Talk:Southern Maya area

Article creation

I am beginning to build an entry on the Southern Maya area. Whoever wishes to weigh in on this, I would ask a few days to carry on with my ideas for this entry. My bona fides are that I am a professional scholar and archaeologist with many years of work in the Southern area - at Kaminaljuyu, and now at Chocola - and I have coedited a volume specifically on the subject of the Southern area.Jonathan (talk) 23:34, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

How about the postclassic

The article is mostly concerned with preclassic and classic times, and specifically the origins of Mayan civilization in the southern area. What about the southern Maya area in Epiclassic and Postclassic times? Doesn't the article need a broader historical scope if it is to cover the titles topic? ·Maunus· ·ƛ· 15:16, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

Maunus, you are correct to say that what's missing in the entry thus far is coverage of later times in the Classic and Postclassic ("Epiclassic" is a somewhat controversial term, and probably applies best to Yucatan). I will make an effort to supply this as soon as I get some other things off my plate. Jonathan K1938

I believe that the focus of the article is "Maya origins within the Southern Maya area". That is, the article is not really about this region per se but rather about how this region is/could-be the place where Maya culture first appeared -- where the Maya first stirred. Madman (talk) 13:50, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

I believe you are right. But then the title should be changed.·Maunus· ·ƛ· 14:08, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

More Comments on the article as it stands

In addition to Maunus's comment, I'd like to point out some other issues in the article. It needs to address why the boundaries of the Southern Maya Area are drawn where they are. If the area isn't all Maya, and mayaness isn't the criteria, why is the boundary drawn at the limits of "maya" distribution in Honduras and El Salvador (although the argument has been made that Copan isn't ethnically maya...)? The article is written as if the southern boundary exists in a vacuum, and all interaction was to the east, and north, with the Northern Maya Area and the Olmec heartland. Whatever model you want to use for the Olmec, the iconography isn't bounded on the south where you've drawn the boundary, but continues at least into central Honduras. Like Ocos and Pacific Coast Guatemalan early sites, there are large sites in Honduras which predate San Lorenzo, but, at the time San Lorenzo comes to prominence, participate in the same network of practices, use the iconography on pottery, make large stone monuments, manufacture jade artifacts, and so on. Chalchuapan Usulutan style ceramics recently turned up at a site on the pacific coast of Costa Rica. Soconusco and the pacific coast of Guatemala were not the only significant producers of Cacao in the formative. Again look south of your southern boundary for others. I seem to recall that Fox wrote an article about the evidence for the SMA being populated by multi-lingual people.

Why an apogee in the formative? What about the terminal classic and postclassic? Rsheptak (talk) 01:49, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

The boundaries are given roughly because, as the entry elucidates, the SMA is as much a scholarly construct as it is an actual space and time. Basically, scholars speak of the SMA – or as the “Southern area” – because of the important early sites connected seemingly with later high developments, principally in the Classic Maya world. Accordingly, sites range from Chiapa de Corzo, with its distinct Maya or Mayoid artifacts (like the Horcones phase carved bones that are very Miraflores-like), to below Copán, this broad arc including the Pacific coast from Izapa and Paso de la Amada in the west through the Soconusco, Mexico, and the Guatemalan coast, piedmont, and highlands. You should think of sites, not a delimited geographical and temporal entity as if it were a unitary politically integrated entity.

I don’t understand what you mean when you say “The article is written as if the southern boundary exists in a vacuum, and all interaction was to the east, and north, with the Northern Maya Area and the Olmec heartland. Whatever model you want to use for the Olmec, the iconography isn’t bounded…etc.” If you mean that Olmec and Olmecoid phenomena should be considered part of the SMA, this is only true with respect to the latter, i.e., as an “influence” or still not understood “presence” of Olmec or Olmec-like traits at, for example, Takalik Abaj.

I also fail to understand the rest of your comment. Your comment about Usulutan ceramics seems to indicate a belief that ceramic distributions represent ethnic distributions, which is not the case, especially with Usulutan.

While Maya linguists believe there were several different languages spoken in the SMA in the Preclassic they struggle with linguistic distribution, that is, where and when questions. Jonathan K1938 (talk) 07:15, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Comments by Jonathan Kaplan

Nice map!! Obviously if possible it would be good to add a few more sites, at the least: Copan, Takalik Abaj, El Baul, Chalchuapa, Chocola, El Sitio, and El Jobo, in order to emphasize the multiplicity of large and important early polities in the SMA, tho I realize this may be difficult given the scale of the map and the size of the font. The point is, if visitors see the map with only a few sites the import of the SMA may not register. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathan K1938 (talk • contribs) 22:59, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

SMA map, etc.

Wow I am impressed. By the way I am thinking about comments from Maunus and others about what made me draw the lines, as it were, to delimit the SMA. It is really based on the SITES, that is on the data. The SMA itself is a theory we are still trying to test. But the sites included all display earlier-than-elsewhere "high traits." Archaeology ideally works with a continuous dialectic between data and theory - gathering data, making a hypothesis to explain it, gathering more data to test the hypothesis, finding new data that doesn't fit the theory, making a new theory, gathering more data to test it, and so on and so on. I thought I had made this clear in what I had written but will try to make it clearer.Jonathan K1938 (talk) 01:42, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Jonathan Kaplan back again!

At last the edited volume on the Southern Maya Area has a publication date - 4/25/2011 - so the general public will have access to other Southern area scholars' recent views. I have begun a new section, as had been recommended early on in the creation of this entry, that carries the discussion forward in time to include the Classic and the Postclassic. A site considered highly important but highly anomalous in Mesoamerica, Cotzumalguapa, belongs to the Middle Classic, and grew apparently because of successful competition for control of trade in cacao. The excellent map-maker really needs to redo the map to show both Cotzumalguapa and Chocola. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathanhiramkaplanreal (talk • contribs) 02:44, 23 December 2010 (UTC)