Harvey M. Bricker; Victoria R. Bricker. Astronomy in the Maya Codices. xxviii + 907 pp., illus., index. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2011. $75 (cloth).

Astronomy in the Maya Codices, by anthropologists emeriti Harvey Bricker and Victoria Bricker, is an impressive treatment of a challenging topic. At 907 pages, this hefty volume considers four manuscripts written in Mayan hieroglyphs: the Dresden, Madrid, Paris, and Grolier Codices. The book is well organized, beginning with the history of each codex. It follows with the standard approach of reviewing relevant astronomical concepts (Ch. 2), as well as the Mayan calendric system (Chs. 3 and 4). Chapters 5-7 provide the requisite ideological and geographical contexts for the content of the codices and are followed by the substantive contributions of this book. Treating tables and almanacs, confined to a single codex page or spanning several pages, the "content chapters" provide research histories along with the Brickers' own interpretations. Pages of hieroglyphic text and accompanying images are lavishly reproduced in whole and in part to explain different aspects of their interpretations. The work represents a synergy between Harvey Bricker's computational analyses and Victoria Bricker's linguistic expertise. Overall, the book is a testament to thirty years of collaborative work.

The first chapter is a pleasure to read, although it stems from the unfortunate circumstance that none of the codices come from an archaeologically controlled context. As their names imply, each codex is attributed to the source of its surfacing into European or U.S. history. Chapter 1's account of their discoveries and decipherment histories reads like a detective novel and benefits from thorough background research by the authors.

An excellent contribution comes next in the form of a consideration of the environment and tropical weather patterns, although more might be said about their impact on the visibility of celestial events. The intent instead is to contextualize the practice of swidden agriculture. Absent, though, is a discussion regarding the connection between the slash-and-burn agriculture the authors describe and the agricultural practices utilized during the codices' writing. Were these almanacs for village farmers, written by small-town daykeepers? Or were they written by high priests at Mayapan or Chichen Itza, dependent on intensive agricultural practices? Unfor- tunately, the authors do not consider the question.

The writing in the following chapters is dense, requiring the patience of working through a dissertation. At times, mathematical computations, astronomical concepts, and hieroglyphic decipherment are all treated in a single paragraph. Nonetheless, for aficionados of Mayan culture, all expectations for astronomical content are met. Chapters 8 and 9 cover Venus and eclipses, each anchored to the weighty literature on their respective tables in the Dresden Codex. Chapter 10 covers Mars, which has enjoyed much less scholarly consensus-though the 121 pages here are certainly meant to sway opinion. Next, the Brickers find astronomical references in "Seasonal Tables" generally understood to treat either agricultural or strictly ritual cycles. Finally, "Stars" (Ch. 13) is anchored to the "Zodiacal Almanac" of the Paris Codex. These five chapters constitute the celestial material most commonly populating studies of Mayan astronomy. Rounding things out, Mercury is included in a section within the Venus chapter; Jupiter and Saturn are relegated to Appendix A.

Coverage of the inherited literature is very strong and constitutes sufficient reason for specialists to own this book as a reference volume, but the authors also present new interpretations in every chapter. Their intent is to provide a "more complete" treatment of astronomy in the codices, beyond explanations of the Venus and Eclipse Tables. Toward this end, they find a "Venus-Mercury Almanac," a sidereal Mars Table, and an astronomical aspect to a "Burner Almanac." Fortunately, all new material is generated by a single consistently applied method: "For a more complete understanding of what they knew about heavenly bodies (our objective in this book), it is necessary to place their astronomical tables and almanacs in real time, and that requires a correlation of the Maya and Western calendars" (p. 77). The book's fundamental coherence rests on the use of a calendar correlation to examine reconstructed night skies relative to the authors' reading of the codices.

But there has been some debate over the accuracy of the calendar correlation the authors subscribe to (the GMT), as well as the variant that they identify as the "correct" one. Therefore, Chapter 4, solely dedicated to the calendar correlation, becomes absolutely critical; without a secure correlation, the book is an exercise in speculation based on computational pattern matching. At one level, this critical dependency may underlie misstatements. They write multiple times that "[John] Teeple thought [the GMT] was probably correct" (e.g., p. 269). While Teeple certainly made use of it, at the end of a section on the calendar correlation, within the document the authors reference, he was not convinced that it was the correct correlation.

In addition to a secure calendar correlation, the Brickers' method relies on three factors: exhaustive reconstructions of potential historical astro- nomical events; extensive exploration of permutations of the dates and intervals recorded in the codices; and loose readings of the hieroglyphic texts. The first two are evident from the beginning of the book. The Brickers write: "[the] distinction between a base date and an entry date is one that we have applied repeatedly in our study of astronomical tables in the Dresden Codex" (p. 93). This distinction results from the use of the calendar correlation that does not translate the "base dates" written in the codices into intuitively appropriate astronomical events. For example, the Venus Table is unanimously understood to preserve first morning visibility of Venus on the (260-Day Count) date 1 Ajaw. But the GMT places the "base date" 16 days too early, during Venus's evening star phase. The "entry date" handles this by using intervals written in the preface to compensate for the error and generate a later historical "period of use."

