Myth and History Reconsidered: Archaeological Implications of Tzotzil-Maya Mythology (Ameican...

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Myth and History Reconsidered: Archaeological Implications of Tzotzil-Maya MythologyAuthor(s): J. M. LeviReviewed work(s):Source: American Antiquity, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Jul., 1988), pp. 605-619Published by: Society for American ArchaeologyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/281221 .

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MYTH AND HISTORY RECONSIDERED: ARCHAEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF TZOTZIL-MAYA MYTHOLOGY

J. M. Levi

This is the point the reader is asked to consider: that the unhistorical and the historical are equally necessary to the health of the individual, a community, and a system of culture.

Nietzsche 1957:8

This paper traces changing perspectives in archaeology and ethnology regarding the historical content of myth and demonstrates a method whereby mythological data are used to generate hypotheses amenable to falsification when integrated with other data sets. Based on a myth collected among the Tzotzil of San Pablo Chalchihuitan, Chiapas, Mexico, the presentation offers predictions regarding the location, contents, interpretation, and age of an unreported prehistoric burial site. It also sheds light on some currently unexplained aspects of an associated site in a neighboring community, and amplifies other ethnohistorical discussions relating archaeology to contemporary Indian mythology elsewhere in Mesoamerica. By showing how a modern Maya myth reveals significant information about an ancient Maya site, the study illustrates the complementarity of archaeology and ethnography through a suggested relation between myth and history.

Both the social sciences and the humanities inherited from nineteenth-century evolutionism a curious wisdom: namely, tha" t "history" is the product and possession of literate societies, while "'myth" is the record of the past among nonliterate peoples, especially among non-Western and so- called "primitive" societies. This facile dichotomy, however, conceals a more problematic (and therefore analytically more dangerous) duality which suggests that the smug distinction between history and myth amounts to little more than the difference between facts and fictions. This parochial view would claim that myth, relying as it does on ral transmission, is subject to distortion and hence is an unreliable account of the goings-on in ancient times, while history, being based on written documents, somehow offers a more privileged window from which to view the "objective truth" about what happened in the past.

Since no field matures in an epistemological vacuum, anthropology of course also has been caught up in this theoretical whirlwind, but its subdisciplines-particularly archaeology on the one hand and social anthropology and/or ethnology on the other-have at different times and for different reasons usually taken opposed trajectories in the course of their own tailspins through the dialectic of myth and history. While a previous generation of social anthropologists vehemently denied that there existed any connection between the myths told by the people they studied and the actuality or historicity of the events purportedly described in those legends, the archaeologists of the time often were busily drawing historical inferences from the very realm of oral tradition denounced by their ethnological contemporaries as being devoid of historical content. In recent years, however, this situation seems to have reversed itself. Today social anthropologists, enlightened by several currents of poststructuralist thought, are discovering important relations between myth and history, while archaeologists, perhaps influenced by their discipline's "explicitly scientific" turn, seem to be paying less attention to mythology and oral tradition. If nothing else, therefore, the following discussion is put forth in the hopes that it will effect a rapprochement between archaeology and social anthropology regarding the interrelation between myth and history.

In this paper, I shall proceed first by tracing some of the history of the myths about history as promulgated in the development of archaeology and social anthropology, specifically focusing on how the approach to the past (in every epoch) is colored by the theoretical climate of the respective

J. M. Levi, Department of Anthropology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138

American Antiquity, 53(3), 1988, pp. 605-619. Copyright ? 1988 by the Society for American Archaeology

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disciplines. Next, I relate this debate to mesoamerican materials in general and to Maya data in particular. The remainder of the paper is devoted to a concrete application of these ideas among the Tzotzil Maya. Here, in the context of a specific case study, I argue that one of the least-explored but most exciting uses of ethnographic analogy involves taking seriously the relation between myth and history as a valuable means by which to generate hypotheses that can be tested archaeologically.

ETHNOGRAPHIC ANALOGY, MYTH, AND HISTORY

Ethnographic analogy-the use of information on contemporary cultures to interpret the archaeological record-"is the principal theoretical apparatus by which an archaeologist benefits from ethnological knowledge" (Chang 1967:229). Yet the popularity of this method of interpretation and the rigor with which it has been applied has varied over the years. Responding critically to an earlier trend in which ethnographic analogy was applied liberally and rather promiscuously to prehistory, many archaeologists eventually came to consider ethnographic evidence to be of somewhat dubious repute in the rigorous interpretation of archaeological data. As for contemporary oral traditions, archaeologists working in a given area frequently have tended to ignore the region's ethnographically collected mythologies-mythologies which, though not always extensive, at least always are rich in local details, place-name explanations, and general exegetic content. In so doing, I believe, archaeologists are robbing themselves of an important source of data which may shed valuable light on their own findings. This is due, in part, to the fact that some archaeologists still regard the relation between myth and history as tenuous, if not downright fallacious. Also, ethnographers have not attempted to bridge this interdisciplinary communication gap by making archaeologically significant myths available to the archaeological community.

Perhaps the earliest use of ethnographic analogy was exemplified in Sir John Lubbock's (1865) essay entitled Prehistoric Times as Illustrated by Ancient Remains and the Manners and Customs of Modern Savages. But it was not until 1911, with the publication of W. J. Sollas's (1911) Ancient Hunters and Their Modern Representatives, that the interpretive technique of ethnographic analogy gained wide acceptance as an established analytical tool. Sollas, a geologist, argued that the contemporary Tasmanians, Australian aborigines, Bushmen, and Eskimos could be used as representatives of four different stages of Paleolithic culture. Against this simplistic model, which assumed both universal unilinear evolution and an absence of spatial- and temporal-boundary restraints, the utility of ethnographic analogy came under critical reconsideration.

