Holley Moyes
Biographic Data
| ID | 213395 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Holley Moyes |
| GIVEN NAMES | Holley |
| FAMILY NAME | Moyes |
| SIGNATURE | MOYES H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Merced |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 126 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 36 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Ritual schedule and worshippers’ origin at an ancient Maya ritual cave site, Las Cuevas, Belize
Beneath the surface, below the line
During the Late Classic period (a.d. 550–900), ancient Maya settlement spread throughout western Belize, including the Vaca Plateau, a rugged karstic region with high densities of ritually utilized cave systems. Within the past decade, archaeologists have increasingly drawn on LiDAR technology to document the extent of such settlement at local and regional scales. Combined with traditional pedestrian survey, we have begun to amass substantial dat…
In Visible Presence
This chapter explores the uses and perception of light in religious architecture. Often characterized as an ambiguous materiality—neither concrete and tangible nor distinctly immaterial—light seems to offer itself readily as both matter and metaphor for the divine. We argue in this chapter that this is precisely what happens in contemporary Danish churches, yet not without conflicts between the ideal of immaterial divinity and the need for tangib…
Reconstructing Artificial Light in Ancient Greece
This chapter presents an overview of artificial lighting means and their efficiency in the performance of domestic nocturnal activities (except cult practices) in ancient Greece. Through experiments conducted in the Lighting Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens, the optical properties of exact copies of ancient light sources are investigated. The experimental data are used to assess the sufficiency of light produced by the li…
Light and Shadow Effects in Megalithic Monuments in the Iberian Peninsula
Atlantic Europe and the Mediterranean, especially the Iberian Peninsula, contain thousands of Megalithic monuments, such as dolmens and passage graves, built at the end of the Neolithic and Bronze Age. These are funereal monuments normally built with large bolders that define a space usually kept in darkness except for a period of time when light may enter the inner parts. These light and shadow displays were used in all likelihood to highlight d…
Illuminating Sensory Archaeologies
Light has a fundamental role to play in our perception of the world. It meditates the relationship between people and things within space, and is crucial to our understanding of the material culture of past societies. This chapter introduces light as the core focus of the volume; its qualities and affordances in different contexts and (im)material environments; its design and manipulation; and its elusive properties. The introduction also outline…
Lighting and Museum Exhibits
Museums exist to display and preserve valuable artefacts. Display lighting helps fulfil one of the main tenets of a museum, but excessive light causes irreparable damage to sensitive exhibits. Getting the balance between good display lighting and good conservation conditions is often difficult, but not impossible. Good exhibit lighting is not accidental. A considered process of design ideation and refinement is required to render exhibits to best…
Visibility, Privacy, and Missing Windows
This chapter examines the means by which light was admitted to Mesopotamian domestic space, arguing that doorways were the primary light source for most rooms. The consequences of this are then discussed, including the accessibility of lighting to archaeological study through recovered floor plans, and the impact which a reliance on doorway lighting may have had on the development of ancient Mesopotamian architecture. The interrelationship of lig…
The Light of the Flame
This chapter presents a study of light, in particular light produced by flame, by investigating the most representative lighting devices used in preindustrial Greece. The symbolism of lighting devices in traditional Greek society, used either out of necessity or in ritual ceremonies and customs as well as in representations in art and in social discourse, is examined to reveal aspects of culture, common beliefs, and social structure. The oral lit…
The Eleusinian Projector
The Mysteries of Eleusis in ancient Greece were the foremost sect of the mystery religions that dominated the eastern Mediterranean sphere for almost 2,000 years. The staying power of the Eleusinian rite stemmed from its convincing presentation of an otherworldly drama about the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. Initiates endured a harrowing experience in darkness that somehow evoked death, before seeing beatific visions, the climax of which was …
Light and its Interaction with Antiquities and Works of Art
This chapter addresses issues related to light–object interaction along with its resulting phenomena, taking into consideration materiality issues. It presents light and its role in artefacts studies, either as a tool for finds analysis or as a corrosion agent. It attempts a balanced investigation into past and contemporary approaches towards light from the conservator’s perspective. It discusses traditional raking and oblique light examination, …
