Posthumanocentric Archaeology

For several reasons I have decided to move the blogging to WordPress instead, but this website will be updated now and then anyway. The new blog is found at Archaeological Haecceities

The last entry made me recall one of my earlier studies on the concept of ideology in Maya research. The aim of Mayanists seems to be to find the ideal ideology that remains fairly unaffected by most inter-societal encounters. This is generally found as a shared external macro-level structure. However, if there is something the Mayanist models on ideology share, it is a lack of a deeper notion of ideology itself. In the Mayanist models, there are no explanations of how this “shared” ideology is reproduced, transmitted, and internalized at the most basic level, that of the human agent. One reason for this may be the general confusion of what ideology is.

The largest archaeological site in the Maya area is the Late Formative center of El Mirador in northern Guatemala. Its size is simply massive for the lack of a better word. It is being excavated by Richard Hansen (who was Mel Gibson’s consultant for the Apocalypto movie). El Mirador is being developed for tourism and by 2020 the plan is to have a propane powered train that will transport thousands of tourists to the site (and I guess the other huge sites in the Mirador basin, such as Nakbe, Tintal, Wakna and Xulnal).

On our final day in Tanah Toraja we went on a hike across the large rice fields in the hills surrounding Rantepao. The landscape is covered with small rock outcrops and these are often transformed into rock tombs. We came across one under construction.

The guy on the left is a professional tomb excavator and he does the work by himself. His only company is a rooster (used for cockfights). He travels around to different villages where he is hired for the work. I do not remember how long it takes to dig the whole tomb (which could contain several coffins), but I think it was two months. He uses fire to sharpen his tools as shown on the picture.

After the funeral is over the tomb is closed by a wooden decorated door. The objects on top of the tomb below that looks like a tongkonan are the litters used to carry the coffins to their tombs.

Yo’aktun lies six km southwest of Sacalaca. It has a fairly long cave passage compared to other known caves in the region. The cave is accessed from a small rejollada which has a small nearby haltun, a small water filled cavity. From the rejollada the cave leads down to a series of chambers that are over two m high. The main passageway ends in two deeper chambers. The first one has a small pool of water, but which is considerably larger and deeper during the rainy season. There were only few sherds visible in the cave, but there are also deep guano deposits that possibly cover artifacts.

In my last entry on time and archaeology I focus on Henri Bergson (1859-1941). It is from him that I have borrowed the quote ?time is invention or it is nothing at all.? Considered to be the philosopher of becoming, Bergson argues that the instantaneous and scientific time is a ?spatialized time?, an actual or discrete multiplicity (a unity that is multiple in itself), where time is seen as a difference of degree to space. Bergson believes that the linear succession of stages and instants as future, present, and past is an intellectual illusion and that our lives, society and science are regulated by this. The snapshot model is not adequate for him to understand continual change. He believes that time must be understood as a whole if we are to understand the reality of time. It is also duration that explains life itself. The challenge Bergson offers for us is to think in duration where time is a continuous multiplicity. His philosophy is also a way out of the phenomenological, constructionist and representational perspectives that has affected much recent archaeology.

Although Bergson mainly discusses human duration he does speak of several durations that each is an absolute. Our psychological duration is just one of several others. He also discusses ?real time? and has a theory of evolution to explain why we have difficulties in understanding the pure flow of duration. Our consciousness has two intertwined tendencies; the instinct and the intelligence. For him, our instinctive experience of duration is not different in kind to real duration. It is when we analyze duration by our intellect, by breaking it down to fragments, that we make it different in kind to true duration. This is a reflection of our evolved habits of representation and our needs. Our acts exerts on fixed points in space where duration gets broken down to instants that relate to our positions (a discrete or an actual multiplicity). These instants are only snapshots that our intellect has extracted from the continuity of duration (the continuous or virtual multiplicity).

Every number, such as number 3, is a unit since it is given a name (3 or three), but it also consists of a sum which is a multiplicity of parts (1+1+1). These numerical units are identical when they are counted. However, the parts must still be distinct from each other, as they otherwise would be a single unit. We therefore set the numbers in juxtaposition in a homogenous space when we count them. They can be enumerated because each number is separated from the others, they have spatial locations. Thus, actual multiplicities are homogeneous and spatial. Since they are homogeneous, they can also be represented with a sign, such as a number (3) or a word (three).

The formation of a number or a word implies discontinuity. This is what McTaggart, and Bachelard do when they describe time. Time is made into space and time is believed to consist of homogeneous instants that can be added, divided, extended and isolated since an instant is discontinuous. An instant is separated from the following instant by space. We add these instants into a false continuity. In reality, successive states are combined with or interpenetrate with other states but when we count the states, they must be separated within a homogeneous (spatial) medium where they leave the same trace. Spatialized time is therefore a sign, a symbol, absolutely distinct from true duration. Science handles signs that are substitutes for, and representations of, the objects.

Thus, we can only catch instantaneous and static views of a changing world. The intellect cannot understand the transition between instants, because there are no voids, and change is continuous. For Bergson, the instant is an unreal abstraction imposed from the outside by the intellect. The mind form artificially closed systems and there is no succession in these systems as this is something formed by our mind as a string of immobilities that runs from past, to present, and to future. He calls scientific time cinematographic, as it is similar to the movement of static frames of instants. As he sees real time as continuous, time escapes the intellect as it can only form a clear idea from discontinuity.