The reactions among archaeologists ranged from those who concluded that ethnographic analogy was still permissible, given weighty qualifications, to others who claimed that archaeological interpretation based on analogy to living groups was a technique that should be abandoned outright. Representing the former view, Clark (1953:355), Willey (comments in Tax et al. 1953:229), and Childe (1956:51) suggested that analogies should be restricted to groups existing under common conditions of subsistence and ecology. In an influential article, Ascher (1961:319) summarized this position: "The canon is: seek analogies in cultures which manipulate similar environments in similar ways." By contrast, representing the latter view, Smith (1955:4-6) wrote that the continued reliance by archaeologists on ethnographic analogy was tantamount to "logical alchemy"; as an analytic tool he urged that it was both methodologically indefensible and empirically untenable and therefore called for its abandonment. In a similar vein, Ascher notes that Hawkes (1954) contended that interpretation by means of ethnographic analogy, "cannot penetrate much beyond technology and subsistence. It is in these very aspects that man, according to Hawkes, is most similar to other animals. Where man is most unlike other animals, for example, in the possession of social, political, and in particular, religious institutions and systems, interpretive tools are near powerless" (Ascher 1961:322).

Nevertheless, other archaeologists remained unconvinced by the assertion that ethnographic analogy was of little use when it came to the realm of religion, myth, and ritual. If it proceeded according to explicit and discriminating guidelines, why should the technique be restricted to interpretations of only the material conditions of life? In 1868, Heinrich Schliemann reasoned that by taking his clues from the Homeric epics he would be able to discover Troy:

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Schliemann's interest in the Homeric legends led him to mainland Greece and the site of Mycenae, where he hoped to find the tombs of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. He began his excavation there within a circle of stones inside the Lion Gate. Soon he uncovered five shaft graves equipped with incredible funery remains: gold face-masks, gold and silver vases and inlaid swords, oraments and jewelry of all kinds and a variety of other goods that made the tombs one of the sensations of the day .... Although we known that the Mycenaean civilization was pre-Homeric rather than Homeric, there is no question that Schliemann essentially substan- tiated the historical validity of Homer [Knudson 1978:463].

Schliemann's work is but the most famous example of a correspondence between archaeological sites and ancient legends. However, there are numerous other instances of significant connections between oral traditions and historical events, especially in view of African and Biblical archaeology, though the fit between myth and site seldom is neat (Braukaemper 1973; Schmidt 1983; Van Noten 1982; Zigmond 1964). As Vansina (1985: 10) observes in his important recent book Oral Tradition as History, all stories associated with archaeological sites are deserving of both caution and attention: "They cannot, as a class, be rejected out of hand, nor can they be accepted wholesale."

Social anthropology and ethnology, archaeology's sister disciplines, have done an even more drastic about-face regarding the relation between myth and history. In both England and the United States, social anthropology's founding fathers assumed theoretical stances characterized by rigid ahistorical formalism. Perhaps in an effort to drive an institutional wedge between anthropology (as science) and history (as humanities), they admonished the practitoners of the new discipline to seek explanations in terms of synchronic functional analysis, rather than diachronic "conjectural history." According to Radcliffe-Brown (1965:3): "In the primitive societies that are studied by social anthropology there are no historical records.... Anthropologists, thinking their study as a kind of historical study, fall back on conjecture and imagination, and invent 'pseudo-historical' or 'pseudo-causal' explanations .... The view taken here is that such speculations are not merely useless but are worse than useless." Lowie's position also was blatantly antihistorical: "I deny utterly that primitive man is endowed with historical sense or perspective: the picture he is able to give of events is like the picture of the Europeane war as mirrored in the mind of an war as mirrored in the mind of an illiterate peasant reduced solely to his direct observations" (Lowie cited in Price 1983:31). And again, even more to the point Lowie (1915:598) noted: "I cannot attach to oral tradition any historical value whatsoever under any condition whatsoever." As for Boas, his early view of anthropology as a kind of historical geography was soon replaced by his interest in the synchronic interrelation between psychology, social organization, and culture. With the notable exception of a few counter-current Boasians with ethnohistorical inclinations-such as Dixon, Kroeber, Swanton, and Radin-there consequently was a general hiatus between history and ethnography during the first half of twentieth-century anthropology (cf. Payne and Murray 1983).

Nonetheless, the relation between myth and history has been resurrected lately in anthropological debate (e.g., Appadurai 1981; Feeley-Harnik 1978; Godelier 1971; Goody 1977; Henige 1982; Levi- Strauss 1966; Portelli 1981). One of the most fascinating explorations of the idea that "historical metaphors" are both a cause and a consequence of "mythical realities" has been advanced by Sahlins (1985a, 1985b). Offering a critical reexamination of the false dichotomy between structure and event, myth, and history, Sahlins (1985b:vii) analyzes the contact situation between Europeans and Hawaiians in order to demonstrate the dual thesis that "history is culturally ordered" just as "cultural schemes are historically ordered." In a similar critical philosophical genre is Bourdieu's (1977) conception of the habitus as the dialectically improvised interplay between the "structured structures" and the "structuring structures." His ideas potentially are very relevant to archaeological interpretation since in his view both history and mythology are rooted in the economics of domestic production. According to Bourdieu (1977:78-84), culture is the product of history produced "in accordance with the schemes engendered by history."

