User talk:CJLL Wright/Archive XIX

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents
ARCHIVE INDEX (EDIT)
2005 2006 2007 2008
  • Archive XIX (Jan)

Jan '08

Talk page

Thanks for the talk page help. Hard-banned Primetime (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · block user · block log) was recently discovered to snuck back and he's angry about being found-out. ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:24, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey, no problem. Know how annoying those things can be. Looks to be a long-running prob with that ex-user, good luck with it all. Cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 08:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Teo Edits

Hi CJLL,

I think we may have corresponded a bit - I know I have with Madman. Anyway I keep my eye on the Teo page, mostly just to keep it from getting radically inaccurate. It could do with a longer overhaul but that may take a while for me to get to! cheers --Mhrobb (talk) 00:51, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Mhrobb, yes I believe that we have, and I think also via Dave H. (user:Chunchucmil). It's good to have someone of your expertise looking out for the Teo article- I hope that we'd be able in the not too distant future to give that one the full expanded treatment it deserves. Don't worry, whatever and whenever you can spare some time, that'd be great. If there's anything I, Madman, or others involved with WikiProject Mesoamerica can help out with in regards to wiki-formatting etc, pls don't hesitate to drop us a line. Also, if you've any general comments or suggestions for sources, themes to focus on, etc, would welcome any comments at the project talk page or on the talk page of the relevant article(s). Anyways, many thanks for your help and contribs thus far- take care, and cheers! (also posted at ur talkpg). --cjllw ʘ TALK 09:03, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Image:Lake Texcoco c 1519 .svg

This svg results in errors on my and other wikipedians browsers when viewed.

   XML Parsing Error: prefix not bound to a namespace
   Location: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ca/Lake_Texcoco_c_1519_.svg
   Line Number 7, Column 1:
   ...

Kagee (talk) 20:16, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting. I don't get those errors, but will look into it and see. This svg map was really only a 'test' conversion of one in png format (Image:Lake Texcoco c 1519 .png), and so it's not really a proper SVG layout. Unless or until it's converted into a proper vector-based svg, it is probably best to use the png format anyways. Thanks for the advice, tho, and cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 03:26, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The Virtual Turistic Guide of Honduras and WP:COI

User Honduristica originally posted an external link on the Honduras wikipedia page that pointed to a commerical advertising supported website ( http://www.honduristica.com The Virtual Turistic Guide of Honduras, in Spanish ) which user Kww deleted as WP:COI (and I agree it is). There have been two subsequent attempts to add the link back to the page posted from the IP address 190.4.46.6. I deleted the first attempt but its back again. Rather than start a delete war I thought I'd ask for another opinion.

I visted the site and found almost no content and lots of advertising so I'm of the opinion its not an appropriate or useful link, and that its been posted to generate "clicks".

Should this link be included?

Rsheptak (talk) 21:48, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi there Rus, sorry for slight delay in response, have been offline the past few days.
Yes, I agree with you that the link has COI concerns, and does not really provide access to any substantial encyclopaedic material that could complement the article. As it's also exclusively in spanish, it's of even less value to the general en-wiki readership. I've removed it again. Saludos, --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:20, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. Send, or post here, a list of the Yaxkin articles you might be interessted in reading and I'll see about getting some of them next week. Do it quick before I get immersed in archival documents again and forget to come up for air. Rsheptak (talk) 21:43, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Rus. Hey, that would be great. The index of Yaxkin articles at IHAH's site (PDF here) only goes up to 1989 (the PDF file itself seems to be incomplete..?).
Even so, a couple of those older titles that are listed, and which caught my eye and would be useful, if you are able to obtain any of them readily (am not expecting all), include:
  • Dixon, Boyd (1989). "Estudio preliminar sobre el patrón de asentamiento del Valle de Comayagua: corredor cultural prehistórico", Yaxkin (12):1
  • Abe, Masae (1988). "Los sitios monumentales en la zona norte del Valle de Florida", Yaxkin (11):2
  • Henderson, John S. (1988). "Investigaciones arqueológicas en el Valle de Sula", Yaxkin (11):1
  • Joyce, Rosemary (1985). "Resultados preliminares de las investigaciones en Cerro Palenque, Valle de Sula", Yaxkin (8):1-2
  • Stone, Doris Z. (1980). "Una interpretación del Ulúa", Yaxkin (3):3
  • Fowler, William R., Jr (1978). "Problemas del Período Postclásico en El Salvador central", Yaxkin (2):4
  • pretty much any of the papers in vol 5 no 2 (1982).
plus, of course, any of your or Rosemary's papers on Cerro Palenque, Travesia, Ulua-ware, etc. If there are any other papers which give a good account of Honduran sites that are otherwise not widely published elsewhere, that you might recommend, would be appreciated. In short, I don't want to detain you too long in looking around for these articles, but generally any article that you may easily come across describing the 'lesser-known' Honduran sites where info can be hard to come by. Once again, greatly appreciate your kind offer, and many thanks. Cheers, (also post at ur talkpg) --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:31, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Leichhardt, New South Wales

Sorry for reverting your edits. There have been a lot of changes today. Please keep an eye on the article.J Bar (talk) 07:45, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi J Bar, don't worry about it. Quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with that well-intentioned new editor, hopefully with some gentle coaching they can be brought up to speed on wikipedia's conventions. Cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 08:13, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Sahagun citation