Pure duration is when the present state is not separated from earlier states by an imaginary instant. The past would not be accessible if it could only be accessed through the present. Our present state is only explained by what happened before. The former states are not set alongside the actual/present state or are successive moments, but past and present is seen as a whole where succession is melted into one another. Past and present coexist since each present goes back to itself as past. Because it preserves itself, it is also the whole past that co-exists at each present. When we think that the past is no more, we have confused being with being-present. The present is pure becoming and it is always outside itself. The past is not acting but it has not ceased to exist. Instead the past is growing without ceasing. It has the capability to re-invent and duration is the continuation of that which does not exist into what does exist.

The virtual is everything the actual is not. The latter emerges from the former by our need to break up continuity to manageable units. For us, the virtual appears to be an abstract idea, but it is only in the present that physical forms have the spatial extension, which they do not have in duration. Take any object seen in the present and observe it for a millennia and its spatial form will change. It will not remain the same since there is no essential property that always is present. Properties are always emerging.

The only way to illustrate this is unfortunately to use spatial analogies since what is continuously changing cannot be represented by a static and homogenous symbol that cannot change. A spatial analogy of the difference between actual and virtual multiplicities is a rainbow. The rainbow has a multiplicity of heterogeneous colours. There is a continuum of differentiated change in its spectrum. This characterizes a virtual multiplicity in time. The colours cannot be individuated since they constantly move into another colour. If we do define the colours, we separate them from each other, give them boundaries and a fixed spatial location. Then they become numerical, metric, homogenous and actual. These can be counted and analyzed according to our needs, but they are misrepresenting the true heterogeneous character of the colours of the rainbow.

Archaeologically, this means that artifacts, buildings, postholes, etc. are actual multiplicities. They have extensive, spatial and Euclidean (metric) characteristics that can be measured (length, width, height, weight, colour, etc.). When we describe the materialities they are devoid of duration since pure duration cannot be represented and it is only in the present that our interests intersect with the materialities in question. The virtual past is erased in our descriptions. An artifact, such as a pot, changes in time. What once was clay transformed into a pot, it broke into sherds and became construction fill. Of course, we could use one of the many biographical approaches here, but these only focus on events with actual traces (breakage, incision, erosion). What these analyses misses is that through these processes, the actual properties changed but its virtuality continues to carry the whole of its past even when ceramic sherds are part of construction fill. Archaeologists should attempt to include the immanent duration of the artifact in their studies, instead of simply use it to isolate a few sequences of its history and relate it to transcendent concepts not associated with the artefact, such as culture.

Before visiting the warugas we stayed a couple of days near the Tangkoko National Park in northern Sulawesi. Here one can see prosimian primates of the speciesTarsius spectrum (Spectral Tarsier). They are nocturnal and therefore have large eyes and ears. The eyes cannot move but they can turn their heads 180 degrees. Adults reach a weight between 110 and 125 grams.

Tarsiers live in groups of 2 to 6 individuals and they sleep in a hollow tree which they return to every day. Roughly 20 minutes after sunset they come out and begin their hunt for insects but not more than 9 m above ground. They are vertical clingers and leap around 1.4 m. Their main enemy are feral cats but the tarsiers apparently have a bad taste.

Although I am against direct historical analogies for several reasons, the contemporary use of calendars give insights to how the calendars can be used as indices of something else apart from what is directly expressed in glyphic writing. However, the important point here is that we need to find evidence of continuity, not assume it as something a priori.

My trip to China last December was not my first one to this country. In the summer of 1995 I spent three weeks in Tibet. The main goal for this trip was a six days long trek to Lhamo La-tso, the skull-shaped Oracle lake, the most sacred of lakes in Tibet. This is where Tibetan monks journey to see visions of where the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama will be reborn.

When we went there we were accompanied by other Tibetan pilgrims in search for their own visions. I for sure did not see anything, or maybe there was a hint of a total station on the shimmering surface (or maybe it was the altitude – 5300 m.a.s.). The last day of hike went from the nearby Gelugpa Chokorgyel monastery, 800 m further below. I was in a slightly better shape 14 years ago but it was quite difficult to climb the last hundred meters up to the rim from where you could see the lake, roughly 150 m further below. The lookout is covered by silk scarves.

Tomorrow it is 50 years since the Dalai Lama left Lhasa and fled to India. In the following Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) thousands of Tibetan temples and monasteries were demolished. I visited Tibet during turbulent times. The then recently appointed Panchen Lama (the second highest lama in Tibet, appointed by the Dalai Lama) had been kidnapped by the Chinese who appointed their own Panchen Lama. Panchen Lama’s residence is the Tashilunpo monastery in Shigatse and we could not visit this large monastery which holds 4000 monks. Police and soldiers kept the monks inside the monastery and would not allow any visitors.

According to tradition, it is the Panchen Lama who has the responsibility to find the next Dalai Lama. Since the Chinese has their own Panchen Lama installed it will for sure cause dire political problems when the current Dalai Lama passes away.

Indonesia’s best known archaeological ruins are located on Java. These are the Buddhist stupa at Borobudur and the Hindu temples at Prambanan. They are probably on all package tours and should of course not be missed and I myself visited them back in 1993. Less well known are the warugas of Minahasa in northern Sulawesi which I had the opportunity to see in 2008. Most of them are now to be found at the village Sawangan where 144 warugas were relocated in 1977. Sawangan is located 30 minutes by car from Manado.