If researchers again are beginning to understand that historical events are interpreted mythically then we also might ask, by the same logic, whether (and when) mythical events should be interpreted historically. Many anthropologists gather reams of data they classify as "myth" and then go on to analyze the material according to the idiosyncracies of their own theoretical proclivities. But seldom do we ask about the potential historicity of the text. Might we not also profit, at least sometimes,

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by regarding the myth as do the natives themselves; that is, as a kind of "sacred history" or "true story"? Are we justified in the assertion that there never is a kernel of history embedded in the layers of myth? An emphasis on the synchronic system too often obscures the diachronic process; too frequently is there a rupture between structure and event. Put simply, ethnographic realities are not linked sufficiently with their wider ethnohistorical and archaeological implications.

HISTORICAL EVENT AND MYTHICAL STRUCTURE IN MESOAMERICA

Contemporary indigenous oral traditions and belief systems in Mesoamerica offer a rich source of clues for those interested in historical processes. Paul Radin, for example, collected a historical legend in Oaxaca concerning the wars of the Aztecs and Zapotecs, and-when compared with the written accounts given by Burgoa, Brasseur, and Bancroft-concluded that his legend represented a Zapotec version that derived from oral tradition alone, and consequently was not based on any of the published accounts which seemed to represent an Aztec rendition of the events (Radin 1935). More recently, Weigand (1975) has written on possible references in Huichol mythology to the significant archaeological ruins of La Quemada. He observes that selected passages from a Huichol myth cycle suggest that this great fortified northern mesoamerican site was burned and destroyed during the Postclassic in response to the attempts of the ancient inhabitants of La Quemada to disrupt, if not control, an important "east-west trade network for peyote, salt, feathers, and shells"

survivals only to the selfsame degree that they also illustrate specific responies to the sometimes unrelenting blows of the historical process. Taussig (1980) has suggested a sweeping historical dialectic which seeks to illuminate causality behind structure; that is, how and why historical events come to cast beliefs in their present form. He deconstructs the meaning of the Devil, "Earth Lord," or "Mountain God"-through out Meso- and South America-as a deity representing exploitative exchange relations and the tensions, contradictions, and ambivalence inherent in the transactions between Indians and non-Indians. It therefore is becoming obvious that myth and history are reciprocally informed, and anyone interested in one, I argue, also must be concerned with the other.

The rest of this paper is put forth as a contribution to a steadily growing body of literature that explores the relation between myth and history among the Maya peoples, both ancient and modern, of southern Mesoamerica, and in particular among the Tzotzil of the Chiapas highlands. However, I wish to extend the chronological range of this method by shifting the time frame to an even deeper past; i.e., by demonstrating that myth can shed light not only on history, but also on prehistory.

The trenchant philosophical distinction which mistakenly separated on opposite sides of a great cultural divide Western from non-Western societies and, ipso facto, people with "history" from those with "myth," frequently overshadowed the supposedly corresponding duality between literate and nonliterate societies. Hence, even though the ancient Maya were a literate society, for decades it was held that, though they may have been obsessed with recording time, they were oblivious to documenting history. Despite the fact that the ancient Maya possessed a complex writing system, and though several early scholars (i.e., Morley 1915; Spinden 1917; Stephens 1841) maintained that many of the hieroglyphic inscriptions in fact were recording history, the prevailing view among the most eminent archaeologists through the mid-twentieth century was that the surviving Maya texts dealt not with history, but rather exclusively with astronomy, astrology, calendrics, and cos- mology (i.e., Morley 1946; Teeple 1926; Thompson 1950). According to Sharer (in Morley and Brainerd 1983):

All that is changed now. With recent advances in the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphs, it can be stated with certainty that the suppositions of the earlier scholars, based partly on colonial accounts, were correct. Many ancient Maya texts, especially those from the Classic period, deal with historical events in addition to calendrical and other esoteric matters. Thus, like the records of ancient Egypt, Sumer, and other early states, they deal with histories of specific centers and the reigns of their rulers, their political fortunes, genealogy, marriages, alliances, and conflicts. The recognition of this historical information has significantly altered our understanding of Maya civilization [Morley and Brainerd 1983:513].

Today most Mayanists would agree that there is a growing need to integrate archaeological and

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ethnohistorical data sets, though individual researchers may differ over the specific interpretation of a given piece of evidence (Carmack and Weeks 1981; Jones et al. 1981). In his recent analysis of systemic patterns among the Maya, Vogt graphically demonstrates the explanatory power of what he terms a "phylogenetic model." He advocates this interpretive technique not only because it maintains "the geographical and historical contexts, but it also provides a framework for analysis that utilizes the data of all of the branches of anthropology-archaeology, linguistics, ethnology, and physical anthropology-as well as the data of the historians" (Vogt 1986). In reference to the lowland Maya, Shuman claims that when ethnohistoric data is used in conjunction with archaeological data, "the ethnohistoric data must be considered the weaker evidence" (Shuman 1977:1). Nevertheless, he demonstrates that ethnohistory can be used to formulate hypotheses that can then be tested by archaeology. If ethnohistorical materials can be used in this manner, why should selected data from local mythology not be employed similarly?

As for the ethnography of contemporary Maya groups, again researchers are profiting by beginning to question the sterile dichotomization of synchronic structures and diachronic events. Eva Hunt (1977) has undertaken such a study in The Transformation of the Hummingbird. She argues that in order to understand fully the rich symbolism embedded in a 27-line Tzotzil poem currently recited in Zinacantan requires one to embark on an "archaeology of symbols," tracing the ramifi- cations of the poem's metaphors back to their ancient Mayan-as well as Aztec-precursors (since this Maya region also had important politico-economic relations with central Mexico). Without a historical interpretation of symbolism, the poignant metaphors in myth and ritual can remain as mysteriously baffling to anthropologists as they sometimes are to the natives themselves. Yet by seeing how contemporary metaphors represent the amalgamations and permutations of antecedent ones, the riddles of present-day symbolism can be solved through historical deconstruction. Thus, the hummingbird, for example, one of the world's smallest birds, is said to be "big" in the Tzotzil poem because as an aspect of the ancient god Huitzilopochtli it simultaneously represents both "sun" and "warrior." So too, the hummingbird is called "One Legged" since in this instance it refers to the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca (known to the Mayans as Hurakan) that is, the one-legged mesoamerican deity of the cosmic center (Hunt 1977:238-246).

