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.

back to home page