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I don’t remember where the “new weds” claim came from when I massively copyedited and cleaned it. But the number of the page is the correct one. I already modified the article accordingly. Cheers and happy new year :) —Cesar Tort 06:32, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that, CT. And ¡Feliz Año Nuevo también a ti...!) --cjllw ʘ TALK 11:37, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Central America Project template

Thanks for the assistance. I just got the admin tools, so I though the lock icon was included in with the new tools for some silly reason. I'm fixing corresponding banners as well. Sorry for the screwup, but I'm still learning. I shouldn't repeat the mistake, though. John Carter (talk) 01:21, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi John, you're welcome. Don't worry about it; if there's anything I can help out with or advise on, just drop me a line. Saludos, --cjllw ʘ TALK 01:26, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Chocola

Hi. A comment and question about the entry I have been writing on Chocola.

The comment: because present knowledge of Chocola originates almost entirely from my project there (Proyecto Arqueologico Chocola), I would suggest to you that if you have questions about the content, professional scholars of Mesoamerica should be invited to review the entry. Some controversy exists between Mayanists who work in the northern Peten, on the one hand (Richard Hansen, for example), and Southern Maya area scholars such as myself. Of course, there is always disagreement among professional scholars; however, a genial but definite disagreement continues to stimulate debate about the origins of Maya civilization. The fact that Chocola, and our work at the site, is reviewed at some length in Robert Sharer's The Ancient Maya (Stanford U Press, 2005), the standard synthetic work on the Maya, warrants my assertion that, in general, scholars do accept the significance of Chocola, even if much remains to be discovered at the site. I do not know your bona fides with respect to the specialty scholarship of the Maya, but if you do have such specialty training, I would assume what I say here will not surprise you.

My question: an enormously longer entry could be composed, which would, conceivably, reprise Mesoamerican and Maya civilization (obviously in brief and summary fashion), with another section on the Southern Maya area, with subheaded sections on the highlands of Guatemala, the Pacific coast, and the piedmont; within these subsections, major sites such as Kaminaljuyu and Takalik Abaj would be discussed. Conceivably the bases for our knowledge of the Southern area, with the subsections I have described, would be discussed, as well - ceramics, figurines, monumental sculpture, settlement pattern, and so forth. In addition, theoretical issues could or also should be aired - sociopolitical complexity (how is this defined, origins, and so forth), culture history, the "ancient city," from a comparative prehistory perspective, and in Mesoamerica, linguistics, etc. My question is if an entry on one site, albeit in my view a potentially extremely important one not only for Maya studies but for the study of prehistory, in general, but one where archaeological investigation much continue for many years before we can say for sure exactly what Chocola comprised and meant in the various contexts of discussion possible, are such further sections and subsections warranted? I am sure there are many or will be many entries about Mesoamerica and its ancient cities, cultures, and so forth, so it would seem to me there might be some danger of redundancy, as well as some significant differences of opinion. I do not see, frankly, how all of this could be properly refereed. To sum up, I am more than willing to enlarge the entry on Chocola, but would appreciate guidance.