In a similar vein, Victoria Bricker, analyzing the symbolic representation of the Conquest in the oral and ritual dramas of indigenous Chiapas and Guatemala, has shown that, "if we understand what happens to history when it is transmitted orally, and transformed into a myth, it is possible to decode the myth and, with the help of written sources, reconstruct the historical events which are symbolized by it" (Bricker 1977a:245; see also Bricker 1981). In her article "The Caste War of Yucatan: The History of a Myth and the Myth of History," Bricker (1977b:257) urges that: "The history of the Caste War of Yucatan needs to be rewritten with more attention paid to the Maya version of the conflict .... And just as oral traditions must be weighed against written documents, so also must the written documents of both sides in the conflict be weighed against each other in order to determine what is history and what is myth."

While it may be rather obvious that over time history becomes myth, it is more significant to recall that this process also can run the other way around to the extent that myth structures history. When actual historical events are played against a mythical backdrop-when, for example, Cortes in Mexico is mistaken for Quetzalcoatl, or correspondingly Captain Cook, in the Hawaiian Islands, is associated with the god Lono-mythical realities shape historical realities because they provide the code for the interpretation of reality itself. Gary Gossen has argued persuasively that, in the Tzotzil community of Chamula, historical events in both the past and present are constructed, interpreted, and recalled in accordance with certain culturally stereotyped motifs and structural themes. Thus, the interpretation of Cuscat's War (a revitalization movement which took place in the Chiapas highlands between 1867 and 1870), as well as the so-called "Protestant Wars" (which refer to a series of clashes in the 1960s and 1970s between upholders of the traditional religious order and converts to the American missionaries' new faith), both were historical events construed according to a culturological frame, the interpretive paradigm for which is set out in the myth of the First Creation. Gossen (1977:250) writes: "A simple proposition lies behind my presentation: that the making of myth and history are one and the same cognitive process in Chamula; I am

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inclined to think the same is true of our Western world. Myth and history are bundles of meaningful experience about the past-symbols, in a word-which are conditioned by utility for and relevance to the present, as it is experienced by a particular cultural tradition."

With these scholars, I argue that one of the most powerful methodologies which the anthropologist engaged in the analysis of symbolism has at his disposal is one that critically combines appropriate archaeological, ethnohistorical, and ethnographic sources, though the significance of the findings is related directly to the ability to maintain controlled comparisons both across space and through time. By keeping in mind specific regional and historical considerations, one therefore can trace not only the permutation of symbols, but also the transformation of history into myth, and occasionally vice versa.

MYTH AND HISTORY IN CHALCHIHUITAN

I now address this general problem by way of a specific example. Through a careful textual analysis of a portion of a modern Tzotzil-Maya myth, I wish to make some tentative predictions regarding the location, contents, interpretation, and age of a heretofore unknown probable burial site, and furthermore, offer several explanations on some currently unexplained aspects of an already excavated site (Lee 1972) which is related to the predicted former site. In short, the discussion will illustrate how a modern Mayan myth can give us significant information about an ancient Mayan archaeological site, and in so doing demonstrate something of the nature of the relation between

myth and history, on the one hand, and the twin-born complementarity of archaeology and ethnography, on the other.'

The suggestions I put forth result from the examination, comparison, and subsequent integration of two independent data sources: (1) a published archaeological report on "Jmetic Lubton," a minor Late Classic Maya burial site in the municipality of Chenalho, Chiapas, Mexico (Lee 1972); and (2) a portion of the legend "The Wanderings of Vaniko," a traditional Pablero (Tzotzil) myth that I recorded during the course of my fieldwork in the neighboring municipality of San Pablo Chalchi- huitan.2

Chenalho and Chalchihuitan are related to each other in terms of geography, culture, and language. Geographically, they are neighboring municipalities sharing a long border; ethnically, both are Chiapas highland Indian communities speaking the northwestern dialect of the Tzotzil Maya language. Methodologically, a comparative approach therefore is appropriate when we combine the archaeological data from the excavation at Chenalho with the mythological data from neighboring Chalchihuitan in an attempt to render intelligent predictions about the prehistory of the latter.

The archaeological site of Jmetic Lubton (Tzotzil for "Our Mother Tired Rock") is located near the paraje of Tsajal Uacum, municipality of Chenalho. Accidentally disturbing "several small tombs while leveling a low natural hill for the construction of a short airstrip," Mark Weathers brought the attention of the site to the New World Archaeological Foundation (Lee 1972:1). The present investigation primarily is concerned with two central features of the Jmetic Lubton site:

(1) a columnar, crudely carved, "crossed-arms" style, prehistoric stone sculpture that corresponds in both form and function to a similar prehistoric stone sculpture in Chalchihuitan which is described in the myth (Figure 1); and,

(2) the eight burials (both simple graves and the masonry cists or tombs) since the myth predicts that similar burials exist in Chalchihuitan beneath that stone sculpture.

