This chapter deals with the issue of the role of philosophy in Mesoamerica and its sources. Offering an expansive account of philosophy, it argues that the sources of philosophy in ancient Mesoamerica include, but are not limited to, textual material. While there is a long textual tradition in Mesoamerica, particularly in Maya and Aztec cultures, we find philosophy in other sources as well, including architecture, art, oral tradition, and performance. The chapter describes the ways philosophy can be found in these numerous sources, and argue for the importance of philosophical interaction with anthropology, art history, and other relevant fields.

This introduction consists of a brief overview of the people, cultures, and history of Mesoamerica, to give readers context and background for understanding precolonial Mesoamerican thought. It provides accounts of the languages, myths, and intellectual culture of the ancient Olmecs, one of the foundational early cultures of Mesoamerica, as well as of still extant groups such as the Maya, Aztecs, Mixtecs, and Zapotecs.

The nature of the cosmos and its maintenance are central issues in Mesoamerican philosophy. The correlative metaphysical systems of Mesoamerica, with their focus on interdependence, transformation, and continual creation, rely on particular views about the nature of the world and its operation that are covered in this chapter. The chapter covers the development of key concepts connected to creation and change, as well as the particular ways these are developed in creation stories across Mesoamerica. Creation stories serve an important purpose in Mesoamerican thought. They should not be thought of as only myth grounding the overall tradition and system, but also as discussions of the nature of being, change, and continual creation.

This chapter begins by synthesising the results of the previous modelling chapters, also considering how far one might go with conclusions in each case, given the limits and quality of the various datasets. Having synthesised these data, the models are tested against two ‘known’ networks, described in ancient literature: the Ionian League and the Kalaureian Amphiktyony. In highlighting the differences between the expected and the actual results, the case is made that literature and historical documents can project a greater degree of unity between communities than might have in reality been expressed or presented for reasons of their own political gain and unity.

This book deals with the philosophical thought of the region of Mesoamerica (southern Mexico and northern Central America), specifically during its long history prior to the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century CE. Chapters on central concepts and views in Mesoamerican philosophical traditions highlight issues such as language, truth, time, personal identity, creation, being, knowledge, and ethics. While the Maya and Aztec traditions receive most focus here, other Mesoamerican traditions are discussed, including those of the Mixtec, Zapotec, and of the long distant Olmec.

This chapter deals with the concept of being in Mesoamerican traditions, which to some extent resembles what we find in other global traditions. The chapter covers concept such as the Yucatec Maya itz and the Nahuatl teotl as a kind of basic stuff of the cosmos determining its nature. It is not quite right to call these constituents of reality, in the sense of a material such as atoms that make up the world in physicalistic systems. Instead, these concepts should be understood as expressing the nature of reality itself, that is, being itself, underlying, prior to, and sustaining all particular things.

This book closes by returning to the problem of the polis, and to considering the extent to which a fresh approach can contribute new thoughts to an old debate. In considering what exactly an ancient city was, its activities are emphasised: the fact that a city formed political and economic connection with its neighbours helped to define it. The potentials and pitfalls of modelling for historical enquiry are considered, and the case is made for a more data-driven and ‘scientific’ classical archaeology of the next generation.

This chapter considers the problem of ‘heavy freight’, a problem posited by Anthony Snodgrass in the 1980s concerning how Greeks might have moved heavy goods like marble around the Greek world. A dataset of freestanding marble statues is presented, where the size and the shape of these statues is used to consider how much marble might have been used in the Greek world during various economic production processes. After estimating the scale of the industry, this chapter uses spatial network modelling to consider some of the routes along which marble might have been transported on the sea, using a rules-based system that ships will always have gone the most direct route from-anchorage-to-anchorage. The shape of these networks is then discussed in light of their implications for our understanding of the whole of the Greek world.

This chapter builds on the discussion of product shipping from the previous chapter, but by introducing a different sort of product: commodity or semi-luxury goods (in the words of Lin Foxhall), things transported in ceramic amphoras that were also loaded onto ships. The distribution of pottery from across various sanctuaries and urban sites is considered to make the point that certain sites ‘specialised’ in various products, and that there might be evidence for Greeks selecting certain products for import or export. This element of choice is indicative of a wide amount of economic knowledge circulating in the Greek world that is not immediately materially visible. Spatial network modelling is conducted for this dataset too, revealing similar shapes to those from the previous chapter, and making the case for possible ‘piggy-backing’ of goods shipped from similar production sites to points of consumption.

This chapter covers Mesoamerican conceptions of knowledge through the image of seeing. Knowledge is a matter not just of accessing stable and mind-independent truths about the world, but also involves an aspect of creativity and construction, according to Mesoamerican views. Knowledge requires sensation, which has a creative and participative aspect. We contribute to sensation as active partners with the world. The chapter discusses seeing, the rituals and texts associated with seeing, and the community of people, such as the daykeepers in the Maya tradition, tasked specifically with generation and transmission of knowledge.

The dataset discussed in this chapter is coinage, specifically the first coinage minted in the Aegean Basin. The start of this chapter considers to what extent coinage was first used as either an economic or a political tool, and, therefore, whether any patterns in the dataset will reveal more about political or economic networks. In presenting continuities of the dataset using a network analytical model, this chapter illustrates how the spread of coinage across the Aegean from Ionian innovators is indicative of a pattern in the spread of technology. This pattern is juxtaposed with the distribution of amphoras pattern, indicating that there is a qualitatively similar economic pattern, albeit separated with a large time-lag. This pattern is a useful reminder that different types of economic network laid the foundations for one another, and that material evidence may not always be contemporary with the formation of networks.