The same complication holds for the Dresden Codex Eclipse Table. Three potential base dates are listed, separated by 15-day intervals, giving the impression that they might record a historical eclipse season. The GMT assigns none of them to a node, so the Brickers use the table of multiples in the preface to move from the "base date" to its "entry date." The pattern continues with the Mars Table and within their treatment of seasonal tables. Clearly such moves are reliant on the computational capacities of modern computers.

The authors' treatment of the synodic Mars Table exemplifies their method. Initially, the numbers look promising: a table recording 10 periods of 78 days is hypothesized to capture the 779.9-day synodic period and its 78-day retrograde motion. But the observable period of Mars varies much more than that of Venus, from 764 to 811 days, and the period of retrograde varies from 60 to 84 days. While this can be handled, the base date does not correspond to any discernible "station" in the Mars cycle according to the GMT. Again they are forced to adjust the base date to create an entry date, in this case awkwardly placed between the beginning and the middle of retrograde motion. Their attempt to confirm this entry date appeals to the astronomical context of mythical dates included in the table's preface (p. 381). For their argument to cohere, they require the Postclassic authors of the table to have possessed records of eclipses and Mars events from the year 3114 B.C. (i.e., during the Archaic period, 1,000-plus years be- fore any of the first cities in Mesoamerica). How such records may have been obtained is not discussed.

Treatment of the hieroglyphic text does not advance their argument. A single verb root leads each caption in the tables. This verb has bee securely deciphered (through phonetic substitutions) as "ch'ak"-"to chop, to cut." The Brickers, however, are uncomfortable with an "axeing" reading because it conflicts with their (idiosyncratic) interpretation of the main verb in the Venus Table (p. 384). So they suggest an alternative reading of "uac," meaning "to emerge." This turns out not to be wholly acceptable either, so they "prefer to remain agnostic" on the reading of the verb (p. 384).

Unfortunately, the interplay between loose hi- eroglyphic readings and accommodating pattern matching occurs throughout the book. This practice is based on the no-longer-viable read- ings of glyphs (such as hieroglyphic EK' as the "Venus glyph"). The Brickers first identify the almanac as astronomical and then interpret the glyphs accordingly: "The interpretation of the hieroglyphic text associated with any astro- nomical instrument in the codices is made easier and more secure if we know the referents of the text in real or historical time" (p. 424). Moreover, once they develop an interpretation that they are comfortable with, they take it as further confirmation that the GMT is correct.

Finally, their method is on full display in their treatment of the "Burner Almanac" in the Dres- den Codex. A single verb root leads the caption for every image of an almanac covering the lower register of seven pages. Two of the images contain eclipse glyphs, so the Brickers find an anchor to apply their method. To place the almanac historically they need something other than just the two eclipse images, but there is nothing in the captions that they find useful and they read the lead verb as only "an undeciphered existential collocation" (p. 664), which therefore allows for any interpretation. They resort to an image of Chaak (a rain deity) sitting on a sky- band (an icon representing the sky) as referring to "solstitial phenomena" (p. 664), an idiosyncratic identification arising from their historical placement of other almanacs. With a solstice separated from two eclipses and constrained by the intervals recorded in the captions, they turn to the historical record to find a solution: two eclipses appropriately spaced after a summer solstice. The first eclipse (not visible in the Maya area) occurred 6 days after the summer solstice of A.D. 1517. Five years later (reached by recycling the almanac), a "partial penumbral lunar eclipse... technically visible in the Maya area but at the lower limit of perceptibility" (p. 672) provided the match for their second image. Their conclusion is that this must therefore be the latest material written in the codex, "overlap[ping]... the earliest significant Spanish contact with the Maya culture of Yucatan" (p. 674).

Complications aside, this book is definitely a tour de force, and the amount of labor behind it is unquestionably herculean. The authors pro- vide a service to other scholars, since the expla- nations and literature review offer them count- less possibilities for exploring the material more deeply or investigating alternative interpreta- tions on their own. The treatment of cognate almanacs across codices is part of a growing recognition of the need for greater historical contextualization of these manuscripts. But there are significant problems with both meth- ods and conclusions, which call into question any suggestion that this is the "1ast word" on the codices. Given the methodological complica- tions, the Brickers' interpretations may or may not hold up to further study, independent of the calendar correlation problem. Conversely, if the GMT is proven wrong by more than a few days, there is scarcely a page of interpretation among the last 700 that will not be adversely affected.

This book demonstrates the challenge of work- ing with the specifics of the written material (not completely prose, but not simply iconographic/ symbolic) and the astronomy (not strictly ephe- merides) in the Maya codices. Interested investi- gators should be forewarned that no real progress will be made without a current command of both aspects of this unique historical record.

Gerardo Aldana