I first became aware of the myth "The Wanderings of Vaniko" as I was eliciting a list of the

power objects in Chalchihuitan. I had explained the religious use of certain "live" or "magical" stones among the Paipai Indians of Baja California (Levi 1978) to my Pablero consultant and asked whether there existed similar "sacred stones" in Chalchihuitan. My consultant responded by telling me about a sacred stone idol located in the paraje of K'ante7al that still is venerated as an object of worship by the inhabitants of Chalchihuitan. Candies, posh (meaning "medicine" or locally brewed cane liquor), copal incense, and pine boughs all are offered before the idol while lengthy prayers are chanted by special religious functionaries. I was informed that the "spirit" of the

prehistoric stone sculpture lives inside the mountain upon which it stands, and that the idol was

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carved in ancient times by a deity known as Vaniko. My consultant then recounted the myth wherein Vaniko carves the "four-sided stone" to mark the tomb he prepared for his son.

The myth which I have entitled "The Wanderings of Vaniko" is classed in the folk taxonomy of native speech genres as batz'i 7antivo k'op, or "true ancient narrative." It is situated temporally in an unspecified period during one of the earlier creations (the present age is in the Fourth Creation). Essentially a narration of the escapades of the demigod Vaniko and his dealings with his son, the myth is told as part of a larger cycle of myths about the Vashakmen, or Creator Gods, and the formation of the cosmos.

Chronologically, the Vashakmen are the first of the deities and, in addition to building the church in San Pablo Chalchihuitan, they are held responsible for earthquakes, health, and good crops- among other things. However, their most important role is that of "earth bearers"-a notion which is common throughout the Tzotzil region (Gossen 1974:22; Laughlin 1975:364; Vogt 1969:303- 304). Pableros explain is that the world is "like a table" in that it is supported by four cosmic pillars, sometimes said to be serpents, and that these column gods are the Vashakmen. Other informants explained Vashakmen as the "one who upholds the world on his back"-for these individuals he represents a unitary form of this four-fold principle. In either case, it is obvious that these gods are a manifestation of the pervasie mesoamerican belief in a quadrilateral universe; in particular they are reminiscent of the ancient Maya ioncept of the Bacabs (Thompsons 1970:276-280).

Nonetheless, Vashakmen has a puzzling etymology. The Tzotzil word vashak is the numeral classifier for the number "eight," while men essentially is untranslatable. One interpretation would be that Vashakmen means "Eight Pillar": four terrestrial aspects supporting the four corners of the earth, and four celestial aspects holding up the four comers of the sky. According to Vogt (1969: 304):

Another possibility is that VASHAKMEN is a collective term for the four comer gods and for four gods at the cardinal points, as Holland (1964) has found in Larrainzar. The main flaws in this interpretation are, first, we know of no words in Zinacanteco Tzotzil to describe "north" and "south"; rather LOKEB K'AK'AL ("place where the sun rises") and MALEB K'AK'AL ("place where the sun sets") are the only named directions, and what we call north and south are merely the "sides (SHOKON) of the sky" or sides of the path of the sun; and, second, we have no data on gods of the cardinal directions.

Vogt goes on to state that some informants in Zinacantan insist that the correct term is Vashaknen,

which would be translated as "eight mirrors" or "eight windows." NEN is a proto-Maya word which Kaufman (1964:110) translates as vidrio (windowpane) or espejo (mirror), and I would suggest that the original term applied to some type of pyrite mirror. All of this raises the interesting question of whether there is some belief about these gods either having mirrors or looking through windows at people. Or perhaps there were eight apertures in "heaven" through which the VASHAKNEN surveyed the affairs of men [Vogt 1969:304].

Hunt notes that the Vashakmen worshipped by the contemporary Tzotzil also correspond to the ancient "fourfold god Tezeatlipoca [who] had four assistants who helped him hold up the sky" (Hunt 1977:122). In reference to Vogt's suggestion that Vashaknen means "eight mirrors," it thus becomes all the more significant to recall that Tezcatlipoca (whose name itself translates as "smoking mirror" in Nahuatl) not only was situated "at the polar center, a point in the sky from which he could see 'all things'" (Hunt 1977:241), as befits the deity of the four directions, but also carried an "all-seeing mirror" that symbolically enabled him to "see all that took place in the world" (Duran 1971:99).

Vashakmen is believed to have at least two assistants: Balunmen and Vaniko, both of whom figure prominently in myth, prayer, and ritual. However, our myth deals only with the latter of these, Vaniko. Almost certainly, Vaniko is a Tzotzilization of the Spanish names Juan Diego or Juan Lopez, who, evidently, were actual historical figures immortalized and elevated to divine status in the process of becoming integrated into the main body of Pablero folklore. Kohler (1977:23) has postulated that Vaniko therefore may refer to a person involved in the Tzeltal revolution of 1712- 1713 or the military confusion of the early 1920s. If this is true, then historical or temporal depth has been expanded greatly in the myth since the Pableros regard Vaniko as one of the supernatural beings who aided Vashakmen in the creation of the world and, as such, place him chronologically

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I ii? r ???.,c: ? :4,f-! 12(? ..??? ?. '?; ?C ?I??? t ?'?4?? ??? = '' '" .? ?rt:

r... = ' ==rt .? ? rr;? t?? l??i ri ?'(?.

Ir: : r . :-f r ,. .???. .r I.:? .'? "' .c:,??' ?; ,?: t ;? 4 .r

t f?'?:'?': i:? ? ,????-?? ? ? i? L'?? .. '. t t

' .. ?I ': ??

Figure 1. The stone sculpture of Jmetic Lubton (after Lee 1972:5).

with the other gods who witnessed "the dawning of the world in the time when the rocks were still soft." The time dilation of historical events which transcend the memory of present generations also is manifested in other Tzotzil oral narratives.

