Maya Calendar Origins: Monuments, Mythistory, and the Materialization of Time PDF
Preview Maya Calendar Origins: Monuments, Mythistory, and the Materialization of Time
Maya Calendar Origins N the william & bettye nowlin series in Art, History, and Culture of the Western Hemisphere MAYA CALENDAR ORIGINS Monuments, Mythistory, and the Materialization of Time PRUDENCE M. RICE Copyright © 2007by the University of Texas Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First edition, 2007 Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to: Permissions University of Texas Press P.O. Box 7819 Austin, TX 78713-7819 www.utexas.edu/utpress/about/bpermission.html The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISOZ39.48-1992(R1997) (Permanence of Paper). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rice, Prudence M. Maya calendar origins : monuments, mythistory, and the materialization of time / Prudence M. Rice. — 1st ed. p. cm. — (William and Bettye Nowlin series) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-292-71688-9(cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 978-0-292-71692-6 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Maya calendar. 2. Maya chronology. 3. Maya cosmology. I. Title. f1435.3.c14r53 2007 529´.32978427—dc22 2007001064 Dedicated to my happy, helpful, quadripartite band of were-jaguar wannabes: Poodie, Binz, Ted, and especially Harley THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Authority over the annual calendar . . . , or of other chronological instruments like clock time, not only controls aspects of the everyday lives of persons but also connects this level of control to a more comprehensive universe that entails critical values and potencies in which governance is grounded. Controlling these temporal media variously implies control over this more comprehensive order and its definition, as well as over the capacity to mediate this wider order into the fundamental social being. . . . Hence the importance of calendric and related time shifts connected with sociopolitical changes is more than political in the narrow pragmatic sense. It has to do with the construction of cultural governance through reaching into the body time of persons and coordinating it with values embedded in the “world time” of a wider constructed universe of power. —Nancy Munn, “The Cultural Anthropology of Time: A Critical Essay” THIS PAGE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK Contents List of Figures and Tables xi Note on Orthography and Dates xiii Preface xv Acknowledgments xix 1 Introduction 1 Popol Vuh, a Maya Creation Myth 3 Time and Preclassic Mesoamerica 5 Chiefdoms and Cycles 8 The Early Maya and the Isthmian Region 9 2 In the Beginning: Early Mesoamerican Prehistory 12 Early Occupation: The Paleoindian or Lithic Stage 13 The Archaic Stage 15 The Archaic-to-Formative Transition 18 The Early Mesoamerican Tradition 22 Discussion 28 3 Mesoamerican Calendrics: Time and Its Recording 30 The 260-day Calendar 31 The 360- and 365-day Calendars 39 The Long Count and the May 44 Origins of the Mesoamerican Calendars 45 Recording Time 48 Discussion 56 4 Maya Calendar Developments in Broader Context 58 Originally Thirteen Months? 58 Beginnings and Endings 61 The Months and the Day Names: A Derivational Model 63 Calendrical Origins and the Popol Vuh 67 5 Middle and Late Preclassic: The Gulf Coast Olmec and Epi-Olmec 75 Architectural Patterns 77 Monuments, Iconography, and Themes 87 Discussion: Calendrical Implications 102 The Epi-Olmec 103 Discussion 106
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