The warugas are rectangular stone burial chambers, usually of quite recent date (9th century and onwards), but they have not attracted much archaeological interest (to my knowledge anyway). A prism-shaped lid crowns the chambers. These lids usually contain carvings depicting the owner’s occupation, characteristics or the cause of death. The chambers were placed above ground facing the rising sun. The dead body was placed sitting upright on a Chinese porcelain bowl (these were imported from around the 15th century). Jewelry covered the body but no clothing and because of this the warugas have often been plundered. In 1828 this above ground burial practice was banned by the colonial authorities due to epidemics.

Cosmological models have been highly influential in Mayanist studies and frankly, I do not like them at all. Where we find the strongest bastion for cosmological modelling in contemporary Mayanist research is probably in the subfield of cave studies. Karen Bassie-Sweet followed in the footsteps of Schele and Freidel and although her work has been criticized by Brady and Prufer, there are no major differences in how these researchers all view caves as central to various cosmological models. The difference is one of degree, not one of kind. They all agree that cosmology is the foundation for politics, economics, etc. These heavily idealist approaches could use some materialist injections to explain the far more complicated picture that exist.

Is time continuous duration or is it made up by discontinuous instants (as it is represented in clocks, calendars, etc?). I am a proponent for a continuous view of duration, something I shall discuss in another entry. However, in my licentiate thesis (“Caught Somewhere in Time”;) I still had the other view and my main influence back in 2003/2004 was Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962). He has an extreme position on instants and argues that time can only be observed in instants and duration can only be experienced through these instants. Instants without duration forms duration in a similar way as a line consists of infinitely small points with no dimension. Bachelard maintains an idea of both momentary and discrete instants. The first term means that the instant has no extension and the second means that the instant is isolated from another instant. In such a view, time could be seen as having neither extension nor flow. Time is just made up of an infinite succession of discrete instants.

This view of time was largely a response to Bergson’s view on time. Bergson argues that the idea of instants belongs to quantitative science and that they are static and kills the flow of time. A discrete instant cannot, according to Bergson, produce the next instant and thus the future must be determined and continuity remains a problem. Bachelard tries to solve this problem by claiming that only nothingness is continuous (see figure), being and events make time discontinuous. Bachelard argues that if time is continuous then we see time as independent of the events that make us perceive time. Bergson, on the other hand, sees time as continuing between events, in what Bachelard sees as voids. Time is empty if nothing happens and nothingness lacks magnitude and as such it is not measurable. The instant is therefore found between nothingness and nothingness.

Time’s being is not carried from one instant to the next to form duration according to Bachelard. The instant is solitude and isolated, always breaking with the past. The “new” is something that exceeds earlier conditions because the instant does not have a history. The new cannot be new if it is connected with the past and therefore he rejects Bergson’s continuity as this means that the present is inscribed in the past. However, the instant cannot be perpetually vanishing if it is not also perpetually returning. Time is perpetually heading towards non-being as the future passes into the past through the present. The idea that something will end is therefore the foundation for Bachelardian continuity. What last from the past is what begins again. Only that which starts over again has duration. Bachelard therefore argues that rhythm, as a system of instants, is critical to the concept of time. Duration is constructed by rhythms, rhythms that are by no means necessarily grounded on an entirely uniform and regular time.

Bachelard’s notion of a consciousness is that it only exist in the act and a time that is intermittent and discontinuous by no time at all. All our memories of events are reduced to their root in an instant according to Bachelard. We have only selected memories, not of continuity. Memory needs many instants. Therefore, we never remember duration, we only have snapshots. Continuities have to be constructed as they never are complete, solid, or constant. In a way, this resembles how archaeologists create chronological tables. Thus, an artifact, a posthole, construction fill, etc. represents an event. The materialities are our nodes for past events in an otherwise unknown and “empty past”. We construct continuity of fragments, but is the past really gone as Bachelard argues? I shall return to this when I discuss Bergson. Bachelard argues that the tension of looking towards the immediate future forms our present duration. Both memory and anticipation comes from our habits and past and future are habits themselves, they do not exist in reality. For Bachelard, past and future are empty and do not affect time and being since they are continuous nothingness. Time is only the present instant. The present never passes since we constantly move into a new instantaneous present.

In short, Bachelard is a hardcore “presentist”. His instants are static and there is no flow between them which make them similar to the B-series (see entry on McTaggart). But since he believes that only the present can exist, he belongs to the A-view. However, he needs something that mediates between the instants because the obstacle is to explain how the instant gives away to another instant, generating a real time flow and extension. It runs the risk of ending up with a tenseless time and temporal parts ontology where the instants are strung along a predetermined time line.

There is a dialectic relation between the instant and nothingness in Bachelard’s view. This dialectic relationship goes back to Hegel. For Hegel, everything is defined by what they are and by what they are not. A thing has a separate identity because it is different from other things. Being is thus defined from its opposite, which is nothingness. Hegel argues that being is a movement to overcome nothingness, thus becoming. The dialectic movement of opposites is the foundation of all being. However, Bergson’s critique of dialectic thinking suggests that, in order for us to understand nothingness, we must first have an idea of something full (the instant). This means that nothingness only becomes a negation and an inversion of the instant. Thus, dialectics set up contradictions on a scale with degrees which means that the instant is located in one end of the scale and nothingness at the opposite end, being a difference of degree to the instant. Degrees are believed to be homogeneous (spatial) units of measurement. The dialectics therefore confuses difference in kind with difference of degree. Therefore, Bachelard’s view on time is based on spatial metaphors such as point, line and void. We represent time in spatial media, but this is still not the nature of true duration.