By the way, my doctorate is from Yale, and my advisors were Michael D. Coe and Mary Miller, two of the greatest Mesoamericanists alive today. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathan Kaplan1938 (talk • contribs) 03:38, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Jonathan, thanks for your comments, and also thanks for your welcome expansions and improvements to the Chocolá article! It's always a pleasure to have knowledgeable and credentialled contributors adding to wikipedia from their field of expertise. I myself haven't a formal degree in this field, only a long-standing interest and some familiarity with the sources and region.
There should generally be no issue for you to add material based on your own research, with however a couple of provisos.
Firstly, the material needs to have been (notably) published, ie on the public record somewhere, so to speak. This requirement stems mainly from our local policies of Verifiability and No Original Research, which are essentially designed to ward off spurious, speculative and 'hobby-horse' additions. Per verifiability, it's required that statements (whether of fact or of interpretation) are traceable and attributable to some reliable source that can be verified, and that furthermore the statement fairly reflects the degree of its standing and acceptance among the wider body of field literature. "No Original Research" disbars the mention of novel claims that have not been (verifiably) published previously, since wikipedia is not a research outlet but rather supposed to be more like a compendium of the knowledge and interpretations that have already circulated in the field's published literature. Thus it's generally OK to use a published paper that is putting forward a new interpretation that differs from the current 'status quo' view(s), as long as it's attributed and identified as such; but not OK for an article to put forward a novel synthesis that cannot be found in any reliably published literature.
In your case, there's clearly no problem to quote from your own published research, particulary when (as you note) a lot of info on this site originates from that archaeological project. However, unlike a journal paper, wikipedia tends to steer clear from 'in press', 'unpublished notes', and 'personal communication' types of sources- preferring instead published sources where these are available. That said, a lot also depends on the nature of the statements being added- the more controversial or novel the view, the stronger is the requirement to back up the statement with verifiable sources. Again, I don't think there's any issue here with your edits to this site's article.
Secondly, so long as one is mindful of our Conflict of Interest and Neutral Point of View (NPOV) policies, writing based on one's own published research should not be an issue. Other editors may potentially chime in on occasion with the intention of seeing that balance and proportion are maintained; any content here is liable to challenge from time to time, sometimes the challenge is informed sometimes not- so if you're prepared to discuss and work around any alterations there should be no problems.
As far as your comment that there are perhaps different scholarly takes on the site's importance (and indeed a whole range of things), the way we try to address that is to document what those varying views are in the article, attributed to their sources, and (insofar as possible) in the relative proportion to their currency within the field. Note that, when I amended the so-called 'importance' rating on the WikiProject Mesoamerica banner on the article's talk page, that's not directly a reflection of how 'significant' the site is to Maya scholarship. Those ratings are really only an aid to prioritising the WikiProject's scope and workload, and as such 'importance' would be better-named as 'priority', but was arbitrarily named the former only due to historical reasons. The assignment of values to these project ratings is a judgement call, this page attempts to describe the relative values and rationale- I've bumped the rating up to 'high' for Chocola for focus.
You raise an interesting question, here's my take on it. While it's good practice to avoid excessive repetition across articles, each article should be able to stand on its own and provide sufficient information within the article itself to give the reader a solid-enough understanding of the topic and where it fits in, without having to flip back-and-forth between different articles. So for an article on a given Maya site, it would be appropriate to include sufficient background information on its milieu and regional interactions to place it in some overall context. Somehow, without reprising an entire reconstructed history and description of the Southern Maya lowlands, the Chocola article would benefit from at least a summarised description of the main points and regional influences that may colour interpretations of findings at the site itself. Actually, what you have identified is the need for a separate article on the Southern Maya lowlands itself to be commenced (we lack one currently), which can contain all that detail and synthesis at the regional level. The Chocola article can then address specific relevant highlights of its regional setting, and at the same time cross-reference with the overall regional article which contains a lot more detailing of the background. We actually are in need of a whole suite of articles on various identified subregions of Mesoamerica, those that we do have tend to be either quite brief, or extracts from the top-level articles (Mesoamerica, Maya civilization, etc.) We have top-level/overviews, and quite a few specific sites, but comparatively few developed articles that give any depth to a regional assessment and reconstruction.
Setting those regional articles up is a long-term goal; you'd be quite welcome to kick off a Southern Maya lowlands article if you had the time and inclination. My suggestion would be, if you prefer to flesh out the Chocola article some more, is to make a start on some background context passages there. We can always transfer material to build further upon into other/new articles later down the track, and the 'hierarchy' of scope between articles is something that's subject to ongoing change and improvement. If investigations at Chocola are answering (or posing) questions that have a regional or pan-cultural scope, these can certainly be covered in its article, but also perhaps mentioned at other relevant articles too. You might also like to take a look at one of our best-developed Mesoam. site articles, Chunchucmil, for some ideas on the direction and scope. As always, myself and other active members of WP:MESO would be glad to assist with any editing or other general queries, so pls feel free to drop us a line on our or an article's talk pages; WP:MESO's project discussion board is also somewhere where comments and queries can be directed.
I hope the above addresses your queries, would be glad to clarify anything. The main thing, as is said around here 'be bold' in updating, the content and relationship between articles typically develops over time. Kind regards, (also posted to your talkpg), --cjllw ʘ TALK 02:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Dear CJ, Though, like any active scholar, my plate is full, I will try to expand the Chocola entry with short reprises as discussed, as background, specifically with a section on the "Southern Maya Area." Can you tell me - being somewhat dysfunctional with the composition mechanisms - how to create headings and subheadings? I do agree an entry might be created on the Southern Maya area, and, given time, I can try to come up with something. - Jonathan —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathan Kaplan1938 (talk • contribs) 02:32, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Jonathan, don't worry I quite understand the pressures of time, so no rush or expectation- whatever and whenever you can, that'd be great.
To create a section heading within an article, at the appropriate juncture you simply enclose the heading title on a new line between equals-signs, like so (need to have the same number before and after):
==Southern Maya lowlands==
then start writing the text of the section from a new line immediately below. By increasing the number of equals-signs you increase the indentation of the header level; eg three ='s ===Section title=== will produce a 3rd-level (sub)header, and so on. By convention on articles we start with 2nd-level headers, then 3rd, 4th and sometimes 5th level, if a section needs to be further broken down. The Manual of style describes this, and other common markup techniques.
To create a new article, follow any of the methods outlined at WP:CREATE.
Best, (replying also to your talkpg) --cjllw ʘ TALK 03:08, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Tagging