Darkness and the Imagination
Darkness has profound effects on human behaviour and the ability to perform everyday activities. It can influence our ability to function, our moods, emotions, and cognition. Here we examine the relationship between darkness and supernatural beliefs. This work is informed by cross-cultural cave research, which suggests that cave dark zones are used as the settings for rituals from the advent of modern humans to the present. How can this phenomeno…
Rediscovering the Winter Solstice Alignment at Newgrange, Ireland
Newgrange was the first prehistoric site in Ireland to have its astronomical alignment widely accepted, and since its discovery in 1967 has remained the best-known astronomically oriented archaeological monument on this island. This chapter investigates the discovery of the winter solstice orientation at this key light-centred site. It proposes a possible new explanation for the astronomically oriented ‘roof-box’: that its origins can be found in…
Modalities of Meaning
Images do many things: they capture data, they analyse and explain it in very particular ways; they are used as evidence to give weight to arguments; they stand in for the original; they contain and convey information to specialists and the public alike and they do this by transforming vastly complex material into usable and visible form. But they are not neutral. All images are sign systems that are more or less effective for the uses they have …
Materializing Light, Making Worlds
The distinctive architecture of Neolithic passage tombs reproduces the fundamental format of a camera obscura. Could Neolithic people have projected animated images of the outside world into the chambers of these monuments? Fieldwork in Wales and Scotland reveals that the methods required to generate optical projections inside passage tombs are straightforward and do not require a lens. At those sites that feature a solar alignment it is possible…
Lighting the Good Life
During late antiquity, the aristocratic house worked as an architectural social filtering system. Many structures of the private residence were used and combined to create, or to strengthen, an impression of social superiority. Ancient sources and archaeological evidence show clearly that light played a key role as an aesthetic element within this aristocratic housing scheme. The function of many key architectural and ornamental features were dep…
The Chacoan World
In the southwest United States, high altitudes, open vistas, and cloudless skies create a visual atmosphere where the light is legendary. I focus on the role of light for the people of Chaco Canyon—a 1,000-year-old pilgrimage centre in the San Juan Basin of northwest New Mexico. Here, worldviews and cosmologies involved the dualistic juxtaposition of light and dark, visible and invisible, sun and moon. The movements of celestial bodies in a clear…
The Role of Darkness in Ancient Greek Religion and Religious Practice
Aiming at a better understanding of ways through which the ancient Greek religious experience was shaped, this chapter investigates the role and use of darkness in religious belief and practice. The orientation and certain architectural features of Greek temples, Dionysiac and Mystery cults, divination, rites of passage, magic, and other nocturnal rituals are examined here in an investigation of the interplay between light, darkness, and shadow a…
Encountering Photoamulets and the Use of Apotropaic Light in Late Antiquity
In antiquity, natural and artificial light was not only manipulated to illuminate dark spaces but could also serve an amuletic function. This chapter explores several unique and in some instances forgotten archaeological small finds that hint at the use of symbolic light in tombs, sanctuaries, and building foundations. These ‘photoamulets’ were linked to symbolic and metaphoric light in word, image, and form. They were used for protection against…
Çatalhöyük
This photo essay outlines the experimental work undertaken in summer 2007 in Çatalhöyük in Anatolia, Turkey, while the author was the artist in residence. The work done in this Neolithic settlement led to the discovery of a sun clock, i.e. a beam of light present in each dwelling entering from the roof and drifting like a sun dial to different areas of the house. The parallelogram of light produced by the beam created a pattern of light and shado…
The Handling of Light
This chapter explores the handling of natural light in the classical Greek temple and the Byzantine church. It discusses concepts of orientation as related to their respective functions and aims and the planning of lighting. It addresses light’s influence on the shaping of formal components in the Greek temple, such as the peristyle, fluting, and echinus of the Doric column. It attempts to establish relationships between the temple and the church…
Industrializing Light
The evolution of the factory in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was one of the most significant components of the process of industrialization, the impact of which is still being felt today. Early factories played a vital part in the development of artificial lighting, particularly in the use of gas lights. This role was not confined to the pioneering of the technology; also, perhaps more significantly, it altered public attitudes to…