In case you wonder why I have water as a background on my website, it is because I am a proponent for an ontology of fluidity, complexity, and multiplicity. I am against ontologies of solids, reductionism, and oneness (quite common in mainstream archaeology). Materiality (artifacts, ruins, postholes, mountains) are seen as fluid, ever changing (with different durations and intensities), connecting to other materialities, forming complex multiplicities. Water is such a materiality, responsible for creating caves which are my current focus. Here is a suitable quote from Deleuze’s book on Leibniz and the critical idea of the fold:

”Matter thus offers an infinitely porous, spongy, or cavernous texture without emptiness, caverns endlessly contained in other caverns: no matter how small, each body contains a world pierced with irregular passages, surrounded and penetrated by an increasingly vaporous fluid, the totality of the universe resembling a “pond of matter in which there exist different flows and waves” [Leibniz].

Deleuze, Gilles (1993) The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

During the final two days of the field season 2003, Alberto Flores and I passed by a cave called Santa Cruz (“Holy Cross”;) by the people living in Sacalaca. The name is apt since inside its narrow vertical entrance is a chamber with several charcoal paintings, one of them with the text “Santa Cruz”. We do not know the date of these paintings since they could be from around 1550 up until the present (the ceramics in the cave are Prehispanic as are the nearby mounds). However, this is also in the area where the Caste War broke out and this gives me the opportunity to discuss the “talking cross”.

In the period after independence from Spain (1821-1847) the oppression of the Creoles (Mexicans of European descent) against the Yucatec Maya increased and the Creoles in Yucatan also declared independence from Mexico. Maya groups rebelled against the Creoles in what has been called the Caste War. The early successful campaigns by the mazehual (“Maya”, 1847-1848, which almost drove the Creoles out from the peninsula, ultimately led to a series of setbacks and approximately 40 percent of the population of Yucatan died between 1846 and 1850.

In 1850, the Caste War was almost lost for the mazehual. At this time, a spiritual mobilization and a revivalistic movement appeared. José María Barrera and his band came to a place called Lom Ha (Cleft Spring), which was a small cenote, 60 km southeast of Saban, one of the southernmost larger settlements. He found a small cross carved in a mahogany tree at the edge of the cenote. One of the members of the band was Juan de la Cruz Puc, who was trained in priestly duties. He heard the voice of God coming from the cross in the tree. This cross became a santo, the Santo Jesucristo, an intermediary with God, which had the capacity to speak. Juan de la Cruz Puc could hear the voices in his head, but in order for others to hear the Talking Cross he needed the ventriloquist Manuel Nauat to project the words as if they came from the tree.

The Talking Cross told its followers, the Cruzob, to continue the fighting. The town Chan Santa Cruz (contemporary Felipe Carillo Puerto) grew up on the location and became the centre for resistance until 1901. However, the last skirmishes between cruzob and the Mexican state occurred in 1933. The religion still exists at some places between Saban and Felipe Carillo Puerto. Maybe the painting in the Santa Cruz cave depicts the Balam Na church at Chan Santa Cruz (it could of course depict other crosses as well and may be unrelated to the cruzob).

I was supposed to map Sacbe 2 at Yo’okop in 2003 as part of my dissertation on causeways. For various reasons this did not happen and the CRAS project did not work in the ejido of Saban for five years. We returned last year and my colleague Alberto Flores finally mapped Sacbe 2 in 2008 (I was busy locating caves and wells). I joined the final day of mapping and together with Dave Johnstone I mapped the terminus structure called Structure N25E6-3 at Xnicte (Group C). We already knew that Sacbe 2 is the single most interesting causeway known in the region. Here is a brief description of the causeway, seen on the left side of the picture below.

Sacbe 2 is currently divided into two distinct parts (Sacbe 2A and 2B). There is a small gap between the causeway segments indicating that there might have been a passage between them. The major northern portion (Sacbe 2B) is 1800 m long, sometimes up to 4 m high and 10 m wide. This part terminates at a pyramid that is built in alignment with the causeway. At the terminus the causeway runs across a large square platform but there is no plaza in front of the stairway of the terminal pyramid in Group C, Structure N25E6-3. The alignment of the pyramid is different from that of the major buildings in Group A and B that are 25 degrees east of north. The alignment of Structure N25E6-3 is instead 48 degrees east of north as is the angle of the causeway. The pyramid is 11 m tall from the causeway/pyramid intersection (seen below).

The south end of Sacbe 2B may originally have begun northwest of another pyramid, Structure N11E1-2. On the northwestern side of the causeway there are also two large platforms connected to the causeway. These platforms support smaller structures that may be of later Postclassic date. This arrangement with large platforms differs from the other causeways at Yo’okop.

Another segment of the causeway (2A) continues southwest from an area slightly northwest of N11E1-2. In this sense the causeway segment resembles the Xquerol causeway at Ichmul that also has a pyramid abutting one side of the causeway. Sacbe 2A continues with the same alignment as the larger northeastern section but is only 7 m wide. This 300 m long section continues towards the North Acropolis in Group B but never reach it. A small structure is located near the preserved southwest origin of the causeway. The southern segment is less well preserved and may have been built of less skilled laborers and/or at another date than the northern section.

Sacbe 2B is probably the oldest known causeway of the Cochuah region. It’s date is currently based upon the fact that it runs across an unusual subterranean passage with an Early Classic vault style. The 3 m high and 1.8 m wide vault is located near the two lateral platforms. The two entrances of the vault have partially collapsed but the passage is perpendicular to the trajectory of the causeway and hence built at the same time as the causeway. This suggests a late Early Classic date for the causeway. However, we do not know if the causeway is a one phase construction. An earlier, lower and less wide, causeway could potentially have connected Group C and the platform that the current causeway runs across today.