Came across your comment, completely on accident :) Just wanted to let you know, I've replied, and, I'll stop the process, until we work out the issue presented here. SQLQuery me! 08:48, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, all the articles tagged by me deal directly with Mexico, or, in the case of Mesoamerican culture, in an area directly related to those cultures, whose area included Mexico. Those that were tagged automatically fall within a category which directly related to Mexico as per the title of the category, and I assumed that they were correctly placed in those categories. Unforunately, I myself saw Mitt Romney being tagged with the banner, and his relationship with Mexico is at best peripheral. I have since removed that banner. My intention, when I can get to it, which I hope is shortly, is to go through and assess all the articles myself, most of which are now comfortably in the unassessed Mexico articles category, to see if the banner belongs there and if it doesn't remove it. But it does make it a lot easier to proceed this way, because, given articles placed in multiple related categories, going through the main category tree would mean visiting the article several times. This way, they only get seen once apiece. John Carter (talk) 14:18, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
Oh, ouch. It took me a bit to figure out why it tagged that one. Apparently he's in Category:Mexican Latter Day Saints, which.... understandably was on the list. As I noted at WT:MEXICO, I put a list of what's left up in User:SQL/Sandbox, and stopped the bot, if you want to tweak what it's tagging. Or, let me know, if you'd rather not complete the task (about 300 categories left, about 7-800 completed). SQLQuery me! 14:29, 17 January 2008 (UTC)
OK, thanks both, John and SQL. If a human is going to go through those already tagged with a sanity check as John suggests, then that should do.
After a quick look through that list of the remaining cats, most would seem to be apt ones, and so will leave it up to John whether the bot can be reinitiated to complete the job. One that did stand out in a quick scan, as being unlikely, is Cat:Venetian language— of the few in that one, only Chipilo Venetian dialect would have relevance for Mexico. Cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:55, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

sample draft of expansion of Chocola entry

The following represents a start at a longer entry. It gives you some idea of the complexity of the ideas and subject matter to be tackled; obviously a very compendious bibliography would have to be appended, as well as very numerous links to other topics, such as "Northern Peten sites," "Pacific Coast," "Maya languages," and so forth, to say nothing of many links to more general anthropological and archaeological topics.

