REVISITING MONKEYS ON POTS: A CONTEXTUAL CONSIDERATION OF PRIMATE IMAGERY ON CLASSIC LOWLAND MAYA POTTERY

2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prudence M. Rice ◽  
Katherine E. South
Keyword(s):  
Physical Characteristics ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
Spider Monkey ◽  
Howler Monkey ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Monkey Species ◽  
Creation Myth ◽  
Cultural Traits ◽  
Lowland Maya

AbstractFour species of monkeys may have lived in the Maya region in pre-Columbian times: two howler monkey species, the spider monkey, and possibly the capuchin. Simians also played an important role in Maya creation myth and cosmology, and are frequently represented on Maya pottery and in glyphic texts. Scholars disagree, however, on which monkeys are depicted. Here we provide an analysis of 142 monkey images on 97 pots, focusing especially on Classic-period lowland polychromes. Multiple physical characteristics of the primates are considered, along with cultural traits, to provide appropriate biological and cultural contexts and artistic conventions necessary to their interpretation. Besides the well-known scribal roles (attributed to howlers and “Monkey-Men”), we conclude that monkeys commonly take on pictorial and non-pictorial roles that involve carrying or bringing goods such as tribute or cacao. In contexts of liminality, these creatures are often charged with transcending natural and social realms.

MAYA HETERARCHY AS INFERRED FROM CLASSIC-PERIOD PLAZA PLANS

2004 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 127-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall Joseph Becker
Keyword(s):  
Settlement Patterns ◽  
Rural Settlement ◽  
Classic Maya ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
Terminal Classic ◽  
Lowland Maya

Recognition of architectural patterning among groups of structures at lowland Maya sites dating from the Classic period provides insights into the ways that residences and ritual complexes were organized. Each structured group arrangement, or Plaza Plan (PP), reveals an architectural grammar that provides the database enabling us to predict urban as well as rural settlement patterns. Wide variations in sizes among examples of residential PPs suggests that heterarchy was an important aspect of Classic Maya society. Examination of PP2 at Tikal indicates that a heterarchic pattern of organization existed. Heterarchy may relate to the fragility of the structure of lowland Maya kingship, and this may explain the gradual demise of states during the Terminal Classic and Postclassic periods and their replacement by re-emergent Maya chiefdoms.

RETHINKING CLASSIC LOWLAND MAYA POTTERY CENSERS

1999 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prudence M. Rice
Keyword(s):  
Classic Period ◽  
Terminal Classic ◽  
Divine Kingship ◽  
Terminal Classic Period ◽  
Lowland Maya

Classic lowland Maya censers can be described in terms of two general categories, image (or effigy) and non-image. The function and meaning of these incensarios is approached through consideration of their embellishment, symbolism, and contexts of use and recovery. It is suggested that in Peten and some adjacent areas, Classic image censers were part of the paraphernalia of divine kingship, associated with termination rituals and a royal funerary cult. Non-image and particularly spiked censers were more associated with birth/renewal, earth, rain, and calendrical rituals involving fire drilling. Their use became widespread in the lowlands during the Terminal Classic period, with the “collapse” of divine kingship and elite power.

The Work of Monuments: Reflections on Spatial, Temporal and Social Orientations in Mongolia and the Maya Lowlands

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah E. Jackson ◽  
Joshua Wright
Keyword(s):  
Social Organization ◽  
Lived Experience ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
Maya Lowlands ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Inner Asia ◽  
Ancient Landscapes ◽  
Interpretive Frameworks

In this article, we look at two very different contexts of monument use – Bronze Age Inner Asia and the Classic period Maya lowlands – in order to explore the function and meanings of monuments and the variety of ways in which they worked to mark and differentiate ancient landscapes. Our goal in uniting such disparate contexts is to examine how power and social organization in these settings were translated into monumental material forms, and how such materializations were experienced by those who viewed and re-interpreted the monuments. In particular, we explore how monuments acted as orientational markers within specific cultural contexts. Our discussion finds common ground between the disparate settings through several common interpretive frameworks focused on spatial, temporal and social orientational work accomplished by active, agentive monuments through their relationships with humans, which we frame as a ‘technology of the monument’. Monuments are instrumental in situating groups within these different layers, or landscapes, of lived experience, yet even while physically fixed, allow for movement through changing meanings and ideas.