The fact that the pyramid at Group C is in a right angle with the causeway implies that the structure was constructed at the same time as the causeway. However, in-situ walls indicate a Terminal Classic Late Puuc style of architecture. Still, the original structure at Group C may date back to the late Early Classic. The establishment of Group C broke with the Late Formative settlement pattern and may indicate that the location was important (such as a preexisting cave).

I can already see the angry complaints about inaccuracies and the accusations of ethnocentrism, racism, etc. that will follow in the backwaters of the upcoming movies revolving around the year 2012. We have seen these accusations and complaints before concerning Apocalypto, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, King Kong, etc. I have been part of this choir myself but I have a more or less neutral position nowadays.

Mayanists have been quick to dismiss Apocalypto and its director (and, surprise, there are countless inaccuracies and exaggerations in that movie). However, it is not Mel Gibson who is the bad boy. He was just using known stereotypes and generalizations created by others. These others, who are they? They are first of all countless of people that, since the conquest, have had their own biased views on the Other (not only Spaniards, but “Mayans” themselves”;).

And, of course, some of these more recent others are well known Mayanists like the late Linda Schele, Mary Miller, David Freidel, Arthur Demarest, and a host of others who have spent considerable time focusing on violent activities, auto-sacrifice, human sacrifice, torture, decapitation, etc. It is ironic then when one finds interesting quotes here: http://www.xispas.com/blog/2006/12/apocalypto-caligula-of-yucatan.html

Demarest says ”I don't care about some minor historical inaccuracies. That's Hollywood. What I'm very worried about is how the Maya themselves will perceive the film.”

Freidel says “I can promise you that there will be a massive repudiation of this film, not only as a work of fiction, but as a systematic and willful misrepresentation of the Maya.”

These are interesting quotes considering their own publications that have focused more on violence than on any other single topic. Yes, the movie misrepresent the “Maya”, but so do “Three thousand years on the shaman’s path” as it is a masterpiece of arborescent thinking.

Is this ignorance of ones own role in creating Gibson’s mega-violent epic, a lack of self-criticism or in fact a reliance on the arborescent cultural model that too often mixes contemporary people with those of the past? In any case, it is easy for a Mayanist to criticize Mel Gibson, but perhaps we should look in our mirror first. 

Warfare has been of interest in Mayanist studies for a long time. Once thought to be a peaceful civilization, it was transformed into a hoard of blood-thirsty shaman-kings by Linda Schele, David Freidel and others. As a general rule in these studies on past warfare it is argued that warfare increased in scale, frequency, and “nature” over time to reach a peak at the Terminal Classic and/or Postclassic. What is the archaeological basis for this assumption?

When hierarchically social formations appeared at the end of the Middle Formative, new political positions, titles, and offices emerged which people are believed to have desired and competed for. These positions were few and new ones were not created although the population increased according to David Webster. However, there seems to be little physical traces of such competitions around this time.

The situation is different with Late Classic material which is argued to indicate increased warfare in relation to earlier periods. Evidence for increased warfare consists of fortifications in site centers (like the ones at Yo’okop, see photo), the location of centers in isolated areas, and massive moat-wall complexes. It is believed that several centuries of elite polygyny, intermarriage among certain groups, led to a complex and fragmented political world. Thus, there is another assumption that fragmentation automatically leads to warfare. Without direct glyphic evidence, it is argued that factions of people desired the possession of resources, titles, and labor of others or that they wanted to create new polities. 

Multiple burials, at for example Tikal, may indicate mass sacrifices of enemies. Some massacres occurred at a few places in relation to site abandonment, such as at Cancúen. However, the occurance of these burials are not bountiful. They are also known from Late Formative contexts, even at small sites, such as Cuello in northern Belize. But mass burials, indicative of sacrifice, should not be common at any time since warfare is not something done on a regular basis.

Webster argues that the Late Classic wars occured on a high frequency because warfare never included large military infrastructures. Hassig has argued that only 600-1000 elite warriors may have existed at Tikal at the height of its power. However, the wars in earlier periods would also have lacked this infrastructure. It is assumed that an experienced force of elites probably could have mobilized a large commoner force in case of emergency. Still, this is based upon analogies, since no archaeological or textual evidence for mobilising commoners exist for the Classic period.

Evidence for increased warfare is usually attributed to glyphic expressions. For example, the earliest ”star war” event is noted at Caracol. Thus, most textual evidence of warfare relate to the 6th century and later. This may reflect new needs among the royal elite. These texts basically contain formulaic texts. No details, apart from the date, the event, the defeated ruler and his site, were mentioned. Defeats and victories were recorded by a ruler’s scribes, but defeats were only mentioned in relation to later victories. Thus, from these later inscriptions we cannot say how often warfare occurred in the Early Classic or the Late Formative. Much of data related to these earlier periods are likely buried under Late Classic constructions. The Late Classic period rulers claimed continuity between their own battles and successes of earlier kings and it is basically from these sources we know about earlier battles.