Phenomenology of Light
Focusing on the glitter of gold in a fourteenth-century Byzantine cross—today inserted in the famous reliquary of Cardinal Bessarion, Venice, Gallerie dell’Accademia—this chapter uncovers the important role phenomenology plays in the study of the spiritual operations of medieval art. The analysis draws on the inscriptions written on the cross in order to explore how gold’s sparkle functions as a vision of Paradise nourished by the Byzantine litur…
Afterword
Is light an energetic ray, a beam, the illumination of surfaces, an atmosphere? Is it the shining of the sun, the moon and the stars? Is it a flickering flame, a lamp or torch, the glowing embers of a fire? Is it whiteness, or a spectrum of colour? Is it a release from darkness, an enlivening of the spirit, divine presence, the power of reason? In this commentary I show that light can be all of these things but only because, as we pass from one t…
Illuminating Time
Using the astronomical animation software of Stellarium, this chapter will demonstrate how time was ‘staged’ by prehistoric people at particular periods during the solar and lunar years. It will show how they ‘choreographed’ night- and day-lighting and landscape shadowing effects, along with the appearance and travels of other celestial phenomena in relation to the monuments and their horizons. It was this staging of natural lighting through illu…
The Ancient Maya Drought Cult
Caves were used as ritual venues by the ancient Maya from the Early Preclassic to the Postclassic period. These sites have been intensively investigated, but little research has been devoted to changes in cave use over time. Work at Chechem Ha Cave in western Belize investigates transformations in ritual practice occurring between the Early and Late Classic periods using an explanatory framework that incorporates high-definition archaeological re…
The Use of LiDAR in Understanding the Ancient Maya Landscape
The use of airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) in western Belize, Central America, has revolutionized our understanding of the spatial dynamics of the ancient Maya. This technology has enabled researchers to successfully demonstrate the large-scale human modifications made to the ancient tropical landscape, providing insight on broader regional settlement. Before the advent of this laser-based technology, heavily forested cover prevented…
Formation of a Complex Polity on the Eastern Periphery of the Maya Lowlands
This paper pursues the application of a central tenet of the dual-processual framework, the corporate/network continuum, to the development of Uxbenká, a small monument-bearing polity in the southern Maya Lowlands. During its growth, Uxbenká underwent a transformation from a small farming community to a complex polity with many of the trappings of elite authority that characterizes Classic Maya centers. It was one of the earliest complex polities…
Multivariate visualization and analysis of photomapped artifact scatters
The Geopolitics of Emerging Maya Rulers
Cross-culturally we find that emerging leaders in agrarian societies create ritual ties to the land as a political resource in gaining and maintaining political power. Based on research in ancient Maya caves, we argue that this strategy was followed by emerging Maya kings, who used ritual practice in caves to establish their relationships with deities associated with the earth and its resources. These rites bolstered their legitimacy, supported t…
Defining Best 3D Practices in Archaeology
This research aims to investigate the potential use of three-dimensional (3D) technologies for the analysis and interpretation of heritage sites. This article uses different 3D survey technologies to find the most appropriate methods to document archaeological stratigraphy, based on diverse environmental conditions, light exposures, and varied surfaces. The use of 3D laser scanners and dense stereo matching (DSM) techniques is now well establishe…
Illuminating Triangulations
The moon and its moonlight mediated human and non-human relationships in ways that a relational theory of bundling helps us to understand. Similar to assemblage, bundling better captures the ways that human perceptions involve triangulations and transfers. Pre-Columbian human experience in the Mississippi River valley was intimately aligned to the nightly, monthly, and generational cycles of the moon as these converged with the earth and other mo…
Light, Human Evolution, and the Palaeolithic
Human light-producing technology (i.e. the controlled use of fire) evolved during the Palaeolithic. Among its more obvious advantages to survival (heat, cooking, protection), fire-provided light in the form of hearths and lamps probably had considerable evolutionary significance. As human symbolic systems spread with the late Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic in Eurasia, it became a constituent component of European cave art. After revie…
Mapping Ritual Landscapes Using Lidar
Data collected from aerial lidar scanning provides new opportunities for archaeological survey. It is now possible, in a short period of time, to collect vast amounts of geographic data that would have taken years of pedestrian survey to acquire. This enhances and extends landscape studies by reducing time-frames and cost, encouraging analyses based on real-world data collection on a regional scale. This paper describes an approach for modeling t…
