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Books by Susan Milbrath

Cosmology, Calendars, and Horizon-Based Astronomy in Ancient Mesoamerica, 2015

This chapter by Susan Milbrath and Anne Dowd explores introduces the topics and table of content... more This chapter by Susan Milbrath and Anne Dowd explores introduces the topics and table of contents in this volume in honor of Anthony F. Aveni, edited by Anne Dowd and Susan Milbrath

Decoding the Codex Borgia: Visual Symbols of Time and Space in Ancient Mexico, 2024

The index of my book will allow the reader to understand the scope of this volume, which covers n... more The index of my book will allow the reader to understand the scope of this volume, which covers not only the Codex Borgia but also its relationship to Aztec ethnohistory and religion, as documented in chronicles and codices. There are a number of cross references to ethnography drawn from the broader area of Mesoamerica, especially those relevant to the seasonal cycle and agricultural practices. The field of cultural astronomy is also a focus because the text includes discussion of the solar calendar, lunar cycles, and images of planets and constellations.

Birds and Beasts of Ancient Mesoamerica: Animal Symbolism in the Postclassic period, 2023

The introductory chapter highlights the main themes developed in this edited volume published by ... more The introductory chapter highlights the main themes developed in this edited volume published by University of Press of Colorado. This volume brings together the sciences and humanities in an intriguing fashion, for it links Precolumbian imagery of animals with scientific data related to animal morphology and behavior. The varied patterns of animals in nature were noticed by the indigenous people of Mexico, and they created myths and visual images that serve as records of their observations. Early colonial period documents also enhance our understanding of nature, as seen through the perspective of the Maya and Aztec cultures. Mythological elements are also apparent in ancient Mexican animal imagery, for real animals were merged with fantastical creatures, creating zoological oddities not unlike medieval European bestiaries. After the Spanish conquest, these bestiaries may have inspired early colonial period records describing animals of the New World, but their natural history also reflects close observation of animal behavior, life cycles, and anatomy and habitats. Rituals involving animals is also a main theme of this book, featuring imagery from painted books, monumental sculpture, portable arts and archaeological evidence from the field of zooarchaeology.

Papers by Susan Milbrath

Das Bild der Jahreszeiten im Wandel der Kulturen und Zeiten, 2013

iii. morphome Der Jahreszeiten in archäoloGie unD KunstGeschichte Jan n. BREmmER The Birth of the... more iii. morphome Der Jahreszeiten in archäoloGie unD KunstGeschichte Jan n. BREmmER The Birth of the Personified Seasons (Horai) in Archaic and Classical Greece 161 DiEtRicH BoscHUnG Temporaanni:Personifikationen der Jahreszeiten in der römischen Antike 179 sUsannE WittEKinD Orte der Zeit-Form, Funktion und Kontext von Kalenderbildern im Mittelalter 201 stEPHan KEmPERDicK Die Geburt Christi zu Ostern? Jahreszeiten in der altniederländischen Malerei

University Press of Colorado eBooks, Dec 14, 2023

This chapter summarizes key points in the volume chapters and defines some wider trends in animal... more This chapter summarizes key points in the volume chapters and defines some wider trends in animal symbolism ancient cultures in the old world.

Antiquity, Nov 25, 2010

an undiscovered or now-extinct ‘wild maize’. This argument ran from 1939 for more than half a cen... more an undiscovered or now-extinct ‘wild maize’. This argument ran from 1939 for more than half a century, and was only resolved when plant genetics and DNA analyses showed that the Beadle/teosinte school was in essence correct. The other revelation came from AMS radiocarbon dating, which demonstrated that prior estimates of the antiquity of cultivated maize, notably those based on the work of Richard S. MacNeish in the Tehuacan Valley of central Mexico, were several millennia too old. Staller narrates all of this with good citation, although still with redundant passages that obscure an otherwise fascinating narrative of scientific history.

White Paper: Venus and the Great Eclipse of 1496 in Codex Borgia 39-40. In Cosmology in Amerind... more White Paper: Venus and the Great Eclipse of 1496 in Codex Borgia 39-40. In Cosmology in Amerindian Culture, electronic publication of the Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, New Mexico, on line February 2011. http://www.santafe.edu/media/workingpapers/11-02-007.pdf

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2006

Información del artículo Ethnoastronomy in Cultural Context Songs from the Sky, Indigenous Astron... more Información del artículo Ethnoastronomy in Cultural Context Songs from the Sky, Indigenous Astronomical and Cosmological Traditions of the World edited by Von Del Chamberlain, John B. Carlson & M. Jane Young. ...