It is from the Classic period we have some indications when during the year warfare was most frequent. It appears to have peaked during the dry season (January–April). Planting sesason was in May, and harvest was from mid-September to the end of October. The few conflicts that occured in the June-September rainy season were shorter than the ones during the dry season. This pattern could potentially support an idea that “commoners” participated in warfare, as they were not confined to work with agriculture. But it might just as well be argued that elite warriors attacked their enemies when the stores were full after harvest (although storage facilities are rare in the Maya area) or whenever roads or trails were passable.

Further, Aldana argues that the correlation issue between the Long Count calendar and the Gregorian calender still has not been solved. The resolution of the GMT correlation concern a matter of at least sixty days and if Aldana is right we may have to reconsider the astronomical data as well, and when the “star-wars” and other warrelated events occurred. The Star war events are perhaps not related to the planet Venus after all but to meteors.

It is further assumed, from archaeological, epigraphic, and iconographic remains, that warfare involved even more people during the Terminal Classic and the Postclassic than in the Late Classic, at least in terms of percentage since there was a general decline in demography (apart from the Terminal Classic northern lowlands). The iconography from the northern lowlands during this time show many participants, both in wars and rituals. This has been suggested to represent an emerging warrior society or order. The general idea is therefore that warfare changed in the Terminal Classic, such as the burning and sacking of sites that can be seen in Chichén Itzá’s murals.

This is to me a awkward conclusion from iconography. Mural paintings covering whole walls can, of course, depict more people than a lintel or a stela. Since we do not have many surviving mural paintings from the Classic period, until the Late Classic (Bonampak) and the Terminal Classic (Chichén Itzá;), these few examples tend to stand for the whole past corpus. The Late Formative murals at San Bartolo does not emphasize war, but we cannot make a general judgement of the whole Maya area and the whole period from this fragmented and scattered evidence.

It is still far from certain that warfare affected a larger population at any period except when sites have been abandoned as a result of warfare, such as at Dos Pilas, Aguateca, Cancúen, Chunchucmil, Copán, Piedras Negras and Caracol. For such cases, Demarest, Rice and Rice argue for refugees that may have involved large populations. From what is presently known, before the wars in the Petexbatun area there is no direct evidence that warfare affected a wider population. There are not many indicators that large armies clashed at any time. The hieroglyphically recorded violent events may only have concerned a few number of combattants even during the Late Classic.

Archaeologists usually discuss the past. However, the most problematic mode of time is the present which also is the only mode that we experience. It is either seen as an absolute existence, a mental illusion, an unfolding moment of various duration or coexistent with other temporal modes. Since there are so many varieties of describing the present, does time as such exist?

In order to understand the logic behind the last question, we need to understand the conclusions of the British idealist philosopher John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart (1866-1925). He argues that time has no existence. According to him there are two ways of distinguishing events in time. We order events in terms of being future, present, and past (the A-series), and in terms of being earlier than and later than (the B-series).

The A-series is also known as tensed or dynamic time. In time, all events, like the construction of a building, moves between these temporal modes. During the Stone Age, the Bronze Age was in the future, then the Bronze Age became present and during the Iron Age the Bronze Age receded into the past. The A-series fits our own experiences as we live in a present which is something we cannot attach to the B-series, where the present only is a subjective illusion. In the A-view, the world appears to have duration and to be tensed. Events begin and end and this gives us the idea that events will continue to occur.

The B-series is also known as tenseless or static time. In B-time, all events equally exist since there is no past or future, only before or after. This is the time of the chronological table where time periods precedes or proceeds each other in a predefined cinematographic manner.  Events do not change their B-series position, while they do change their A-series positions. This means that, in the B-series, events do not move from future to present, or from present to past.  They are lined up in an unchanging sequence. Time does not flow, or, in other words, it is tenseless. The Bronze Age is therefore always before the Iron Age and after the Stone Age.

The main controversy among time-philosophers is McTaggart’s conclusion. According to him, time needs change. If something is perceived not to have changed, it is just in relation to something else that has changed. Change is only a change of the characteristics given to events in the A-series. We need the A-series to explain change since the B-series cannot account for that. Then we could assume that the A-series is the “real” time. The main objection to the A-series is that an event cannot have the properties of being past, present, and future at the same time, but can only have them in succession. According to McTaggart, if something that consists of many parts is to be real, all of its parts must coexist and this is not the case for the past, present and future. This leads McTaggart to the conclusion that time is unreal.

Since the A-series is inconsistent and the B-series relies on the A-series to explain change, it may be possible that events exist as a non-temporal series. The relation that forms the A-series must therefore be a relation to something not in the time-series. Time has to be presupposed for the A-series to exist and vice versa. This indicates that McTaggart relies on Kant’s claim that we all have the same kind of “faculty of representation”, that is, a capacity to order atemporal and non-spatial stimuli from the external world and create an experience that is temporal and spatial. McTaggart’s solution is the C-series where reality is not temporal or material but spiritual and timeless. The C-series consists of permanent relations of events that together with the A-series give time. Since it is not temporal, it involves no change, only an order. When change enters the series, it transforms into a B-series. The C-series does form the order of a series but it does not determine the direction of it. For that it needs the A-series.

McTaggart’s conclusion that time is unreal is based on the assumption that past, present and future cannot coexist unless there is temporal parity. This stems from the idea that the temporal modes are discontinuous instantaneous moments or series succeeding each other in a linear fashion. This view also sees societies following each other in succession as they tend to do in chronological tables.