“Maya Civilization” Controversy continues about the origins of Maya civilization as scholars continue vigorously to search for and engage in debate about the roots or first impulses of what became an ancient civilization that traditionally is considered to have been one of the greatest of the world, that of the ancient Maya. In considering the question, one risks falling into ultimately meaningless arguments about how “origins” might be considered or defined – essentially arguments about inevitably subjectively rendered entities or topics, giving way to questions such as, What is “Maya civilization”? What is “Maya”? What is “civilization”? What allows us to call this or that civilization “great”? and even, What constitutes “ancient” as opposed to “modern”? (This last question is not so hair-splitting as one might think with regard to the Maya since, contrary to popular misunderstanding, the Maya did not disappear in the 10th century AD but continued, albeit in very different yet conceivably more “complex” ways, socially and culturally, until the coming in the 16th century of the Spanish conquerors of the New World.) Despite these seemingly terminologically pitfall-laden inquiries, the research question about Maya origins does contain certain innate justifications for professional focus and elaboration, since all historical topics are, by their very nature, constituted not only by ascriptions weighting the given topic in importance and cast by this or that interpretation or interpretative context but, also, by “fact.” Of necessity, these kinds of questions are rooted in the history of scholarship about this or that topic, and (to use the word even in Foucault’s sense or a critical or reflexive sense) an “archaeology” of the scholarship is undertaken often or inevitably with different or new emphases or de-emphases, usually generationally or paradigmatically determined. “Maya civilization” is both a reality and a construct, with strands in the weave composed of actual patterns and “emergent” entities and characteristics but also of patterns and agentive decisions in the scholarly world, these, themselves, retroactively considered and reconsidered in the same way, more or less, that a great author’s “importance” can enjoy waxings or suffer wanings of estimation. While discussions of “origins” of this or that entity in history is inevitably postdicted – that is, constructed in varying degree by the inquiry and the inquirer, with his or her presuppositions, prejudices and predilections inevitably in play – yet another possible confound is the very equally balanced options of consideration based on ascent or descent, configured in anthropology as between cladistics and genetics, or between overdetermination (per Marx, as in many causes leading to a single result), and multiple determinations from single causes. Again, for reasons of space, this article will not discuss such conceivably unanswerable questions, even though not to do so risks taking archaeology into the realm of armchair story-telling. The author of this article admits to the inclination to consider “cultures,” “peoples,” and “civilizations” in rough agreement with the views of Fustel de Coulanges in the 19th century and Wheatley in the 20th century of the “ancient city” as similar in many ways to the individual organism, with a birth, a life, and a death. Hence, Maya civilization was organic, with its own trajectory of rise and fall, albeit influenced or created in whatever degree by environmental and contextual factors: physical ecological impacts, non-Maya neighbors and rivals, and unique or historically acute contingencies such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that decimated ancient polities, rulerships and ideologies, and economic systems and networks. For reasons of space and to avoid spiralling down into unanswerable debates the scope of this article will not nor cannot be expanded to include such topics as “civilization” – although this term and concept has been debated in many different contexts including that of anthropology (see, for example, Kluckhohn and Kroeber’s famous dissection [1952]). The “facts” about the “Maya” – that “Maya” is a distinct and discrete entity in the reality of history, that it is an “emergent” with sufficiently stark and dramatic characteristics to justify its continued emphasis as such – derive from such varied observed inner cohesions as language and “culture” (this term, too, controversial and having many meanings and applications – in the context of this article, it is interchangeable with “cultural traits” and “cultures,” although – somewhat maddeningly – the very notion of fixed “cultures” is somewhat controversial, as well. Indeed, only with misgivings does the responsible prehistorian, historian, or archaeologist seek to avoid such otherwise glaring problems as the notion of “ethnicity,” since ethnicity, according to the work of Barth, Cohen, and others, refers to an entity – an ethnicity – as the product entirely of ascription of identity by a group of itself, and by other groups of that group, according at the most basic level to an existential requisite to distinguish Self from Other). The “Maya” and “Maya civilization” first began to coalesce as distinct topics in history and intellectual discourse with the development of Western, Enlightenment-based intellectual enterprises such as historiography, social science, anthropology and archaeology. Indicative of the “archaeological” nature of the development of the inquiry into the Maya is the fact that the first accurate descriptions and characterizations came from a travel writer, John Lloyd Stephens, a New York lawyer, romantically fascinated explorer, and amateur diplomat assigned the difficult task by President Martin Van Buren of locating for the purpose of presenting diplomatic credentials to the almost completely fictitious “government of Central America.” The difficulty of Stephens’ task derived from the fact that there was no single Central American government, despite very brief manifestations of efforts to create such an entity, efforts which quickly faltered and failed. Ironically – and to the great benefit of Maya scholarship – the very difficulty of Stephens’ mission served as a justification for Stephens to travel widely throughout what in the 1820’s was a true terra incognita to Western eyes, sensibilities and knowledge, and, in most practical respects, to allow him to discover Maya civilization for Western comprehension as a distinct entity spread out over much of Guatemala, southern Mexico, Yucatan, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador. In astonishingly prescient fashion, Stephens noticed a unity to and internal integrity in the jungle-covered edifices of ancient cities, carved monuments, and even Maya hieroglyphic writing, as he travelled, with great difficulty and often at great peril, through Yucatan, Mexico, and Honduras; his descriptions of travelling through some of the most difficult terrain in the world, enduring all sorts of hardship, and eventually succumbing to malaria contracted during his journeys, remain today as breathtakingly exciting as they were when first published – the occasion, indeed, nothing less than the discovery of Maya civilization as a whole. Accordingly, the Maya as a subject that remains wholly fascinating not only to scholars but to millions around the world are due in no small part to Stephens. His uncannily accurate observations and absolutely fresh and original assumptions – uninfluenced and untrammelled by the conclusions of others – not only have held up virtually to the entirety of Maya scholarship after him but have been resorted to nearly continuously by succeeding generations of professional scholars. His partner in travel and in the production of what became bestselling books in the 1830’s was the great illustrator, Leslie Catherwood, whose drawings of hieroglyphic-bearing sculptures and of jungle-choked buildings are prized even today for their depictions of now lost objects and perspectives. While Stephens and Catherwood were not the first Westerners to visit and record their observations of evidences of ancient Maya civilization, they remain unarguably the proper claimants to the title of its discoverers both because of the panoramic view they provided, integrating observations from areas as far distant from one another as Yucatan and northern Honduras, and because of the extraordinary accuracy of their detail and presciently correct conclusions. They remain at least on a par in importance with other great early modern scholars such as Brasseur de Bourbourg, Alfred Maudslay, Alfred Tozzer, and Ernst Förstemann, and later pioneers such as Sylvanus Morley, J. E. S. Thompson, Yuri Knorosov, Tatiana Proskouriakoff, and the extraordinary archaeologists of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. The point behind this detour into the origins of the discussion of the Maya and of Maya civilization is that there were “real” components allowing scholars to consider whatever it is that “Maya” was as a distinct and anciently unified entity, notwithstanding also the very real impacts and influences of scholarly biases, prejudices, presuppositions and predilections that have gone into the construction of the subject; with respect to these latter forces in scholarship, just as they are impactful in the popular mind and imagination for any topic, for the Maya the romantic allure continues to swell the ranks of Mayanists sometimes almost to absurdity and the fine-grained nature of the inquiries almost to the nano-level. The allure of the Maya to the public may be measured by the great proliferation of amusingly if not outrageously nonsensical tracts claiming to interpret the hieroglyphics and Maya calendar according to “New Age” teleologies and eschatologies. The pertinence of this observation for the present article on Chocolá leads into the next a discussion of the Southern Maya Zone, in the very heart of which lies the site of the ancient city of Chocolá.