Birds and Beasts of Ancient Mesoamerica: Animal Symbolism in the Postclassic Period, 2023

This chapter focuses on representations of animals in an almanac on Codex Borgia 49-53 and encod... more This chapter focuses on representations of animals in an almanac on Codex Borgia 49-53 and encoded calendar cycles. Ten scenes include animals attacking one another, scenes of struggle involving and anthropomorphic gods, animal sacrifices, and world trees with birds that represent the cardinal directions. Most of the animals represented also appear among the day signs, and the chapter closes with a discussion of the ten animals that appear as calendar day signs and their associated symbolism in Postclassic Mesoamerica.

Nature Communications

The influence of climate change on civil conflict and societal instability in the premodern world... more The influence of climate change on civil conflict and societal instability in the premodern world is a subject of much debate, in part because of the limited temporal or disciplinary scope of case studies. We present a transdisciplinary case study that combines archeological, historical, and paleoclimate datasets to explore the dynamic, shifting relationships among climate change, civil conflict, and political collapse at Mayapan, the largest Postclassic Maya capital of the Yucatán Peninsula in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries CE. Multiple data sources indicate that civil conflict increased significantly and generalized linear modeling correlates strife in the city with drought conditions between 1400 and 1450 cal. CE. We argue that prolonged drought escalated rival factional tensions, but subsequent adaptations reveal regional-scale resiliency, ensuring that Maya political and economic structures endured until European contact in the early sixteenth century CE.

Ketzalcalli, 2007

Los incensarios Chen Mul modelado de Mayapan representan artefactos artisticos ideales para estud... more Los incensarios Chen Mul modelado de Mayapan representan artefactos artisticos ideales para estudiar la religion de los mayas durante el Posclasico. Algunos representan deidades de Mexico central y otros comparten elementos iconograficos y estilisticos con los codices y murales mayas. Los incensarios encontrados en sitios posclasicos de la peninsula de Yucatan, el sur de Belice y el Peten guatemalteco, proporcionan informacion comparativa que ayudara a refinar la interpretacion al culto de los incensarios difundida desde Mayapan. Las excavaciones en el sitio nos dan un contexto arqueologico y los datos etnohistoricos describen rituales con “idolos” y ceremonias del calendario de renovacion

A Forest of History: The Maya after the Emergence of Divine Kingship

Archiv fur Volkekunde, 1991

The first European Images of indigenous peoples in the New World were fanciful representations th... more The first European Images of indigenous peoples in the New World were fanciful representations that were based on descriptions by Columbus and Vespucci layered with a repertoire of imagery referencing the Garden of Eden, the golden age of Antiquity, or medieval traditions of the Wild Man. Imagery of the Tupinanamba dominated along with imagery of cannibalism. Some later 16th century images seem more reliable in terms of ethnography, including images of Incas from Peru and Aztecs from Mexico, but the Tupinamba prototype still dominated in Theodore de Bry's multivolume work published in the late 16th century.

Archaeoastronomy in the Americas, 1981

Cosmology, Calendars, and Horizon-Based Astronomy in Ancient Mesoamerica, 2015

Decoding the Codex Borgia: Visual Symbols of Time and Space in Ancient Mexico, 2024

Birds and Beasts of Ancient Mesoamerica: Animal Symbolism in the Postclassic period, 2023

Das Bild der Jahreszeiten im Wandel der Kulturen und Zeiten, 2013

University Press of Colorado eBooks, Dec 14, 2023

Antiquity, Nov 25, 2010

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2006

Birds and Beasts of Ancient Mesoamerica: Animal Symbolism in the Postclassic Period, 2023

Nature Communications

Ketzalcalli, 2007

A Forest of History: The Maya after the Emergence of Divine Kingship

Archiv fur Volkekunde, 1991

Archaeoastronomy in the Americas, 1981

The Latin American Anthropology Review, 2009

This work is a remarkable contribution and a required reading for understanding the influence of ... more This work is a remarkable contribution and a required reading for understanding the influence of colonial processes on modern Mexican indian social structure. Curiously, perhaps a fault of the data, there is no mention of the place of the compadrazgo system in these processes. The book contains two appendices, one a helpful glossary, and nineteen tables, mostly informative.