I myself follow the trend among philosophers, such as Nietzsche, Bergson and Deleuze, that sees the past as a past that has never been present. This implies a continuity of time since past and present coexist rather than succeed each others. This also means that social assemblages run parallel, coexist and nest with each other rather than succeeds each other. Crucial here is how we treat the “length” of time. A discontinuous and instantaneous view of time would give us little help in distinguishing mixed and coexisting social assemblages. Unnecessary problems of “cultural breaks” appear. If time is continuous and at the same time differentiating then social assemblages also become continuous and differentiating, not static like in traditional archaeological culture concepts. 

The most famous architectural feature of the Toraja is called tongkonan , characterized by its greatly upswept saddleback that is shaped like a boat standing on piles. There is not much space inside the building and hence people live most of the day outside the building or in other buildings.

A tongkonan is the navel in the Toraja universe and therefore it is horizontally and vertically divided. Regalia is kept in the attic, below this is the living area and under the floor is where animals are kept. The building usually faces north and south. In larger villages the tongkonans stand in a northern row with each family’s rice barn (alang) facing the tongkonan and hence create a southern row.

The gables and outside walls are often decorated by red, black, and yellow colored wood with carved patterns. Carvings reflect social status and are argued to represent prosperity and fertility. Roosters represent the way of the ancestors (aluk to dolo).

Tongkonans are “houses of origin” and crucial nodes in the kinship network since people trace their family ties through these ancestral buildings. The names of human individuals may disappear but the names of their houses are remembered. Families meet to discuss marriage, inheritance and other important matters in the tonkonans (the Toraja word tongkon means to sit). Since the Toraja trace their origin bilaterally (both male and female lines) each individual belongs to several houses but they may not live in them. One’s membership in a house is only activated on important occasions. Toraja men move to their wife’s home. If the couple divorce the woman keeps the house but the man may dismantle and move the rice barn. The tongkonan is never removed since its east side usually contains several buried placentae.

Buffalo horns are placed vertically on the front gable as an index of the prestige and wealth of the household. These are the remains from earlier funerals where buffalos were slaughtered.

Several years ago I wrote a novel entitled “Tidens Hjärta” or “Heart of Time” in English. I got some encouraging (but ultimately dismissive) comments from one of the publishers I sent it to (Leopard förlag). They argued that I could write an interesting story but that I made the same mistake as many other “experts” trying to write novels on their area of knowledge; I simply tried to squeeze too much facts into the story, making it burdensome (believe I have heard that about some of my research as well). The other problem for this publisher was that parts of the story straddled the line towards fantasy. This was obviously my intention, sort of Lord of the Rings meets Apocalypto (although the book was finished well before Gibson’s movie). I simply let the “shamanistic” world live as it is depicted in the iconographic and epigraphic record. The “heart of time” is a sacred object kept in a bundle and its is actually the main polyagent of the book.

The main human character of the book is a fictious person whose life is affected by the civil war within the Mutal kingdom; between the brothers ruling Tikal (Nuun U Jol Ch’aak) and Dos Pilas (B’ajlaj Chan K’awiil). So, what is this “real” story then? It is a story of divide and conquer. I will tell it from B’ajlaj’s perspective. He was born on 9.9.12.11.2 8 Ik’ 5 Keh which correspond to 15th of October 625. His name in the translation offered by Marc Zender is as follows: “K’awiil Hammers (in) the Sky”. The name seems to relate to thunder and lightning and since he was born during the rainy season, it is not unlikely that his name reflects the time of his birth.

His birth happened three years before the last known date associated with the 22nd ruler of Tikal, known by the nick-name Animal Skull. The person mentioned as B’ajlaj’s father, K’inich Muwaan Johl II, is believed to have been the 24th king of Tikal. Stanley Guenter believes that B’ajlaj was the second son of this king and that he had an older brother who eventually became the 25th ruler of Tikal, Nuun U Jol Ch’aak. During the time surrounding Animal Skull’s last known date there may have been a dynastic crisis of some sort at Tikal since part of the royal court migrated to the small center of Dos Pilas, 115 km to the southeast in the Petexbatun area. Fahsen and Eric Boot believes that B’ajlaj arrived at Dos Pilas on the date 7 Ben 16 Xul, in 629, when he was only four years old. Guenter on the other hand believes that B’ajlaj had been living at Dos Pilas from birth.

An obscure event occured on 4 Muluc 2 Kumk’u, in 648. A person called Lam Nah K’awiil, whose flint and shield was brought down (a metaphor for the defeat of his army), at a place called Sakha’al. Fahsen believes he was a subordinate to Nuun U Jol Ch’aak who may have become ruler at this time. Guenter believes it was yet another brother from Tikal. B’ajlajs victory at Sakha’al may have divided the Mutal kingdom in two halves, the large and old Tikal and the small and new Dos Pilas. New data indicate that Yuknoom Ch’een, the king of Calakmul, attacked Dos Pilas on the 20th of December 650 (1 Kawak 17 Muwan). B’ajlaj probably fled and “climbed” to a place called K’inich Pa’ Witz which may be the nearby site of Aguateca. B’ajlajs life was spared and Yuknoom Ch’een made him an ally and a vassal. On 6 Ix 2 Kayab, 12th of January 657, Yuknoom forced B’ajlaj’s brother Nuun U Jol Ch’aak to flee Tikal to a place called Sakpa...n.

Step 3 on the eastern section of Hieroglyphic Stairway (HS) 2 at Dos Pilas describe an unknown but probably highly important event which involved Yuknoom Ch’een’s son Yich’aak K’ak’, and B’ajlaj and Nuun at a place called Yaxha. Unfortunately, the date is eroded, but both Guenter and Simon Martin believes that this was a joint submission to the Calakmul ruler and thus was the reason for the “volte face” of B’ajlaj against his brother in later events. The event may have occurred between 658 and 661 if it follows the time sequence.