The portion of the myth of specific concern in this paper deals with how the god Vaniko carves a four-sided idol (which currently is venerated in the same manner as the idol in Chenalho) and buries his son beneath it while Vaniko goes to his milpa in the low country. He urges his son not to accompany him and instead remain behind at K'ante7al. Then, according to the myth, the following conversation ensues between Vaniko and his son:

(1) "Well are you going to stay here?" asked the son [to Vaniko]. (2) "Oh no, I will return in a while." (3) "I'm just going to have a look at my land there in the low country [7olontik]," he said. (4) "At the Water Jug River [K'ibal 7uk'um]," he said. (5) Well his little son was sad in his heart, when he was made to remain behind. (6) "But do not be afraid," said Vaniko to his son. (7) "Do not be scared of the Jaguar," he said. (8) "Here, I will carve a stone to stay with you," he said. (9) So the rock which stayed there, Vaniko carved it to have four sides, they say.

(10) Then he opened the ground [dug a hole] for his son. (11) And he put his son inside. (12) There the son remained buried, they say. (13) There he put him in, and covered him up, and there he stayed, they say. (14) What he covered his son with was a large stone. (15) He opened up the ground and left his son buried there, they say. (16) And he left a window for him, they say. (17) So that he would not die, they say. (18) "Now here you will stay; you will not die," he said. (19) "I have made you your window," he said.

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(20) You understand, our Lord, Vaniko, left his son a window. (21) And he covered him with a rock because if he did not, the Jaguars would come and dig him up, they

say. (22) Or the Blackman monsters, or whatever, could come and dig up his son. (23) But now they would not be able to dig him up, because our Lord, Vaniko, made it good and strong. (24) So he left a stone over his son. (25) But he just deceived his son, because he did not come back for him. (26) And so his son remains there to this day, he left him buried there. (27) "But you will wait for me here," he said [to his son]. "Yes," he said [to his father, Vaniko]. (28) And that is why the place is called the Trap Stone [Petz'eton], for he left his son closed up there.

By comparing the above portion of the myth from Chalchihuitan with Lee's (1972) description of the Jmetic Lubton site in Chenalh6, together with associated ethnographic data, I offer the following suggestions.

The Stone Sculpture

The myth informs us that the four-sided, crossed-arms style stone sculpture in Chalchihuitan was carved in ancient times by Vaniko to keep his son from being frightened and lonely while Vaniko went to check on his cornfield in the tropical lowlands (lines 1-9). Referring to the stylistically almost identical Jmetic Lubton stone sculpture in Chenalho, which, like its counterpart in Chalchihuitan, also is an object of contemporary worship, Lee (1972:15) says: "It is not known to what supernatural being the prayer is offered, but it is undoubtedly a primary one; the same ceremony being carried out twice a year in twenty-six other principal parajes in the municipality of Chenalh6."

Based on Lee's description and my ethnographic material from Chalchihuitan, I believe it now is possible to establish firmly the identity of the supernatural being associated with the prehistoric Jmetic Lubton sculpture, namely it is a Yahval Nio7 deity, in other words a "Lord of the Spring" or "Female Mountain Goddess." The supernatural entity is an Earth Lord or Mountain God because Lee (1972:15) writes that it is called an 7angel, which is merely a Hispanization of 7ahnel or 7ohov, meaning "Lord of or "Lord of the Earth" or "Lord of the Mountain." Such deities are believed to live in caves and are held to be the "guardians" of certain mountains, wild animals, and the "souls" of maize- these Earth Lords or Mountain Gods usual remale. Othese Earth Lords or Mountaiin Gods usually are male. Otherwaterholes and springs and these are believed generally, though not exclusively, to be female. Thus, because the idol itself is called Jmetic [Hme7tik], literally translated as "Our Mother," and furthermore because the spirit of the stone is reported to reside in the adjoining marshy area, the supernatural being associated with the stone sculpture described by Lee in Chenalho seems to be a Yahval Nio7, or a female "Lord of the Spring."

Lee (1972:22-23) notes that the modern worship of prehistoric stone idols has been reported for several other localities throughout Chiapas and Guatemala. Although we cannot be certain, it at least is possible that these prehistoric sculptures in Chalchihuitan and Chenalho were utilized in ancient times as they are today, that is, as stations in ceremonial circuits. This conjecture is supported by the fact that the myth mentions that the stone sculpture marks one of the places that Vaniko stopped and rested during his travels. Indeed, many ceremonial circuits today actually retrace Vaniko's steps-as they are described in the various myths. The ritual participants stop where Vaniko stopped, rest where Vaniko rested, and so on, thereby making an important psycho-social identification with the deity himself. If we attach any historicity to the myth, we might claim that the sculpture served a similar function in prehistoric times by symbolizing the territorial aspect of cooperating residential units or labor groups.

It also is possible, since no skeletal remains (with the exception of several teeth) were discovered in the Jmetic Lubton burials, that the crossed-arms aspect of the sculpture might suggest the actual body position at the time of interment-i.e., that mortuary customs dictated the corpse be buried in a semifetal position with legs bent and arms crossed, just as the man is depicted in the sculpture. The hypothesis that the idol served as a kind of descriptive monument or headstone portraying the original position of the bodies is supported by the current Tzotzil belief that human souls are recyclable, that every death is followed by eventual rebirth. The Prehispanic inhabitants of the

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Jmetic Lubton site might have held similar beliefs, and extrapolated their ideas into action by reasoning that when one buries a corpse, one is returning the person to Mother Earth (in Tzotzil, Hme7kaxailtik or "Our Mother Coffer," the idea being that Mother Earth is a treasure chest filled with good things), in some sense an archetypal "womb," and thus should place the deceased in a fetal or semifetal position in preparation for his imminent rebirth.

