Toponymic Analysis of Three Lienzos from the Mixtec Lowlands, Oaxaca

Introduction

This study, as part of my doctoral thesis, deals with the toponymy and political structure of the territories in the Mixtec Lowlands, Oaxaca, Mexico, based on the study of three lienzos from the XVI century. The central theme is the analysis of the place names represented in said lienzos, which on the one hand allows us to understand whether the signs are logographic and if they reflect characteristics of the language they codify, and on the other gives us information about the territorial make up of the Mixtec seigniories in the region during the Early Colonial Period.

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In order to identify the toponymic glyphs, the study was based methodologically in the iconographic analysis of Panofski (1972) and an internal and external comparative method, as well as a focus on epigraphy, linguistics, ethnohistory and oral tradition (Smith, 1973; Pohl, 1994; Hermann, 1994). These authors general objectives were to propose alternative analyses to decipher the meaning and localization of the place names represented in these documents, as well as to understand the prehispanic political geography and the processes of change during the Colonial Period in the Mixtec Lowlands through the study of the toponymic registers on these three lienzos.

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In this report, I present the results and contributions obtained from the toponymic analysis of the lienzos from the Mixtec Lowlands known as Postcortesan Mixtec Codex No. 36 (CMP36), Map of Xochitepec (MX) and Glosses from Lienzo 57 (L57) (Plate 1, Plate 2 and Plate 3). The lienzos are Colonial documents that may be accompanied by files, but in the case of the three lienzos examined for this study, if they had files at one time they are now missing. These lienzos are very interesting due to the quantity of toponymic registers that are represented on them with relation to the towns or borders that mark or indicate the political space of the seigniory or central settlement in which these lienzos were very possibly made.

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