On 4 Ak’bal 11 Muwaahn (8th of December 672) B’ajlaj was boosted from Dos Pilas by Nuun in a “star war” event. In the text from HS 4,  Nuun is only mentioned as a person from Mutal with the title Huxlahun Tzuk “(He of) Thirteen Provinces” which is associated with Central Petén. B’ajlaj sought refuge at place called Ch’aak Na, a site of unknown location. The Tikal forces were apparently chasing B’ajlaj throughout the Petén. The Dos Pilas king spend five years in exile, either at Hiix Witz or at the court of Calakmul as suggested by Martin and Nikolai Grube.

On 2 Ix 17 Muwaahn, 13th of December 677, a new “star war” event took place, as well as a burning event at the unknown site of Pulil/Puluul. Yuknoom of Calakmul once again attacked Nuun. This time Nuun fled from Dos Pilas where he seems to have stayed, which thus make it possible that Tikal was still in control of Yuknoom. Nuun “climbed” to the “Ti’ Patuun” place during his escape. Seven days after his brother’s flight, B’ajlaj arrived at Dos Pilas.

Two years later, on 11 Caban 10 Zotz (30th of April 679) the flient and shield of the king of Tikal was brought down. It is not known if Nuun U Jol Ch’aak was residing in Tikal at this time or if he was still in exile. Anyway, a sentence on Step 3 indicate that blood was “pooled” and bones where “mountained” at Tikal itself (picture below). The lords of the thirteen provinces (locations associated with Central Petén, such as Motul de San José and Tikal) were apparently slaughtered. These unfortunate people must have been allies to Nuun. There are no textual evidence that Nuun died, but he used the title Huxlahun Tzuk (the thirteen provinces) in his name. B’ajlaj do not mention Nuun as a king of Tikal and it is likely that he saw himself as the king of Tikal since he used this Emblem glyph himself. Guenter believes B’ajlaj buried Nuun to proclaim his legitimacy. He further suggests that B’ajlaj tried to become ruler of Tikal but that he was seen as a quisling by the local elite who finally enthroned Nuun’s son as the new king in 682.

The new king of Tikal, Jasaw Chan K’awiil, acceded to the throne on 5 Kib 14 Sotz’ (6th of May 682). He claimed to be the son of Nuun U Jol Ch’aak. The acceeding to the throne of Jasaw may have been a direct act against his uncle and the king of Calakmul which four days later, on the Period Ending of 9.12.10.0.0, danced in a ceremony, probably at Calakmul. Stela 9 from Dos Pilas is the only known portraiture of B’ajlaj. He is depicted as being at Calakmul, dressed as the Tikal Maize God and standing on his bound captive Nuun B’alam. He holds a K’awiil scepter in his right hand and a shield in his left hand. On the shield is the title U Naab’nal K’inich, a royal title of the Tikal rulers. It is thus ironic that four days earlier Tikal had crowned a new king.

B’ajlaj may have had problems governing Tikal and this disorder may have benefited the nearby Naranjo ruler who attacked the site of Caracol, an ally of Calakmul. The Naranjo victory must have been short-lived since the king of Naranjo never was heard of anymore and it is likely that B’ajlaj and Calakmul defeated Naranjo. This left the throne vacant at Naranjo. It is not by chance that B’ajlajs daughter Ix Wak Chan Ajaw was sent to the site. She arrived on the 27th of August 682, almost four months after Jasaw’s accession. She was never inaugurated as a ruler but she is believed to have acted as one for several years. Whoever she was married to, he was never mentioned in the known inscriptions. She later gave birth to the future king of Naranjo, K’ak’ Tiliw Chan Ch’aak in 688. It is likely that B’ajlaj used Naranjo to keep battles away from the Petexbatun area and still close to receive reinforcements from Calakmul. Jasaw’s early campaigns was heading in this direction, toward Yaxha and Naranjo.

We know very little about B’ajlaj’s final years. He witnessed the accession of the new ruler of Calakmul, Yich’aak K’ak’ in 686. No known recorded death date has been found for B’ajlaj. According to the retrospective mention on Stela 5 at Aguateca he danced and oversaw the 9.13.0.0.0. 8 Ajaw 8 Wo Period Ending. This was on the 15th of March 692. This is the last known date and he probably died around this time, at least before 698 when the next known accession date is known. His death occurred at a time when Jasaw began to gain more control of his predecessors realm. Jasaw defeated the Calakmul forces in 695 and Tikal reclaimed its leading position in the central Lowlands. Jasaw was later buried in Temple I at Tikal.

B’ajlaj Chan K’awiil thus became at least 67 years old. He is believed to be buried inside the unexcavated Structure L5-49, a large structure at Dos Pilas, on which we find HS 2. A person with the name Itzamnaaj B’alam and his mother, Lady of Itzan, are mentioned on Step 1 of HS 2. It is believed that he was the next in line, and not as once thought, Ruler 2 or Itzamnaaj K’awiil, who became king in 698. Itzamnaaj B’alam dedicated HS 2 in the mid 690s. Apart from the dedication of HS 2 there is a period of no known inscriptions at Dos Pilas until Stela 1, erected in 706. This is also related to the early reign of a new powerful king at Calakmul. Dos Pilas’ fate was thus tightly intertwined with the large site in the far north, even after the death of B’ajlaj.