Evaluating the sustainability of hunting: a comparison of harvest profiles across three Huaorani communities

2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARGARET FRANZEN
Keyword(s):  
National Park ◽  
Amazon Basin ◽  
Biosphere Reserve ◽  
Northern Region ◽  
Spider Monkey ◽  
Howler Monkey ◽  
Alouatta Seniculus ◽  
The Road ◽  
Yasuni National Park ◽  
High Conservation

Yasuni National Park and Biosphere Reserve in Ecuador's Amazon basin is home to the Huaorani and an area of high conservation value. As a result of oil development in the early 1990s, a road was constructed in the northern region of the Park. Three Huaorani communities have since been established in proximity to the road, two of them when the road was built, ten years prior to this study, and the third in a previously uninhabited area. This allowed for a natural experiment comparing harvest compositions across communities of different ages at one point in time. Harvest profiles suggest that the spider monkey Ateles belzebuth is facing local depletion near the two old communities and the howler monkey Alouatta seniculus may also be depleted near one of the old communities. That the two oldest communities still harvested a relatively high number of other vulnerable species is attributed to their use of the road to increase forest access. The spider monkey appears to be the first species to become depleted in persistently hunted areas.

scholarly journals Isotopic niche partitioning in two sympatric howler monkey species

2020 ◽  
Vol 172 (3) ◽  
pp. 438-446
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Flores‐Escobar ◽  
Carolina Sanpera ◽  
Lluís Jover ◽  
Liliana Cortés‐Ortiz ◽  
Ariadna Rangel‐Negrín ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Niche Partitioning ◽  
Howler Monkey ◽  
Isotopic Niche ◽  
Monkey Species

Patterns of infection by intestinal parasites in sympatric howler monkey (Alouatta palliata) and spider monkey (Ateles geoffroyi) populations in a tropical dry forest in Costa Rica

Primates ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 383-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Selene Maldonado-López ◽  
Yurixhi Maldonado-López ◽  
Alberto Gómez-Tagle Ch. ◽  
Pablo Cuevas-Reyes ◽  
Kathryn E. Stoner
Keyword(s):  
Costa Rica ◽  
Intestinal Parasites ◽  
Tropical Dry Forest ◽  
Alouatta Palliata ◽  
Spider Monkey ◽  
Dry Forest ◽  
Howler Monkey ◽  
Ateles Geoffroyi

THE HIATUS AT TIKAL, GUATEMALA

2003 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hattula Moholy-Nagy
Keyword(s):  
Political Development ◽  
Settlement Patterns ◽  
Classic Period ◽  
Preliminary Conclusion ◽  
Late Classic ◽  
Stone Monuments ◽  
Lowland Maya

Research on the Lowland Maya Hiatus that focuses solely on the inscriptions on monuments is too limited to provide information about its causes, nature, and consequences. I consider the hiatus at Tikal using additional evidence from architecture, settlement patterns, caches and burials, domestic artifacts, and inscriptions on portable objects. A preliminary conclusion is that Tikal's long hiatus can be regarded as part of a sequence of internal political development rather than due to conquest from outside. The displacement and destruction of inscribed and plain stone monuments was an ongoing phenomenon at Tikal. It was present from Terminal Preclassic times and occurred with increasing frequency until the beginning of the late Late Classic period. Monument destruction may have come to a halt then under a series of powerful rulers. The setting of inscribed stone monuments and wooden lintels continued for another two centuries until the disappearance of dynastic rule itself.

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