The Southern Maya Zone Maya scholarship long has considered the ancient Maya in a temporal and geographic sense to have come into being, thermometer-fashion – as things began to “warm up,” socially and culturally – at the “bottom,” that is, in Southern Mesoamerica. In other words, events and processes coalesced in the coast, piedmont and highlands of southern Guatemala and the Pacific coast of Mexico. Mayanists principally from Brigham Young University’s New World Archaeological Foundation but from other centers as well have pioneered the efforts to discover the radix of Maya civilization from work at such sites as Izapa and Chiapa de Corzo, building on extraordinary efforts by scholars such as Michael Coe at La Victoria, on the southern Pacific coast of Mexico, and followed up by the work of scholars such as John Clark, Barbara Voorhies, Barbara Stark, and others. Notable, as well, is the work of Franz Termer at Palo Gordo. Work by Carnegie archaeologists, A. V. Kidder and E. M. Shook, at Kaminaljuyu has been fundamental in moving attention to the origins of Maya civilization to the South. Since their work, many other sites have been studied, including Paso de la Amada, El Sitio, El Jobo, La Blanca, and Ujuxte. The notion of an aboriginal Maya stimulus – linguistic, cultural, and ethnic strands interweaving together early on, that is, from late in the Paleoindian or Archaic periods – derives from two primary but not exclusive considerations, reconstructions of Maya linguistics and the Olmec. Beyond these two “emergent” factors, processual archaeology continues to look at functionalist and highly theoretized aspects of social and cultural process, including egalitarian-to-hierarchical communities and other cultural evolutionary sequences for example, those of Service and Fried, and of environmental-based, “man-land interactions,” and zero-sum finite resource responses (e.g., “carrying capacity”). Rough and sometimes illogically and erroneously inspired characterizations of social and development derived from evolutionary biology threaten to muddy the discussion just as traditional yet persistent cultural historical characterizations leave many questions unanswered, given their emphasis on description as opposed to explanation. Discussions of the Southern Maya Zone as important if not essential to the rise of Classic Maya civilization must be related to discussions of the putative primacy of developments in the Northern Petén, and vice-versa. Fundamentally, the debate is between those who put more weight on the temporal priority and complex cultural and social achievements in the South as opposed to those who favour northern Guatemala for these developments. Conclusions based on absolute dating, especially when events are dated by 14C (“calibrated” or “uncalibrated”) – still the most widely used absolute dating method in Mesoamerica – cannot be rendered more fine-grained than ca. 100 years and often are much less precise. Accordingly, the temporal priority debate will remain unresolved unless and until other absolute dating methods such as archaeomagnetics and luminescence (hitherto, thermoluminescence), are applied more widely. While relative dating methods, principally ceramic, are highly reliable, having been cross-referenced from many sites, and with sophisticated statistics available, unless anchored to absolute dates these remain uncertain especially when the scholar’s focus is on the early periods of development in Mesoamerica. “High traits” of ancient Maya civilization prominently include hieroglyphic writing and the Maya Long Count calendar, with the former constituting one of a handful, worldwide, of pristine inventions of writing and the latter comprising the invention of the concept of zero and other mathematical achievements unequalled at the time in Europe as well as extraordinary achievements in astronomy. Beginning in the Late Preclassic period and proliferating exponentially during the Classic Maya period, Maya texts are dateable because correlation can made between Maya Long Count dates and the Gregorian calendar. Accordingly, with great certainty we can speak of the Classic Maya as framed by the large-scale appearance throughout the Maya world of dated texts on carved monuments by the third-fourth century AD, and by the disappearance of these texts on monuments by the 10th century AD. (Consensual acceptance of one correlation between the Maya Long Count and the Gregorian calendar – known as the Good-Martinez-Thompson “or G.M.T.” correlation – has come only fairly recently. In this correlation, a beginning date of August 12, 3114 BC gives the Maya calendar its arrow-of-time character, just as the 0 date for the Christian calendar divides Western time-keeping into an absolute divide and, at the same, permits an infinity of both past and future time to be considered as opposed to “cyclical time.”) One of the arguments in favor of the Southern area as “more seminal” to those of the Petén is based on the thus far inarguable fact that by far the greatest number of hieroglyphic texts and a few of the earliest calendrical texts as well are found in the South, although the very earliest – by ca. 100 years – known thus far are found at Chiapa de Corzo and Tres Zapotes, that is, from sites with an Olmec (or “epi-Olmec”) identity. Calendrical origins, themselves, from the most compelling evidence, must be attributed to a thin latitudinal band stretching across southern Guatemala, and including sites such as Chocolá and Tak’alik Abaj. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathan Kaplan1938 (talk • contribs) 06:26, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Crikey, Jonathan, you work fast! On a quick reading this looks to be a most useful basis to kick off a regional article- with as you note backing refs to be added and some dovetailing and shoehorning to make it fit more comfortably into the wikipedia writing style (less like a paper or a book chapter, more like an encyclopaedia, if you see what I mean...). Happy to review it a little more, though I may not be online much the next couple of days, until next week. Thanks, and cheers --cjllw ʘ TALK 11:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Chocola...more

Well it is all in my head and just pours out, the product however of many years of study and thinking about these matters. I do appreciate your feedback and will continue working on this as it seems a good thing to do for the sake providing accurate information for web-surfers around the world! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathan Kaplan1938 (talk • contribs) 13:21, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Pardon me for jumping in here, but I thought I'd toss in a few comments:
  1. Welcome to Wikipedia! We are very glad to have you here.
  2. I echo CJLL's comments that the material above is more suited to the general Maya civilization article or a more narrowly-defined article entitled, say, Origins of the Maya civilization or some such. It's a bit off-topic for the Chocola article.
  3. In contrast to your work on the Chocola article, the work above is a bit more essay-like, or magazine-article-like what with words like "vigourous" and this phrase: "The allure of the Maya to the public may be measured by the great proliferation of amusingly if not outrageously nonsensical tracts".
In any case, I'm looking forward to further edits from you. Thanks, Madman (talk) 20:27, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Chocola

Hi. I have added considerably to the Chocola entry. A contemplated final and short section will detail the two most interesting things about Chocola, cacao and hydraulics. I hope my entry is meeting muster. Jonathan (talk) 19:19, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

chocola, a bit more

In answer to Madman's observation that much of the added material is better suited to an entry on the Southern Maya area or on other larger Maya topics, I would argue that Chocola needs to be understood within its context. Given the elaboration of research detail now available, an entry on the Southern Maya area should have its own take on matters. Although I could start this entry, this would have to wait since my plate currently is full. If I were to write it, it would have both more, and much more specific, content and its own large set of references. I tried to send this comment to Madman but could not find a way to do it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathan Kaplan1938 (talk • contribs) 19:25, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Celt?

