T H E I R WAY OF W R I T I NG

Scripts, Signs, and Pictographies in Pre-Columbian America

Dumba rton Oaks Pr e- C olumbia n Symposia a nd Colloqu ia

Series Editor
Joanne Pillsbury

Editorial Board
Elizabeth Hill Boone
Tom Cummins
Gary Urton
David Webster
 T H EI R WAY OF W R I T I NG
Scripts, Signs, and Pictographies
in Pre-Columbian America

ELIZABETH HILL BOONE and GARY URTON

Editors

DUMBARTON OAKS R ESEARCH LIBR ARY AND COLLECTION

WASHINGTON, D.C.
 2011 Dumbarton Oaks
Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America

15 14 13 12 11 1 2 3 4 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Their way of writing : scripts, signs, and pictographies in Pre-Columbian

America / Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gary Urton, editors.
p. cm.(Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian symposia and colloquia)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-88402-368-5 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Indians of MexicoLanguagesWriting. 2. Indians of Central AmericaLanguagesWriting.
3. Indians of South AmericaPeruLanguagesWriting. 4. Picture writingMexico.
5. Picture writingCentral America. 6. Picture writingPeru.
7. Mayan languagesWriting. 8. Nahuatl languageWriting.
9. Quechua languageWriting.
I. Boone, Elizabeth Hill. II. Urton, Gary. III. Dumbarton Oaks.
f1435.3.w75t74 2011
497dc22
010050788

General Editor: Joanne Pillsbury

Art Director: Kathleen Sparkes
Text Design and Composition: Melissa Tandysh
Jacket Design: Kathleen Sparkes
Managing Editor: Sara Taylor

Volume based on papers presented at the Pre-Columbian Studies symposium Scripts, Signs, and Notational
Systems in Pre-Columbian America, organized with Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gary Urton and held at
Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington, D.C., on October 1112, 2008.

Cover illustrations: Inka khipukamayuq, drawing 137 of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Nueva cornica y
buen gobierno, 1615, photograph courtesy of The Royal Library, Copenhagen. Mixtec scribe, detail, folio 48v
of the Codex Vindobonensis Mexicanus.

www.doaks.org/publications
These books were written in symbols and pictures. This is their way of writing,
supplying their lack of an alphabet by the use of symbols.
f r i a r mo t ol i n i a, 15 4 1,
History of the Indians of New Spain

Before the Spaniards came the Indians of Peru had no knowledge of writing at
all..., but this did not prevent them from preserving the memory of ancient times,
nor did they fail to keep a reckoning for all their affairs whether of peace, war,
or government....[T]hey compensated in part for the lack of writing and let-
ters...principally, with quipus....What they achieved in this way is incredible,
for whatever books can tell of histories and laws and ceremonies and accounts of
business all is supplied by the quipus so accurately that the result is astonishing.
jo s de ac o sta, 159 0,
Natural and Moral History of the Indies
 con t en t s

for e wor d | ix
Joanne Pillsbury

1 i n t roduc t ion
Their Way of Writing: Scripts, Signs, and Pictographies
in Pre-Columbian America | 1
Gary Urton

2 The Cold War and the Maya Decipherment | 9

Michael D. Coe

3 All Things Must Change: Maya Writing over Time and Space | 21
Stephen D. Houston

4 The Flowering Glyphs: Animation in Cotzumalhuapa Writing | 43

Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos

5 Teotihuacan and the Development of Writing in Early Classic Central Mexico | 77

Karl Taube

6 The Written Surface as a Cultural Code: A Comparative Perspective

of Scribal Traditions from Southwestern Mesoamerica | 111
Javier Urcid

7 Elaboration and Abbreviation in Mexican Pictorial Manuscripts:

Their Use in Literary Themes | 149
Michel R. Oudijk

8 Writing, Images, and Time-Space in Aztec Monuments and Books | 175

Federico Navarrete

9 Ruptures and Unions: Graphic Complexity and Hybridity

in Sixteenth-Century Mexico | 197
Elizabeth Hill Boone

10 Moche as Visual Notation: Semasiographic Elements

in Moche Ceramic Imagery | 227
Margaret A. Jackson

v ii
 11 Chuquibamba Textiles and Their Interacting Systems of Notation:
The Case of Multiple Exact Calendars | 251
R. Tom Zuidema

12 Tocapu: What Is It, What Does It Do, and Why Is It Not a Knot? | 277
Thomas B. F. Cummins

13 Khipu Typologies | 319

Gary Urton and Carrie J. Brezine

14 Khipu from Colony to Republic: The Rapaz Patrimony | 353

Frank Salomon, Carrie J. Brezine, Reymundo Chapa, and Vctor Falcn Huayta

15 The Cultural Category of Scripts, Signs, and Pictographies | 379

Elizabeth Hill Boone

c on t r i bu t or s | 391
i n de x | 397

v i i i c on t e n ts
 fore word
T he first authors to write about the systems of
recording information used by the Aztec and
Inka, the dominant empires in the Americas in
the early sixteenth century, stressed the complex-
ity and efficacy of the scripts, signs, and notational
systems used to register dynastic histories, tax and
tribute lists, and other matters crucial to the opera-
tion of any large and complex state. The types of
systems used to record information in the ancient
Americas varied dramatically, from the glyphic
writing in Mesoamerica to the knotted cord
records, or khipus, that facilitated the expansion of
the Inka empire in South America. As Elizabeth
Boone and Gary Urton have noted, these early
modern authors distinguished such systems from
writing as they knew it, preferring, like Motolinia,
to use the phrase their way of writing or, as was
often the case in the Andes, simply accounts. Yet
there was no doubt in the minds of these sixteenth-
century authors that such systems were extremely
effective in conveying information.
The European fascination with Pre-Columbian
systems of recording information continued or
even increased in later centuries. The eighteenth-
century Neapolitan intellectual Raimondo di
Sangro, principe of Sansevero, was obsessed with
khipus and felt that they could replace European
writing systems, as he considered them a richer and
more efficient form of communication. Sansevero
saw them as the future, not just the past. Indeed, he
said he would spread the word about this great sys-
tem himself, were it not for all of his friends in the
printing business who would be put out of work.
The study of ancient American writing and
other systems of recording information did not
wane in the nineteenth century. Mesoamerican
systems, in particular, were the focus of many
studies. We should remember, however, how little
was known about ancient American writing at this
time. The U.S. writer John Lloyd Stephens, travel-
ing in the 1840s, described the spectacular monu-
ments at the Maya site of Copan. He recognized
that hieroglyphs had the potential to reveal rich
histories, but that they remained unintelligible and
functionally mute. By the late nineteenth century,
however, essential features of Maya writing, par-
ticularly numeration, had been worked out, setting
the stage for the spectacular decipherments of the
twentieth century.
With over a century of serious, sustained re
search on Pre-Columbian systems of recording
information, it is perhaps a good time to consider
our current state of knowledge. The present vol-
ume is based on papers presented at the sympo-
sium Scripts, Signs, and Notational Systems in
Pre-Columbian America, held at Dumbarton
Oaks on October 1112, 2008. Organized with
Elizabeth Boone and Gary Urton, this conference
was a particularly celebratory one, as it marked the
return of the annual Pre-Columbian symposium
ix
 to Washington, D.C., after four years of being
held off-site while renovations were completed on
the Main House at Dumbarton Oaks. Two papers
presented at this symposium, by David Stuart and
Alfonso Lacadena, were not available for publi-
cation in the present volume. Dumbarton Oaks
remains indebted to Elizabeth and Gary for their
vision in the scholarly organization of the sympo-
sium and for their expertise and tireless efforts in
editing the resulting volume. Their own work on
the subject of recording information in the ancient
Americas has set a high standard, and we are for-
tunate to have their consideration of the broader
framework for the study of writing and other nota-
tional systems.
I am grateful to Jan Ziolkowski, director of
Dumbarton Oaks; William Fash, of the Adminis
trative Committee of Dumbarton Oaks; and the
senior fellows in Pre-Columbian Studies for their
counsel and support in the organization of the
symposium and the creation of the present vol-
ume. The staff at Dumbarton Oaks was unfailingly
accommodating, from the symposium planning
stages to the preparation of this publication. No one
was more helpful than Emily Gulick, the program
assistant in Pre-Columbian Studies, whose creativ-
ity and hard work were behind every stage of this
project. Bridget Gazzo, Pre-Columbian librarian;
x f oreword
Miriam Doutriaux, exhibition associate; and Juan
Antonio Murro, assistant curator, organized two
stimulating exhibitions on the history of decipher-
ment designed to coincide with the symposium.
The present volume was prepared by the pub
lications department of Dumbarton Oaks, under
the directorship of Kathleen Sparkes. I am grateful
to Sara Taylor, art and archaeology editor, for her
thoughtful work on editorial and production mat-
ters. Outside of Dumbarton Oaks, I would like to
thank the two anonymous reviewers for their help-
ful advice.
The success of any scholarly gathering and
publication depends upon the free exchange of data
and ideas and the rigorous analyses and discussion
surrounding their presentation. I would like to
close by thanking the authors in this volume for
their willingness to share their research. We are
indebted, as well, to the many distinguished schol-
ars who attended the symposium; their good ques-
tions and comments contributed to the stimulating
discussion at the symposium itself and to the ongo-
ing dialogue about the nature of recording infor-
mation in the ancient Americas.
Joanne Pillsbury
Director of Studies, Pre-Columbian Program
Dumbarton Oaks

