Some social correlates of directional symbolism

Maxime Boccas, Johanna Broda, and Gonzalo Pereira, eds., Etno y arqueo-astronomía en las Américas: Memorias del simposio Arq-13 del 51 Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, Santiago de Chile, pp. 161-176

2014

The Maya site of Cerros, located on the Caribbean coast of Belize, was part of an early coastal trading network that linked the New River with Chetumal Bay and regions beyond. This site situated directly on the coast included a port and very early architecture that probably was used to formulate an early horizon calendar by observing the sun as it moved from the land to the lagoon, much like island to island alignments that helped people of the Caribbean navigate and make astronomical observations. This analysis uses the architectural history and landscape features to understand the development of the ideological system that began around the time one of the earliest pyramids was constructed at the site of Cerros, Belize between 50 BC and AD 150. Structure 5C marks a key point of the lagoon where an important agricultural date, the solar zenith, would have been naturally observed with the combination of the rising sun and the coastline. In a later building episode, Structure 4 was bu...

The Oxford Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution

This chapter explores the symbolic and conceptual relations between prehistoric groups and the sky. The study of how people engage with the sky is known as cultural astronomy, a term that comprises any field concerned with sky and culture, including archaeoastronomy. The latter focuses on analyzing the archaeological record for evidence of past skyscapes, i.e., past forms of engagement with the celestial objects, and how they would feature in the world views of the societies under study. The chapter discusses six case studies from the Western part of the Iberian Peninsula that are representative of prehistoric contexts found in other parts of the world. They illustrate how prehistoric skyscapes provided not only spatial axes for the construction of structures that align to celestial objects and events but, more importantly, how such alignments served as temporal anchors moored to key environmental, social, and symbolic moments of transition.

Latin American Antiquity 2 (3), pp. 199-226, 1991

Many societies use architecture for symbolic expression, and often buildings or other constructions constitute maps of a culture's worldview. Archaeological identification of such ideational expressions is receiving renewed attention, in the Maya area as in many other regions. Excavations in 1988 to examine a particular model ofancient Maya site planning and spatial organization, in which the principles ofarchitectural arrangement and their directional associations derive from Maya cosmology. This paper describes the model and its archaeological evaluation at Copan and discusses interpretive implications of the specific results obtained, in the context of other ongoing studies in epigraphy, iconography, and archaeology.

The Maya site of Cerros, located on the Caribbean coast of Belize, was part of an early coastal trading network that linked the New River with Chetumal Bay and regions beyond. This site situated directly on the coast included a port and very early architecture that probably was used to formulate an early horizon calendar by observing the sun as it moved from the land to the lagoon, much like island to island alignments that helped people of the Caribbean navigate and make astronomical observations. This analysis uses the architectural history and landscape features to understand the development of the ideological system that began around the time one of the earliest pyramids was constructed at the site of Cerros, Belize between 50 BC and AD 150. Structure 5C marks a key point of the lagoon where an important agricultural date, the solar zenith, would have been naturally observed with the combination of the rising sun and the coastline. In a later building episode, Structure 4 was built with an orientation toward the solar equinox which suggests a new interest in calendrical precision, and an establishment of hierarchy at Cerros.

2014

The experience of landscape, be it perceived directly or virtually, triggers a tacit affective appraisal in the cognitive apparatus of the human mind (cf. Appleton 1975; Dewey 1925; Orians and Heerwagen 1992). In many regions of the world, a landscape’s most salient features are forest and shrub vegetation (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989, 572). It is thus not sur- prising that, throughout cultural evolution, forests and trees have become major symbols, and as such they are commonly used as designs or motifs in literature, art and other forms of cultural representations (Bloch 2001; Crews 2003; Thompson 1958). I would like to present a cognitive framework in order to understand the evolution and effectiveness of the human symbolic device—most likely a mental tool (cf. Sperber 1975)—as exemplified by tree symbolism. This paper examines the mental mechanisms and the evolutionary origins that contribute to the generation and transmission of tree symbolism in ancient and mod- ern human cultures. Sources that allow a glance into past minds are usually limited and incomplete. Where historical (i.e. material) sources are missing or reach their explanatory limits, both evolutionary psychology and cognitive science of culture may bridge this gap and provide a methodological framework in order to open a window into past minds.

Civil Engineering and Architecture, 2021

The study of the pyramids has attracted attention for several centuries because of the construction itself and its positions. We try to understand their formal and geospatial position and implications. There are various hypotheses about the design of them, from the mystical sphere to mathematical analysis. In this research, we carried out a study of the orientation presented in various prehispanic buildings in Mexico, as a part of Mesoamerica; we selected the most important ceremonial places or pyramids and different cultures, including the last one called "Aguada Fenix" that may produce the first knowledge. Separately, we consider three similar cases, Iraq, Iran, and Egypt, as ancient initial constructions. The research shows that orientation prevails from the visualization of the sunset from the location selected by the Mesoamerican culture under a particular specific translational earth position. However, some cultures prioritized solstice sunrise-facing constructions. It does not necessarily imply that they knew explicitly about the cardinal points: the position of the sun may be sufficient. The Giza Pyramid case is analyzed under this perspective, proposing that the arrangement was carried out by following the line from sunrise to sunset through the drawing of lines from the same point, allowing the largest sunny area during the year.

Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica, 2007

Fuson (1969), see also Carlson (1975), claims that Olmécs and Maya knew and used a (lodestone) compass for the orientation of pyramids, ceremonial and other important buildings, thousand years before Chinese. This hypothesis is tested here with the aid of the new data, namely by comparison of paleomagnetic declinations for that time and area (Korte and Bőhnel, 2005), with orientation data of buildings based also on our measurements at many archaeological localities of México, Guatemala, and in Copán in Honduras by GPS and with a precise compass. After eliminating known astronomical and calendar orientation of some structures, we have found that there is majority of structures with an orientation that clearly deviates from geographic north (pole of rotation of the Earth). When trying to explain this, we can rule out pure chance, local topography, aesthetic, meteorological or defense reasons. Thus, the Fuson hypothesis can still explain the observed site layout and building orientations. But more accurate and extensive information mainly from paleomagnetism and archaeology is needed to reject or accept the hypothesis. A proof of knowledge of a compass in Mesoamerica prior to Chinese would be important for our understanding history of the ancient world.