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The Interpretation of Ancient Symbols Author(s): Terence Grieder Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 77, No.

4 (Dec., 1975), pp. 849-855 Published by: Blackwell Publishing on behalf of the American Anthropological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/674792 Accessed: 04/12/2008 02:53
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The Interpretation AncientSymbolsl of


TERENCE GRIEDER Universityof Texas,Austin Two methods of interpreting ancient pictorial symbols are in use: Kubler's "configurational"method of describing internal relationshipsof images within a style; and the widely used "ethnological"method seeking comparableexpressions in verbalform in ethnographic and historicaldocuments.Ethnologicalanalogy may offer only comparisons, but ethnology can also define one end of a traditionof symbolic meaning and can be used to generatepremises for deductive reasoning. Disjunction of form from meaning does not invalidateethnographicanalogy, as argued by Kubler, but is a culturalphenomenon which can be studied archaeologically. A ceramic sequence, for example, can reveal a disjunction of form from meaning.Configurational analysis of styles in sequence revealschangesof form and of some fundamental kinds of meaning. Ethnological evidence of traditions of meaning within a culture gives some basis for verbalizingthe meaning of earlier symbols. The interpretation of ancient symbols requires the use of both configurationalanalysis of styles and ethnologicalanalysisof traditionsof meaning. AMONGTHE TRADITIONSof every society is one of symbolismexpressedin material products. Products made mainly as vehicles of s^rmbolism present special problems of interpretationto archaeologistsand cultural historians. Two methods for interpretingthe symbolism of ancient cultures are currently in use. They differ principally in what is considered acceptable evidence of a tradition of symbolism: the "configurational" school, representedby George Kubler, holding that interpretationmust confine itself to "iconographic clusters" within single periods to avoid disjunctionof meaningfrom form (Kubler 1970: 142); and the "ethnological"school arguingthat forms may be assumedto retaintheir symbolic meaningsif the culturecan be shown to be essentiallyunchangedin other respects. The use of ethnological analogy in the explanation of symbols has been the target of Kubler'scriticism. Kubler (1967:11-12) has rolled out the big gun of Panofsky's(1960:84) "principle of disjunction" against the use of ethnological analogy in the interpretationof symbols from prehistoriccontexts. He arguesthat "we may expect to observe disjunctions of form and meaningmore often than markedcontinuity in their association"when dealing with "successive cultures spanning a duration on the order of magnitude of about one thousand years in the same region" (Kubler 1967:12). He proposesinsteadthat the student of the past "consider the total visualconfigurationof an ancient site or groupof sites as the primarysource of information. Such studies are concerned more with iconographicclusters than with pottery types and chronology. As long as entire configurationsof evidence are understudy, the fragmentation analogizingis minimized"(Kubler1970:142). of Analogy shares with all historical generalizationan inductive method of reasoning,and like all inductivemethods, its validity increaseswith the numberof traitsor examplesknown relative to the total number. Genuine analogicalargumentis convincingonly when a great many traits are known on both sides of the equation, as for example in Shaw'sanalysisof his excavationsat Igbo Ukwu in Nigeria(Shaw 1970:269-270).
Submitted for publication March 18, 1974 Accepted for publication May 13, 1975

