Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T14:26:00.403Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Multispectral imaging of an Early Classic Maya codex fragment from Uaxactun, Guatemala

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Nicholas P. Carter  and
Jeffrey Dobereiner
Nicholas P. Carter
Affiliation:
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA (Email: [email protected])
Jeffrey Dobereiner
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, 11 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Multispectral visual analysis has revealed new information from scarce fragments of a pre-Columbian document excavated in 1932 from a burial at Uaxactun, in Guatemala. The plaster coating from decomposed bark-paper pages of an Early Classic (c. AD 400–600) Maya codex bear figural painting and possibly writing. Direct investigation of these thin flakes of painted stucco identified two distinct layers of plaster painted with different designs, indicating that the pages had been resurfaced and repainted in antiquity. Such erasure and re-inscription has not previously been attested for early Maya manuscripts, and it sheds light on Early Classic Maya scribal practices.

Keywords

GuatemalaEarly Classic periodMayamultispectral imagingcodex
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 90 , Issue 351 , June 2016 , pp. 711 - 725
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agrinier, P. 1975. Mounds 9 and 10 at Mirador, Chiapas, Mexico (Papers of the New World Archaeological Foundation 39). Provo (UT): New World Archaeological Foundation.Google Scholar
Audet, C.M. 2005. Baking Pot Codex Restoration Project, Belize. Report produced for the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies. Available at: http://www.famsi.org/reports/02090/02090Audet01.pdf (accessed 25 February 2016).Google Scholar
Beaubien, H.F. 1993. From codex to calabash: recovery of a painted organic artifact from the archaeological site of Cerén, El Salvador. Journal of the American Institute for Conservation 32: 153–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3179707 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buti, D., Domenici, D., Miliani, C., García Sáiz, C., Gómez Espinoza, T., Jímenez Villalba, F., Verde Casanova, A., Sabía de la Mata, A., Romani, A., Presciutti, F., Doherty, B., Brunetti, B. & Sgamellotti, A.. 2014. Non-invasive investigation of a pre-Hispanic Maya screenfold book: the Madrid Codex. Journal of Archaeological Science 42: 166–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2013.08.008 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cassidy, A.W. 2004. Divination by image: the Borgia group of pre-Hispanic Mexican manuscripts. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University.Google Scholar
Fash, W.L. 2001. Astronomers, scribes, warriors, and kings: the city of Copan and the ancient Maya. New York: Thames & Hudson.Google Scholar
Gutiérrez Mendoza, G. 2008. Four thousand years of graphic communication in the Mixteca-Tlapaneca-Nahua Region, in Jansen, M.E.R.G.N. and van Broekhoven, L.N.K. (ed.) Mixtec writing and society: Escritural de Ñuu Dzaui: 71–108. Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen.Google Scholar
Hernández, F. 1942. Historia de las plantas de Nueva España. Translated by José Rojo. México, D.F.: Imprenta Universitaria.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hernández, C. & Vail, G.. 2010. A case for scribal interaction: evidence from the Madrid and Borgia group Codices, in Vail, G. & Hernández, C. (ed.) Astronomers, scribes, and priests: intellectual interchange between the northern lowlands and highland Mexico in the Late Postclassic period: 333–66. Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection.Google Scholar
Kidder, A.V. 1935. Notes on the ruins of San Agustin Acasaguastlan, Guatemala (Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 456; Contributions to American Archaeology 15). Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington.Google Scholar
Kidder, A.V. 1947. The artifacts of Uaxactun, Guatemala (Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 576). Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington.Google Scholar
Lacadena García-Gallo, A. 2000. Los escribas del Códice de Madrid: metodología y paleográfica. Revista Española de Antropología Americana 30: 27–85.Google Scholar
Landa, D. de. 1941. Relación de las cosas de Yucatan (Papers of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology 18). Translated and edited by Alfred M. Tozzer. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University.Google Scholar
Landa, D. de. 1978. Yucatan before and after the Conquest. Translated and edited by William Gates. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
López de Cogolludo, D. 1688. Historia de Yucathan. Madrid: Juan García Infanzon.Google Scholar