Writing, Images, and Time-Space
in Aztec Monuments and Books
S cholars have long recognized that
Aztec, and more generally Mesoamerican,
writing traditions regularly combined and juxta-
posed written signs with images, and the complex
relationship between these two media has been
analyzed and discussed from many perspectives.1
In this chapter, I will argue that our analysis of
Aztec writing should also include the oral tradi-
tions and the ritualized performances that usu-
ally accompanied these two elements in order for
us to understand the workings of the scriptural
traditions as wholes. All of these elements came
together when the narratives were performed in
public. These performances must have been highly
formalized occasions in which the owners of the
traditionthat is, those who were socially entitled
to transmit itrecited its oral contents, read the
written records, and displayed the images to a spe-
cific audience. The solemn toast described, or actu-
ally performed, at the beginning of the Historia
tolteca-chichimeca indicates such an occasion:
8
federico navarrete
Come, my uncle, sit on the chair.
Come sit.
My grandfather, come, sit.
My grandfather, Godspeed.
My uncle, have a drink.
Oh tlatoani, Godspeed (Kirchhoff et al. 1989:131).
As suggested by John Monaghan (1994:89) and
Mark King (1994:105107) for the Mixtecs, these
performances may also have included music,
chants, dances, and ritual offerings that would
have heightened their ritual significance.
During these performances, the written texts
in the codices and monuments were read aloud
and explained, while the oral tradition, includ-
ing formalized discourses known generically as
huehuetlatolli as well as poems and chants called
cuicatl, was solemnly recited. The written texts did
not record all of the verbal elements of the tradi-
tions, but merely a few salient aspects such as dates,
place-names, and personal names. This is why
175
 several authors have proposed that they played a
mnemonic role, eliciting the much more complete
oral discourse. But their role went beyond being
mere primers for memory, as Dana Leibsohn
(1994) has called them.
Meanwhile, some of the salient elements of the
images contained in the codices and monuments
were alluded to, through the use of pointing devices
and linguistic markers, in the oral discourse. The
frequent utilization of expressions such as here is
or here we show in colonial alphabetic sources
may reproduce the kind of expressions that were
used to refer to the images during these perfor-
mances. Similarly, the Historia tolteca-chichimeca
uses a different color of ink (red instead of black) in
the phrases that refer to an accompanying image,
thus hinting that during the oral performance
of the narrative a different tone of voice, or some
kind of physical gesture, may have been employed
to refer to the images. The written comments that
are included in many colonial pictographic manu-
scripts may, in turn, be transcriptions of the oral
explanations that were used to describe or eluci-
date the images during the performances. The ritu-
alized nature of the performance also likely meant
that it provoked or facilitated communication with
supernatural entities and transcendental realities
or direct contact with the past events and charac-
ters that were being described. The past was, thus,
ritually or performatively reenacted and brought to
the present.
Therefore, the written and visual narratives
that have survived to this day were only complete
when they were performed together with their cor-
responding oral traditions. Not one of the constitu-
ent parts contained the entire message, which was
meant to be transmitted by the whole, and no part
encompassed the others completely. The writing
did not fully explain or describe the images, nor did
it register the complete oral tradition. The images
were likewise enriched and partially explained by
the information contained in the texts and in the
oral narratives, but they also contained many ele-
ments that were not described by them. Finally, the
ritual performance added significant elements to
the narrative message, such as the solemnity and
1 7 6 nava rret e
the actualization of past realities. Hence, when we
decipher written signs and interpret images, their
explicit referential meanings form just the bare
outline of a much more complex message that had
significant performative dimensions that cannot
be exhausted by a single way of reading, seeing,
or reciting.
Chronotopes and Rgimes dhistoricit
How did these highly complex, multidimensional
constellations of words, images, performances,
and oral traditions maintain their unity and their
coherence? The written signs, in articulation with
images, worked as the organizing armature of the
traditions, and they did so through systematic rep-
resentations of time and space as significant forms,
that is, in the form of chronotopes. This concept was
first developed in relativist physics to refer to the
entanglement of time (chronos) and space (topos)
in physical reality. It was subsequently adopted by
Mikhail Bakhtin to explain how all literary works
are constructed around specific and meaningful
representations of time and space, always in com-
bination, and how these literary chronotopes func-
tion as the essential cores of any narrative genre.
They provide concretion and visibility to nar-
rated time and space, thus organizing the flow of
events and providing it with a framework to make
it understandable and coherent. Chronotopes
determine the nature of the characters and agents
involved in the narrative, and determine how they
change or maintain their continuity through time.
In other words, they give coherence and unity to
the narrative by organizing its constituent parts
into a meaningful whole (Bakhtin 1981).
I contend that chronotopes are also fundamen-
tal for the articulation of time and space in histori-
cal narratives. In this realm, they can be considered
a key element in the definition of what Franois
Hartog (2003) has called a rgime dhistoricit,
that is, the manner in which a specific society at a
specific moment in time conceives of the relation
between the past, the present, and the future
a relation that, in turn, defines the meaning and
purpose of social action in time. For instance, in
the rgime dhistoricit prevalent in the Western
world until the eighteenth century, the present and
the future were conceived as the necessary repeti-
tions of past models that were deemed to be eter-
nally valid, which meant that human action strove
to imitate past models and roles. As Hartog argues,
however, in the modern Western conception of
history, which gained currency after the French
Revolution, the future is expected to be completely
different from the past, and superior to it, so that
human action breaks with the past and seeks inno-
vation and progress.
Alfredo Lpez Austins classic work Hombre-
Dios: Religin y poltica en el mundo nhuatl (1973)
provides key elements for understanding what
we could define as the Aztec rgime dhistoricit.
According to his proposals, Aztec ritual perfor-
mances, as well as historical and political actions,
repeated and commemorated cosmogonic actions
carried out by the gods in the beginning of time as
well as exemplary historical actions of the previ-
ous generations. Thus, human actions in the pres-
ent strove to repeat or re-create the past, or they
were made to conform to past models a posteri-
ori, when they were recorded or narrated (Lpez
Austin 1973:159160). This established a highly sig-
nificant identification between past and present,
between historical actions and their ancient myth-
ical and historical models, and between significant
historical events and their ritual reenactments. I
shall try to show how this conception of history,
this rgime dhistoricit, was presented and artic-
ulated through the use of particular chronotopes,
that is, specific ways of organizing time and space
graphically and symbolically in Mexica codices
and monuments.
Students of Aztec writing, most recently
Alfonso Lacadena (2008), agree that Aztec glyphic
writing was used mainly to denote dates, names
of places, and names of persons and deities. This
fact confirms the link between written signs and
the chronotopic organization of oral, visual, and
performative narratives.
The preeminence of year dates in Mexica books
is reflected in their original name, xiuhamatl,
Writing, Images, and Time-Space in Aztec Monuments and Books 177
count of the years, and led Donald Robertson
(1959:6264) to define them as time oriented and
to compare them structurally with the annals of
the European tradition. But he also pointed out
that Mixtec and Texcocan manuscripts were orga-
nized differently, around events and places, respec-
tively. Robertsons observations, later elaborated by
Elizabeth Boone (1994, 2000), are basically sound,
but they need further refinement. The Mexica man-
uscripts they classified as time-oriented annals
were also organized around explicit depictions
of space; the Mixtec books they defined as event
oriented, or res gestae, also contained abundant
dates and place-names; and the place-oriented,
or cartographic, Texcocan codices also contained
chronological narratives. All three kinds of books
were in fact organized around both time and space,
and the striking differences pointed out by these
authors can be attributed precisely to the fact that
they employed different chronotopes.
Even within the Mexica codices, we can iden-
tify two clearly different chronotopes, that is, two
different ways of organizing time and space. The first
chronotope corresponded to the migration period
before the foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan,
while the second chronotope corresponded to
what can be called the imperial period, after the
foundation of that city, when the Mexica had a rul-
ing dynasty and later became an imperial power
(Navarrete 2000). In the codices that narrate the
former period, time and space flow in a parallel
way, as they depict the Mexicas discontinuous
journey from place to place over the years in their
seemingly unending quest for the land promised
them by their god Huitzilopochtli. In the latter
narratives, as we shall see, space is firmly centered
on the altepetl of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and more
specifically on the Templo Mayor, its ritual heart,
and time is punctuated by the succession of the
Mexica rulers and by the conquests and rituals car-
ried out by them.
Thus, I propose the existence of an imperial
chronotope, a specific way of organizing time and
space, graphically and symbolically, in the histori-
cal narratives that dealt with the events of Mexica
history after the foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
 and before the Spanish conquest. This chronotope
can be found not only in the surviving historical
manuscripts, all from the colonial period, but also in
the known stone monuments with historical content
from the Pre-Columbian period. Understanding
this chronotope puts us on the path to understand-
ing the working of the Mexica rgime dhistoricit organized chronologically through the representa-
and also the complex relationship between writing,
oral tradition, visual representation, and ritual per-
formance in Mexica historical narratives.
Codices
Six pictographic books produced in the six-
teenth century narrate and depict the history
of the Mexica after the foundation of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan and before the Spanish conquest: the
Codex Aubin (Dibble 1963), the Codex Mexicanus
(Mengin 1952), the Codex Azcatitlan (Barlow
et al. 1995), the Codex Mendoza (Echeagaray 1979),
and the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (Quiones
figure 8.1
The reign of
Axayacatl, Codex
Azcatitlan,
pages 18v19r.
(Photographs
courtesy of the
Bibliothque
Nationale de
France, Paris.)
1 7 8 nava rret e
Keber 1995), along with the closely related Codex
Vaticanus A/Ros (1979).2 Although these manu-
scripts differ markedly in their style and in some
aspects of their content, they share all, or most, of
the essential featurestwo chronological and two
spatialof the imperial chronotope. First, they are
tion of long rows of successive year signs depicted
in the traditional pictographic style as cartouches
with the year sign and numeral inside. Second,
they depict the succession of Mexica tlatoque, or
rulers, marked by their enthronements and deaths.
Third, they display prominently the Templo Mayor,
the main temple of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, and they
depict its renovations and some rituals carried out
on and around it; alternatively, they display the
toponymic glyph of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, which is
metonymically associated with the Templo Mayor.
Fourth, they enumerate the conquests carried out
by each Mexica ruler. Each codex utilizes these con-
ventional elements differently, but they all respect
the essential features of the chronotope.
 The first two chronological elements, the suc-
cession of year signs and Mexica rulers, clearly
served to establish a sense of continuity in time
and to emphasize the uninterrupted and grow-
ing power of the Tenochca state. They also dem-
onstrated that the history of the period was first
and foremost the history of the rulers of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan and of their ritual actions and feats
of conquest. As Boone (1994:67, 2000) has pointed
out, this served to establish that the time depicted
was a specifically Mexica time and it symbolized
empire and that Mexica history was an unbroken
line. This is also the reason why Eloise Quiones
Keber (1995) has called the imperial-period Codex
Telleriano-Remensis a dynastic chronicle. In this
sense, the Mexica histories appear to be very close
in their structure and content to European chroni-
cles of the time, which were also organized around
dynastic succession.
These two elements are articulated in different
ways in each manuscript. In the Codices Telleriano-
Remensis, Mexicanus, and Aubin, time appears to be
Writing, Images, and Time-Space in Aztec Monuments and Books 1 79
dominant, since the year signs are organized in con-
tinuous lines and the coronations and deaths of the
kings do not affect their deployment. But the pages of
the Codex Mendoza are organized around the rule
of each tlatoani, and the number of years included
in each one depends on its length, so the year signs
are not continuous. The Codex Azcatitlan does away
with year signs altogether, depicting the rule of each
tlatoani in a double page, thus explicitly subordinat-
ing the year count to the succession of rulers (Figure
8.1). As we shall see, however, the lack of dates
does not mean that the codex does not follow the
imperial chronotope.
The third element of the chronotope, the rep-
resentation of the Templo Mayor, the ritual center
of the Mexica altepetl, served to organize space,
confirming the political, ritual, and cosmic cen-
trality of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and its rulers.
Boone (2000:236) has proposed that in Mexica his-
tories the Mexica and the city of Tenochtitlan are
the unmarked categories, they are considered so
fundamental to the history that they need not be
 figure 8.2
The beginning of the imperial chronotope, Codex Aubin, pages 4849. (Photograph courtesy of The Trustees of the
British Museum, London.)
named or specifically indicated and that all the
events in Mexica histories were assumed implic-
itly to take place in that town. Such an assumption,
however, is possible only because the year count
that organizes the stories is firmly anchored to the
Templo Mayor and to Mexico-Tenochtitlan.
This spatial anchoring is particularly explicit
in the Codex Aubin, since the year count after the
foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan starts near the
base of the recently erected Templo Mayor (Figure
8.2). Afterward, the document portrays the renova-
tion of the temple under the governments of Tizoc
and Axayacatl. Significantly, the last depiction of
the Templo Mayor is in an image portraying the
massacre carried out in front of it by the Spanish
conquerors in 1520.
The Codex Vaticanus A/Ros (folio 71v) be
gins the year count corresponding to the impe-
rial period of Mexica history on a page depicting
the foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and dis-
playing its tenochtli, or stone-cactus, toponymic
1 8 0 nava rret e
glyph. Afterward both it and the Codex Telleriano-
Remensis (folios 38v and 39r) depict the renovation
of the Templo Mayor of Mexico-Tenochtitlan under
Tizoc and Axayacatl, emphasizing the bloody sac-
rifices that were made on those occasions.
The Codex Azcatitlan (page 12) also depicts
the foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, placing
the famous tenochtli on the chest of a sacrificial
victim who lies atop the Templo Mayor. It then
portrays the foundation of the temple in Mexico-
Tlatelolco (page 13), which is understandable since
this document presents a Tlatelolca version of
Mexica history. Only after recounting the defeat
of the Tlatelolcas by the Tenochcas and the death of
their ruler Moquihuix (page 19), who was dismem-
bered and thrown down the stairs of his temple,
does it portray the Templo Mayor from Mexico-
Tenochtitlan. In this way, the codex argues that the
original political and cosmic center of the Mexicas
was in Tlatelolco and that the Tenochcas usurped
its rightful position (Navarrete 2004). The last
depiction of the Tenochca Templo Mayor portrays
the massacre carried out by the Spaniards during
the conquest (page 24).
The Codex Mexicanus does not initially depict
the Templo Mayor (folio 44), but it includes the
toponymic glyph of Mexico-Tenochtitlan to mark
the foundation of the altepetl. It then portrays the
conquest of the Tlatelolca temple and the renova-
tion of the temple of Mexico-Tenochtitlan under
Tizoc (folio 76).
In contrast, the Codex Mendoza never de
picts the Templo Mayor of Mexico-Tenochtitlan
but only those temples in conquered enemy cities,
including the temple in Mexico-Tlatelolco. Nev
ertheless, one could argue that the temple is pre-
sented implicitly. The codexs famous initial page
(folio 2r) clearly portrays Mexico-Tenochtitlan as a
cosmic center, represented by the tenochtli glyph,
a clear sacrificial symbol in the Mexica tradition,
as it was supposed to have grown upon the bur-
ied heart of a sacrificial victim and its red cactus
fruits were symbols of the human hearts offered
to the deities. To strengthen this association with
sacrifice, it also depicts a tzompantli, or skull
rack (Figure 8.3). On the following page (folio 2v),
it records the sacrifice of war captives after the
Mexica conquered four enemy cities. As we have
seen, the Codex Azcatitlan explicitly identifies
the tenochtli glyph with the Templo Mayor (page
12); this glyph was also associated with the monu-
ment known as the Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada
(Teocalli of Sacred Warfare).
But the question remains: why was the Templo
Mayor not represented directly in the Codex
Mendoza? A possible response is that this docu-
ment, which was commissioned by the Spanish
authorities, sought to understate the religious and
sacrificial dimensions of Mexica power, symbol-
ized by the temple, and instead emphasized its
political and military elements, which were of par-
ticular interest to the Spaniards, as successors to
the Mexica.
The fourth element of the chronotope, the enu-
meration of conquests carried out by the successive
Mexica rulers, combines time and space in a mean-
ingful way since these conquests were both events
Writing, Images, and Time-Space in Aztec Monuments and Books 181
(battles won by the Mexica at a specific moment in
time) and places (foreign polities that were incor-
porated into the growing Mexica empire). These
outlying places were implicitly related to the cos-
mic center in Mexico-Tenochtitlan because they
represented the four directions of the cosmos
that became progressively subordinated to it. This
relationship is explicitly stated in a passage from
Fernando Alvarado Tezozmocs (1992:33) Crnica
mexicyotl, in which the Mexica made the follow-
ing promise to their god Huitzilopochtli: In truth
here [in this cosmic center] shall be your tequitl
[your sacred duty], the one you came here for; you
shall wait for the others, you shall confront the oth-
ers in all the four directions you shall push forward
the altepetl.3
Each codex represents the conquests using
one of the different glyphic conventions available
in Nahuatl writing. The Codex Mendoza employs
highly simplified images of the burning temples
of each conquered polity alongside its toponymic
glyph. In contrast, the Codex Azcatitlan repre-
sents the conquered polities using the customary
altepetl, water-mountain, glyph, which consists
of a mountain (tepetl) with a horizontal bar on the
bottom that represents water (atl). Each of these
glyphs is accompanied by its respective toponymic
glyph, and some particularly important battles
and sacrificial rituals are also depicted. The Codex
Aubin also presents the altepetl glyphs below a
war shield with a macquahuitl, a truncheon with
obsidian blades that denotes conquest. The Codex
Mexicanus only shows the place-names and the
war shield with the macquahuitl. The Codex
Telleriano-Remensis also uses the altepetl glyph
and the toponymic glyphs but always depicts two
warriors who are metonymic representations of the
defeated enemy and the victorious Mexica armies
and who are shown wearing their full regalia,
including hats, hairdressings, paper banners, and
weapons (Figure 8.4). These figures are similar to
the ones found on the Stone of Tizoc.
The combination of consistency and variabil-
ity in the implementation of the imperial chrono-
tope in the Mexica codices suggests that we are
dealing with a convention that was well established
 figure 8.3
The foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, Codex Mendoza, folio 2r. (Photograph courtesy of the Bodleian
Library, Oxford.)

1 82 nava rret e
 figure 8.4
Mexica conquests, Codex Telleriano-Remensis, folio 37r. (Photograph courtesy of the Bibliothque Nationale
de France, Paris.)

Writing, Images, and Time-Space in Aztec Monuments and Books 183

 but also allowed a fair amount of liberty to each
particular tlacuilo, or writer-artist, just like the lee-
way the scribes belonging to different altepetl had
in the use of the basic conventions of the writing
system, according to Lacadena (2008:1013).
All of these codices have a clear, linear nar-
rative structure that is familiar and reassuring to
Western readers since it corresponds well with the
linearity of our own historical chronotopes. (For
more on Western concepts of lineal history, see
Koselleck 1985.) Therefore, they have been easily
accepted as legitimate histories by Western audi-
ences since the sixteenth century. Even the repeti-
tions that are clearly evident in the sequence of the
accessions and deaths of rulers, in the conquests
accomplished by each Mexica tlatoani, and in the
successive renovations of the Templo Mayor and
the sacrificial rituals that accompanied them can
be easily considered historical regularities derived
from the political organization of the altepetl. Just
like their European counterparts, Mexica rul-
ers sought to emulate the successful and glorious
actions of their predecessors and to liken them-
selves to them; in this way they gained legitimacy
and confirmed the continuity of their royal lineage
and the political regime that centered around it
(Cruz Gonzlez 2006). These assertions of conti-
nuity may have been directed primarily toward
other members of the ruling elite, who had their
own claims to the throne, as well as toward the rul-
ing lineages of neighboring polities.
But as the subsequent analysis of Pre-
Columbian stone monuments will show, these
repetitions may have had a more literal meaning
within the Aztec rgime dhistoricit, which estab-
lished a highly meaningful relationship between
past and present and between ancient events and
their contemporary ritual reenactments.
Also since the sixteenth century, codices
have been assimilated into the Western category
of books, as objects with a written message that
is both dominant and self-contained, and thus
their ritual and performative dimensions have
been underestimated and even suppressed. This
has happened despite the fact that pictographic
histories produced by indigenous authors in the
1 84 nava rret e
sixteenth century deliberately attempted to repro-
duce some of the oral and performative dimensions
of the tradition they sought to continue. But several
other factors militated in favor of decontextualiza-
tion. First of all, Mexica authors needed to gain the
assent of the new dominant Spanish audiences to
which they directed their messages, often within
the context of delicate judicial and political nego-
tiations. Therefore, at the formal level, they sought
to strengthen the aspects of their tradition that
were more similar to Western notions of history
and writing and to downplay those that were more
dissimilar, such as the ritual and oral dimensions.
At the level of content, they sought to reduce, or
even suppress, the religious and ritual dimension
of their historical narratives and to stress those
aspects that corresponded to Spanish notions of
political legitimacy (Navarrete 2011). This process
is quite evident if we compare the images of the
conquering and conquered warriors who appear
as embodiments, or representatives, of the patron
gods of their polities in the pre-Hispanic Stone of
Tizoc (see Figure 8.6) and the similar images on the
initial page of the colonial Codex Mendoza, which
are completely deprived of any religious elements
(see Figure 8.3).4
Stone Monuments
My analysis of some key Mexica stone monuments
from Pre-Columbian times will confirm that they
utilized the imperial chronotope and will show
how their visual and written narratives were inti-
mately articulated with the ritual life of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan. This analysis will also bring forth
some peculiarities and complexities of the impe-
rial chronotopes and the Aztec rgime dhistoricit
that are not so evident in the deceptively linear and
familiar pictographic histories.
The stone monolith known as the Teocalli
de la Guerra Sagrada is a scale representation
of a temple, most likely the Templo Mayor itself
since it has a beautiful rendering of the tenochtli
glyph on its rear side. The close association of
the two elements in this monument confirms the
 figure 8.5
Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada, stone monolith, Museo Nacional de Antropologa, Mexico City. (Photograph
by Marco Antonio Pacheco; reproduced by permission of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia,
Mexico City.)

implicit presence of the Templo Mayor on the ini-
tial pages of the Codex Mendoza and the Codex
Mexicanus. The teocalli also confirms the sym-
bolic importance of the Templo Mayor as a cosmic
center: the altar at its summit is adorned with a
sun disk, flanked by the gods Huitzilopochtli and
Tezcatlipoca (or Tepeyollotl, one of his avatars;
Umberger 1984:6467), and placed atop a represen-
tation of the open maw of Tlaltecuhtli, the Earth
Lord (Figure 8.5). In this way, it depicts heaven and
the underworld, placing itself in the center of them.
The cosmic centrality of the Templo Mayor (and of

Writing, Images, and Time-Space in Aztec Monuments and Books 185

 Mexico-Tenochtitlan) is a key feature of the impe-
rial chronotope and was explicitly or implicitly
asserted in all of the codices that I have analyzed.
The monument also contains significant dates.
On top, the year date Ome Calli (2 House) refers
to the founding of Tenochtitlan as represented
through the tenochtli glyph. On the front, the
dates Ce Tochtli (1 Rabbit) and Ome Acatl (2 Reed)
may refer to the beginning of the current cosmic
era, as Alfonso Caso (1927:6264) proposed, but
also to the last New Fire ceremony performed by
Moteuhczoma Xocoyotzin in Mexico-Tenochtitlan
in 1507, as Enrique Palacios (1927:1920) affirmed,
or to the previous one carried out by Moteuhczoma
Ilhuicamina in 1455 (Graulich 1997:192). These read-
ings are not contradictory, but complementary,
since they associate the ritual actions of the Mexica
rulers with the creation of the cosmos. This associa-
tion is both spatial, since the altepetl is represented
as a cosmogonic and sacrificial center, and chrono-
logical, since it is portrayed as the place where the
cosmogonic actions of the gods are reenacted and
cosmic time is renovated when the specific dates
are repeated. This assertion of cosmic centrality
is anchored to historical time by the dates of the
foundation of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and of the per-
formance of the New Fire ceremonies, which also
demonstrate the continuity of the altepetl.
Although there are no explicit depictions
of conquests in this monument, war as a sacred
endeavor is presented through the atl tlachinolli,
water-burnt field, glyphs, well-known sym-
bolic representations of warfare that sprout from
the mouths of most of the figures carved on it. As
Richard Townsend (1979:5455) proposed, the por-
trait of the Earth Lord Tlaltecuhtli surrounded
by war shields and arrows (a symbol of conquest
employed in the Codices Aubin and Mexicanus)
may be interpreted as a claim for military domina-
tion of the whole world by the Mexica.
The final key element of the imperial chro-
notope, the portrayal of Mexica rulers, is also
implicitly present in the teocalli through the
name glyph of the tlatoani Moteuhczoma, which
could allude both to Ilhuicamina and his succes-
sor, Xocoyotzin, and which appears right next to
1 86 nava rret e
the figure of Tepeyollotl-Tezcatlipoca on the main
altar (Umberger 1984:73). This glyph led Emily
Umberger (1984:8283) to propose that the mono-
lith was in fact a momoztli, a kind of small altar that
was used as a throne for the god Tezcatlipoca, and
that it could also have been used as a ceremonial
or symbolic throne for Moteuhczoma Xocoyotzin
since it was found on the site of his palace. But this
interpretation has been challenged by Guilhem
Olivier (1997:206), who contends that the monu-
ment is too small to have served as a throne.
Even if it did not serve as a throne, this monu-
ment could have been associated with the perfor-
mance of sacrificial rituals linked to the New Fire
ceremony, which it appears to have commemorated
(though Graulich [1997] questions this link). In any
case, I propose that the written and visual messages
contained in the monument could only be fully
read when these rituals were being performed,
whether the king used it as his throne and com-
pleted the rituals through his physical presence or
whether the rituals of cosmic renewal carried out
around the teocalli gave them a physical actuality.
At those moments, the monument would not sim-
ply represent but would actually become the center
of the cosmos, both chronologically and spatially.
It would function as the locus where the cosmo-
gonic actions of the gods and the rituals of the
Mexica priests converged in the present, confirm-
ing the legitimacy and continuity of Mexica ruler-
ship, which would also explain why this monument
was located in the palace of the reigning ruler.
The famous round monolith known as the
Stone of Tizoc also contains the key elements of
the imperial chronotope: the affirmation of the
cosmic centrality of Mexico-Tenochtitlan and the
enumeration of the conquests of the Mexicas, as
well as the assertion of the uninterrupted succes-
sion of the Mexica rulers and the continuity of
Mexica time (Figure 8.6). The top of the monument
is carved with a solar disk that represents the cen-
ter of the cosmos and its four directions. The fif-
teen carvings on the side of this huge disk depict
the Tenochca tlatoani Tizoc and fourteen other
Mexica warriors subjugating a series of fifteen
enemy warriors representing the same number
figure 8.6
Stone of Tizoc, stone monolith, Museo Nacional de Antropologa, Mexico City. (Photograph by Luis Martn
Martnez; reproduced by permission of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia, Mexico City.)