I have used the word celt in the article on Sitakunda Upazila, but it is creating some confusion as the word generally means a group of people, not an implement. If you can clear this confusion, please, leave a note on Talk:Sitakunda Upazila. Aditya(talk • contribs) 04:12, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Aditya, I've left a note on that talk page to the effect that celt (tool) is (IMO, at least) quite a well-known term for certain adze/axe-like implements. Regards, --cjllw ʘ TALK 04:21, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for the help. Kyoko has another question, left on Talk:Sitakunda Upazila. Can you take a look at it? Aditya(talk • contribs) 15:00, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Sure, have taken a shot at answering. Cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 13:24, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Chocola stuff

Hi CJ. I will add page refs to my cits as soon as I can access my library - now in storage after a couple of years with me in Guatemala at Chocola. I appreciate your prefs for how the cits and bibliographies are handled and will try to amend accordingly.Jonathan (talk) 23:38, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey Jonathan. Sounds good. I will see if I can't a little later on make a start myself there on setting out that notes/referencing style, and when you've regained access to your books you can start adding the page nos etc. Saludos, --cjllw ʘ TALK 00:02, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Kaminaljuyu entry

Dear CJ, The Kaminaljuyu entry is woefully scant, out-of-date, and inaccurate. I did my doctoral thesis on Kaminaljuyu, and, when time permits, with your permission, I would like to try to make it better.Jonathan (talk) 03:04, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

But of course! Agreed, that's an article on a key site that has as yet received scant attention. No need at all to ask, although I appreciate the courtesy; whenever you have the time and inclination, pls feel free to be bold and tackle this or any of the others that catch your eye as in need of improvement. We'll do what we can to assist...(if we can keep up, that was an extraordinary expansion you've whipped up for the Southern Maya area article, and Chocola continues apace- excellent stuff much appreciated, JK! Saludos, --cjllw ʘ TALK 07:39, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Southern Maya Area

Hi CJ. I appreciate your comments and hope you will continue to monitor and advise. It is my professional business, by the way, to be "up" on these matters, although I do not claim to have all or all of the most accurate information. Saying that, there are but a few Mayanists working diligently in the Southern area and I am one of them. At any rate, I will keep pecking away. Cheers!Jonathan (talk) 23:27, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

CJLL, could you please delete Image:Fig1finalfixed.JPG. Jonathan uploaded it for me to use to make a map for him the Southern Maya area and perhaps other articles, but it doesn't belong in Wikipedia, being under copyright and all etc etc. I added a speedy delete tag. Thanks, Madman (talk) 23:47, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
ok, 'tis done. Look forward to seeing your map! Cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 23:56, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
Whoa! That was fast. Thanks, Madman (talk) 00:05, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Kaminaljuyu

Hi CJ, I have worked on the Kaminaljuyu entry and think it pretty fairly complete, given the brevity necessary for an encyclopedia. I sent a table to Madman showing the ceramic sequence of the Highlands/KJ, which is an important part of any entry on the city. I am hoping he can remake it into a web-friendly image and insert it. (I also sent him a map to be used as a basis for a Web map showing the Southern Maya area, and am hoping similarly he can fashion this acceptably to put into the SMA entry.) At any rate, please take a look at it and let me know if it suffices to raise it to a higher level in the Wiki ranking. Jonathan —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jonathan Kaplan1938 (talk • contribs) 17:18, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Takalik Abaj

Hi CJ. The Takalik Abaj entry is woefully inadequate. Example: the text states that TA is the only site known thus far with both Maya and Olmec art and artifacts. This is very far from the fact. I do not have the time at the moment to fix this. If you have on your Meso committee folks like Michael Love, Barbara Arroyo, John Clark, or, best, one of the directors of the Proyecto Nacional Takalik Abaj - Christa Schieber de Lavarreda, who is English-fluent - it would be probably be better handled, although I can do the chore to a minimum of adequacy. But not right now.Jonathan (talk) 21:00, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Pardon me for jumping in, but you'll find that several of the archaeological articles in Wikipedia are on the dodgy side and many more are incomplete. Izapa, for example, is incomplete as well as poorly written. And now you've experienced a reason that they aren't upgraded more often -- there's a shortage of time and talent. But we keep plugging away.
I got your ceramic sequence. It would be difficult to transform this into a wiki-table. Even a simple table in wiki-markup is, in my humble opinion, a royal pain. Nonetheless, I will think about how to do this. By the way, this is great information! Madman (talk) 23:46, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Votan NOT Woden