On the other hand, if the stone sculpture does not represent the person supposedly buried beneath it, who or what does it represent? The fact that the man depicted in the sculpture is hunched over with crossed arms might indicate that he was carrying something. If the idol was meant to depict a deity who functioned as a Vashakmen in the capacity of an earth bearer, then it may represent a god who is supporting the world. If the stone sculpture represents a god like Vaniko, it may intend to show him hunched over carrying his son (as described elsewhere in the Pablero myth). Neither of these represent exclusive interpretations.

The Burial Complex

Subsequent excavations around the base of the asheJmetic Lubton sculpture in Chenalh6 revealed eight ancient Maya burials. I now predict, based on the suggested historicity of the aforementioned portion of the Pablero myth, that similar burials might be uncovered if archaeological investigations were undertaken around the base of the stone sculpture in Chalchihuitan. Since the mythically described burial in Chalchihuitan corresponds to the historically excavated burial in Chenalho, I present the following five hypotheses:

(1) Burials will be in the immediate vicinity of the stone sculpture. In the Pablero myth, Vaniko "opened up the ground" and buried his son in a hole dug beside the stone idol he carved (lines 9- 12). All eight burials at the Jmetic Lubton site were excavated in the vicinity of that stone sculpture. Therefore, I predict the existence of a burial site at the base of the stone idol in the paraje of K'ante7al, Chalchihuitan.

(2) Burials will be capped with horizontal stone slabs. The myth asserts: "There he put him in, and covered him up, and there he stayed, they say. What he covered his son with was a large stone (lines 13-14)." Hence the place is called Petz'eton or "Trap Stone." In Tzotzil, ton means "stone" and petz' means "trap"-but it denotes a specific sort of deadfall trap with a smooth, flat stone used to capture small animals, especially rats. According to Laughlin (1975:270), the stone used for the petz' deadfall trap is "a rock a handspan and a half in length, and a handspan and four fingers in width [which] is rubbed on the ground to smooth it." At the Jmetic Lubton site, two different burial types were found-simple graves and masonry tombs-yet both had horizontal stone slab coverings. Says Lee (1972:8), "The simple burials consisted of plain trenches in the ground in which the bodies had been placed and then covered with a few large stone slabs." The small tombs had not only the single layer of cover slabs, but tabular sandstone slabs covering the sides and the bottoms of the tombs as well.

Here, the message of emotional ambivalence toward the dead is clear. On the other hand, the myth suggests an interpretation or rationale for the coverings: The burials were capped with large stones in order to prevent the interred bodies from being molested by various natural and supernatural carnivores, such as jaguars and Blackman monsters, respectively (lines 21-24). Yet on the other hand, the myth is saying that the buried individuals essentially were being captured in a petz'; that is, they were caught in a "rat trap" with a large stone slab being used as the deadfall. Regardless of the interpretation, and since the excavations at Jmetic Lubton also evidenced stone slab coverings, we consequently should expect to find beneath the stone sculpture in Chalchihuitan burials capped with smooth, flat stones.

(3) Burials will have niches or "windows" with mortuary offerings. The Pablero myth states that when Vaniko buried his son, he left a "window" for him so that he "would not die" (lines 16-20). In reference to the Jmetic Lubton excavation, Lee (1972:9) writes that several of the burials had niches in their side walls containing ceramic bowls which, presumably, held food for the dead. Just as our myth claims that the window was supposed to enable the son of Vaniko to continue living, so too a niche with burial offerings strongly suggests that the excavated items were left to be used

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by the deceased to continue their journey in the hereafter. Thus, I contend that a niche-as an architectural burial feature filled with mortuary offerings-was interpreted as a kind of metaphoric "window" allowing the deceased to continue his life in the next world.

Throughout Mesoamerica, symbolic "windows" or "doorways" frequently are believed to be interactive nodes which animate the gods, in addition to being construed as portals facilitating communication between the living and their ancestors. The Huichol niriekas (Lumholtz 1902) and Zinacanteco shrines and crosses (Vogt 1976) are quite obvious expressions of this idiom, likewise may be the "windows" and "mirrors" previously discussed in associatin with Vashaknen. Food, money, and certain household implements still are buried with the dead in present day Chalchihuitan and Chenalho in the belief that the deceased not only must be equipped with the tools of his or her livelihood, but also must pay the Earth Lord for the space their bodies occupy in the ground. All of this represents the architectural and material aspects of the burial complex which links eschatology with mortuary customs, on the one hand, and in so doing further illustrates the suggested continuity between certain ancient and modem practices, on the other.

(4) Burials will be cists in box-like forms. According to the myth we are told that Vaniko made his son a "well made kaxa" and evidently placed him inside it. In Tzotzil, kaxa means "box, chest, trunk, coffer, or coffin" depending on its usage. Several burial chambers at the Jmetic Lubton excavation were masonary cists or tombs "all made of tabular sandstone apparently laid up in drywall construction or with mud mortar.... The bottoms of the tombs are covered with stone slabs upon which rest the side and end walls" (Less 1972:8-9). Because our myth states that Vaniko's son was buried in a "box," it is possible that masonry tombs similar to those excavated at Jmetic Lubton likewise will be uncovered at the proposed site in Chalchihuitan.

However, it also is possible that the prehistoric dead in Chalchihuitan were interred in wooden boxes, or between crudely hewn wooden boards-as is the custom today. If this is so, such organic matter by now probably would have disintegrated, leaving little or no trace of its existence at the time of interment-though its presence may be inferred from the myth. Archaeologists might do well to recall that things which are seldom preserved in the ground can, occasionally, be uncovered in myth.

(5) Burials will exhibit artifacts dating from two distinct periods. In attempting to establish the age of the suggested site in Chalchihuitan, I hypothesize that the site will contain elements dating from two distinct periods widely separated each from the other in time.