of different altepetl conquered by the Mexica.
The king is explicitly identified through his name
glyph and is shown wearing a headdress that lik-
ens him to Huitzilopochtli, the patron god of the
Mexica; his left foot is missing and is substituted
by a smoke sign, which would identify him also
as Tezcatlipoca (Townsend 1979:4346). Olivier
(1997:9193) has also found traits associated with
the god Xiuhtecuhtli. He is shown subduing an
enemy warrior by taking hold of his hair, a well-
established icon of conquest in the Mesoamerican
and Nahuatl traditions. A toponymic glyph iden-
tifies the captive with Matlatzinco, an impor-
tant region and ethnic group situated to the west
of Mexico-Tenochtitlan. In contrast, none of the
other Mexica figures in the monument are identi-
fied, though all have godlike characteristics, while
each enemy captive is associated with a specific
toponymic glyph. Umberger (1998:251) has pro-
posed that the captive enemy warriors are met-
onymic figures who stand at the same time for the
polities and the ethnic groups conquered by the
Mexica, as well as for their patron gods.
There are terrestrial symbols carved below the
figures, including the open maws of Tlaltecuhtli
and stars and sky bands above them, which together
with solar disk atop the monument place this series
of conquests in a cosmological framework, imply-
ing that the Mexica had subjugated their enemies
all over the world (Townsend 1979:4647), the same
message conveyed by the codices and the Teocalli
de la Guerra Sagrada. Historical sources assert
that this stone monument and an earlier one now
known as the Ex-Arzobispado Stone, to be dis-
cussed subsequently, were placed atop the Templo
Mayor (Cruz Gonzlez 2006), thus presenting the
familiar message of the cosmic centrality of that
building, of the Mexica altepetl, and of the relation
between this center and the imperial expansion of
the Mexicas.
Strikingly, this monument contains no dates.
This absence may be related to the fact that most of

Writing, Images, and Time-Space in Aztec Monuments and Books 187

 the places, or polities, depicted on it were not actu-
ally conquered under Tizocs short-lived reign. But
Michel Graulich and other scholars have asserted
that the conquests depicted on this monument are
organized chronologically in the same order as
in the Codex Mendoza, starting with Colhuacan
and culminating with four conquests that could
be attributed to Tizoc (though three of them are
attributed to Axayacatl in that codex; Graulich
1992). In fact, the same conquests, except for the
final four attributed to Tizoc, were represented in
the exact same order on the Ex-Arzobispado Stone,
an earlier and very similar monument attributed to
Moteuhczoma Ilhuicamina by Felipe Solis (1992) or
to Axayacatl by Graulich (1992).
According to this interpretation, the monu-
ment would be historically accurate, while im
plicitly linking the significant conquests of the
previous Mexica rulers with Tizocs much less
impressive achievements. In this way, it would
establish a temporal continuity between these mil-
itary feats and convey the same message of con-
tinuity and repetition, thereby assimilating the
glorious actions of one ruler with those of his prede-
cessors and successors, as the codices did through
the use of continuous dates and the representations
of the coronations and deaths of the Mexica kings.
The Stone of Tizoc, just like the Codex Azcatitlan,
therefore managed to represent the chronological
dimension of the imperial chronotope, that is, the
assertion of the continuity of Mexica time, without
using year signs.
The Stone of Tizoc, however, served as more
than a record of conquests since it was either a
cuauhxicalli (a vessel for the blood of sacrificial vic-
tims) or a temalacatl (a stone around which ritual
sacrificial combats were carried out). Townsend
(1979:46) suggests, in fact, that the monument is not
a historical record as such, since it did not depict
the conquests of those fifteen altepetl, but rather
depicted a ceremony in which war captives hailing
from the altepetl were sacrificed by Tizoc, either
because they were captured in combat or because
they were rendered as tribute by the already con-
quered towns. This is why the counterclock-
wise direction of the carvings corresponds to the
1 8 8 nava rret e
direction taken by participants in some key Mexica
rituals involving the tlatoani (Townsend 1979:47).
Following the same line, Umberger (1998:246
249) argues that the monument was designed as
a program for the sacrificial rituals that were to
be carried out by Tizoc to celebrate his own con-
quests and to commemorate those of his predeces-
sors, which were actually performed around it in
1484, transforming it into a piedra sangrada, or
bloodied stone, according to the Codex Telleriano-
Remensis (see Umberger 1998).
Within the Aztec rgime dhistoricit, the
anointment of the stone with the blood of the sac-
rificial victims may have had the effect of ritually
reviving the conquests carried out by the Mexica
rulers over the generations, bringing them to the
present. And after the stone was bloodied, any
future reading of its explicit historical contents
would recall the sacrifices that were carried out
around it. In such a way, the reading of the mon-
ument required the performance of the rituals that
it represented, and these in turn led to the reactu-
alization of the past feats that it commemorated.
The third monument I analyze here is the
famous Dedication Stone of the Templo Mayor
(Figure 8.7). It carries the themes of assimilation
between past and present events and dynastic con-
tinuity to an extreme that clearly breaks with the
Western notion of historical truth but is neverthe-
less consistent with the Aztec conception of his-
tory. This stone plaque consists of a large year sign
cartouche (Chicuey Acatl, or 8 Reed) below a scene
in which two Mexica rulers, Tizoc and Ahuitzotl,
perform a ritual of self-sacrifice. Between them
is a series of ceremonial artifacts, particularly a
large zacatapayolli used to absorb the blood they
are letting out of their ears and to hold the spines
they are using to pierce their skin. These artifacts
stand atop the open maw of Tlaltecuhtli. Since
this plaque was most likely attached to the Templo
Mayor itself (Umberger 1987:420422), it provides
us with a significant variation of the imperial chro-
notope. Whereas generally this cosmic center was
associated with the sacrifice of captive enemies,
in this instance it is linked to the performance of
rituals of self-sacrifice by the Mexica rulers. This
 figure 8.7
Dedication Stone, stone plaque, Museo Nacional de Antropologa, Mexico City. (Photograph by
Boris de Swan; reproduced by permission of the Instituto Nacional de Antropologa e Historia,
Mexico City.)