The Kayuko Mound Group
Multivariate visualization and analysis of photomapped artifact scatters
The Ancient Maya Drought Cult
Caves were used as ritual venues by the ancient Maya from the Early Preclassic to the Postclassic period. These sites have been intensively investigated, but little research has been devoted to changes in cave use over time. Work at Chechem Ha Cave in western Belize investigates transformations in ritual practice occurring between the Early and Late Classic periods using an explanatory framework that incorporates high-definition archaeological re…
Formation of a Complex Polity on the Eastern Periphery of the Maya Lowlands
This paper pursues the application of a central tenet of the dual-processual framework, the corporate/network continuum, to the development of Uxbenká, a small monument-bearing polity in the southern Maya Lowlands. During its growth, Uxbenká underwent a transformation from a small farming community to a complex polity with many of the trappings of elite authority that characterizes Classic Maya centers. It was one of the earliest complex polities…
The Geopolitics of Emerging Maya Rulers
Cross-culturally we find that emerging leaders in agrarian societies create ritual ties to the land as a political resource in gaining and maintaining political power. Based on research in ancient Maya caves, we argue that this strategy was followed by emerging Maya kings, who used ritual practice in caves to establish their relationships with deities associated with the earth and its resources. These rites bolstered their legitimacy, supported t…
Ancient Maya Regional Settlement and Inter-Site Analysis
During April and May 2013, a total of 1057 km2 of LiDAR was flown by NCALM for a consortium of archaeologists working in West-central Belize, making this the largest surveyed area within the Mayan lowlands. Encompassing the Belize Valley and the Vaca Plateau, West-central Belize is one of the most actively researched parts of the Maya lowlands; however, until this effort, no comprehensive survey connecting all settlement had been conducted. Archa…
Defining Best 3D Practices in Archaeology
This research aims to investigate the potential use of three-dimensional (3D) technologies for the analysis and interpretation of heritage sites. This article uses different 3D survey technologies to find the most appropriate methods to document archaeological stratigraphy, based on diverse environmental conditions, light exposures, and varied surfaces. The use of 3D laser scanners and dense stereo matching (DSM) techniques is now well establishe…
The Use of LiDAR in Understanding the Ancient Maya Landscape
The use of airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) in western Belize, Central America, has revolutionized our understanding of the spatial dynamics of the ancient Maya. This technology has enabled researchers to successfully demonstrate the large-scale human modifications made to the ancient tropical landscape, providing insight on broader regional settlement. Before the advent of this laser-based technology, heavily forested cover prevented…
Mapping Ritual Landscapes Using Lidar
Data collected from aerial lidar scanning provides new opportunities for archaeological survey. It is now possible, in a short period of time, to collect vast amounts of geographic data that would have taken years of pedestrian survey to acquire. This enhances and extends landscape studies by reducing time-frames and cost, encouraging analyses based on real-world data collection on a regional scale. This paper describes an approach for modeling t…
The Kayuko Mound Group
Illuminating Triangulations
The moon and its moonlight mediated human and non-human relationships in ways that a relational theory of bundling helps us to understand. Similar to assemblage, bundling better captures the ways that human perceptions involve triangulations and transfers. Pre-Columbian human experience in the Mississippi River valley was intimately aligned to the nightly, monthly, and generational cycles of the moon as these converged with the earth and other mo…
Light, Human Evolution, and the Palaeolithic
Human light-producing technology (i.e. the controlled use of fire) evolved during the Palaeolithic. Among its more obvious advantages to survival (heat, cooking, protection), fire-provided light in the form of hearths and lamps probably had considerable evolutionary significance. As human symbolic systems spread with the late Middle Palaeolithic and Upper Palaeolithic in Eurasia, it became a constituent component of European cave art. After revie…
Xibalba, the Place of Fear
Las cuevas eran un elemento destacado de la cosmología maya que encarnaban el inframundo de Xibalba. Como describe el mito, su propio nombre significa “lugar del miedo o el terror”. Aun así, los antiguos mayas se adentraban en la obscuridad de las cavernas para celebrar rituales destinados a divinidades asociadas con la lluvia, la fertilidad, y los ominosos Señores del Inframundo. Aunque se ha escrito poco sobre las prácticas rituales del período…
Ritual cave use among the ancient Maya