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Analogies, however, also have the capacity to generate premisesfrom which deductions can be made. For example, Furst (1968:148) examined ethnographicsources which share the jaguar theme with Olmec art to arriveat a "fact" which could be stated as a premise: that in indigenous Americansocieties "shamansand jaguarsare not merely equivalent,but each is at the same time the other." The conclusion, that jaguarsrepresentedin Olmec art representshamans,is a deduction which is open to attack only through the premise. Furst does not say: (1) recent indigenousgroupsuse jaguarsymbols and have such and such other known cultural traits; (2) the ancient Olmecs also used jaguarsymbols and had the same cultural traits; (3) therefore, the meaningof the Olmecjaguarsymbols is the same as that of recent jaguar symbols. The deductive method is the stronger method, but it has the difficulty that a single negative instance disproves the premise. Furst (1968: 145-148) analyzes some seemingly negativeinstances to defend the premise. The use of ethnography as a source of principles from which deductive conclusions can be drawn for testing is at as least as valuableto archaeologists its use as a source of materialfor analogicalcomparison. The two methods, the configurationaland the ethnological, make use of very different forms of evidence. The configurationalrelies on materialevidence in the form of designs, pictures, and sculptures. This is what Kubler (1962:26) calls iconography, but only the graphicis given;the iconic meaning,even to the namingof objects, is inferential.Translation from the graphicto the verbalmediumis done by the moderninterpreter,with the inclusion method in Americanarchaeology of the requisite number of "probably"s.The ethnolcogical accepts the written accounts of the four centuriessince the Conquestas the verbalevidence. In ethnography, the informant, who is closer to his material than is the configurational analyst to ancient things, makes the translationfrom the materialor graphicto verbalform. In both methods the ultimate problem is to find a verbal translationfor a pictorialsymbol which may neverhave had a specific or adequateverbalequivalent. The controversialpoint is the validity of assumingtraditions of meaningor use which have great antiquity. Assumingthat the informantrepresentsa people historicallyassociated with the region, can we expect him to have any traditionswhich we can reliablyidentify as having endured from very ancient times? Many of the indigenousAmericanoral traditions are in the form of myths, which, Vansina(1965:157) asserts,"arevery valuablesourcesfor the history of beliefs . . . because of their religious character,myths are transmittedwith care." Yet no standardfor rate of change in myths, or in oral traditionsgenerally,has been widely accepted (cf. Kroeber1948:564-568). It is noteworthy that the study of the modern Maya of Zinacantanindicates more ready acceptance of change in materialculture than in cosmology and religiousattitudes (Vogt 1969:610-612). If the Zinacantanstudy reflects a widespread situation, then archaeological records based on material culture give an exaggeratedpicture of the rate of change within a culture as a whole and myths are among the slowest changingof the elements of a culture. The configurational and ethnological approachesare based on contrary premises. The configurational approach is based on the view that the rate of change in a culture is unpredictable,difficult to discover, and presumablyfairly rapid.The ethnologicalapproach is based on the view that a culture in isolation would change slowly and that the factors record.It assumes which cause change most efficiently can be identified in an archaeological that form and meaningwill remainjoined in a period of culturalstability and that instability sufficient to disjointhem will be discoverablein the materialremains. Social and environmentalchanges and external contacts, for example, are evident in the archaeologicalrecords of ancient societies, especially in the form of changes in pottery, which immediately reflects changes that affect the members of a society. Contrary to Kubler's (1970:132) assertion of the uselessness of pottery sequences for the buildingof cultural history, it is hard to find a material product in any period that provides more immediate and exact information about the state of a society than does pottery. The