Writing, Images, and Time-Space in Aztec Monuments and Books 189

 was another key aspect of their ritual duties, and it
was also modeled on the cosmogonic actions of the
gods, since they created the world, and mankind,
through self-sacrifice.
This plaque has been interpreted as a record of
the dedication ceremonies of the renovated Templo
Mayor carried out by Ahuitzotl. A second date,
without a cartouche (Chicome Acatl, or 7 Reed)
has been read by H. B. Nicholson (1993:77), follow-
ing a previous interpretation by Alfonso Caso, as
December 18, 1487, the specific date on which this
dedication ritual was enacted.
This chronological accuracy is misleading,
however, because the dedication ritual could not
have occurred as depicted, since by that date Tizoc
had been dead for over a year. The joint presence
of the dead former ruler and his successor on the
monument is thus a symbolic statement similar
to that of the famous Cross Panels of Palenque, in
which the ruler Chan Bahlum appears alongside his
dead predecessor, Pakal. In both instances, the mes-
sage is the continuity of the ruling dynasty. Such a
statement was particularly important in this case
because Tizoc had died at a relatively young age
after just a few years on the throne and probably had
been poisoned, according to Diego Durn (1967:311).
Moreover, the renovation of the Templo Mayor that
Ahuitzotl inaugurated was actually started by Tizoc.
Thus, we can assume that the dedication ritual
was carried out by Ahuitzotl (who was imitating
the self-sacrifices carried out by the gods at the
beginning of time) and that the dedication stone
that commemorated it stated that Tizoc should
have been there, as Ahuitzotls predecessor and
as the initiator of the rebuilding of the temple, or
that Tizoc was made present by some kind of ritual
invocation. In this way, different moments of the
recent past and of more distant cosmogonical time
were conflated, and the invocation of the past rul-
ers and the imitation of their actions propitiated
a more literal and tangible presence. As with the
Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada, the Templo Mayor
became the cosmic center where the historical
times of the Mexica rulers and the time of the gods
could come together and be actualized in the pres-
ent through the performance of sacrificial rituals.
19 0 nava rret e
Writing and Society
The previous analysis puts forward an ideologi-
cal model for interpreting Aztec writing (Houston
2004:6) based on the premise that its nature and
workings, its contents, and its relation to outside
reality cannot be fully understood unless we take
into account the social and historical framework in
which it was produced; the chronotopes that artic-
ulated its written, visual, oral, and ritual elements;
and the rgime dhistoricit that gave meaning to
the events that it narrated.
This means that the written signs cannot be
deciphered and understood until we understand
their social meanings and intentions. In Mexica
society, and quite likely in other Mesoamerican
societies, writing was primarily a tool at the ser-
vice of the state and its rulers.5 We can assume that
full literacy was restricted to specialized elites,
since it involved not only the ability to read and
write the written signs, but also the capacity to
draw and interpret the visual narrations in which
they were embedded, the knowledge of the oral
traditions that accompanied them, and the mas-
tery and social authority to carry out the associ-
ated rituals. Another key element of literacy was
a full command of the conventions of the specific
chronotopes that were used to structure historical
narratives and that may have worked as proofs of
the authenticity and legitimacy of each codex and
monument, as well as of their authors (Navarrete
2000). Beyond this reduced group, other social sec-
tors may have been able to muster varying degrees
of literacy, which allowed them to understand
some parts of the visual, written, and performed
messages and to participate in the rituals.
In addition, each genre or class of docu-
mentseither historical, sacred, tributary, or
judicialmust have developed its own ad hoc way
of linking the written, visual, oral, and performa-
tive elements. These specific configurations obeyed
practical constraints and considerations; that is,
each genre found the most efficient method to pres-
ent a given set of information and the most con-
vincing way to convey its argument. Each of them
must have also developed specific rules regarding
who could read and recite the texts, as well as
when and how the documents could be shown and
performed. These configurations must have had
significant ideological and cosmological under-
pinnings. Here I have explored just how complex
such tenets were in the case of historical books and
monuments, but similar analyses could be made
of documents and monuments of other kinds, as
Boone (2007) has done for the sacred books.
The speed and efficiency with which Aztec
written and visual traditions adopted European
elements and techniques after the Spanish con-
quest, and adapted them to the new cultural con-
text, proves that they were not inflexible or static.
Significantly, the chronotopes survived and thrived
in the new forms of European books and in the use
of the new alphabetic scripts.
This historical convergence, however, should
not blind us to the differences between Aztec and
other Mesoamerican systems of writing and our
own. For instance, I want to stress that written
names, toponyms, and dates were almost always
embedded within larger visual contexts and formed
part of more complex visual narratives. Hence, their
spatial placement and arrangement, and their rela-
tionship with the images they explained or named,
were an integral part of their meaning, beyond the
verbal content they registered. That is why a lineal
transcription of the names and dates contained in
the codices and monuments that I have analyzed
here would not render their full meaning.
The works of Mary Elizabeth Smith (1973),
Pablo Escalante (1996), and Elizabeth Boone (2000)
have already described and analyzed some of the
key elements of visual narrations in Mesoamerican
codices. But we still need more detailed studies
that move beyond the clarification of details and
individual scenes to the analysis of the narrative
structures and conventions utilized in whole docu-
ments and to the comparison between them. Our
understanding of visual narratives will also ben-
efit from systematic comparisons between Mexica,
Texcocan, and Mixtec codices with their different
chronotopes, that is, the ways in which they depict
and integrate time and space as well as the ways in
which they organize images and texts. This kind of
Writing, Images, and Time-Space in Aztec Monuments and Books 191
analysis should also be extended to stone monu-
ments all over Mesoamerica.
When studying the relationship between writ-
ing and other elements of the traditions, we should
strive to avoid the logocentrism of Western culture
that attributes to written records a more exalted
status or a higher reliability. In Mesoamerican tra-
ditions, written documents and monuments were
not regarded as the sole guarantors of authentic-
ity and truth, nor did they establish a direct con-
tinuity with the historical past, as in the Western
scribal tradition. Instead, they were frequently
destroyed, defaced, and replaced by new versions
(Navarrete 1998). In fact, some oral genres, such as
cuicatl (sacred chants) and huehuetlatolli (words
of the ancients), were likely held in higher regard
because of their sacredness, and their performance
provided historical narratives with veracity, solem-
nity, and sacredness, as well as instigated the estab-
lishment of supernatural connections with the past
or the divine realms being alluded to.
Nahuatl traditions were not simply performed,
or enacted in front of an audience in a solemn way,
they were also performative in the linguistic sense
defined by John Austin (1962): as utterances they
had effects that went beyond the transmission of
their explicit content. Their performance not only
transformed the historical reality, past and present,
to which they referred but also transformed the
codices and monuments themselves. For instance,
the dedication of the Stone of Tizoc turned this
monument into a bloodied stone, a sacred sac-
rificial altar, and also may have transformed Tizoc
himself into a conqueror similar to his forebears.
There is a tautological relationship between
written and visual narrations and their ritual per-
formances: the former are both records of the latter
and programs for their future realization and rep-
etition. This relationship could even apply to cer-
emonies that were never carried out as they were
depicted, like the joint dedication of the renovated
Templo Mayor by Ahuitzotl and Tizoc, but that
were represented in an idealized way. This tautol-
ogy between narrative and performance is parallel
to the relationship between ritual events and his-
torical ones within the Aztec rgime dhistoricit.
 The sacrifices performed around the Stone of Tizoc
not only commemorated but actually reenacted the
conquests carried out by all the previous Mexica
rulers, dating back even to the founding of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan, which ritually transformed Tizoc
into the conqueror of the whole world.
This cycle of repetition also extended into the
future, as Mexica rulers sought to imitate their
predecessors. Just as Tizoc emulated Axayacatl by
making a sacrificial stone similar to his, Ahuitzotl
invoked Tizoc in the dedication ceremonies of the
Templo Mayor, as commemorated in the Dedication
Stone. Similarly, Moteuhczoma Xocoyotzin tried to
build his own sacrificial stone in the manner of the
two previous rulers, and the fact that he failed was
interpreted as an omen of his future defeat by the
Spanish conquerors (Cruz Gonzlez 2006). Thus,
the historical narratives that I have analyzed can
be highly elaborate from a symbolic and ritual
point of view and at the same time can be faith-
ful to historical events, as conceived in their rgime
dhistoricit, and statements that might seem to be
historical impossibilities according to our con-
ceptions of history, such as the presence of Tizoc
alongside Ahuitzotl on the Dedication Stone, may
notes
1 In this chapter, I shall use the term Aztec to refer
to the Nahuatl-speaking peoples of the central
Mexican plateau and Mexica to refer more specifi-
cally to those who inhabited Mexico-Tenochtitlan
and Mexico-Tlatelolco.
2 I do not include in this group the Tira de Tepechpan
because it was not produced by Mexica tlacui-
lome and because it does not deal exclusively with
Mexica history, since it seeks to integrate local
Tepechpan history with the history of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan. The other Aubin manuscripts (cat.
nos. 85 and 40 at the Bibliothque Nationale de
France) are not included either because they do not
fit the characteristics of these documents.
3 My translation; I am grateful to Berenice Alcntara
for her kind help in interpreting this difficult
192 nava rret e
not be so from a perspective that conflated ritual
archetypes and individual events.
The cycles of repetitions, or rather of mean-
ingful imitations across time, also contained an
element of linearity, since each ruler sought to
distinguish himself in some way from his pre-
decessors. The Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada can
be interpreted as a monument to commemorate
just that kind of innovationthe moving of the
year of the New Fire ceremony from Ce Tochtli
(1 Rabbit) to Ome Acatl (2 Reed) by Moteuhczoma
Xocoyotzinbut it clearly aims to anchor this
novelty in a firm historical and ritual chain of
precedents, emphasizing the continuity of the
central position of the Templo Mayor, of Mexico-
Tenochtitlan, and of its rulers.
That multiplicity of meanings is why, beyond
deciphering the written content of the codices and
monuments, and even beyond proving that such-
and-such a statement or date is either true or false,
we should strive to understand the full significance
of a text within the framework of the narratives
to which it belonged, which were, in turn, firmly
anchored in specific conceptions of time, space,
and history.
passage. The Nahuatl original reads: caye nica-
nyez in motequiuh inic tihualla in titechiaz, in
tinenamiquiz in nauhcampa in tictotopehuaz in
altepetl, inic ticaciz melchiquiuh motzonteco ica,
ihuan moyollo mezom.
4 This contrast was pointed out to me by Luis Reyes
(personal communication 1997).
5 Houston (1994) argues that in Classic Maya soci-
ety there were other social contexts and media for
writing and that there is some indirect evidence of
this in Nahuatl societies. But most of the written
texts that have survived, and certainly the ones that
I have analyzed here, were produced by and for the
ruling elites.
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 con t ribu tor s
Elizabeth Hill Boone
Elizabeth Hill Boone, a professor of art history,
holds the Martha and Donald Robertson Chair
in Latin American Art at Tulane University. She
is a specialist in the painted manuscripts of Pre-
Columbian and early colonial Mexico. Formerly
director of Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton
Oaks (19831995), she has edited or coedited
eleven books, including The Aztec Templo Mayor
(1987), Collecting the Pre-Columbian Past (1993),
Writing without Words: Alternative Literacies in
Mesoamerica and the Andes (1994, with Walter
Mignolo), Native Traditions in the Postconquest
World (1998, with Tom Cummins), and Painted
Books and Indigenous Knowledge in Mesoamerica
(2005). Among her own books are The Codex
Magliabechiano (1983), The Aztec World (1994),
Stories in Red and Black: Pictorial Histories of the
Aztecs and Mixtecs (2000; winner of the Arvey
Prize of the Association for Latin American Art),
and Cycles of Time and Meaning in the Mexican
Books of Fate (2007). She has held research fel-
lowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in
Princeton and the National Gallery of Art in
Washington, D.C. She was awarded the Order of
the Aztec Eagle by Mexico (1990) and was named
the Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center
for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts by the
National Gallery of Art (20062008). Her current
project examines changes in the indigenous tradi-
tion of pictography and manuscript painting after
the conquest.
Carrie J. Brezine
Carrie J. Brezine is a weaver and spinner with expe-
rience in both European and Andean textile con-
struction.Her undergraduate work in mathematics
at Reed College continues to inspire her research in
fabric structure and ethnographic weaving. From
20022005, she was the database administrator
for the Harvard Khipu Database Project, which
catalogued and deciphered the knotted-cord com-
munication devices of the Inka Empire. In the
summer of 2005, she described and analyzed the
patrimonial khipu of Rapaz, Peru. She is presently
a PhD candidate in the Archaeology Program
391
 of the Department of Anthropology at Harvard
University. Her dissertation research focuses on
changes in weaving technology and dress in colo-
nial Peru.
Reymundo Chapa
Reymundo Chapa earned his MA in anthropol-
ogy in 2009 from the University of Wisconsin-
Madison, where he studied with Frank Salomon
and Jason Yaeger. He has worked throughout the
Americas, focusing on the archaeology of the south-
ern Andes, particularly on ceremonial architecture
and its development during the rise of social com-
plexity in the Lake Titicaca basin. He has been an
active contributor to the research of several promi-
nent Pre-Columbian ceremonial centers, including
Tiwanaku, Chavin de Huntar, and Chankillo, and
he has contributed papers, such as Transforming
One Hundred Years of Archaeological Research
into Models of Evolving Ceremonial Form at
Tiwanaku, Bolivia and Aptapis and Archaeology:
How Aymara Celebrations at Kasa Achuta, Bolivia,
Give Meaning to the Past, at professional confer-
ences. He is currently a cultural resources project
manager at a small environmental consulting firm
in Austin, Texas.
Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos
Oswaldo Chinchilla graduated from the Universi
dad de San Carlos de Guatemala in 1990 and
earned his PhD from Vanderbilt University in 1996.
He is currently curator at the Museo Popol Vuh,
Universidad Francisco Marroqun, and professor
at the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala.
His research focuses on the archaeology of the
Pacific coast of Guatemala, Classic Maya writing
and iconography, and the history of archaeology
in Guatemala. He has carried out extensive field
research in the Cotzumalhuapa region of the Pacific
piedmont of Guatemala, including recording and
analysis of the sculptural corpus, studies of settle-
ment patterns and urbanism, and documentary
research on the Pre-Columbian peoples of the area.
His recent papers concentrate on the mythological
interpretation of Classic imagery from the Pacific
392 c on t ri bu tor s
coast and the Maya Lowlands. He is the author
of Guatemala, corazn del mundo maya (1999),
Kakaw: Chocolate in Guatemalan Culture (2005),
and Imgenes de la mitologa maya (2010). He is
also the coeditor of The Decipherment of Ancient
Maya Writing (2001, with Stephen D. Houston and
David Stuart).
Michael D. Coe
Michael D. Coe is Charles J. McCurdy Professor
of Anthropology, Emeritus, at Yale University. His
research interests focus on the pre-Hispanic civi-
lizations of Mesoamerica (especially the Olmec
and Maya) and on the Khmer civilization of