Vistas in Astronomy, 1995

Major monuments of the Mexica (Aztec) style are analyzed in terms of possible eclipse imagery. Th... more Major monuments of the Mexica (Aztec) style are analyzed in terms of possible eclipse imagery. The cycle of monuments linked to the Coyolxauhqui myth are recognized as possible images of historical lunar eclipses. The Bilimek vessel is identified with an historical solar eclipse in 1508. The Calendar Stone is recognized as an image of world cataclysm that may refer to a solar eclipse at the end of the world. In addition, the codices are studied in terms of visual images of eclipses and a pattern linking solar eclipses to the death of a ruler. Eclipse Imagery in Mexica Sculpture 481 Matos (1991) points out, such an interpretation of political metaphor may also be linked to the rivalry between the Sun and the Moon. The legend indicates that the focus is on the fight between the Sun and the Moon, and some accounts emphasize that the solar god ate Coyolxauhqui or her heart after he decapitated her. This is in keeping with ethnographic accounts that often attribute eclipses to fights between the Sun and the Moon (Bad-Jorge, 1983, pp. 402,404; Harvey and Kelly, 1969, pp. 671-672; Thompson, 1971, p. 23 1). Huitzilopochtli's act of devouring Coyolxauhqui brings to mind a text in the Codex Telleriano-Remensis (42v), which says that during a lunar eclipse the Sun ate the Moon, just as the classical Nahuatl term for a lunar eclipse, metztli iqualoca, refers to the Moon being eaten (Campbell, 1985, p. 187; Leon-Portilla, personal communication). Clearly it is the Sun that attacks the Moon and devours it. Although the description of a lunar eclipse in the Florentine Codex says only that the Moon's face grew dark and sooty, an earlier version of Sahagdn's chronicle in the Primeros Memoriales (282) depicts a lunar eclipse with the Sun confronting the Moon, showering it with dark, arrow-like rays, as though the Sun was attacking the Moon (Sahagun, 1950-1982, VII, p. 8, Plate 21). Coyolxauhqui's association with the Moon disk is made clear on Coyolxauhqui 5, excavated from the Templo Mayor, the principal religious center of the Mexica capital located off the Zocalo in Mexico City. Here Coyolxauhqui wears a rayed disk with water flowing from its center (Fig. 1; Matos, 1991, Plate 6). Although Matos identifies this as a Sun disk, it resembles the Moon symbol like that on Codex Borgia 18 (Fig. 2). In both representations, water gushes out from the center of a rayed lunar disk. Since there are no known representations of Sun disks showing water in the center, the relief must show an image of the Moon. It is very appropriate for the lunar goddess to carry a lunar disk. The watery Moon in the relief has a conventionalized water band like those in the codices, represented with shell and jade (chafchi-huitC) symbols attached (Codex Borgia 22; Codex Telleriano-Remensis 42r). The water band is also wrapped with a cord of bells, a symbol of Coyolxauhqui, whose name means 'bellspainted' (Nicholson, 1971, Table 3) or 'she who wears bells' (Klein, 1988, p. 241). Another fragment of the same monument shows the Fire Serpent weapon of Huitzilopochtli penetrating her body, exactly duplicating the myth recorded by Sahagun (Matos, 1991, p. 26, Plate 5). A relief of a dismembered and decapitated female was found in one of the earliest phases at the Templo Mayor. Designated as Coyolxauhqui 6, this sculpture and the one overlying it (Coyolxauhqui 3) clearly conform to the details of the Huitzilopochtli myth (Fig. 3). In the sculptural program, Huitzilopochtli took the position on the top of the temple and Coyolxauhqui was represented in defeat at the base (Matos, 1981, pp. 51-52). According to Matos, the sacrifices on the temple platform re-enacted the daily triumph of the Sun over the Moon. However, the myth is clearly part of a seasonal cycle. Huitzilopochtli's birth and Coyolxauhqui's decapitation were re-enacted in the month of