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extinction of handmadekitchenwaresin the United States and the recent rise of art pottery tell a lot about our culture. In Gifford's (1965:342-343) readingof BartonRamie'shistory from pottery, new styles show us the relative time and suggest the regionalsource of "the influx of peoples." The study of pottery allows one only rarely to discoverthe biographies of indinduals-one of the preoccupationsof traditionalart history-but one can learna good deal about the cultural history of whole societies. The recognition of Teotihuacan style examplesof culturalhistory revealed pottery in tombs at Tikal is anotherof the innumerable by pottery (Coe 1965:35); and where written recordsare available,we can judge the impact of historical events on the society by their effects on pottery, as in ancient Greece (e.g., Cook 1960:261-270, 251: "The technical decline of the fourth century . . . "). A change drasticenough to divorcemeaningsfrom their traditionalforms may be expected to show up in a pottery sequence. Traditionsof form can be traced by constructing chronological sequences of forms in pottery, or in anotherart or craft, which show no changeor for which gradualuninterrupted change can be demonstrated.The use or meaningcan be verbalizedconfidently only when receivedverbally, translatedfrom the materialor pictorialform by a memberof the culture which used the form or symbol. The writingsof Bernardinode Sahagun(1950) mark the beginning phase of such records in the Americas, coinciding with the extinction of the American styles and the destruction of American monuments. Antonio Guzman's description of Desana symbolism is a useful recent example (Reichel-Dolmatoff 1968). Perhapsa convincing tradition of content could be built in CentralMexico extending from Sahagun to the recent studies of Mercedes Olivera de Vazquez (1969), and perhaps in Yucatan and in a few regions in the Andean highlands.The evidence we have coveringthis 400 year period suggests remarkablestability, at least in general themes, and widespread 1969). verbalstyles which shareelements of content (e.g., Levi-Strauss When the symbols cannot be linked reasonably to a verbal explanation survivingin historical documents or obtained by ethnology, some other method must be used to organizeand describe them. The configurationalmethod fills this need. Students of ancient Mexico, which is especially rich in ethnographicsources, have been among the most ardent practitionersof the ethnologicalmethod. Kubler'sresponsehas been to point out that forms and meaningswhich are joined during one period may disjoin in another,and that the more remote symbolic systems would be better studied by a method that is independentof verbal recordsmade much later or by people culturallyunrelated.He has sharpenedthe distinction between tradition and style in order to work entirely within the expression of an ancient culture, without the constant comparison back and forth in time required by the ethnological method. A style is thus defined as a synchronic unit, which is to say that changes in it will be regarded as negligible until a new style is defined. The cluster of traditions,of material,use, design and technique, and meaning, which make up the style of the object are of variousages and have varioushistories, but the period duringwhich they are united is regardedas a style period, meaning that for the purposesof analysistime may be ignored. If one can obtain a full catalogueof the imageryof an ancient culture, one may be able to "decode" some of its meanings or describe its organization. In his study of Teotihuacan imagery,Kubler, in the absenceof written records,examinedeach form "for its grammatical function, whether noun, adjective, or verb," and interpreted the art as a form of picture writing (Kubler 1967:5ff). The relationshipsof the forms in this '4linguisticmodel" are self-evidentsignsand the statement of their functionalrelationshipsis objective. A subjective such as that element enters into the naming of the forms and the assignmentof signiElcance, compounds (Kubler1967:6-7). Namingsubjectsmust of cult objects to isolated nominative always be regardedas an exercise in creativity, but a plausibleguessis so much more useful than such cautious designations as "Motif A" that I think the risk is better baken."Rain

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God" set down beside "MaizePlant"givesrise to considerationswhich will never be aroused by "Motif A" with "Motif B." The configurationalmethod has been useful in the descriptionof the imageryfound at the site of Pashashin the Perunan Andes. Stone reliefs and tenoned heads in collections, but assignableto the site, provided a set of symbolic images for which no culturalcontext was known. Excavations produced Recuay ceramics bearing the same symbols and added more images. The excavations showed that Pashashwas abandoned by about the eighth century, and no reasonableconnection could be made with any historicallyknown culture. But by laying out all of the symbols and studying their relationshipssome things can be learned. For example, a hierarchy from complex to simple images can be seen, with the simple designs appearingas subsidiaryparts or attributesof the complex ones. Among the conclusions that one can draw from this hierarchyis that feline imagesrankbelow those of to frontal crowned men. It would be reassuring be able to infer the ancient myths that seem form. to be represented,but the method does not permit conclusionsin narrative method has been a useful way to start the study of Pashashimagery, The configurational and it is still possible to dismemberthe style into its elements and trace each one in time. The catalogue of images is useful for makingcomparisonswhich have shown how little of Chavinsymbolism was retained at Pashashand how much was sharedwith the later Chimu. With ethnography and historical documentation available for the Chimu, there arises the possibility of applying ethnological analogy to the interpretationof Pashashsymbolism. How valid would it be to stretch Chimu accounts 900 years back in time and across a culturalbarrierto aid in the explanationof Pashashsymbols? Kubler'sTeotihuacan study concentrates on style and disregardstime, except to deny that forms may be assumed to retain their early meanings in much later times (Kubler 1967:12). Recent studies by Doris Heyden (1975) on the meanings of fire and water symbols in CentralMexico confirm Kubler'sargumentthat designs change in meaning,and especially in the secondary extensions of meaning, over time and over cultural and class barriers.But some forms can be found in CentralMexicanimagerywhich have retainedtheir basic meaningsthroughout severalperiods, for example, the "goggle-eyes"found in Central Mexican art from Teotihuacan through Aztec times. Kubler (1967: 6) refers to the goggle-eyes as "having to do with the raingod" at Teotihuacan,judgingby the associated forms. He thus associatedthe form with a meaning.In Aztec art we are againpresentedwith goggle-eyes on the rain god, the identification dependingmainly on imageryin the Codex Borbonicus and the descriptions of Sahagun (1950: I, Ch. IV; II, Ch. XXV). Despite abundant evidence of social disruption during this long interval, the form and its basic meaningappearto have remainedjoined. Whetherwe refer to the raingod by an Aztec name for or call him "raingod"in English is not signiElcant, the meaningremainsthe same. To but generalizefrom this case would be unjustiEled, to insist upon discontinuity ratherthan continuity in old American traditions weights the argument against the evidence. Neither disjunctionnor continuity can be safely assumed. On the other hand, there are good reasons to believe that the "principleof disjunction" can help us reconstruct ancient symbolic meanings. The Paez Indians of Colombia have myths that contain elements which remind one of forms in the ancient sculptureof nearby San Agustin (Bernal Villa 1953; Reichel-Dolmatoff 1972, esp. p. 152, note 15 for bibliography). The configurational school reminds us that the similarities are merely intriguingand that the, perhaps, millenium and a half between the two manifestationsis record. replete with disjunctionsof which we have only the beginningsof an archaeological The ethnological school arguesthat archaeologycan discover evidenceof the circumstances which produced disjunctionsand, moreover, that severalfactors suggest that some parts of the myths reflect traditionswhich may be as old as San Agustin or older. The similarityof peoples and to myths which are reported from distant Paez myths to those of surrounding