Cambodia. He has also conducted archaeological
excavations on forts of the French and Indian War
in Massachusetts. Among his eighteen published
books are Mexico (1962, with four subsequent edi-
tions, two coauthored with Rex Koontz); The Maya
(1966, with seven subsequent editions); The Maya
Scribe and His World (1973); Lords of the Underworld:
Masterpieces of Classic Maya Ceramics (1978); In the
Land of the Olmec (1980, with Richard A. Diehl);
Breaking the Maya Code (1992); The True History of
Chocolate (1996, with Sophie D. Coe); The Art of the
Maya Scribe (1997, with Justin Kerr); Reading the
Maya Glyphs (2001, with Mark Van Stone); Angkor
and the Khmer Civilization (2003); Final Report: An
Archaeologist Excavates His Past (2006); and The
Line of Forts: Historical Archaeology on the Colonial
Frontier of Massachusetts (2006). He has been a
Member of the National Academy of Sciences since
1986. He has been given the Tatiana Proskouriakoff
Award by Harvard University (1989); the James D.
Burke Prize in Fine Arts by the Saint Louis Art
Museum (2001); the Order of the Quetzal by the
Government of Guatemala (2004); the Orden del
Pop by the Museo Popol Vuh (2006); and the Linda
Schele Award by the University of Texas (2008). He
is currently coauthoring a book on Maya cities with
the photographer Barry Brukoff.
Thomas B. F. Cummins
Tom Cummins is the Dumbarton Oaks Professor
of the History of Pre-Columbian and Colonial Art
and the chair of the Department of the History of
Art and Architecture at Harvard University. He
received his MA and PhD in art history from the
University of California, Los Angeles, and has pub-
lished essays and books on early Pre-Columbian
Ecuadorian ceramics and on colonial art and archi-
tecture in Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Mexico.
He is the author of Toasts with the Inca: Andean
Abstraction and Colonial Images on Kero Vessels
(2002) and the coeditor of The Getty Mura: Essays
on the Making of Martn de Muras Historia gen-
eral del Piru, J. Paul Getty Museum Ms. Ludwig
XIII 16 (2008, with Barbara Anderson).
Vctor Falcn Huayta
Vctor Falcn Huayta holds a Licenciado degree
in archaeology from the Universidad Nacional
Mayor de San Marcos, and is a candidate for a
masters degree in Andean studies at the Pon
tificia Universidad Catlica del Per. He was a staff
archaeologist of the Instituto Nacional de Cultura
from 1991 to 2009. As a museum researcher, he
relates collected objects to current field findings.
His publications include La Huayllaquepa de
Punkur: Costa Nor-Central del Per (Anales,
Museo de Amrica, Madrid, 2005); Reconstruc
tion of the Burial Offering at Punkur in the
Nepea Valley of Perus North-Central Coast
(Andean Past, 2009); and Un tambor de cuero
pintado del Museo Nacional de Arqueologa,
Antropologa e Historia del Per (Anales, Museo
de Amrica, Madrid, 2008). His research on the
Lima cultura is published in Playa Grande: Entre
la aldea y el santuario; Un caso de interpre-
tacin arqueolgica ambigua? (Arqueolgicas,
Museo Nacional de Arqueologa, Antropologa e
Historia del Per, 2000); El motivo interlocking a
travs del dolo de Playa Grande (Arqueolgicas,
2003); and Morir en Playa Grande: El rescate de
un entierro de la cultura Lima (Actas del Primer
Congreso Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales y
Humanidades, 2004). He also conducts research on
the rock art of the central Andes, including current
work on Inka pictography in the Yucay Valley at
Inkapintay (Ollantaytambo).
Stephen D. Houston
Stephen D. Houston holds the Dupee Family Pro
fessorship of Social Science at Brown University,
where he has taught since 2004. His previous posi-
tion was as Jesse Knight University Professor at
Brigham Young University. He took his BA at the
University of Pennsylvania and his MPhil and PhD
at Yale University. He is the author, coauthor, and
editor of several books, including The Memory
of Bones: Body, Being, and Experience among the
Classic Maya (2006, with David Stuart and Karl
Taube), Veiled Brightness: A History of Ancient
Maya Color (2009, with various colleagues), The
Classic Maya (2009, with Takeshi Inomata), as well
as The First Writing: Script Invention as History and
Process (2004), Classic Maya Place Names (1994,
with David Stuart), and Function and Meaning in
Classic Maya Architecture (1998). The recipient of fel-
lowships from Dumbarton Oaks, the Guggenheim
Foundation, the School of American Research, and
the National Endowment for the Humanities, he
has also directed archaeological projects at Piedras
Negras and, more recently, at El Zotz in Guatemala.
With Dan Finamore, he curated the exhibition and
edited the exhibition catalogue for Fiery Pool: The
Maya and the Mythic Sea (2010).
Margaret A. Jackson
Margaret A. Jackson is currently assistant pro-
fessor of art history at the University of New
Mexico. As an art historian, her research focuses
on the ancient cultures of the Andes, with particu-
lar emphasis on the imagery and iconography of
the Moche of Peru. Additional research interests
include the visual cultures of ancient Mesoamerica
and systems of visual communication. She com-
pleted her PhD in Pre-Columbian art history at
the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the
president of the Association for Latin American
Art and an active member of the College Art
Association. Most recently, she was coeditor of
Invasion and Transformation: Interdisciplinary
Perspectives on Images of the Conquest of Mexico
(2008, with Rebecca Brienen). Her book Moche Art
and Visual Culture in Ancient Peru (2008) was the
c ontribu tors 393
 recipient of the Association for Latin American Art
book award in 2010.
Federico Navarrete
Federico Navarrete is a historian and anthropolo-
gist at the Instituto de Investigaciones Histricas
of the Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico.
His work centers on the nature and workings of the
historical traditions of Mesoamerican, and more
generally Amerindian, societies. He is the author
of La migracin de los mexicas (1998) and editor
of Indios, mestizos y espaoles: Interculturalidad e
historiografa en la Nueva Espaa (2007, in collab-
oration with Danna Levin). His latest book, Los or-
genes de los pueblos del Valle de Mxico, is in press.
He has also published articles in Estudios de cul-
tura nhuatl and Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics.
Another line of his research concerns the history of
Amerindian societies after European colonization,
their cultural transformations, and their relation-
ship with colonial empires and the independent
nation-states of the Americas. In this area, he has
published the books La conquista de Mxico (2000),
Las relaciones intertnicas en Mxico (2004), and La
invencin de los canbales (2006). He has also writ-
ten the historical novel Huesos de Lagartija (1998).
Michel R. Oudijk
Michel Oudijk received his PhD from the Uni
versiteit Leiden in the Netherlands. After com-
pleting his degree, he worked for three years as
associate professor at the Kbenhavns Universitet
in Denmark. Since 2004, he has been a researcher
at the Instituto de Investigaciones Filolgicas at
the Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Mxico
in Mexico City, where he is currently working on
the translation and analysis of Zapotec colonial
texts. He has published extensively on Zapotec his-
tory and Mesoamerican pictographic documents,
including Historiography of the Bniza (2000) and
Los lienzos pictogrficos de Santa Cruz Papalutla,
Oaxaca (2010, with Sebastin van Doesburg). His
recent research concerns the interaction between
indigenous and Spanish colonial societies. He is the
coeditor of Indian Conquistadors: Indigenous Allies
in the Conquest of Mesoamerica (2007, with Laura
394 c on t ri bu tor s
Matthew) and coauthor of La conquista indgena
de Mesoamrica: El caso de don Gonzalo Mazatzin
Moctezuma (2008, with Matthew Restall).
Frank Salomon
Frank Loewen Salomon is the John V. Murra
Professor of Anthropology at the University of
Wisconsin. Born in New York in 1946, he took
his BA from Columbia University in 1968 and his
MA and PhD from Cornell University in 1974 and
1978. He joined the Department of Anthropology
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in 1982.
A historical ethnographer of the Andean peoples,
he has discovered and analyzed unsuspected
sources on the northern reaches of the Inka
Empire, which are treated in Native Lords of Quito
(1986). In 1991, he published, with George Urioste,
the first English version of the Quechua-language
Huarochir manuscript (1608?), the only known
book presenting an Andean sacred tradition
in an Andean language. He coedited the South
American volumes of the Cambridge History of
the Native Peoples of the Americas (1999, with
Stuart Schwartz). Since 1994, he has been engaged
in field study of Peruvian communities that pre-
serve as sacred patrimony khipus (knotted-cord
records, a perennially enigmatic lost script). A
resulting book, The Cord Keepers, was published
in 2004.
Karl Taube
Karl Taube received his PhD from Yale University
in 1988 and is currently a professor of anthropol-
ogy at the University of California, Riverside.
He has conducted fieldwork in Honduras, Gua
temala, Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru. He is cur-
rently the project iconographer for the San Bartolo
Project in the Peten of Guatemala. His primary
research concerns the archaeology and ethnol-
ogy of Mesoamerica and the American Southwest,
including the development of agricultural symbol-
ism and the relationship between Teotihuacan and
the Classic Maya. Among his publications are The
Major Gods of Ancient Yucatan (1992), Gods and
Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya (1993,
with Mary Ellen Miller), Aztec and Maya Myths
(1993), The View from Yalahau: 1993 Archaeological
Investigations in Northern Quintana Roo, Mexico
(1995, with Scott Fedick), The Writing System of
Ancient Teotihuacan (2000), Olmec Art at Dumbar
ton Oaks (2004), The Murals of San Bartolo, El
Peten, Guatemala, Part 1: The North Wall (2005,
with William Saturno and David Stuart), and
The Murals of San Bartolo, Part 2: The West Wall
(2010, with William Saturno, David Stuart, and
Heather Hurst).
Javier Urcid
Javier Urcid is an anthropological archaeologist
interested in the role of ancient literacy in the
formation and maintenance of social complex-
ity, in the origins and alternative developments
of writing systems, and in the semantic and pho-
netic decipherment of extinct scripts. His other
interests center on archaeological approaches to
ancient political economies and on bioarchaeol-
ogy, particularly the social dimensions of mortu-
ary practices and cultural/ritual modifications
of human remains. His main research focuses on
Mesoamerican scribal traditions. He is the author
of Zapotec Hieroglyphic Writing (2001) and the
coauthor of The Lords of Lambityeco: Political
Evolution in the Valley of Oaxaca during the Xoo
Phase (2010, with Michael D. Lind). He has also
written articles on uie, Central Mexican, and
Mixteca-Puebla scripts.
Gary Urton
Gary Urton is the Dumbarton Oaks Professor
of Pre-Columbian Studies in the Department of
Anthropology at Harvard University. His research
focuses on a variety of topics in pre-Hispanic and
early colonial intellectual history in the Andes,
drawing on materials and methods in archaeology,
ethnohistory, and ethnology. His research on Inka
khipus has resulted in the description of two hun-
dred and fifty samples from museums in Europe,
the United States, and South America. He is the
author of numerous articles, books, and edited
volumes on Andean/Quechua cultures and Inka
civilization. His books include At the Crossroads of
the Earth and the Sky (1981), The History of a Myth:
Pacariqtambo and the Origin of the Incas (1990),
The Social Life of Numbers: A Quechua Ontology of
Numbers and Philosophy of Arithmetic (1997), Inca
Myths (1999), Signs of the Inka Khipu: Binary Coding
in the Andean Knotted-String Records (2003), and
Los khipus de la Laguna de los Cndores (2007).
He is director of the Khipu Database Project at
Harvard University.
R. Tom Zuidema
R. Tom Zuidemas initial academic studies were at
the Universiteit Leiden on the languages, laws, and
anthropology of the former Netherlands Indies.
Since he could not go to Indonesia, he turned his
interests to the Andes, first studying in Spain and
defending a PhD at the University of Madrid (1953)
and then completing fieldwork in Peru and defend-
ing a second thesis at the University of Leiden (1962)
on the ceque system of Cuzco. From 1956 to 1964,
he was curator of the Americas and Siberia at the
State Museum of Anthropology, Leiden, and from
1964 to 1967, he was professor at the Universidad
Nacional de San Cristbal de Huamanga in
Ayacucho, Peru. From 1967 until 1993, he taught
at the University of Illinois, with interruptions to
teach elsewhere. His principal interests in Peruvian
anthropology have been kinship, social and ritual
organization, iconography, and Andean astron-
omy and calendars, in particular the Inka calendar
as it functioned in Cuzco.
c ontribu tors 395
 inde x
Page numbers in italics indicate illustrative material.
abbreviation. See elaboration and abbreviation
abstract or conventional versus iconic systems, 386
Acatempo Stela, 93, 94, 104
Acosta, Jos de, v, 168n56, 306n3, 309n15, 387
acsus (female dresses) in Chuquibamba textiles, 252253
Aguna, Cotzumalhuapa inscriptions at, 50
Ahuitzotl, 188, 190, 191, 192
ajaw signs, 24, 31
Ajaxa: inventory of Cotzumalhuapa inscriptions at, 50;
Monument 1, 56
alabaster carved vessels, 134139, 136
alphabetic writing: hybridity of graphic systems after
Spanish conquest, 201, 204210, 205210; quilca
and, 278
Alvarado, Pedro de (Tonatiuh), 211, 212
Alvarez de Arenales, Juan Antonio, 368370, 369, 373
anabil, 23
Anahuac, Late Postclassic concept of, 103
Anales de Chimalpahin, 158
Anales de Tlatelolco, 158, 168169n56
Angulo, Jorge, 84
animal bones, carved, 135, 137, 139
animation of Cotzumalhuapa writings, 4446, 46, 5965,
5966
Anna, Timothy, 371
anthropology in Stalins USSR, 1112
Antigua Guatemala Valley, Cotzumalhuapa writing
from, 50, 60, 6061
Codex Aute (Codex Selden), 114, 115, 150, 151, 167, 169n8
Apoala, 158, 163, 165, 167
Armstrong, W. E., 1718
Arroyo de Piedra, identification of scribes producing
Maya glyphs in, 23
Ascher, Marcia and Robert, 320, 339
Atahuallpa, 259
Atetelco, White Patio mural at, 96
atl tlachinolli, water, burned field, couplet in Aztec
writing, 62, 186
Atlee, Clement, 9
Atonaltzin, 165
Atzompa, ceramic vessels from, 134, 135
Codex Aubin, 168n5, 178, 179, 180, 181, 186, 215
Axayacatl, 188, 192
Axtapalulca Plaque, 81, 82, 100
ayllu, 288, 306n5, 354355
Codex Azcatitlan, 168169n57, 178, 179, 180, 181, 188, 215,
216, 217
Aztec writing, 175195; atl tlachinolli, water, burned
field, couplet in, 62, 186; chronotopes (time-space
representations) and rgime dhistoricit (historical
sensibility) in, 176178, 181, 184, 188, 190, 191;
conquests of Mexica rulers, depiction of, 178, 181,
184, 186; Dumbarton Oaks conferences on codices, 2;
genres or classes of documents in, 190191; in Mexica
codices, 178, 178184, 179, 180, 182, 183; on Mexica
397
 stone monuments, 184190, 185, 187, 189; Moche
ceramic imagery compared, 238; New Fire ceremony,
186, 192; oral and performative literary traditions,
relationship to, 175176, 191192; places of origin in,
157158; social and cultural meaning, importance
of, 190192; Spanish conquests, adaptation to, 191;
succession of year signs and tlatoque (rulers) in, 178
181, 184, 186; Templo Mayor, Mexico-Tenochtitlan,
depictions of, 177, 178, 179181, 184186; Teotihuacan
writing and, 48, 66, 77, 87
Aztlan, 157158, 162
Baird, Ellen, 202
Bakhtin, Mikhail, 176
Balancan Stela, 27
Codex Baranda, 170n22
Barthel, Thomas S., 16, 307308n8
Bateson, Gregory, 18
Bayer, Herman, 30
Beazley, John, 23
Benedict, Ruth, 12
Beria, Lavrenty, 16
Berlo, Janet, 77
Bertonio, Ludovico, 287288
Beyer, Hermann, 81
Bilbao: architectural compound at, 43, 45; Monument
1, 54; Monuments 29, 48; Monument 4, 61, 62;
Monument 10, 53; Monument 11, 61; Monument 13,
54, 55, 61; Monument 14, 54, 55, 61; Monument 18, 57;
Monument 20, 61, 62, 64; Monument 21, 6465, 65;
Monument 29, 56; Monument 33, 5859; Monument
42, 47; Monuments 84ac, 58, 5859; possible ancestor
cult at, 4849
Codex Bodley, 152153, 153, 157, 167, 168n3, 169n8
Bolvar, Simn, 367368, 368, 370371
Boltz, William, 2930
Boone, Elizabeth Hill, ix, x, 2, 3, 156, 179, 191, 197, 232, 379,
391392
Bonampak murals, 34
Codex Borgia, 103, 198, 382
Borgia Group codices, 2, 103, 153
Codex Boturini, 199, 215. See also Tira de la
Peregrinacin
boustrophedon sequence, 114115, 215
Bove, Frederick, 48
Brasseur de Bourbourg, Abb, 15
Brezine, Carrie J., 319, 353, 360, 391
Browder, Jennifer, 84
Burkitt, Robert, 54
Cacaxtla script: inventory of inscriptions compared to
Cotzumalhuapa, 49; lack of study of, 77; Teotihuacan
writing and, 48, 66, 82, 96
Cdiz, Cotzumalhuapa inscription at, 50
Calakmul dynasty and Maya glyph changes, 32
39 8 i n de x
calendrical notations: calendar khipus, 345; in
Chuquibamba textiles (See Chuquibamba textile
notation systems); Cotzumalhuapa writings, largely
calendrical system suggested by, 65; Monte Albn
objects marked with calendrical names of owners,
134, 135; in uie scribal tradition, 78; Tovar
calendar, 206
canuto khipus, 322323, 323, 350n3
Caracol, absolute size and relative proportion of Maya
glyphs at, 24
Cartilla (Pedro de Gante, 1569), 205
cartillas de ensear a leer, 205
Caso, Alfonso, 48, 78, 82, 83, 85, 140, 190
catechisms, pictorial, 205206, 205210
Catholicism: foundation/migration stories involving,
166; glyph representing change from indigenous