MacNutt, F.A. (ed.; trans.) 1912. De Orbe Novo: the eight decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera, volume I. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar
Magee, C.E. & de Alarcon, T.. 2016. Appendix III: artifact conservation, in Houston, S.D., Newman, S., Román, E. & Garrison, T., Temple of the Night Sun: a royal tomb at El Diablo, Guatemala: 242–48. San Francisco (CA): Precolumbia Mesoweb.Google Scholar
Martin, S. & Skidmore, J.. 2012. Exploring the 584286 correlation between the Maya and European calendars. The PARI Journal 13 (2): 3–16.Google Scholar
Merrill, R.H. 1947. A note on the Maya Venus table. American Antiquity 13: 82–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/275759 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pendergast, D.M. 1979. Excavations at Altun Ha, Belize, 1964–1970, volume I. Toronto: Royal Ontario Museum.Google Scholar
Rossi, F.D., Saturno, W.A. & Hurst, H.. 2015. Maya Codex book production and the politics of expertise: archaeology of a Classic-period household at Xultun, Guatemala. American Anthropologist 117: 116–32. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/aman.12167 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruvalcaba, J.L., Zetina, S., Calvo del Castillo, H., Arroyo, E., Hernández, E., M. Van der Meeren & Sotelo, L.. 2008. The Grolier Codex: a non-destructive study of a possible Maya document using imaging and ion beam techniques. Materials Research Society Symposium Proceedings 1047: 299–306.Google Scholar
Sächsische Landesbibliothek—Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden. 2015. Codex Dresdensis—Mscr.Dresd.R.310. Available at: http://digital.slub-dresden.de/en/workview/dlf/2967/1/0/ (accessed 25 February 2016).Google Scholar
Saturno, W.A., Stuart, D., Aveni, A.F. & Rossi, F.D.. 2012. Ancient Maya astronomical tables from Xultun, Guatemala. Science 336: 714–17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1221444 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schwede, R. 1912. Über das Papier der Maya-Codices und einiger altmexikanischer Bilderhandschriften. Habilitation, Königlich Sächsische Technische Hochschule zu Dresden. Dresden: Richard Bertling.Google Scholar
Smith, A.L. 1932. Two recent ceramic finds at Uaxactun (Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 436; Contributions to American Archaeology 5). Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington.Google Scholar
Smith, A.L. 1950. Uaxactun, Guatemala: excavations of 1931–1937 (Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 588). Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington.Google Scholar
Smith, A.L. 2006 [1949]. Guatemala highlands, in Weeks, J.M. & Hill, J.A. (ed.) The Carnegie Maya: the Carnegie Institution of Washington Maya Research Programme, 1913–1957, Volume I: 184–87. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.Google Scholar
Smith, M.E. 1994. Why the second Codex Selden was painted, in Zeitlin, J. Marcus & J.F. (ed.) Caciques and their people: a volume in honor of Ronald Spores (Anthropological Papers 89): 111–41. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Smith, R.E. 1932. Field notes, Uaxactun. Unpublished notes prepared for the Carnegie Institution of Washington.Google Scholar
Smith, R.E. 1937. A study of structure A-I complex at Uaxactun, Peten, Guatemala (Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 456; Contributions to American Archaeology 19). Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution of Washington.Google Scholar
Smith, R.E. 1955. Ceramic sequence at Uaxactun, Guatemala (Middle American Research Institute Publication 20). New Orleans (LA): Tulane University.Google Scholar
Smith, R.E., Willey, G.R. & Gifford, J.C.. 1960. The type-variety concept as a basis for the analysis of Maya pottery. American Antiquity 25: 330–40. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/277516 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stuart, D.S. 2012. The name of paper: the mythology of crowning and royal nomenclature on Palenque's palace tablet, in Golden, C., Houston, S.D. & Skidmore, J. (ed.) Maya archaeology 2: 116–42. San Francisco (CA): Precolumbia Mesoweb.Google Scholar
Troike, N. 1974. The Codex Colombino-Becker. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of London.Google Scholar
Von Hagen, V.W. 1977. The Aztec and Maya papermakers. New York: Hacker Art.Google Scholar
Weeks, J.M. & Hill, J.A.. 2006. The Carnegie Maya: the Carnegie Institution of Washington Maya Research Programme, 1913–1957, volume I. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.Google Scholar
Willey, G.R., Culbert, T.P. & Adams, R.E.W.. 1967. Maya lowland ceramics: a report from the 1965 Guatemala City conference. American Antiquity 32: 289–315. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2694659 Google Scholar