Trace, Jan 31, 2022

Resumen: La exploración del ciclo del año en el Códice Borgia en relación con las ceremonias de f... more Resumen: La exploración del ciclo del año en el Códice Borgia en relación con las ceremonias de fin de año representadas en las páginas 49-52 del Borgia permite entender mejor el ciclo de las 18 veintenas (periodos de veinte días) en las comunidades orientales nahuas, especialmente del valle de Puebla-Tlaxcala, lugar de origen de este códice. Los rituales de las veintenas representados en este almanaque y la sección narrativa de las páginas 29-46 proporcionan evidencia de que las veintenas realmente estaban ligadas a las estaciones. Las fechas del año, sin embargo, siguieron un sistema diferente, coordinado con el ciclo continuo de 260 días en el tonalpohualli. Ningún ajuste fue posible en el ciclo de 52 años, pero este no es el caso de las veintenas, que nunca se nombran como parte del xiuhmolpilli. Parece probable que la flexibilidad del sistema de las veintenas permitiera que los «meses» se ajustaran para mantenerse en sintonía con las estaciones.

Archaeoastronomy and the Maya, 2014

Analysis of the iconography in a directional almanac on Codex Borgia pages 49–52 invites comparis... more Analysis of the iconography in a directional almanac on Codex Borgia pages 49–52 invites comparison with almanacs in a related set of divinatory manuscripts known as the Borgia Group, but one aspect of the Codex Borgia almanac remains unique. It records real-time dates employing the central Mexican system of year dates that help identify the images as year-end rituals. These fifteenth-century dates correlate with the last twenty-day “month” in the year, known as Izcalli in the Valley of Mexico and neighboring Tlaxcala. Izcalli rituals in February involved drilling a new fire, the erection of sacred trees, and animal sacrifice, all of which appear on Borgia 49–52. During Izcalli, human sacrifice was performed only every fourth year, a pattern like that seen in the Codex Borgia and the Codex Cospi, where death imagery and decapitated humans appear prominently on the fourth year-bearer page, associated with the southern direction.

What is known about the Moon among the ancient Maya of southern Mexico and Guatemala and the Nahu... more What is known about the Moon among the ancient Maya of southern Mexico and Guatemala and the Nahuatl-speaking people of central Mexico, especially the Aztecs who lived in the Valley of Mexico and their neighbors in Puebla-Tlaxcala Valley, has been obtained from records related to astronomy and lunar cycles inscribed on Classic Maya monuments dating between ad 250 and 850/900. Modern scholarship focusing on the mathematical units and glyphic writing has helped in deciphering the records. Postclassic Maya codices dating from 1300 to 1500, sent to Europe shortly after the Spanish conquest, also have lunar tables that have been decoded by study of the lunar cycles and glyphs. Painted books dating prior to the conquest in 1521 are also known from central Mexico, but these can only be understood with the help of books that were painted by native artists later in the 16th century and annotated with texts written in Spanish and Nahuatl. These glosses provide information about lunar deities ...

Estudios de Cultura Nahuatl, 1995

Study of colonial period sources, Precolumbian iconography, and ethno graphic data provide insig... more Study of colonial period sources, Precolumbian iconography, and ethno graphic data provide insights about the different roles played by male and female lunar deities. 1 The multiplicity of lunar deities probably reflects the many personalities of the moon as it undergoes rapid transformation over the course of a month and year.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Planetary Science, 2020

The Spanish chronicles do not mention planets other than Venus, although they compare certain Azt... more The Spanish chronicles do not mention planets other than Venus, although they compare certain Aztec gods with classical gods such as Jupiter and Mars. Creation myths recorded by the Spanish chroniclers frequently name Venus gods, most notably Ehecatl-Quetzalcoatl and Tlahuizcalpantecuhtli. The focus on Venus seen in these texts is also mirrored in colonial period Aztec codices, which feature several Venus gods as rulers of calendar periods associated with the 260-day calendar. The famous Aztec Calendar Stone represents Venus symbols prominently in an image showing the predicted demise of the Sun in an eternal solar eclipse, to be accompanied by earthquakes. Venus is apparently seen as the cause of a total solar eclipse in the Codex Borgia, a pre-conquest codex from Tlaxcala, a community neighboring the Aztecs in central Mexico.