religion to, 162; images, influence on viewing and
reading of, 278; indigenous pictography as vehicle for
ideology of, 198; khipus and, 290, 358; uncu for Christ
Child statue with tocapu, 290, 291
Cave Seven, Oaxaca, 158
celts and celtiform stelae, 99, 100
census khipus, 344, 345
ceque systems: at Cuzco, 259, 259260, 266, 267, 272, 344;
khipus recording, 345
Cerro Bernal inscriptions, 144n2
Cerro de la Caja and environs, carved stones from,
117122, 120, 121
Cerro de la Campagna, Santiago Suchilquitongo, Tomb
5, 125, 126127, 128
Cerro de las Mesas Stela 15, 80
Cerro de los Tepalcates, Chacahua, Oaxaca, 123, 124
Cerro del Rey, Ro Grande, Stela 1, 133, 134
Cerro Nuyoo, Tomb 5, 130, 132
Cerro Yucuniza mortuary slab, 130, 132
Cerron Palomino, Rodolfo, 286, 288
Champollion, Jean-Franois, 18
Chapa, Reymundo, 353, 392
Chiapanec scribal tradition, 112, 113
Chiapas, Teotihuacan writing at, 78
Chicanel pottery, Late Preclassic, 7778
Chichen Itza: size of glyphs on jades from, 25;
Teotihuacan glyphs and, 82, 84; Yukatekan terms in
script at, 27
Chichimecateuctli, don Pedro, 213, 214
Chicomoztoc, 158, 159, 160, 162
Chimalpahin, 168169n56
chinampas at Tenochtitlan, El Plano del Papel de
Maguey showing, 88, 89
Chinchilla Mazariegos, Oswaldo, 43, 387, 392
Choltian hypothesis for Maya glyphs, 27, 36n6
Cholula: lack of writing tradition at, 77; Relacin
geogrfica of, 152153, 160; Tlachihualtepec or Great
Pyramid of, 160, 161
Choque, Rosa and Rosala, 360
chronotopes (time-space representations) in Aztec
writing, 176178, 181, 184, 190, 191
chullpas, tocapu-like designs on, 290, 292
Chuquibamba textile notation systems, 251275; in
archaeological, ethnohistorical, and art historical
contexts, 269272, 270, 271; and ceque system,
Cuzco, 259, 259260, 266, 267; different calendars
represented in, 256257, 257; eight-pointed star
motif and, 269, 271, 271272; feathered ponchos and,
269272, 271; felines, llamas, and toads, symbolic
use of, 261262; female dresses (acsus) and large
shawls, 252253; forty-one, forty, and forty-two,
textiles referring to, 259, 259260, 263, 263264,
264; historical and geographic origins, 256, 269;
Kosok shawls standardized sidereal calendar within
solar year, 256, 267269, 268; male tunics (uncus),
loincloths, and ponchos, 252, 252253; Merrin Gallery
shawl, 263, 263264; Museo Banco Central de Reserva
del Per loincloth, 264; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
shawl with sidereal lunar calendar, 254, 255, 258263,
259, 265266, 267, 268; Ohara shawl with modules
of three different calendars, 261, 265, 265267, 269;
Peabody Museum uncu with solar calendar, 252, 253,
257258, 258, 266, 268, 269; Pleiades constellation
and, 259, 267; types of intentional orders used in,
251253, 252255
classes or genres of documents: in Aztec writing, 190
191; ethnoiconological context provided by, 150151
closed versus open writing systems, 66, 384
coastal writing tradition: defined and described, 112, 113;
mortuary contexts, 130134, 133; Teotihuacan and
Citzumalhuapa writings in context of, 4748, 66
Coatepec, 161, 162, 165, 166
Coatlinchan, unfinished monumental figure from, 100
Cobo, Bernab, 308n9
codices: Aubin, 168n5, 178, 179, 180, 181, 186, 215;
Azcatitlan, 168169n57, 178, 179, 180, 181, 188, 215,
216, 217; Baranda, 170n22; Bodley, 152153, 153, 157,
167, 168n3, 169n8; Borgia, 103, 198, 382; Borgia Group,
2, 103, 153; Boturini, 199, 215; Colombino, 152, 168n3;
Dehesa, 170n22; Dresden, 5, 15, 35n2; Egerton, 170n22;
Fejrvry-Mayer, 103, 153, 155, 198, 200; Florentine,
168169n56, 169n10, 202204, 203, 204; Gmez
de Orozco, 158; Kingsborough, 88, 89; Madrid, 15,
35n2, 80, 81; Magliabechiano, 202, 206; in Mayan
imagery, 35n2; Mendoza, 85, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184,
185, 188, 217, 218, 219, 279, 309n17; Mexica codices, 2,
177184, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 198, 199; Mexicanus,
168169n56, 178, 179, 181, 185, 186, 212, 213215, 215;
Mexicayotl, 168n5; Osuna, 212; Paris, 35n2, 80, 81; de
Santa Mara Asuncin, 85; Selden (Aute), 114, 115,
150, 151, 167, 169n8; Telleriano-Remensis, 178, 179, 180,
181, 183, 188, 202, 206, 212; Tudela, 202, 206; Tulane,
170n22; Vaticanus A/Ros, 178, 180, 206; Vaticanus
B, 103; Vienna, 385; Vindobonensis, 159, 164165, 165;
Zouche-Nuttall (Tonindeye), 115, 152, 158, 167, 169n8.
See also Mixtec codices
Coe, Michael D., 9, 24, 392
Coixtlahuaca valley through-cave inscriptions, 144n6
Cola de Palma, near El Ciruelo, Stela 3, 130134, 133
Cold War and Maya decipherment. See Knorosov, Yuri
Valentinovich, decipherment of Maya glyphs by
Colhuacatepec, 158, 159, 160
Codex Colombino, 152, 168n3
comparative dialogue, importance of, 36, 18
Condesuyu: Inka province of, 251, 256, 269, 272, 298;
references to dress in, 269272, 271
Conklin, William, 2, 321322, 325
conquests of Mexica rulers, Aztec writings depicting,
178, 181, 184, 186
Contreras, Carlos, 368
conventional or abstract versus iconic systems, 386
Copan: absolute size and relative proportion of glyphs
at, 24; Structure 10L-16, Stairway Block 2, 100101;
Structure 26, 91; vowel notations at, 32
Copan Hieroglyphic Stairway: consonant sensitivity in
glyphs from, 33; heterography at, 34; production of,
2324
Corts, Hernn, 166
costume and performance in Moche culture, 228, 229
Cotzumalhuapa writings, 4375; animation of, 4446, 46,
5965, 5966; architectural compounds at El Bal, El
Castillo, and Bilbao, 43, 45; cartouches, 50; in context
of coastal writing tradition, 4649, 47, 66; distribution
and inventory of inscriptions, 4950; head signs in
frontal or profile view, 50; human sacrifice in, 65;
iconographic depictions, comparison of signs with,
52; largely calendrical system suggested by, 65; in Late
Classic period, 4849; Late Preclassic system, 4647;
media, variety of, 50; Mixtec codices compared, 66;
name tags, use of, 57, 5759, 58; numerals, 51, 5152,
52; orientation of signs, 50; oversized signs in, 56,
5657; sign combinations, rarity of, 5455, 55, 66; sign
inventory, 5254, 6771; 6 Star collocations with maw
of reptilian monster, 5759, 58; Star glyph, use of, 50,
5759, 58; Teotihuacan writing and, 4849, 95
Couch, Christopher, 202
counted offerings in ritual petitions, 153, 155
Covarrubias Orozco, Sebastin de, 287, 300301
Coyolxauhqui circular monument, Templo Mayor of
Mexico-Tenochtitlan, 122123
Crnica mexicyotl (Tezozmoc), 181
Cross Panels of Palenque, 190
cross-reading, use of, 15
Cruz, Juan de la, 201, 205
cryptography and decipherment, lack of connection
between, 16
Cueto, Marcos, 368
cuicatl, 175, 191
Cuicuilco, lack of writing tradition at, 77
Cuilapan, Oaxaca cloister stone with Zapotec
inscriptions, 117, 118
cultural category, writing systems as, 379390; access to/
interpretation of message, 382383; commonalities
of, 380384; glottographic versus semasiographic
systems, 384385; hieroglyphic script versus
pictographic systems, 386387; historical significance
of surviving documents, 383384; iconic versus
index 399
 conventional or abstract systems, 386; Mesoamerican
and Andean terms for, 380; pictures versus glyphs,
385386; recording process, 381; scripts, signs, and
pictographies covered by, 379380; speech and
performance compared, 380381; typology of, 384
388; vehicle for message, 381382; writing as term,
problem of, 379380, 387388
cultural code, written surface as, 111148; in Aztec writing,
190192; performance and place-making, relationship
of writing to, 114116, 114123, 118121, 123, 124;
personhood and human body in mortuary contexts,
notions of, 125139, 126129, 131133, 135138; scribal
error, semiology of, 139143, 141, 142; semiological
theory of writing behind, 111112; in six scribal
traditions in southwestern Mesoamerica, 112, 112113
cultural encyclopedias, 206
cultural superiority associated with possession of
writing system, 306n3
Cummins, Thomas B. F., 277, 386, 392393
Cunil, Jacinto, 18
Cuzco: ceque system, 259, 259260, 266, 267, 272,
344; Condesuyu, references to dress in, 269272,
271; guinea pig sacrifices, 262; khipus from, 328;
napa or puca llama, 262; painted tablas at, 300;
Tawantinsuyu, concept of, 298299, 299
dart-thrower carved with owners name, 134, 135
Dvila, Francisco, 309n11
Davletshin, Albert, 30
de Young stela, 22, 2223
dedication stone, Templo Mayor, Mexico-Tenochtitlan,
188190, 189, 191192
Codex Dehesa, 170n22
diagramming tradition, 221n2
Dibble, Charles, 385
difrasismo, 161, 169n14, 170n2021
diglossia in Maya glyphs, 28, 37n10
direct historical approach, 151
disjunction, 151
Doctrina (Pedro de Gante, 1553), 205
Doctrina christiana (1548), 205
Doctrina christiana en la lengua guasteca con la lengua
castellana (Juan de la Cruz, 1571), 201, 205
Doctrina Xpiana en lengua misteca (Hernndez), 161,
161162
Donnan, Christopher, 239
Dos Pilas, identification of scribes producing Maya
glyphs in, 23
Dresden Codex, 5, 15, 35n2
Dubois, Cora, 12
Dumbarton Oaks conferences on Pre-Columbian
writing systems, ixx, 13
Durn, Diego, 190, 202, 206
eagles devouring hearts in Teotihuacan art, 103, 105n6
effigy figure, skin as writing surface on, 138, 139
40 0 i n de x
effigy vessels, 125130, 127, 129, 132, 139
Codex Egerton, 170n22
eight-pointed star motif and Chuquibamba textile
notation systems, 269, 271, 271272
El Bal: acropolis at, 43, 45; Monument 1, 43, 44, 47, 49;
Monument 6, 54, 55; Monument 18, 56; Monument
27, 59; Monument 30, 61, 64; Monument 34, 56;
Monument 56, 51, 52; Monument 59, 4346, 46, 65;
Monuments 67 and 68, 56
El Castillo: architectural compound at, 43, 45; causeway
connecting Goln with, 50; Monument 1, 51, 55, 58, 61;
Monument 16, 56
El Fraile, 289
El Mundo Perdido, Tikal: marcador from, 83, 90, 101;
stucco-painted vessel from, 95, 96
El Palmillo, genealogical slab probably from, 125, 128
El Tajin, inventory of inscriptions at, 49
El Zotz, identification of scribes producing Maya glyphs
in, 23
elaboration and abbreviation, 149174; analogies between
ethnographic present and historical past, 153154,
155; ethnoiconological methodology of approach to,
150154, 151, 153, 154, 155; foundation/toma de posesin/
taking hold of the bundle theme, 150, 166; genre of
document, context provided by, 150151; historical
sources for, 156157; migration theme, 156, 162168,
163, 165; minimal pictographic elements, identifying,
150; nose-piercing theme, 152153, 153; origin theme
and places of origin, 156, 157162, 159, 160; sacred birth
theme, 167; thematic focus, determining, 151153, 152,
154, 155; thematic units commonly found in historical
sources, 156
Elkins, James, 233, 380
Eloxochitlan de Flores Magn burial, Sierra Mazateca,
carved human mandible from, 134, 136
emblematic glyphs (toponyms, titles, and personal
names), 8488, 85, 86, 87, 385
encyclopedias, cultural, 206
Engels, Friedrich, 11, 12, 17
errors in writing, semiology of, 139143, 141, 142
Escalante, Pablo, 191, 202
Escuintla: Early Classic pottery and Cotzumalhuapa
writing, 4748; Teotihuacan glyphs and, 84
Estela Lisa, Monte Albn, 91, 93
Estrada-Belli, Francisco, 88
ethnoiconological approach to elaboration and
abbreviation, 150154, 151, 153, 154, 155
Etla district mausoleum facade and effigy vessel, 125, 127
Ex-Arzobispado Stone, 187, 188
Falcn Huayta, Victor, 353, 364, 393
feather paintings, 202203, 203
feathered ponchos and Chuquibamba textile notation
systems, 269272, 271
Codex Fejrvry-Mayer, 103, 153, 155, 198, 200
felines, llamas, and toads, Chuquibamba textiles
symbolic use of, 261262
Fierro, Pancho, 366, 368
Finca San Cristbal: inventory of Cotzumalhuapa
inscriptions at, 50; Monument 1, 63, 64, 65
Florentine Codex, 168169n56, 169n10, 202204, 203, 204
Flower World, Cotzumalhuapa version of, 58, 6465
Fonds mexicain 399 manuscript, 209, 209210, 210
foundation/toma de posesin/taking hold of the bundle
theme, 150, 166
four steps on the road to God, 161, 161162
Fraccin Mujular: inscriptions, 144n2; Stela 3, 79, 80
Frame, Mary, 256, 267, 269, 284
funerary contexts. See mortuary contexts
Galvin manuscript, 301, 302, 303
Gamarra, Agustn, 369
Gante, Pedro de, 205
Gante I manuscript, 206, 206209, 207, 208
Garca-Des Lauriers, Claudia, 87
genealogical records, inscriptions of, 125, 126128
genres or classes of documents: in Aztec writing, 190
191; ethnoiconological context provided by, 150151
Gerson, Juan, 202
Gisbert, Teresa, 290
glottochronology applied to Maya glyphs, 27
glottographic versus semasiographic systems, 201,
232233, 384387
glyphs versus pictures, 385386
Goln: Monuments 2 and 3, 49, 4950, 6162, 63; human bones, carved, 134, 136
Monuments 4 and 5, 57
Gmez Chvez, Sergio, 82, 88
Codex Gmez de Orozco, 158
Gonzlez Holgun, Diego, 287
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 10, 11, 16
Graulich, Michel, 188
grids, central Mexican examples of writing in, 87,
8890, 89
Grube, Nikolai, 30
Guaman Poma de Ayala, Felipe: Chuquibamba textile
notations and, 262, 269272, 270; Nueva cornica y
buen gobierno, authorship of, 310n24; tocapus and,
279280, 280, 281, 283, 286, 288, 297, 298, 299,
301305, 304
Guchte, Maarten van de, 290
Guerrero: Lienzo de Petlacala, 150; Rufino Tamayo stela,
possibly from, 79, 94; Teotihuacan writing at, 78, 79,
9397, 9398, 94, 104
guinea pig sacrifices, Cuzco, 262
Guzmn, Manuel de, 214
Habel, Simeon, 53
Haddon, Alfred, 17
Hamilton, Andrew, 338
Harris, Roy, 111
Hartog, Franois, 176, 177
head signs: Cotzumalhuapa writings, frontal or profile
view in, 50; Teotihuacan writing, frontal view in, 104
Heggarty, Paul, 345
Hellmuth, Nicholas, 47
helmets as icons for Warrior theme in Moche ceramic
imagery, 234238, 236, 237
herders use of khipus, 354, 371, 373
Hernndez, Benito, 161, 161162
Heyerdahl, Thor, 16
hieroglyphic script: Mayan identified as type of, 15,
386387; pictographic systems versus, 386387
Historia del origen y genealoga real del los reyes ingas del
Per (Martn de Mura, 1590), 298, 299, 302
Historia general del Per (Martn de Mura, ca. 1615), 303
Historia tolteca-chichimeca, 152, 158162, 159, 160, 169n6,
175, 176
historical sensibility: Aztec writing, rgime dhistoricit
in, 176178, 184, 188, 190, 191; in Moche ceramic
imagery, 245
El Hombre de Tikal, 90, 9091
Houston, Stephen D., 21, 61, 66, 382, 384, 386, 393
Huaca de la Luna, 227, 294, 294297, 295, 296
Huajuapan de Len, uie mortuary material from area
of, 130, 132
Huamelulpan, carved stones from, 122
huatancha, 355
huehuetlatolli, 175, 191
Huitzilopochtli, 123, 157, 177, 181, 187
human body and personhood, writing conveying
notions of, 125139, 126129, 131133, 135138
human sacrifice: in Cotzumalhuapa writings, 65; in
Moche culture, 227; San Jos Mogote, Monument 3,
and 122123, 123; Stone of Tizoc and, 188, 191192;
Templo Mayor, Mexico-Tenochtitlan, foundation/
renovations of, 180, 181; in Teotihuacan writings,
102, 103
human skin, as writing surface, 138, 139
Humboldt Fragment 1, 85
Hun Nal Ye cave, stone coffer from, 27
hybridity of graphic systems after Spanish conquest,
197225; alphabetic writing, 201, 204210, 205210;
changes to graphic systems following conquest,
202, 219220; comparison of Mesoamerican and
European graphic expression, 197198; diagramming,
221n2; different graphic systems in sixteenth-century
Mexico, 197201; mimetic figuration, 201, 202204,
203, 204; pictography, 198200, 199, 200, 210219,
211219; pictorial catechisms, 205210; semasiography
and, 198, 233
hyperdiffusionism, 18
iconic versus conventional or abstract systems, 386
Icxicouatl, 158
ideograms (logograms) and Knorosovs decipherment of
Maya script, 1516
Ilhuicatepec, 162
Inka: caves of origin at Pacaritambo, 297, 298; lost writing
system, efforts to unveil, 278, 306n6, 307308n8;
index 401
 supposed lost paintings of, 306307n7; writing system,
lack of, 281283, 308n9. See also Chuquibamba textile
notation systems; Cuzco; khipu; tocapu
Inka-type khipus, 323325, 326
Inti Raymi, feast of, 262
inverted signs, semiology of, 140143, 142
Isthmian script: as closed system, 66; decipherment
proposals, 35n1; glottographic nature of, 384; length
of use of, 21
Ixcaquixtla, Tomb 1, 130, 132
Jackson, Margaret A., 227, 380, 385, 393
jaguars devouring hearts in Teotihuacan art, 102, 103
Jama-Coaque vessels with tocapus, 296, 297, 305
Jansen, Maarten, 150, 385
Japanese script and Maya glyphs, 16
Jara, Victoria de la, 283284, 297, 310n28, 312n42
Kaha Wayi (khipu house) and Pasa Qullqa (storehouse),
Rapaz, 355360, 356, 357, 358, 359, 373
kanji writing, 16, 19n3
Kaqchikel and Cotzumalhuapa writings, 53, 54
Kauffman Doig, Federico, 363364
KCCS (Khipu Color Code System), 339
KDB (Khipu Database), 320, 325, 326, 329, 334, 338,
350n5, 361
Keber, Eloise Quiones, 179
Kelley, David, 1, 16
key-type Wari khipus, 321, 322
khipu: ancestral mummies, entrusted to, 5;
Chuquibamba textile notation systems and, 256;
in colonial and Catholic contexts, 290, 353355;
defined, 320321; distinguished from other cord
constructions, 320; Dumbarton Oaks conferences on,
2; herders use of, 354, 371, 373; metacategory of khipu,
representing, 306n3; Pachacamac archive, 328, 335,
344, 345, 348, 361; Paracas cords, possible origins in,
350n1; study of, 277278; tocapus and, 279284, 288,
289290, 300301; Toledan-era viceroyalty, khipus
of governance under, 353; in Tupicocha, 354, 354355,
374; as writing systems, 387. See also khipu typologies;
patrimonial khipus in Rapaz
khipu typologies, 319352; archival images or icons, 342
343, 342344; archival similarities and differences,
328329, 342344; archives of Inka-type khipus based
on provenience, construction of, 325327, 326, 327;
canuto khipus, 322323, 323, 350n3; ceque system
khipus, 345; color values and patterns, 338339, 340,
341, 342343; comparing and distinguishing types,
325; cord attachment methods, 331332, 332; fiber type
and cord construction, 329331, 330, 331; functional
types, 344345; Inka-type khipus, 323325, 326;
KCCS (Khipu Color Code System), 339; KDB (Khipu
