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

Abstract

This paper traces changing perspectives in archaeology and ethnology regarding the historical content of myth and demonstrates a method whereby mythological data are used to generate hypotheses amenable to falsification when integrated with other data sets.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.

Ancient History in the New World: Integrating Oral Traditions and the Archaeological Record in Deep Time

“…(Parks 1985:57) Only a small number of twentieth-century scholars have looked to oral traditions for insights into ancient historical events and cultural settings, but such studies appeared with increasing regularity during the final decades of the century (Bacon 1993; Bahr etal. 1994; Begay and Roberts 1996; Benn 1989; Ellis 1967Ellis ,1979Fewkes 1898;Hall 1983Hall ,1997Henning 1993;Levi 1988 Vehik 1993). These publications integrate knowledge derived from archaeology with knowledge from oral traditions, revealing, in some cases, vastly richer depictions of human history than can be uncovered through the archaeological record alone or oral traditions alone.…”

The historiography of kardimarkara: Reading a desert tradition as cultural memory of the remote past

“…The notion that a social memory of the remote past is encoded in oral traditions has a long history in the Americas, Australia, Africa and Oceania, paralleling the development of systematic archaeology in these regions (e.g. Howitt and Siebert, 1902; Levi, 1988; Mayor, 2005; Strong, 1934). Most attention has centred on the prehistoric correlates of these traditions rather than textural analysis of individual narratives.…”