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Classic Maya hieroglyphic writing displays a coherence across time and space that points to intensive, sustained communication among scribes about what they were writing and how. Yet we know little about what scribal transmission looked like on the ground or what knowledge scribes were conveying among themselves. This article examines the monumental hieroglyphic corpora from two communities, at Copan in western Honduras and at Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico, to illustrate local processes of innovation and exchange that shaped participation in regional transmission. I argue that distinct ‘cultures of creativity’ developed at Copan and Palenque from local elites’ varying understanding of their position in the Maya world and the nature of hieroglyphic inventions. These case studies attest to the multi-faceted nature of scribal production and exchange within a hieroglyphic tradition that remained largely coherent despite never being centrally administered. In addition, the study's palaeographic methods suggest possibilities for tracing dynamics of cultural innovation and transmission in the ancient past at multiple scales of society.
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This content will become publicly available on November 9, 2025
Graphemic Variation in Morphosyntactic Context: The Syllable u in Classic Maya Hieroglyphic Writing
Abstract Throughout the long history of Classic Maya hieroglyphs, a logosyllabic writing system used from the late first millennium BCE through the mid‐second millennium CE in southern Mesoamerica, the most commonly recorded phonetic value was the syllableu(/ʔu/). With over a dozen differentuhieroglyphs, Classic Maya scribes had more options for recording /ʔu/ than any other syllable or logograph. Cognitive approaches to writing systems typically attribute graphemic variation (i.e., alternation between signs with equivalent linguistic value) to semantic differences like animacy or to non‐linguistic factors like identity. Distribution of Classic Mayauhieroglyphs, however, suggests that morphosyntactic context influenced which grapheme scribes wrote and when. This case suggests that scribal knowledge of Classic Maya hieroglyphs included ideas about writing's relationship to language. It also highlights the cognitive relevance of morphosyntax for a writing system's users as they differentiate among graphic signs with identical linguistic denotation.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1821867
- PAR ID:
- 10556073
- Editor(s):
- Chrisomalis, Stephen; Miton, Helen
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Topics in Cognitive Science
- ISSN:
- 1756-8757
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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