Database), 320, 325, 326, 329, 334, 338, 350n5, 361;
key-type Wari khipus, 321, 322; knot construction
and directionality, 332338, 333, 334337; measuring
402 i n de x
significance of differences using SplitsTree4 and
NeighborNet algorithm, 345348, 346, 347; Middle
Horizon/Wari khipus, 321, 321322, 322, 325, 350;
patrimonial khipus of Rapaz not fitting, 363364, 374;
sizes of archives and khipu samples, 328; subsidiaries,
presence/absence and number of, 328329, 329
King, Mark, 175
King, Timothy, 82, 88
Codex Kingsborough, 88, 89
Kinich Yax Kuk Mo, Teotihuacan cultural ties of,
100101
Kirchhoff, Paul, 157
Kirov, Sergei, 10
Knorosov, Yuri Valentinovich, decipherment of Maya
glyphs by, 920; and anthropology in Stalins USSR,
1112; background, education, and career, 1214;
death of Stalin, dissemination of Knorosovs work
following, 1617; Great Purge/Great Terror in USSR
(1936), effect on intellectual life, 1011; language
of glyphs importance of, 16, 18; methodology of,
1416; photograph of, 10; publication of article on
decipherment by, 14; reasons for success of, 17, 18;
recognition of achievements of, 18; and Thompson,
John Eric Sidney, 10, 1418
Kosok, Paul, 256, 267
Kroeber, Alfred L., 269
Kubler, George, 1, 151, 219, 284
Kuna-Lacanha, Chiapas, Early Classic stela from, 99, 100
La Cinega, Zimatlan, genealogical slab from, 125, 128
La Gloria, Monument 1, 56
La Herredura, Tlaxcala, temple sign from, 86
La Mojarra stela, 144n4
La Nueva, concentration of Cotzumalhuapa-style
sculptures at, 50
La Serna, Viceroy, 369, 370
La Sufricaya, Early Classic painted grids from, 87, 88
La Ventilla, Teotihuacan: corpus of glyphs from, 84;
marcador from, 82, 83; Plaza de los Glifos (See Plaza
de los Glifos, Teotihuacan); shields depicted at, 103;
zoomorphic vehicles at, 92, 93
Lacadena, Alfonso, x, 30, 48, 52, 77, 177, 385
Lagoon of Primordial Blood (Quelatinizoo), 158162, 166
Lake Titicaca and ruins of Tiwanaku, association of
tocapus with, 288
Lambityeco: Tomb 6, Mound 195, 125, 127, 128; Tomb 11,
Mound 195, carved baton or spatula made of deer
tibia from, 134, 135
Landa, Diego de, 13, 1415, 16, 18, 278, 386
Langley, James, 48, 102, 103
language. See speech and language
Lpida de Bazan, Monte Albn, 91, 92
Larco Hoyle, Rafael, 229231, 246n1
Las Colinas, Tlaxcala, Teotihuacan-style ceramic bowl
from, 84
Later Oaxacan scribal tradition, 113, 134, 139, 143
Leakey, L. S. B., 18
Lehmann, Walter, 43, 239
Leibsohn, Dana, 2, 176
Len, Cieza de, 308309n11
Lettera apologetica (Raimondo di Sangro Sansevero,
1750), 284
Lvi-Strauss, Claude, 139, 145n16
Levillier, Roberto, 353
Lienzo de Amoltepec, 162164, 163, 169n16
Lienzo de Chiepetlan, 162
Lienzo de Cuauhquechollan, 162
Lienzo de Guevea, 153, 154
Lienzo de Jicalan or Jucutacato, 162
Lienzo de Petlacala, 150, 162
Lienzo de Tequixtepec I, 158
Lienzo de Tira de Xalatzala, 162
Lienzo de Tlapiltepec, 158, 165
Lienzo de Tlaxcala, 88, 102
liminal places, migration from, 162, 166
literacy, 23, 190
literary themes, elaboration and abbreviation of. See
elaboration and abbreviation
llamas, Chuquibamba textiles symbolic use of, 261262
llutu kuychi (mourning/dark rainbow) textile colors, 339
Locke, Leland, 278
Lockhart, James, 219
logograms, and Knorosovs decipherment of Maya
script, 1516
logographic functions in Moche ceramic imagery,
238239
Loo, Peter van der, 150, 151, 153
Los Cerritos Norte, Cotzumalhuapa inscription at, 50
Los Horcones: Stela 2, 79, 80; Teotihuacan writing at, 78
Lounsbury, Floyd, 1, 16
Lowland Maya writing, as closed system, 66
Lysenko, Trofim, 11, 16
machc, 239
Mackey, Carol J., 354
Macuilxochitl, carved human mandible from, 134, 136
Madrid Codex, 15, 35n2, 80, 81
Codex Magliabechiano, 202, 206
Maksimov, A. N., 12
Malinowski, Bronislaw, 11
Manco Capac, 297, 301305, 302, 303, 304
Mapa de Cuauhtlanzinco, 162
Mapa de Teozacualco, 157, 158
marcadors: El Mundo Perdido, Tikal, 83, 90, 101; La
Ventilla, Teotihuacan, 82, 83
Marcus, Joyce, 91, 385
marked beans (pallares) in Moche ceramic imagery, 229,
230
Marr, Nikolai Y., 11
marriage alliances and genealogical slabs, 144n9
Marx, Karl, 11, 12
Matatlan, genealogical slab probably from El Palmillo
embedded in wall of house in, 125, 128
Matrcula de Huexotzinco, 52
Maya glyphs, 2130; absolute size and relative proportion
of, 2426, 25; Choltian hypothesis, 27, 36n6; content
used for, 26; diglossia in, 28, 37n10; Dumbarton Oaks
conferences on, 12; glottochronology applied to, 26,
28; heterography (variation at any one time), 34; as
hieroglyphic script, 15, 386387; Japanese script and,
16; living essence attributed to, 26; morphosyllables,
2830, 29; non-Maya glyphs with, 26, 27; phonic and
linguistic characteristics, 2630; polycode nature
of, 24; production of, 22, 2224; somatic framework
for, 26; supernatural resonances of, 24; surviving
examples and media, 2122; Teotihuacan writing
and, 7778, 90, 9093, 91, 92. See also Knorosov, Yuri
Valentinovich, decipherment of Maya glyphs by;
variations in Maya glyphs over space and time
McClelland, Donna, 239
McCormac, F. G., 364
Medina Susano, R. Clorinda, 371
Medrano, Sonia, 48
Memoria de Juquila (Memoria probanza de Yetzegoa),
166
Memoria de Yacuini (Memoria probanza de Yacuini), 166
Memorial de Solol, 53
Mndez, Cecilia, 373
Codex Mendoza, 85, 178, 179, 181, 182, 184, 185, 188, 217,
218, 219, 279, 309n17
Mendoza, Antonio de, 212
Mendoza y Velasco, don Juan de, 166
Mexica codices, 2, 177184, 178, 179, 180, 182, 183, 198, 199.
See also specific codices
Mexica stone monuments, 184190, 185, 187, 189
Codex Mexicanus, 168169n56, 178, 179, 181, 185, 186,
212, 213215, 215
Cdice Mexicayotl, 168n5
Mexico-Tenochtitlan: Aztec writing at, 177181, 182,
184187, 192, 192n1; elaboration and abbreviation of
literary themes at, 157, 166; founding of, 217, 220;
El Plano del Papel de Maguey showing chinampas at,
88, 89. See also Templo Mayor, Mexico-Tenochtitlan
Mexico-Tlatelolco, 180, 181, 192n1
Middle Horizon/Wari khipus, 321, 321322, 322, 325, 350
migration theme, 156, 162168, 163, 165
Millon, Clara, 84, 103
miniaturized items, 139, 145n16
mistakes in writing, semiology of, 139143, 141, 142
Mixtec codices: Cotzumalhuapa writing and, 66; darts,
use of, 95; decipherment efforts, 2; Dumbarton Oaks
conferences on, 2; emblematic play in, 385; events and
places, manuscripts organized around, 177; jewels
in feminine names in, 150; Later Oaxacan scribal
tradition and, 113; migration theme and, 162165;
Moche ceramic imagery compared, 238; places of
origin, 158, 161; sacred birth theme and, 167; thematic
units in, 156
Moche ceramic imagery, 227249; compounded signs,
239240, 240; iconic signs with logographic functions,
239; machc, 239; marked beans (pallares), 229, 230;
Mixtec and Aztec traditions compared, 238; molds,
index 403
 manufacture and use of, 233234, 234, 235; mortuary
contexts of, 229; notational elements, Larco Hoyles
theories regarding, 228, 229, 229231, 230; oral literary
tradition and, 245; phases in, 246n1; porras (conical
mace heads), 235, 236, 239; preadaptation toward visual
signing in, 233; rebus devices, 239; relationship to
monumental and performance art, 228, 229; Revolt of
the Objects scene, semasiographic nature of, 241244,
241245; semasiography defined and described,
231233; speech or language, not reducible to, 240
241; stepped pyramid motif, logographic aspects of,
238, 238239; Warrior theme demonstrating use of
conventionalized signs, 234238, 235, 236, 237, 240
Moche costume and performance, 228, 229
Moche murals, tocapu-like figures in, 293297, 294, 295,
296, 305
Moche pyramid complexes and monumental art, 228,
229
Moctezuma, in Codex Mendoza, 218, 219
Molina el Cuzqueo, Cristbal de, 288, 289, 297, 300,
307n7
Monaghan, John, 175
Montana site: Cotzumalhuapa writings and decline of,
48; Teotihuacan cultural traits at, 48
Monte Albn: Building J, 140, 142; Building L-sub, 114,
114117, 116, 138, 139, 140, 145n17; calendrical names of
owners, objects marked with, 134, 135; Estela Lisa, 91,
93; Fragments S11 and S16, South Platform, 140, 142;
Lpida de Bazan, 91, 92; Middle Formative danzante
sculptures at, 100; miniature items from, 137, 139;
Monument SP2, South Platform, 140, 141; Monument
SP8a, South Platform, 140, 142; Monument SP9, South
Platform, 140, 142; Mound II slab, 117, 119; scribal
error at, 140143, 141, 142; Stela 1, 92, 93; Stela 7, 91;
Teotihuacan writing at, 83, 91, 9193, 94; Terrace
79 house, ceramic plaque from, 134, 135; Tomb 7,
miniature weaving baton from, 137, 139; Tomb 104, 125,
126127, 134, 135, 140; Tomb 158, Terrace 27, carved lintel
from, 130, 131; Tombs 139141, Terrace 21, 140, 142
Morgan, Lewis Henry, 11, 12, 17
Morley, Sylvanus, 14, 18, 30
morphosyllables in Maya glyphs, 2830, 29
mortuary contexts: of coastal writing tradition, 130134,
133; of Moche ceramic imagery, 229; of uie scribal
tradition, 130, 132; personhood and human body,
notions of, 125139, 126129, 131133, 135138; of
Zapotec writing, 125130
Moteuhczoma Ilhuicamina, 186, 188
Moteuhczoma Xocoyotzin, 186, 192
Motolinia [Toribio de Benavente], ix, 202
Muchic or Yunga language, 239
mummified remains, writing on skin of, 138, 139
Mura, Martn de: on khipus, 326; on tocapus, 281, 287,
298, 301305, 302, 303, 310n22, 310n24
Nahua and Nahuatl: Cotzumalhuapa writings and
Nahua day names, 53; migration theme and, 162, 164;
404 i n de x
non-Maya glyphs, use of, 26; places of origin and,
157162; Teotihuacan writing and, 77, 78, 84, 85, 88,
89; thematic units in, 156
napa or puca llama, 262
Naples documents and the khipu, 284, 306n6, 310n24,
312n42
Naranjo, identification of scribes producing Maya glyphs
in, 23
Navarrete, Federico, 175, 383, 385, 393394
NeighborNet, 345348, 346, 347
New Fire ceremony, 117, 158, 186, 192
Nicholson, H. B., 1, 2, 151, 190
Noriega, Mound 4, genealogical slab from cist in, 125, 128
Nowotny, Karl Anton, 2, 153
Nueva cornica y buen gobierno (Guaman Poma, 1615),
279280, 280, 283, 301, 304, 310n24
uie scribal tradition: alabaster carved vessels, 134;
calendric notation in, 78; defined and described, 112,
113; mortuary contexts, 130, 132
Nun Yax Ayiin, Tikal Stelae 31 and 32, 99, 100
Ocelotzin, 213, 214
Okladnikov, A. P., 16
Olderogge, Dmitri Alexeyevich, 14, 16
Olivier, Guilhem, 186, 187
open versus closed writing systems, 66, 384
oral literary tradition: Aztec writing and, 175176,
191192; ethnoiconological analogies drawn from, 156;
khipus and tocapus in, 279; Moche ceramic imagery
and, 245; written transmission versus, 45
origin theme and places of origin, 156, 157162, 159, 160
orthographical issues, 6
orthostats: human skin as writing surface on, 138, 139;
preservation of performance and place-making in,
114116, 114123, 118121, 123, 124; scribal error on, 140
Codex Osuna, 212
Oudijk, Michel R., 149, 385, 394
Pacaritambo, Inka caves of origin at, 297, 298, 308n11
Pachacamac khipus, 328, 335, 344, 345, 348, 361
Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua, Santa Cruz, 279, 297,
298, 299, 311n38
Palacios, Enrique, 185
pallares (marked beans) in Moche ceramic imagery, 229,
230
Palo Gordo: inventory of Cotzumalhuapa inscriptions
at, 50; Monument 10, 60; Monument 24, 63, 64;
Monument 25, 6263, 63
Palo Verde: inventory of Cotzumalhuapa inscriptions at,
50; Monument 1, 59
Panofsky, Erwin, 150, 151
Paris Codex, 35n2, 80, 81
Parry, Milman, 149
pars pro toto convention in Teotihuacan writing, 95, 98,
98100
Pasa Qullqa (storehouse) and Kaha Wayi (khipu house),
Rapaz, 355360, 356, 357, 358, 359, 373
Pasin, absolute size and relative proportion of Maya
glyphs at, 24
patrimonial khipus in Rapaz, 353377; Catholicism,
no association with, 358; dating of, 364368, 373;
figurines, 362, 363, 364, 365, 367, 371, 373; historical
context, 353354; Kaha Wayi (khipu house) and Pasa
Qullqa (storehouse), 355360, 356, 357, 358, 359, 373;
khipu collection, 358, 360364, 361, 362, 363; meaning
attributed to, 363; military history and Peruvian War
of Independence in Rapaz area, 364373, 366369, 372;
Pre-Columbian khipus, not resembling, 363364, 374;
scholarly study of, 355; Tupicocha khipus and, 354,
354355, 374; village, description of, 355356
Peirce, Charles S., 111, 233
performance: in Aztec writing tradition, 175176,
191192; elaboration and abbreviation of literary
themes and, 114116, 114123, 118121, 123, 124; in
Moche culture, 228, 229; writing as cultural category
compared to, 380381
personhood and human body, writing conveying
notions of, 125139, 126129, 131133, 135138
Peten, San Diego wall carving at, 25
Peterson, Jeanette, 202
Philip II (king of Spain), death inventory of, 300
pictographic systems versus hieroglyphic script, 386387
pictures versus glyphs, 385386
Piedra Labrada: Stela 1, 81, 82; Stela 3, 133, 134; Stela 11,
130, 133; stela with Teotihuacan water sign, 83, 84;
Teotihuacan writing at, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84
Piedras Negras: identification of scribes producing Maya
glyphs in, 23; Panel 2, 87
Pillsbury, Joanne, x, 3
Pintura de la Peregrinacin de los Culhuaque-Mexitin
(Mapa Sigenza), 162, 168169n56
Pipil and Cotzumalhuapa writings, 53
Pizarro, Pedro, 259
place-making and performance, relationship of writing
to, 114116, 114123, 118121, 123, 124
places of origin and origin theme, 156, 157162, 159, 160
El Plano del Papel de Maguey, 88, 89
Plaza de los Glifos, Teotihuacan: day signs, 80, 81, 82;
Early Classic painted grids at, 87, 88; emblematic
glyphs (toponyms, titles, and personal names), 84, 85;
jaguars devouring hearts, 102; Tlaloc and quincunx
sign, 102, 103
Pleiades constellation and Chuquibamba textile notation
systems, 259, 267
polychrome mural fragment with Teotihuacan day sign,
83, 8384
polycode nature of Maya glyphs, 24
Ponce Monolith, Tiwanaku, 289
Popol Vuh, 164
Porras, Bartolom de, 300
porras (conical mace heads) in Moche ceramic imagery,
235, 236, 239
Porter, James, 100
Post-Monte Albn scribal tradition, 112, 113
Prem, Hans, 385
Primeros memoriales (Sahagn), 102, 202
Probanza de Yetzelalag (seventeenth century), 166
processualism, 4
propagative syllables in Maya glyphs, 3234, 33
Proskouriakoff, Tatiana, 1, 104
puca or napa llama, 262
puka kuychi (red rainbow) textile colors, 339
pyramid complexes, Moche, 228, 229
pyramid motif, stepped, in Moche ceramic imagery,
logographic aspects of, 238, 238239
Pyramid of the Moon, Burial 2, five Tlaloc water jars
from, 103
Pyramid of the Plumed Serpents, Xochicalco, 93
Pyramid of the Sun, Late Preclassic Chicanel pottery in
interior fill of, 78
Quelatinizoo (Lagoon of Primordial Blood), 158162, 166
queros with tocapus, 285, 286, 287, 297, 305
Quetzalcoatl, 152, 164
Quetzalteueyac, 158
Quicopecua, Tomb 1, Mound 1, 125, 126127
quilca, 278, 308n9
Quilter, Jeffrey, 2
quincunx motif: Tlaloc head with quincunx in mouth,
Teotihuacan, 81, 90, 96, 98, 101, 101103, 102; tocapus
and, 297, 299
quipu. See khipu
Radcliffe-Brown, A. R., 11
Rapaz. See patrimonial khipus in Rapaz
Rawlinson, Henry, 18
rebus writing and rebus devices, 77, 210, 222n16, 234, 238,
239, 384, 387
rgime dhistoricit (historical sensibility) in Aztec
writing, 176178, 184, 188, 190, 191
Relacin de la provincia de los Collaguas (Juan de Ulloa
Mogolln, 1583), 272
Relacin de las antigedades del Pir (Santa Cruz
Pachacuti Yamqui Salcamaygua, ca. 1613), 279, 297, 298
Relacin de las cosas de Yucatn (Diego de Landa), 13,
1415, 16, 278
Relacin de las fbulas y los ritos de los incas (Molina el
Cuzqueo, ca. 1575), 288, 307n7
Relacin de Macuilxochtil, 52
Relacin geogrfica of Cholula, 152153, 160
Reptiles Eye glyph in Teotihuacan writing, 81, 8182
Revolt of the Objects scene in Moche ceramic imagery,
241244, 241245
Ro Grande 2, coastal Oaxaca, carved stones from, 122
ritual petitions, counted offerings in, 153, 155
River of Jade and Quetzal Feathers, 158, 162
Rivers, W. H. R., 17
Robertson, Donald, 177
Roman Catholicism. See Catholicism
index 405
 Roman y Zamora, Jernimo, 281
Rosny, Lon de, 15
Rowe, Ann, 256
Rowe, John, 284
Roys, Ralph, 18
Rufino Tamayo stela, possibly from Guerrero, 79, 94,
9495
Ruz Estrada, Arturo, 355, 363, 364
Rulers 13 and 15, Copan, 23, 24
Russia. See Knorosov, Yuri Valentinovich, decipherment
of Maya glyphs by
sacred birth theme, 167
Sahagn, Bernardino de, 168169n56, 169n10, 202204, Soviet Union. See Knorosov, Yuri Valentinovich,
206
Salomon, Frank, 353, 394
San Baltazar Chichicapan, genealogical slab attributed
to, 125, 128
San Bartolo: origins of Maya glyphs and, 31; size of Maya
glyphs used at, 25, 26
San Bartolome Lachixova, title of, 166
San Jose de Moro, 227, 228
San Jos Mogote, Monument 3, 122123, 123
San Juan Tabaa, title of, 166
San Martn, Jos de, 368370
San Pedro Aae, alabaster vessel from, 134139, 136
San Pedro Quiatoni, stone miniature replica of tomb
facade, 125, 127
Sangro Sansevero, Raimondo di, ix, 284
Cdice de Santa Mara Asuncin, 85
Santa Mara Camotlan, writing on skin of mummified
remains from, 138, 139
Santa Rosa site, Cotzumalhuapa inscription at, 50
Sarmiento de Gamboa, Pedro, 281, 288, 300, 307n7
Saussure, Ferdinand de, 111, 232
Schele, Linda, 1
Schellhas, Paul, 13
Schultze-Jena, Leonhard, 153
scribal error, semiology of, 139143, 141, 142
seated character with Cotzumalhuapa Star glyph,
portable sculpture, 50
Codex Selden (Codex Aute), 114, 115, 150, 151, 167, 169n8
Selden Roll, 164
Seler, Eduard, 57, 59
self-sacrifice rituals, 188190
semasiography, 231233; dialectic model of, 232233;
glottography versus, 384385; hybrid graphic systems
as semasiographic, 198, 233; mathematical notation
as semasiographic, 231232; Mexican pictography as
semasiographic system, 198; in Moche Revolt of the
Objects scene, 241244, 241245; musical notation as
semasiographic, 231; origins and meaning of term,
221n3; road signs as semasiographic, 232; triadic
model of, 233
semiological theory of writing, 111112
serpents devouring hearts in Teotihuacan art, 102, 103
