by means of which writing was displayed. From such a perspective, the definition of “decipherment” acquires a different meaning. I still maintain that an understanding of how speech is graphically encoded in the script is critical to elucidate the actual content of the inscriptions and that these are crucial steps for a more comprehensive view of the Zapotec scribal tradition and its societal uses, but acknowledge that by extending the contextual framework of analysis beyond the epigraphic one it is feasible to bring insights concerning semantic meanings embedded in the visual communication and ultimately throw light on the broader cultural code underlying the production and apprehension of writing. The aim of this essay is therefore to highlight how the construction of knowledge (astronomical, calendrical, mantic, and scribal) was linked to the production of social memory and ultimately to political and economic power. My intent is not to cover such links throughout the known uses of the script, uses than spanned more than a thousand years. Rather, I will focus on the scribal production that occurred between the 5th and 9th centuries after the Common Era. In doing so I will rely on the cornerstones that I laid out in “Zapotec Writing”, especially on the conclusions regarding the structure of the Zapotec Calendar Round and the reconstruction of the 20-day name list of the mantic calendar. I will also incorporate or build upon the exegesis of some inscribed materials published before and after “Zapotec Hieroglyphic Writing” that were aimed mostly to Spanish readers and that appear in forums perhaps seldom read by English speakers. I will begin the exposition by providing a general introduction to Zapotec writing and by commenting explicitly on the methods that I have employed in studying the ancient script. Subsequently, I will discuss two broader contexts in which writing was deployed: the monumental and the domestic. While the former may have exposed particular inscriptions to wider audiences in a more direct way, the latter may have accomplished the same albeit indirectly. The example that I will use to illustrate the link between writing and political power centers 4 on the carved monoliths that were found forming the corners of the South Platform at Monte Albán. While this example may seem already familiar, as it was amply detailed in chapter 5 of “Zapotec Writing”, its recapitulation in this context is framed within a discussion of a series of rulers from Monte Albán that can now be identified based on semasiographic and epigraphic data, and the reiteration of the case serves to introduce a newly found carved monolith that was evidently part of one of the two sequential narrative programs that were rendered in these monoliths. To illustrate the link between writing and the production of memory, I will conduct an analysis of writing in elite domestic contexts. Much of the surviving instantiations of “household” writing are found in mortuary contexts, and such inscribed practices include genealogical records and allusions to a rich ritual life that centered on ancestor veneration. I will therefore focus on the exegesis of four kinds of epigraphic and semasiographic materials, namely painted tomb murals, portable carved slabs, blocks that formed composite friezes decorating mausoleums, and tableaus of ceramic effigy vessels. Yet, before specific exemplars of these types of visual records can be approached, I embark in an even broader contextual analysis that lays out key aspects of Zapotec mortuary practices, reviewing not only the skeletal evidence but also the associated material culture and the architectural settings of burials. The particular cases that I will use to “read” the cultural code underlying elite domestic writing include the inscribed materials from tomb 104 at Monte Albán and from tomb 5 at Cerro de la Campana, near Santiago Suchilquitongo. I also delve into an alternative interpretation of a portable slab that, although commented and published by other scholars before, had not been examined through semiotic lenses. To discuss genealogical records that were displayed in mausoleums, I will introduce as centerpiece a carved block now in a private collection in the United States. Both the exegesis of the mortuary narrative program from tomb 104 at Monte Albán and the interpretation of the carved block in the private collection incorporate examples that illustrate how tableaus of ceramic effigy vessels, some of them veritable three-dimensional renditions of “glyphs”, were an integral component of varied technologies of communication in the service of elite interests. Given that the ceramic chronology of the central valleys of Oaxaca has been expanded and refined since Caso and his colleagues first outlined a general framework (Flannery 1968, Flannery and Marcus 1994, Lind 1991, Marcus 1983, Markens 2003, Martínez López 1994, 5 Martínez López et al 2000), I am introducing here an alternative series of phase names that reflect those changes (Table 1.1).1 Part I- THE ZAPOTEC SCRIBAL TRADITION The script that was used in the Central Valleys of Oaxaca constitutes the earliest evidence of writing in the American continent (Figures 1.1 and 1.2). The first tangible, yet piece-meal manifestations of the graphic system can be dated to approximately 600 years before the Common Era (Flannery and Marcus 2003). This precocious Mesoamerican script had subsequently a long trajectory of use that lasted more than 1,500 years. While the earliest known inscription comes from San José Mogote, a settlement that reached its political peak before the establishment of Monte Albán, the largest corpus of inscribed monuments has been documented at this later settlement, including a sizable set of exemplars that date to the times shortly after its foundation. From this evidence it has been surmised that the inception of writing in Oaxaca is related to chiefly competition, and to increasing forms of political centralization that eventually led to statehood and urban life (Marcus 1992a: 227, 1992b: 32-41; Marcus and Flannery 1996: 130). The early evidence of writing in Oaxaca does not necessarily imply that the Zapotecs invented the first Mesoamerican system of phonetic writing. The nature of the archaeological record generates differential preservation of the media through which writing was probably conveyed, and since it is plausible that early scribes used as well perishable materials like wood, cloth, bark paper, and deer hides, several aspects of the origin of writing and its early societal uses in Oaxaca and in Mesoamerica in general may lay beyond our reach. The semasiographic theme associated with the known early inscriptions spanning between 1 The new phase names from 500 BCE to 1521 ACE and their chronometric anchorage were accorded by Lind, Markens, Martínez, Urcid, and Winter during a meeting in Oaxaca City in the summer of 2003. 6 600 BCE to about 200 ACE, and found at the ancient settlements of San José Mogote, Monte Albán, and Dainzu, appear to be related to a set of sacred propositions linking self-sacrifice, the oracular invocation of ancestors to ensure success in warfare raids, the taking of captives, ritual combat with them, and the enactment of human immolation to petition for agricultural and human fertility (Figure 1.3) (Urcid 1998a and 1999a). The elaboration and monopoly by the elites of an ideology that centers on a primordial covenant between humans and the divine (Joyce 1997, 2000; Joyce and Winter 1996), and their choice to commission the carving of monuments that bolster community well-being

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