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regionssuggests that the common elements are old traditions. Christianelements in Paez mythology are easily accounted for by one well-understoodforeigncontact which produced disjunctions.Where Christianelements can be identified, they give a rough measureof the amount of new materialabsorbedduring400 years of Christiancontact. Quantificationof or old and new elements is beyond this writer'sstatistical skill, but the obviously Christian the recorded material. If 400 years of recent elements appear in far less than half of contact have caused so little change, it is easy to believe that there are elements in Christian myths which are a thousandyears old. Moreover,earlierdisjunctionswere more likely to the have been produced by contact with people of Americanorigin who shareda measureof mythology with the ancestorsof the Paez. These considerations, along with the relative isolation of the region and the general evidence of the stability of American traditions, suggest that Paez myths can be used for speculation about the meaningsof San Agustin sculpturalforms. Proof beyond reasonable doubt will elude us forever, but speculativecases can be made and it is the businessof the cultural historian to make them. The phenomenon of disjunctionhelps explain the current situation in which we have Paez myths as the end of a tradition of content, without sculptural form, and San Agustin monuments for which the conventional symbolism has been lost. Disjunctionof meaningfrom form is what one would expect from the historical and archaeologicalrecords. The introduction of Christianitymade material expression of traditional ideas dangerousat the same time that control of land and labor passed out of Paez hands. The myths at least give verbalexpression to ideas, some of which may preserve the traditions of the ancient sculptors or of people with a comparableculturaltradition.A analysis culturalhistory of the region awaitsdescriptionby archaeologyand configurational and traditions of its material culture during the long period between San of the styles Agustinand the SpanishConquest. The permutationsof forms and their meaningscan be traced only by givingattention to both style and tradition. An understandingof the relationshipsof forms within a style is indispensableto their description; the configurationalmethod is an attempt to formulate ways of describingthese internalrelationships.Althoughthe analysisof a style, independent of time, is the first step, the history of a culture requiresa descriptionof its relationshipsto other cultures in which particulartraditions of form are traced through time. Except for is naming,these descriptionsare objective, but verbalnarrative still lacking. Analogy is the method by which verbal narrativetraditons may be brought to bear on ancient forms. The modesty of the claim for analogyis worth pointing out: it merely states a comparison. Usually the observerhas a narrativetradition for which he can only imaginea possible materialform, and a set of ancient symbols in materialform for which he can only imaginea possible narrative.The coincidence of the imaginedform with the extant one, or the imaginednarrativewith the preservedone, is the basis of comparison.The onus rests on the observer to show that more than mere comparisonis valid. But the analogistcan take courage from the fact that the extinction of one tradition does not imply the extinction of other traditions, each of which depends upon particularcircumstances.Disjunction is a useful concept because it identifies a cultural phenomenon, but rather than denying us access to ancient meanings, it clariElesthe method by which they may be studied. which events or circumstances Disjunctionis the result of particularsocial or environmental can be determinedby archaeologyand history. Realistic expectations for the recovery and interpretationof ancient cultures must lie somewhere between the "total culturalcontext" requiredby Proskouriakoff(1950:182) for of understanding the developmentof art, and the purely pictorialmaterialson which Kubler pins his hopes. We can scarcely define the total cultural context of a living person, yet we can define the major styles and traditions in which he participates.With a full catalogueof images, with the archaeologicalrecord, includingceramics,with an awarenessof evidence of

