Signs, symbols, and hieroglyphs of ancient Veracruz: Classic to Postclassic transition

After the fall of Classic cities, between the years C.E. 700–1000, new symbolic vocabularies spread throughout Mesoamerica. Shifting conventions in hieroglyphic writing reflect a changing cultural paradigm where previous notions of time, political authority, and visual communications are radically overhauled. In ancient Veracruz the nature of text and image reflects this new wave in semiotic language.; This dissertation documents and analyzes hieroglyphic scripts in the Gulf Coast lowlands during the Classic-Postclassic transition, using a cognitive-structural analysis of signs, symbols, and hieroglyphs. Using the joint venues of time and space, the author identifies the developmental trajectories of Veracruz hieroglyphic writing and symbolism. Diagnostic attributes surveyed within this study include conventions used in personal names and calendric signs, toponyms, linear text, affixes, substitutions, orientation and directionality, as well as adjoining iconographic programs. On these bases the author identifies the nature and function of discrete writing systems extant in Veracruz during the Late Classic period. A corpus of Veracruz-related hieroglyphs and inscriptions accompanies these analyses, cataloguing the dissemination of hieroglyphic writing beyond the Veracruz-Tabasco coastal plain.; Between C.E. 700 and 1000 narrative, interactive scenes on architectural sculpture and ceramics replace earlier carved stone stelae depicting the exploits of individual rulers, with linear history and time keeping giving way to ceremonials acts regenerated through the repetition of temporal cycles. In southern Veracruz the Long Count, fixing events within a precise locus in sequential time, discontinues in favor of shorthand dates, more ambiguous to 21st Century scholars. In particular, pictorial chronicles on Fine Paste, Molded-carved ceramics from the Mixtequilla illustrate stories connected with an emerging class of merchant elite.; Germane to this study is the distribution of square cartouche-enclosed day signs, the most salient feature in the Mixe-Zoquean derivation script of southern Veracruz. Single or paired calendric signs adorn relief carvings of architectural features, monumental sculpture, ballgame paraphernalia, and Fine Paste Molded-carved ceramics. By the Terminal Classic Period (830–1000) square-cartouche day signs appear from north-central Veracruz into the Maya lowlands as far south as El Salvador. We find their presence in concert with increased popularity of the rubber ballgame and ballgame ritual, merchant iconography, and the appearance of Fine Paste Molded-carved ceramics. These items link Veracruz archaeology and trade with unexplained “foreign” traits among the Terminal Classic Maya. Veracruz long-distance merchants hold a key role in spreading new technologies, symbolism, and religious practices, and in doing so reshape the nature of Mesoamerican thought and culture.