Late Classic period. Lee (1972:18-19, 25) already has postulated, based on formal and stylistic considerations together with comparisons to other crossed-arms style sculptures elsewhere in Chiapas and Guatemala, that the Jmetic Lubton idol dates to the Late Classic period and assumes that the excavated burials-insofar as they are associated with the stone sculpture-are contemporaneous with it and therefore also date to the same period (A.D. 700-950). Since the predicted site in Chalchihuitan also is associated with a stone sculpture almost identical to the one described by Lee in the municipality of Chenalho, and since I also assume the burials (which, technically, still are waiting to be discovered) likewise are associated with the idol, as reported in the myth, it is possible that this site will be found to correlate temporally with the Jmetic Lubton site. Therefore, by cross dating the sites-assuming that there is enough formal evidence for correlation-we can, albeit only provisionally, suggest that the temporal provenience of the Chalchihuitan site be fixed somewhere in the Late Classic period.

Postcontact period. Near Burial 4, at the Jmetic Lubton excavations 26 glass beads of European manufacture were discovered. Lee (1972:10) notes that experts have suggested the beads date as early "as the first quarter of the 18th century" or "as late as the 19th century." Another intrusive, Postcontact artifact was a white ceramic bowl, also of European origin, that has been dated to 1830- 1850. These facts take on an increased significance in light of Kohler's (1977:23) contention that

Vaniko represents the apotheosized case of a man become god. If Vaniko, as a Tzotzilization of the Spanish name Juan Diego or Juan Lopez, corresponds to an actual historical figure prominent in the Tzeltal revolution of 1712-1713, and since the myth claims that "Vaniko buried his son" beneath the stone sculpture, it is possible that excavations at the suggested site in Chalchihuitan

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will reveal certain intrusive, Postcontact artifacts from the historic period-just as the Jmetic Lubton site yielded the Postcontact European-made glass beads and ceramic bowl.

CONCLUSIONS

In this essay, I have reviewed some of the predominant perspectives in archaeology and social anthropology regarding the relation between myth and history, how these views have shifted over time, and how they have influenced the theoretical milieu of general research paradigms, the for- mulation of hypotheses, and the interpretation of existing data. I have not attempted to give an exhaustive review of this debate, but instead sought merely to document what I perceive to be some significant inverse trends in the two disciplines. Simply put, contemporary archaeology stands to

gain much by paying closer attention to local mythologies. Special mention of these issues was made as they applied to mesoamerican and, in particular, Maya data.

We are told that Schliemann used the Homeric epics to discover Troy. In a different but related sense, I have given a concrete application of the position advocated in the first part of this paper. Consequently, I argued that we can employ a modem Tzotzil-Maya myth to help us locate, interpret, and predict the age of an undiscovered ancient Maya burial site. My point is simple: Because history, at least to some extent, is preserved in myth, so too can it be uncovered. In a way, I am urging that if researchers undertake the archaeology of myth by excavating selected clues in traditional oral

narratives, pertinent historical facts can be unearthed and already excavated artifacts can be better

interpreted. To summarize: Two prehistoric, crossed-arms style stone sculptures-similar in both form and

function-exist in neighboring Indian communities in southern Mexico. A traditional folktale relates that beneath one of the stone sculptures a god buried his son in ancient times. Around the base of the other stone sculpture, archaeological excavations uncovered eight burials in 1970 which cor- related in many ways with the burial described in the myth for the other stone sculpture in the other community. Finally, a comparison of the archaeological and mythological data sets led to five substantive hypotheses regarding the predicted site.

We should not surmise from this brief study that the duality between myth and history is in need of dissolution; but rather like so many other grand dichotomies, with all their "hot" and "cold" implications (pace Levi-Strauss), the opposition may be in need of some critical rethinking. Dia- chronic "facts" are not interchangeable with synchronic "fictions." On the contrary, the latter provide the cultural-logical frames which order the expression of the former-and vice versa. So if historical facts are constructed mythically, then myth ical episodes at least sometimes embody historical events. If polemicists then ask "which times?", I can only recommend that they attend more closely to their own data-evidence such as the 28 lines in this Tzotzil-Maya myth with an apparent historical

memory of over a thousand years.3

Acknowledgments. The field research for this paper was made possible by funds from the Department of Anthropology, Harvard University and the National Science Foundation. I am indebted to Evon Vogt, Gordon Willey, Izumi Shimada, Chris Steiner, and Martha Leimbach for their cogent suggestions and editorial assistance. I also thank my parents for introducing me to Chiapas, Nancy Lambert-Brown for her illustration, and Antun Mendez, Gary Gossen, and Kazuyasu Ochiai for their help and friendship during the fieldwork. Finally, I express my gratitude to the people of San Pablo Chalchihuitan for their patience and ability in teaching me something basic.

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NOTES

1 An earlier version of this paper, entitled "Myth and History in San Pablo Chalchihuitan," was read at the Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, December 5, 1985, in Washington, D.C.

2 The fieldwork for this study was conducted among the Pablero (Tzotzil) Indians in the municipality of San Pablo Chalchihuitan, Chiapas, Mexico. Under the auspices of Professor Evon Z. Vogt and the Harvard Chiapas Project, I worked in this region from June 1978 to January 1979.

3 The information in this paper is presented with the confident understanding, in concert with present ethical guidelines, that if the suggested archaeological excavations ever were undertaken they would be executed only on the condition that the full consent and cooperation of the traditional leaders and people of San Pablo Chalchihuitan were forthcoming. Science, if it really wishes to contribute to the growth of knowledge, must consider the interests of all parties concerned.

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