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disjunction, and with historical and ethnographic records to provide one end of the [77,1975 traditions of content, we can attain reasonably good descriptions of the more recent prehistoric cultures, and at least increase the evidential base for speculation about the remote ones. NOTE l I am gratefulto GeorgeKublerfor his helpful comments on a draft of this paper.

REFERENCES CITED BernalVilla, Segundo 1953 Aspectos de la cultura Paez: mitologia y cuentos de la Parcialidad Calderas, de Tierradentro. RevistaColombianade Antropologia1:279-309. Coe, WilliamR. 1965 Tikal: Ten Years of Study of a Maya Ruin in the Lowlands of Guatemala. Expedition 8: 5-56. Cook, Robert Manuel 1960 GreekPaintedPottery. London: Methuen. Furst, Peter T. 1968 The Olmec Were-Jaguar Motif in the Light of Ethnographic Reality. In Dumbarton Oaks Conferenceon the Olmec. E. P. Benson, Ed. Washington, DC: DumbartonOaks. pp. 143-174. Gifford,James C. 1965 Ceramics.In PrehistoricMayaSettlements in the Belize Valley. G. R. Willey,W. R. Bullard, Jr., J. B. Glass, and J. C. Gifford, eds. Papers of the Peabody Museumof Archaeologyand Ethnology, Harvard University,54. Heyden, Doris 1975 Water and Fire Symbols in Mexican Manuscripts.Paper presented at the 40th AnnualMeetingof the Society for AmericanArchaeology,Dallas,May 8. Kroeber,Alfred L. 1948 Anthropology.New York: Harcourt,Braceand World. Kubler,George 1962 The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things. New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress. 1967 The Iconographyof the Art of Teotihuacan. Studies in Pre-Columbian and Art Archaeology4. Washington, DC: DumbartonOaks. 1970 Period, Style and Meaning in Ancient American Art. New Literary History 1:127-144. Levi-Strauss, Claude 1969 The Raw and the Cooked. J. Weightmanand D. Weightman,Trans. New York: Harperand Row. Oliverade Vazquez,Mercedes 1969 Los "duenos del agua" en Tlaxcalancingo. Boletin del Instituto Nacional de Antropologiae Historia33:45-48. Panofsky, Erwin 1960 Renaissanceand Renascensesin WesternArt. Stockholm: Almquistand Wiksell. Proskouriakoff, Tatiana 1950 A Study of Classic Maya Sculpture. Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication593. Reichel-Dolmatoff,Gerardo 1968 Desana;simbolismo de los indios Tukano de Vaupes. Bogota: Universidadde los Andes. 1972 San Agustin:A Cultureof Colombia.New York: Praeger. Sahagun,Bernardino de 1950 GeneralHistory of the Things of New Spain, Vols. 1-13 (FlorentineCodex). A. J. O. Andersonand C. E. Dibble, Trans.Santa Fe, NM: School of AmericanResearchand Universityof Utah.

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Shaw, Thurstan 1970 Igbo-Ukwu: An Account of ArchaeologicalDiscoveries in EasternNigeria,Vols. 1-2. Evanston,IL: NorthwesternUniversityPress. Vansina,Jan 1965 OralTradition.H. M. Wright,Trans.Chicago:Aldine. Vogt, Evon Z. 1969 Zinacantan.Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress.

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