Next Meeting of The
Pre-Columbian Society
Saturday, May 11, 2013, 9:30am-12:00pm: Penn Museum:
Room 345 Special
Codex Workshop:
"Venus Almanacs in the Maya and Borgia Group Codices"
Gabrielle Vail, PhD, New College of Florida in Sarasota:
This workshop is designed for participants with
an interest in Mesoamerican codices, deities, and mythology,
although prior experience working with the codices is not
required. The workshop will focus on identifying calendrical,
iconographic, and/or hieroglyphic references to Venus in codices
painted by Maya and highland Mexican scribes during the Postclassic
period. Dr. Gabrielle Vail specializes in the study of Maya
hieroglyphic texts, with an emphasis on prehispanic Maya ritual and
religion as documented in screenfold manuscripts painted in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Dr Vail makes the Codices
accessible and easily comprehended in her workshops.
The charge will be $20.00, or $15.00 for
students, for the Workshop and an accompanying Workbook.
In order to make certain that we have
enough workbooks, we request that you register for the
workshop by replying to this email, or
calling Lynn Matson at 732-681-8426, or 732-859-3556. Please note
your name, phone number, and email. Last minute
attendees will be welcome, assuming there are enough workbooks.
Saturday, May 11, 2013, 1:30pm in Room 345; Lecture:
"Processions and Prognostications: A New Reading of the
Dresden and Madrid Yearbearer Pages"
Gabrielle Vail, PhD, New College of Florida in Sarasota:
The yearbearer
ceremonies, associated with the rituals marking the transition from
one year to the next among prehispanic Maya cultures, have long been
of interest to researchers studying the Maya codices. Efforts
have previously been focused on relating the imagery and
hieroglyphic texts on the yearbearer pages to the description of
these ceremonies recorded by Diego de Landa in the mid sixteenth
century. In his 1988 dissertation, Karl Taube made a profound
breakthrough in our understanding of these ceremonies, proposing
that they involved a re-enactment of the events leading to the
creation of the present world: the destruction of a previous
Sun or era, and the re-birth or re-establishment of the world
through the intervention of ritual participants. This lecture
considers the implications of Taube’s proposal, while at the same
time emphasizing new discoveries about the types of rituals
undertaken and their relationship to the deity complex known as
Bolon Yokte’ K’uh, who is also referenced in Classic period texts
concerning the completion of the thirteenth b’ak’tun.
Additionally, a new reading of the hieroglyphic text on the Madrid
yearbearer pages, coupled with an in depth analysis of the
iconography included on these pages, reveals references to a
mythological narrative involving the maize god and other primordial
deities which underlies the ceremonial events depicted.
Dr. Gabrielle Vail specializes in the study of
Maya hieroglyphic texts, with an emphasis on prehispanic Maya ritual
and religion as documented in screenfold manuscripts painted in the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Her research is highlighted in
numerous print and online publications, as well as the online Maya
Codices Database (www.mayacodices.org). Her recent publications
include Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests: Intellectual Interchange
between the Northern Maya Lowlands and Highland Mexico in the Late
Postclassic Period, with Christine Hernández, and The New
Catalog of Maya Hieroglyphs, Volume 2: The Codical Texts ,with
Martha Macri. Her forthcoming book,co-authored with
Hernández, Re-Creating Primordial Time: Foundation Rituals
and Mythology in the Postclassic Maya Codices, University Press of
Colorado, provides a new interpretation of rituals portrayed in the
Maya codices and their links to episodes related in Maya creation
narratives. Dr. Vail received her Ph.D. from Tulane University in
1996 and holds a research and faculty position at New College of
Florida in Sarasota, where she teaches courses on Native American
cosmology, deciphering Maya hieroglyphic texts, and the astronomy of
prehispanic cultures of Mesoamerica.
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