shawls. See Chuquibamba textile notation systems
40 6 i n de x
shields, Teotihuacan monumental rendering of, 99,
100103
singing canine heads and weapon bundles, Teotihuacan-
style, 95, 96
Sipan, 227, 228
size of signs: Cotzumalhuapa writings, oversized signs
in, 56, 5657; Maya glyphs, absolute size and relative
proportion of, 2426, 25
skull birds in Cotzumalhuapa writing, 53, 5354, 54
Smith, Mary Elizabeth, 1, 191
social and cultural meaning. See cultural category,
writing systems as; cultural code, written surface as
somatic framework: for Maya glyphs, 26; for Maya stelae,
36n5
decipherment of Maya glyphs by
space. See time and space
Spanish conquest: Aztec writing and, 191;
ethnoiconological approach to representations
of, 166; khipus in colonial and Catholic contexts,
290, 353355; Moteuhczoma Xocoyotzins failure to
build sacrificial stone and, 192; tocapus, colonial
understanding of, 278283, 287288, 305. See also
hybridity of graphic systems after Spanish conquest;
patrimonial khipus in Rapaz
Spear-Thrower Owl, 90, 101
speech and language: Moche ceramic imagery not
reducible to, 240241; writing as cultural category
compared to, 380381; writing, relationship to, 111112
SplitsTree4, 345348
Spranz, Bodo, 1
Squier, E. G., 290
Stalin, Joseph, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16
Star glyph, Cotzumalhuapa writings, 50, 5759, 58
Stephens, John Lloyd, ix
stepped pyramid motif in Moche ceramic imagery,
logographic aspects of, 238, 238239
Stone of Tizoc, 181, 184, 186188, 187, 191192
Stuart, David, x, 1, 24, 28, 32, 34, 88, 104
Sucre, Jos Antonio de, 370371, 373
syllabary, identification of Maya script as, 15
synharmony, principle of, 15
syntagmic relationships in spoken and written language,
111112
Takalik Abaj: Classic period, as important center
through, 48; Late Preclassic writings from, 4647
Talum carved vessels, 133, 134
Tamarindito, identification of scribes producing Maya
glyphs in, 23
tattooed mummified remains from Santa Mara
Camotlan, 138, 139
Taube, Karl, 4748, 61, 77, 134, 385, 394395
Tawantinsuyu, 298299, 299
tecalli bowl carved with Reptiles Eye glyph, 81, 82
tecalli plumed serpent with Teotihuacan day names, 78, 79
tecalli sculpture with Tlaloc and quincunx sign, 101
Techinantitla, Teotihuacan writing at, 84
Codex Telleriano-Remensis, 178, 179, 180, 181, 183, 188,
202, 206, 212
Temple of the Sun, Cuzco, 259
Temple-Plaza-Altar complexes, 117, 118, 125
temple signs, Teotihuacan, 86, 8687
Templo Mayor, Mexico-Tenochtitlan: Aztec writing
depicting, 177181, 184186; Coatepec, representing,
161; Coyolxauhqui monument at base of staircase,
122123; dedication stone, 188190, 189, 191192;
deposition on cult images removed from, 212213,
213, 219
Tenoch, enthronement of, Codex Azcatitlan, 216, 216217
Tenochtitlan. See Mexico-Tenochtitlan
Tenosique Bowl, non-Maya glyphs in Maya inscriptions
on, 27
Teocalli de la Guerra Sagrada, 181, 184186, 185, 187,
190, 192
(Teo)Colhuacan, 158, 162
Teohuaonohualli, 213, 214
Teotenango script: inventory of inscriptions compared
to Cotzumalhuapa, 49; lack of study of, 77
Teotihuacan: grid plan of metropolis, 88. See also
La Ventilla, Teotihuacan; Plaza de los Glifos,
Teotihuacan
Teotihuacan-style statuette with day sign, 79, 80
Teotihuacan writing, 77109; in context of coastal writing
tradition, 4748, 66; Cotzumalhuapa writings and,
4849, 95; day signs in, 7884, 7983; development
of Early Classic central Mexican writing and, 7778;
emblematic glyphs (toponyms, titles, and personal
names), 8488, 85, 86, 87, 385; grids, central Mexican
examples of writing in, 87, 8890, 89; Guerrero,
monumental texts from, 78, 79, 9397, 9398, 94,
104; head signs in frontal view, 104; human sacrifice,
depictions of, 102, 103; Maya influence, 7778, 90,
9093, 91, 92; open systems, trend toward, 66; tlatoque (ruler) successions in Mexica codices, 178181, 184
pars pro toto convention, 95, 98, 98100; shields,
monumental rendering of, 99, 100103; speech scrolls
in, 61; symmetry as characteristic of, 100; Tlaloc head
with quincunx in mouth, 81, 90, 96, 98, 101, 101103,
102; Zapotec writing and, 48, 7778, 83, 90, 9093, 91,
92, 100, 104; zoomorphic vehicles, 92, 93
Tepantitla, Teotihuacan writings from, 84, 85, 96, 102,
103
Tepecuacuilco: Stela 1, 9596, 96; Stela 2, 96, 97, 98;
Teotihuacan writing at, 78
Tepelmeme de Morelos, Oaxaca, Protoclassic murals,
80, 81
Tepeyollotl-Tezcatlipoca, 186
Testerian manuscripts, 206209, 206210
Tetitla, Teotihuacan emblematic glyphs from, 86
Texcocan manuscripts, organization of, 177
textiles: color system for, 339; costume and performance
in Moche culture, 228, 229; tocapus and, 278, 287, 289.
See also Chuquibamba textile notation systems; khipu
Tezcatlipoca, 103, 186, 187
Tezozmoc, Fernando Alvarado, 181
Thomas, Cyrus, 15
Thompson, John Eric Sidney: Cold War decipherment of
Maya glyphs and, 10, 1418; Cotzumalhuapa writings
and, 43, 5152, 54
Tikal: Burial 116, incised bone from, 90, 9091;
identification of scribes producing Maya glyphs in,
23; somatic framework of stelae at, 36n5; Stela 1, 90;
Stela 31, 99, 100, 105n6; Stela 32, 99, 100, 104; Temple
of the Inscriptions, 24, 25; Teotihuacan arrival at, 88,
104; Teotihuacan writing at, 78, 83, 90, 9091
Tikal dynasty: Maya glyph changes and, 32; probable
usurpation by Teotihuacan, 88, 104
Tilantongo, 157, 167
time and space: Aztec writing, chronotopes in, 176178,
181, 184, 190, 191; tocapus used to represent significant
spaces, 297300, 298, 299. See also variations in Maya
glyphs over space and time
Tiquisate bowl, Cotzumalhuapa writing and, 53
Tira de la Peregrinacin, 168169n56. See also Codex
Boturini
Tira de Tepechpan, 192n2, 199, 211, 215
Tiwanaku monoliths and tocapus, 288289, 289
Tizoc: dedication stone, Templo Mayor, Mexica-
Tenochtitlan, 188, 190; Stone of Tizoc, 181, 184,
186188, 187, 191192
Tlachihualtepec or Great Pyramid of Cholula, 160, 161
tlacochcalco, 87
Tlaloc heads: in Cotzumalhuapa writing, 53;
Teotihuacan Tlaloc head with quincunx in mouth,
81, 90, 96, 98, 101, 101103, 102
Tlaltecuhtli, 185, 186, 187, 188
Tlamanalco church choir paintings, 202
Tlapacoya, lack of writing tradition at, 77
Tlapanecs, ritual use of counted bundles by, 153, 155
Tlatelolco. See Mexico-Tlatelolco
Tlatolatl, 212
Tlaxcallan property plan, 213, 214
Tlaxiaco, alabaster vessel from, 134139, 136
Tlazolteotl, 208
toads, Chuquibamba textiles symbolic use of, 261262
tocapu, 277317; ancestral mummies wrapped in
textiles with, 5; arrangement of, variations in, 292;
Berlin cross painted with, 284287, 285; on chullpas,
290, 292; color schemes, significance of, 286287;
defining, 286288; Dumbarton Oaks conferences
on, 2; fixed set of signs, problem with interpretation
as, 305; Inkas lack of writing system and, 281283,
308n9; Jama-Coaque vessels with, 296, 297, 305;
khipus and, 279284, 288, 289290, 300301; Lake
Titicaca and ruins of Tiwanaku, association with,
288; in Manco Capac portraits, 301305, 302, 303,
304; Moche murals, tocapu-like figures in, 293297,
294, 295, 296, 305; multiple media, appearances in,
290293; on queros, 285, 286, 287, 297, 305; quilca,
relationship to, 278; quincunx motif and, 297, 299;
as seales (signs), 300301; significant spaces, used
to represent, 297300, 298, 299; Spanish conquest,
index 407
 in writings and images after, 278283, 287288, 305;
specific meanings for individual forms, efforts to
decipher, 283284; symbolic meanings attached
to, 288290; textiles, relationship to, 278, 287, 289;
Tiwanaku monoliths and, 288289, 289; uncus (male
tunics) with, 281, 282, 284287, 290, 291, 293294,
295, 300, 301305, 302, 303, 304; urpus painted as if
wearing uncus with, 290, 293
Tokarev, Sergei Aleksandrovich, 12, 13
Toledan-era viceroyalty, khipus of governance under, 353
Tollan, 159161
Tollan Cholollan, 152
Tolstov, Sergei Pavlovich, 1112, 13, 14
Codex Tonindeye (Codex Zouche-Nuttall), 115, 152, 158,
167, 169n8
Torres Straits Expedition (1898), 17
Totometla, Tlaloc and quincunx sign from, 101
Tovar calendar, 206
Townsend, Richard, 186
Tozzer, Alfred, 18
tribute khipus, 344, 345
Codex Tudela, 202, 206
tukapu. See tocapu
Tula: lack of study of, 77; Teotihuacan writing and, 82, 87
Codex Tulane, 170n22
tunics, male. See uncus
Tupicocha khipus, 354, 354355, 374
U-shaped element serving as toponymic sign for
Teotihuacan and Xochicalco, 96, 97
Uaxactun Stela, 27
Ulloa Mogolln, Juan de, 272
Umberger, Emily, 186, 187, 188
uncus (male tunics), 252253; Peabody Museum
Chuquibamba uncu with solar calendar, 252, 253,
257258, 258, 266, 268, 269; with tocapu designs, 281,
282, 284287, 290, 291, 293294, 295, 300, 301305, 302,
303, 304; urpus painted as if wearing, 290, 293
Urcid, Javier, 2, 111, 382, 386, 395
urpus painted as if wearing uncus with tocapu designs,
290, 293
Urton, Gary, ix, x, 1, 2, 319, 320, 323, 324, 334, 338, 339, 345,
380, 395
USSR. See Knorosov, Yuri Valentinovich, decipherment
of Maya glyphs by
Uxmal, Yukatekan terms in script at, 27
Uxul stelae, size of glyphs on, 24, 25
variations in Maya glyphs over space and time, 2142;
in absolute size and relative proportion, 2426,
25; consonant sensitivity, development of, 32, 33;
diversity, accounting for, 3034; heterography
(variation at any one time), 34; Middle and Late
Classic-period glyphs, 3234; morphosyllables,
2830, 29; number of glyphs in use at any one
time and place, 3031; phonic and linguistic
40 8 i n de x
characteristics, 2630; Postclassic-period glyphs,
34; Preclassic- and Early Classic-period glyphs,
31; propagative syllables, use of, 3234, 33; social
circumstances affecting, 23, 31, 32, 3435; vowel
notations, introduction of, 32
Codex Vaticanus A/Ros, 178, 180, 206
Codex Vaticanus B, 103
Vega, Garcilaso de la, 281, 326, 328
Ventris, Michael, 18
Veracruz: Teotihuacan writing at, 78, 100; Xochicalco
Glyph A on monument probably from, 82, 83
Codex Vienna, 385. See also Codex Vindobonensis
Codex Vindobonensis, 159, 164165, 165. See also Codex
Vienna
Viracocha, 288
Vista Linda, Monument 1, 58
Von Winning, Hasso, 82, 86, 103
Wari/Middle Horizon khipus, 321, 321322, 322, 325, 350
Warrior theme in Moche ceramic imagery, 234238, 235,
236, 237, 240
White Patio mural at Atetelco, 96
Whittaker, Gordon, 385386
Wichmann, Sren, 30
women and writing: Chuquibamba textiles for women,
252253 (See also Chuquibamba textile notation
systems); ethnoiconology of representations of
women, 150, 151; Maya glyphs, female literacy in, 23
writing systems in Pre-Columbian America, ixx,
17; comparative dialogue, importance of,
36, 18; as cultural category, 379390 (See also
cultural category, writing systems as); as cultural
code, 111148 (See also cultural code, written
surface as); cultural superiority associated with
possession of writing system, 306n3; Dumbarton
Oaks conferences on, ixx, 13; elaboration and
abbreviation of literary themes in, 149174 (See
also elaboration and abbreviation); hybrid graphic
systems, 197225 (See also hybridity of graphic
systems after Spanish conquest); Inka lack of, 281
283, 308n9 (See also Chuquibamba textile notation
systems; Cuzco; khipu; tocapu); oral versus written
transmission, 45; orthography of, 6; true writing,
status as, ix, 2; use of writing as term, problem of,
379380, 387388. See also specific systems, e.g.,
Maya glyphs
xiuhamatl, 177
Xiuhtecuhtli, 103, 187
Xochicalco Glyph A on Teotihuacan-style vessels and
monuments, 82, 8284
Xochicalco script: animated signs in, 59, 5960;
inventory of inscriptions compared to
Cotzumalhuapa, 49; lack of study of, 77; Temple
of the Feathered Serpent, 59; Teotihuacan writing
 and, 48, 66, 78, 82, 87, 93, 94, 101; Tlaloc head with
quincunx in mouth, 101
Xolochiuhyan place name, Codex Mendoza, 85
Xoxocotlan, Tomb A, lintel, 140, 142
Yagul, Tomb 28, Terrace C, 125, 126127
Yaxchilan, absolute size and relative proportion of Maya
glyphs at, 24, 25
Yaxha stela, 24, 25
Yaxitzadao, 166
year counts: in Mexica codices, 178181; on Mexica stone
monuments, 186
Yogana: alabaster vessel attributed to, 134139, 136; effigy
vessel from, 125130, 129
Yucatan, number of Maya glyphs in use in, 30
Yukatekan terms in script at Uxmal and Chichen Itza, 27
Zacuala Palace mural, Teotihuacan, 93
Zapotec writing: alabaster carved vessels, 134; and
Cuilapan cloister stone, 117, 118; defined and
described, 112, 112113; genealogical records,
inscriptions of, 125, 126128; human skin as writing
surface for, 139; length of use of, 21; migration
theme and, 162, 165166; mortuary contexts of many
inscriptions, 125130; places of origin and, 158160;
scribal error in, 140143, 141, 142; symmetry as
characteristic of, 100; Teotihuacan writing and, 48,
7778, 83, 90, 9093, 91, 92, 100, 104; Xochicalco
Glyph A probably originating in, 83
Zender, Marc, 34, 385
Zhdanov, Andrei, 1011
Zimatlan: human carved parietal bone attributed to, 134,
136; stone cylindrical basin attributed to, 134, 135
zoomorphic vehicles, Teotihuacan figures riding, 92, 93
Codex Zouche-Nuttall (Codex Tonindeye), 115, 152, 158,
167, 169n8
Zuidema, R. Tom, 251, 286, 345, 386, 395
Zumrraga, Juan de, 212213, 214
index 409
 dumbar ton oak s pre- columbia n
s y mp osia a nd col loquia
published by dumbarton oaks research library
and collection, washington, d.c.
The Dumbarton Oaks Pre-Columbian Symposia
and Colloquia series volumes are based on papers
presented at scholarly meetings sponsored by the
Pre-Columbian Studies program at Dumbarton
Oaks. Inaugurated in 1967, these meetings provide
a forum for the presentation of advanced research
Dumbarton Oaks Conference on the Olmec,
edited by Elizabeth P. Benson, 1968
Dumbarton Oaks Conference on Chavn, edited
by Elizabeth P. Benson, 1971
The Cult of the Feline, edited by Elizabeth P.
Benson, 1972
Mesoamerican Writing Systems, edited by
Elizabeth P. Benson, 1973
Death and the Afterlife in Pre-Columbian America,
edited by Elizabeth P. Benson, 1975
The Sea in the Pre-Columbian World, edited by
Elizabeth P. Benson, 1977
The Junius B. Bird Pre-Columbian Textile
Conference, edited by Ann Pollard Rowe,
Elizabeth P. Benson, and Anne-Louise
Schaffer, 1979
Pre-Columbian Metallurgy of South America,
edited by Elizabeth P. Benson, 1979
Mesoamerican Sites and World-Views, edited
by Elizabeth P. Benson, 1981
The Art and Iconography of Late Post-Classic Central
Mexico, edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone, 1982
and the exchange of ideas on the art and
archaeology of the ancient Americas.
Further information on Dumbarton Oaks
Pre-Columbian series and publications can
be found at www.doaks.org/publications.
Falsifications and Misreconstructions of
Pre-Columbian Art, edited by Elizabeth Hill
Boone, 1982
Highland-Lowland Interaction in Mesoamerica:
Interdisciplinary Approaches, edited by Arthur G.
Miller, 1983
Ritual Human Sacrifice in Mesoamerica, edited by
Elizabeth Hill Boone, 1984
Painted Architecture and Polychrome Monumental
Sculpture in Mesoamerica, edited by Elizabeth Hill
Boone, 1985
Early Ceremonial Architecture in the Andes, edited
by Christopher B. Donnan, 1985
The Aztec Templo Mayor, edited by Elizabeth Hill
Boone, 1986
The Southeast Classic Maya Zone, edited by
Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gordon R. Willey, 1988
The Northern Dynasties: Kingship and Statecraft in
Chimor, edited by Michael E. Moseley and Alana
Cordy-Collins, 1990
Wealth and Hierarchy in the Intermediate Area,
edited by Frederick W. Lange, 1992
4 11
 Art, Ideology, and the City of Teotihuacan, edited
by Janet Catherine Berlo, 1992
Latin American Horizons, edited by Don Stephen
Rice, 1993
Lowland Maya Civilization in the Eighth Century
AD, edited by Jeremy A. Sabloff and John S.
Henderson, 1993
Collecting the Pre-Columbian Past, edited by
Elizabeth Hill Boone, 1993
Tombs for the Living: Andean Mortuary Practices,
edited by Tom D. Dillehay, 1995
Native Traditions in the Postconquest World,
edited by Elizabeth Hill Boone and Tom
Cummins, 1998
Function and Meaning in Classic Maya
Architecture, edited by Stephen D. Houston, 1998
Social Patterns in Pre-Classic Mesoamerica, edited
by David C. Grove and Rosemary A. Joyce, 1999
Gender in Pre-Hispanic America, edited by
Cecelia F. Klein, 2001
Archaeology of Formative Ecuador, edited by
J. Scott Raymond and Richard L. Burger, 2003
Gold and Power in Ancient Costa Rica, Panama,
and Colombia, edited by Jeffrey Quilter and John
W. Hoopes, 2003
Palaces of the Ancient New World, edited by Susan
Toby Evans and Joanne Pillsbury, 2004
A Pre-Columbian World, edited by Jeffrey Quilter
and Mary Ellen Miller, 2006
412
Twin Tollans: Chichn Itz, Tula, and the
Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican
World, edited by Jeff Karl Kowalski and Cynthia
Kristan-Graham, 2007
Variations in the Expression of Inka Power, edited
by Richard L. Burger, Craig Morris, and Ramiro
Matos Mendieta, 2007
El Nio, Catastrophism, and Culture Change in
Ancient America, edited by Daniel H. Sandweiss
and Jeffrey Quilter, 2008
Classic Period Cultural Currents in Southern and
Central Veracruz, edited by Philip J. Arnold III
and Christopher A. Pool, 2008
The Art of Urbanism: How Mesoamerican
Kingdoms Represented Themselves in Architecture
and Imagery, edited by William L. Fash and
Leonardo Lpez Lujn, 2009
New Perspectives on Moche Political Organization,
edited by Jeffrey Quilter and Luis Jaime Castillo B.,
2010
Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests: Intellectual
Interchange between the Northern Maya Lowlands
and Highland Mexico in the Late Postclassic
Period, edited by Gabrielle Vail and Christine
Hernndez, 2010
The Place of Stone Monuments: Context, Use, and
Meaning in Mesoamericas Preclassic Transition,
edited by Julia Guernsey, John E. Clark, and
Barbara Arroyo, 2010
Their Way of Writing: Scripts, Signs, and
Pictographies in Pre-Columbian America, edited
by Elizabeth Hill Boone and Gary Urton, 2011