Papers by Alonso Zamora Corona
MIRADAS – Journal for the Arts and Culture of the Américas and the Iberian Peninsula, 2023
This article proposes a reading for all the glyphs infixed in the images which accompany the twen... more This article proposes a reading for all the glyphs infixed in the images which accompany the twenty-first chapter of Book 9 of the Florentine Codex, following the decipherment work initiated by Frances Berdan (2015). These images depict the process of featherworking during the early colonial period, expressing the names of the materials used by the feather artists or amantecah, their properties, as well as the actions involved in the manufacture of their artworks. The analysis of these glyphs shows that they constitute a sort of technical ‘instruction manual’, and possibly corresponded to one of the ways in which arts and crafts were transmitted among the indigenous people of Mexico during the sixteenth century, an era of strong transculturation. The analysis also reveals how strict phonocentric approaches in grammatology are insufficient to tackle the complexity of Aztec writing and to understand its communicative possibilities. Instead, we propose that, in these pages, images work together with logosyllabic glyphs, codifying ‘embedded texts’, as defined by Janet Berlo (1983), texts which had a degree of independence from those written in Spanish and even alphabetic Nahuatl, and hence can be considered as true pictographies, indigenous texts with the potential to decolonise our idea of writing.
Signata, 2022
The aim of this paper is to propose the elements of a new theory of writing and writing systems. ... more The aim of this paper is to propose the elements of a new theory of writing and writing systems. It concentrates in the decades-long controversy about whether to consider the highly pictorial communication system present in Aztec, Mixtec and other non-Maya Mesoamerican pictorial codices as writing. After exposing the history of this controversy and the problematic elements in contemporary grammatological and semasiographic visions, I propose to treat Aztec and Mixtec writing as complex systems which depict language through bottom-up strategies (logograms and/or syllabograms, which are signs which try to represent the morphological and phonological levels of language), and top-down strategies (pictography, which is a semantic depiction aided by contextual inferences grounded in pragmatics), strategies which roughly correspond to the bottom-up and top-down language processing operations. Based on this idea, I propose that semiotic writing strategies are possible, and that writing should not be seen as a mere surrogate of phonetics: this vision could solve the long-standing question of why writing systems which developed phoneticism seem to start in a non-phonetic stage that is still treated, in an unclear way, as ‘proto-writing’.
Tlacuilolli Blog, 2022
In this entry, I discuss most of the written variants of the name of the seventh Aztec emperor, T... more In this entry, I discuss most of the written variants of the name of the seventh Aztec emperor, Tizoc, which has puzzled specialists for at least a century both in account of its etymology and its glyphic forms. I propose that most instances of this name are examples of the phenomenon of phonetic alteration in spelling, which is different from phonetic alteration in the spoken language, and is a feature of other writing systems, specifically of Sumerian (cfr. Viano 2015). Besides offering readings for most of the variants of this name, I propose that the lone variant tezo, Tezo(c), found in Codex Telleriano Remensis 38v and 39r, could indicate that the name's original form was Tezoc, 'bleeder'.
Tlacuilolli Blog, 2022
In 2018, Lori Boornazian Diel identified and analysed a Nahuatl hieroglyphic version of the Catho... more In 2018, Lori Boornazian Diel identified and analysed a Nahuatl hieroglyphic version of the Catholic Articles of Faith in Codex Mexicanus 52-54. This entry proposes a detailed re-analysis of this sequence, which is unique in the corpus of Aztec writing in the sense that it transcribes full sentences in a purely logosyllabic fashion, and could even contain an exceptional native phonetic sign working in a similar way to those of our alphabet.
Tlacuilolli Blog, 2021
The presence of the yahui, the fire serpent of the Mixtec, in Codex Borgia 38, is discussed along... more The presence of the yahui, the fire serpent of the Mixtec, in Codex Borgia 38, is discussed alongside Nowotny’s suggestion for phonetic glyphs in the same page, related to a cypress or ahuehuete represented with a tree and a drum (a-HUEHUE). It is argued here that the yahui glyph might be a tonal play for the word ‘plaza’ (yahui) in Mixtec, denoted by the crenelated enclosure that sorrounds this glyph, while the word play for ahuehuete, in Mixtec yutnu ñuu or ‘drum tree’, also seems to work in that language.