I need some help in changing the way that Votan redirects. It currently points to Woden, a Norse god, but really merits a new entry. Votan in Mesoamerican history is the name of a legendary grandson of Noah who reportedly migrated with his family to Mexico after the Flood. His story is recounted in La Historia Antigua de México (1780) by Francisco Javier Clavijero. However, for more than two centuries, this character has been confused with Wotan, Odin, or some other Nordic white guy when in fact he's someone totally different. The current Wikipedia entry is perpetuating that confusion. I'd like to create a separate entry for Votan that would include comments on the mythological figure as well as other entities in popular (and pseudoscientific) Mesoamerican lore, such as "Pacal Votan" and "Valum Votan", who are derived from Clavijero's reference. How do I do that (and also change the relevant redirects)? Hoopes (talk) 07:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi there Hoopes, I replied at your talk page here. I'd only heard of 'Votan' in a Mesoamerican context from the pseudo-mythology spouted by Arguelles, and his Pakal Votan / Telektonon concoction. So it's interesting to find out there's some earlier basis to it; look forward to seeing how that turns out. Any other assistance I can provide, just let me know. Best, --cjllw ʘ TALK 07:52, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help and suggestions! I had also heard of "Votan" only through pseudoscientific sources (Donnelly first and then later Arguelles), but found more information while doing some research on Brasseur de Bourbourg. I still haven't tracked down a reliable reference to the original late 17th century work by Bishop Nuñez de la Vega that is cited by Clavigero, but his is the earliest reference to Votan I've been able to find so far. The story is repeated by Clavijero in 1780, who is cited in turn by Charles Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg in 1857 and then Ignatius L. Donnelly in 1882. Both of them mention Palenque, but I suspect that Donnelly, whose work on Atlantis had renewed popularity in the 1960s and 1970s (remember Donovan's "Atlantis"?), is the source for ideas that resulted in the "Pakal Votan" mythology. Any further suggestions on how to improve this entry would be great. Hoopes (talk) 03:11, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Votan's an intriguing character who appears in a great deal of 19tn century literature but all but disappears from everything but pseudohistorical and pseudoscientific discussion in the 20th century. From his first mention, his story is encumbered with speculation about Noah and migrations from the Old World to the New. Over time, due primarily to the similarity of "Votan" and "Wotan", there is even more speculation about his being a "white" wanderer from Europe. I'm guessing that many academics began avoiding discussion of Votan with the rise of the Third Reich, Nazi archaeology, and references to Votan in SS lore, and this continued as his mythology expanded with New Age speculation. Despite his prominent mention in early literature, his name is absent from the index of Morley's "The Ancient Maya" and he didn't rate an entry in Miller & Taube's ""The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya". I decided to create this entry to try and head off some of the mystery that fosters wild speculation. Furthermore, there may well be an interesting story behind the original Votan. Hoopes (talk) 03:55, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Hoopes, no worries. And many thanks for that extremely interesting expansion on Votan- good work! Just one or two minor stylistic conventions there that I'll update. One thing that would be great to add in when you get a chance is a couple of inline cites against the key assertions, to annotate where that particular info comes from. This is accomplished by enclosing the annotation between <ref> and </ref> tags, immediately after the sentence. You can use a Harvard-esque abbr., for example:
Some statement that would benefit from an inline cite specifying the source of the information.<ref>Smith and Jones (1992, pp.123-125).</ref>
The cited work (here Smith and Jones) would be expanded in full bibliographical style under the 'references' section. I'll have a go at adding in some of these, but may need your help for page no's etc as I don't have those works to hand myself.
Otherwise I think this serves its purpose admirably. It will be interesting to see if anything from actual Maya legendary accounts turns up, as opposed to the subsequent embellishments and projections by Europeans from Clavijero onwards. Regards (posted also at your talkpg),--cjllw ʘ TALK 05:32, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Michael E. Smith is again active on Wikipedia

CJLL, I wanted to alert you, in your role as the Official Greeter and Ringmaster of WP:MESO, that Michael E Smith is again active here at Wikipedia. In fact, I just posted to his Talk page responding to a rather unhelpful editor who accused Dr Smith of a conflict of interest. FYI, Madman (talk) 17:57, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I figure that User:Hoopes is archaeologist John W. Hoopes. But you probably knew that. Madman (talk) 19:24, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
Hi Madman. Yes, I'd seen MES' recent and helpful contribs, and was also glad to see Maunus recreate his too-hastily deleted article. COI vigilance is fine, but it wouldn't have taken much snooping around for the watchful to establish his bona fides as a citeable source, and notable article. Thx for weighing in on that one, and thx also for your initiative and time spent with JK- since none of us can be everywhere it's gratifying to know there are more pairs of eyes on the pelota, so to speak- and that the project never sleeps ;-)
I believe you're right in your other assertion- you would prob. have seen on AZTLAN-l his recent encouragements to wiki participation. Think we're off to a good start this year. Cheers, --cjllw ʘ TALK 23:07, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
ps. If anyone has some time to spare to carry out any of the maintenance/upkeep/tidying tasks for the project space and activities, they'd be more than welcome to chip away, at any time and without prior notification. While far from being of critical importance, there are a few pages such as priority/cleanup listings and so on that haven't been updated in quite a while. A more formal and extended set of Mesoamerica-editing guidelines (eg naming/orthography conventions, checklists for what kinds of info should be mentioned in an article about a site, or a culture, &c) would be good to work out. Or even, a tailored new-user welcome/invite msg that gives some pointers to some newcomer who's shown some aptitude on Meso articles. Or anything else you may think of as being useful, and worth the time to develop. --cjllw ʘ TALK 00:04, 31 January 2008 (UTC)


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