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Ethnohistory 51.2 (2004) 421-428



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From Naked-Eye Astronomy to Races of Maize:

Cultural Entanglements in Pre-Columbian Civilizations

Boston University

Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars. By Susan Milbrath. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000. 382 pp., 3 appendices, glossary, bibliography, index, 7 tables, 48 figures, 22 plates. $55.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.)
Maya Art and Architecture. By Mary Ellen Miller. (London: Thames and Hudson, 1999. 240 pp., select bibliography, index, 207 illustrations. $14.95 paper.)
Pulltrouser Swamp: The Settlement Maps: A Lowland Maya Community Cluster in Northern Belize. By Peter D. Harrison and Robert E. Fry. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2000. 40-page booklet, bibliography, 21 loose maps, 25 figures. $55.00 for maps and booklet in plastic folder.)
Corn in Clay: Maize Paleoethnobotany in Pre-Columbian Art. By Mary W. Eubanks. (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1999. 240 pp., 3 appendices, bibliography, index, 8 tables, 135 photos. $49.95 cloth.)
The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume 2: Mesoamerica, Part 1. Edited by Richard E. W. Adams and Murdo J. MacLeod. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 571 pp., bibliographical essay or bibliography for each of 11 chapters, index. $89.95 cloth.)

Cognitive dissonance, which can be characterized as the inability of two parties to communicate due to vastly different cosmological frameworks, represents a leitmotif of the colonial history of the Western Hemisphere [End Page 421] as well a challenge to contemporary interpreters of colonial documents. This malaise stands in great contrast to the coherent interlocking of cultural components within pre-Columbian societies that is so evident in the books under review here. Although spanning a wide range of topics that include Maya naked-eye astronomy, Maya royal art and architecture, Maya settlement patterns, impressions of maize cobs in molded pottery from Moche jars and Zapotec urns, and synoptic treatments of cultural historical sequences of Greater Mesoamerican societies, each of these publications highlights the entangled nature of pre-Columbian societies. Maize production was linked to pottery production, which, in turn, was linked to status expression. Settlement patterns cannot be divorced from agricultural strategies. Concerns regarding agricultural fertility can be discerned from architectural embellishments while astronomical observations can be seen as both linked to the cultivation cycle as well as a bold statement of political power. The knitting together of the heavenly with the mundane created a social fabric of great strength and amazing durability in the face of colonial onslaught.

Cultural durability and connectivity is evident in Susan Milbrath's compendium of astronomy in art, folklore, and calendars (Star Gods of the Maya). Milbrath leads off with a chapter on heavenly cosmologies of contemporary Maya peoples and works back to Colonial and pre-Columbian imagery. Although this book represents traditional scholarship in many respects, Milbrath is no advocate of "the timeless Maya" and emphasizes the fact that solar references, closely linked with divine rulership, "faded from view" (58) by A.D. 1000, to be replaced by the annual festival calendar. Likewise, lunar imagery of the Classic period appears to have been male dominated and associated with ball playing and the maize complex. In contrast, lunar imagery found within the Postclassic codices emphasized female lunar deities, both a young moon goddess who represented the waxing moon and an old moon goddess who epitomized the shrinking or waning moon.

Casting a wide net, Milbrath deals with the "relationship between astronomy, calendar dates, and Maya imagery" (9). The hieroglyphic corpus is noticeably underrepresented in this treatment (the author herself points to this omission on p. 9), which is lamentable, given the rich source of astronomical information contained therein. Nonetheless, the plentiful iconography of Maya Classic and Postclassic architecture, monuments, codices, and pottery vessels provides a database of immeasurable richness. With forty-eight figures and twenty-two plates, Milbrath has reproduced in this book much of the imagery on which her analysis is based. Apparently redrawn or rephotographed from primary sources, the images are grouped [End Page 422] together into...

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