Tlacuilolli Blog, 2021
The famous plan of the teoithualco or sacred courtyard in folio 269r of Sahagun’s Primeros Memori... more The famous plan of the teoithualco or sacred courtyard in folio 269r of Sahagun’s Primeros Memoriales has been of enormous importance in conceptualizing sacred spaces in Aztec religious history and archaeology, despite the uncertainties regarding its identification. This note argues that the most famous interpretation of this diagram, that of Eduard Seler (1901), probably misidentified two buildings, namely the Colhuacan Teocalli or ‘Temple of Culhuacan’ and the Cuauhcalli or ‘House of Eagles’, a temple for warriors. This misidentification stemmed from glossing over the CUAUH, cuauh·tli, ‘eagle’ glyph next to the small temple-house with the image of Huitzilopochtli, as well as from Seler’s usage of Durán’s information regarding the location of the cuauhcalli, now superseded by archaeological data.
Tlacuilolli Blog, 2021
The mysterious glyph for Aztlan in Codex Boturini is probably a case of non-initial phonetic moti... more The mysterious glyph for Aztlan in Codex Boturini is probably a case of non-initial phonetic motivation in Aztec writing, a phenomenon first noticed by Gordon Whittaker. The iconographic identification of the glyph is probably piaztli, 'drinking straw'. The reading proposed here for its appearance in Codex Boturini is: az, Az(tlan), Aztlan. Originally posted at https://tlacuilolli.com/2021/03/23/7/
Journal of Material Culture, 2020
For the current-day K’iche’ Maya of the Highland community of Momostenango, Guatemala, animals ar... more For the current-day K’iche’ Maya of the Highland community of Momostenango, Guatemala, animals are conceived as having not human, but artificial souls: they are, in fact, objects that exist in the mountain dwellings of their gods. Conversely, artefacts like sacred altars are seen as being wild animals of the gods and ancestors, which can bring illness and death to people when not fed by ritual offerings. Based on this and other data that the author gathered during his recent ethnographic fieldwork among the K’iche’, in this article the author explores the ontological paradoxes of living beings and artefacts among current-day Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples of the past to propose a version of perspectivism that incorporates the ideas of technology, asymmetry and material culture to the more horizontal and personhood-based model proposed for Amazon cultures by Viveiros de Castro in his article, ‘Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism’ (1998).
Journal de la société des américanistes, 2019
El estudio de las ideas sobre la corporalidad y las almas se ha consagrado en años recientes como... more El estudio de las ideas sobre la corporalidad y las almas se ha consagrado en años recientes como uno de los temas más importantes en el conocimiento de los pueblos mayas del pasado y el presente (Pitarch 1996, 2011; Figuerola Pujol 2010; Velásquez García 2015). En el caso de los k’iche’ de Santiago Momostenango, importantes trabajos se han centrado en temas como las prácticas calendáricas (Tedlock 1992), la cosmología (Cook 1981) y la etnohistoria (Carmack 1995), pero la información sobre el cuerpo humano y las almas resulta todavía poco sistemática. Siguiendo la propuesta de Pedro Pitarch en torno a la persona maya (2011), en este artículo presento nueva información sobre las ideas en torno de la corporalidad y las almas entre los momostecos. Destaca la existencia del chikop, un alma con forma de pájaro muy similar al “ave del corazón” de los tzeltales, la cual puede ser castigada por las divinidades ancestrales cuando una persona olvida hacer ofrendas en los altares del patrilinaje.
Estudios Indiana 13, 2019
El Tonalamatl o ‘almanaque in extenso’ presentado en las ocho primeras páginas del Códice Borgia ... more El Tonalamatl o ‘almanaque in extenso’ presentado en las ocho primeras páginas del Códice Borgia ha resistido durante largo tiempo una interpretación concreta tanto de su iconografía como de su uso ritual. En este artículo ofrezco una nueva hipótesis sobre la sección inaugural de este documento: por su imaginería y contenido, el almanaque in extenso del Borgia presenta correspondencias con rituales de purificación descritos por Sahagún en los libros I y IV del Códice Florentino. En dichos ritos especialistas calendáricos (tlapouhqueh o tlamatinime) bajo el patronazgo de Tezcatlipoca y Tlazolteotl escuchaban las transgresiones de sus clientes y, mediante el uso de libros adivinatorios, asignaban penitencias y acciones rituales para evitarles la mala fortuna y el castigo de los dioses.
Book Reviews by Alonso Zamora Corona
AIBR Revista de Antropología Iberoamericana, 2024
Reseña de una reciente etnografía sobre los masewal (nahuas) de Santa María Tepetzintla, Puebla
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Papers by Alonso Zamora Corona
Book Reviews by Alonso Zamora Corona