Throughout Mesoamerica from as early as 1000 BC, the ancient Maya considered caves to be sacred features of the landscape. As a result, these sites became powerful and important ritual venues, a tradition that continues today. With the advent of cave archaeology in the 1970s, archaeologists have investigated hundreds if not thousands of cave sites and have begun to understand the rich diversity of ritual practices and the implications of cave use…
In Visible Presence
This chapter explores the uses and perception of light in religious architecture. Often characterized as an ambiguous materiality—neither concrete and tangible nor distinctly immaterial—light seems to offer itself readily as both matter and metaphor for the divine. We argue in this chapter that this is precisely what happens in contemporary Danish churches, yet not without conflicts between the ideal of immaterial divinity and the need for tangib…
Reconstructing Artificial Light in Ancient Greece
This chapter presents an overview of artificial lighting means and their efficiency in the performance of domestic nocturnal activities (except cult practices) in ancient Greece. Through experiments conducted in the Lighting Laboratory of the National Technical University of Athens, the optical properties of exact copies of ancient light sources are investigated. The experimental data are used to assess the sufficiency of light produced by the li…
Light and Shadow Effects in Megalithic Monuments in the Iberian Peninsula
Atlantic Europe and the Mediterranean, especially the Iberian Peninsula, contain thousands of Megalithic monuments, such as dolmens and passage graves, built at the end of the Neolithic and Bronze Age. These are funereal monuments normally built with large bolders that define a space usually kept in darkness except for a period of time when light may enter the inner parts. These light and shadow displays were used in all likelihood to highlight d…
Illuminating Sensory Archaeologies
Light has a fundamental role to play in our perception of the world. It meditates the relationship between people and things within space, and is crucial to our understanding of the material culture of past societies. This chapter introduces light as the core focus of the volume; its qualities and affordances in different contexts and (im)material environments; its design and manipulation; and its elusive properties. The introduction also outline…
Lighting and Museum Exhibits
Museums exist to display and preserve valuable artefacts. Display lighting helps fulfil one of the main tenets of a museum, but excessive light causes irreparable damage to sensitive exhibits. Getting the balance between good display lighting and good conservation conditions is often difficult, but not impossible. Good exhibit lighting is not accidental. A considered process of design ideation and refinement is required to render exhibits to best…
Visibility, Privacy, and Missing Windows
This chapter examines the means by which light was admitted to Mesopotamian domestic space, arguing that doorways were the primary light source for most rooms. The consequences of this are then discussed, including the accessibility of lighting to archaeological study through recovered floor plans, and the impact which a reliance on doorway lighting may have had on the development of ancient Mesopotamian architecture. The interrelationship of lig…
The Light of the Flame
This chapter presents a study of light, in particular light produced by flame, by investigating the most representative lighting devices used in preindustrial Greece. The symbolism of lighting devices in traditional Greek society, used either out of necessity or in ritual ceremonies and customs as well as in representations in art and in social discourse, is examined to reveal aspects of culture, common beliefs, and social structure. The oral lit…
The Eleusinian Projector
The Mysteries of Eleusis in ancient Greece were the foremost sect of the mystery religions that dominated the eastern Mediterranean sphere for almost 2,000 years. The staying power of the Eleusinian rite stemmed from its convincing presentation of an otherworldly drama about the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. Initiates endured a harrowing experience in darkness that somehow evoked death, before seeing beatific visions, the climax of which was …
Light and its Interaction with Antiquities and Works of Art
This chapter addresses issues related to light–object interaction along with its resulting phenomena, taking into consideration materiality issues. It presents light and its role in artefacts studies, either as a tool for finds analysis or as a corrosion agent. It attempts a balanced investigation into past and contemporary approaches towards light from the conservator’s perspective. It discusses traditional raking and oblique light examination, …
Darkness and the Imagination
Darkness has profound effects on human behaviour and the ability to perform everyday activities. It can influence our ability to function, our moods, emotions, and cognition. Here we examine the relationship between darkness and supernatural beliefs. This work is informed by cross-cultural cave research, which suggests that cave dark zones are used as the settings for rituals from the advent of modern humans to the present. How can this phenomeno…
Rediscovering the Winter Solstice Alignment at Newgrange, Ireland
Newgrange was the first prehistoric site in Ireland to have its astronomical alignment widely accepted, and since its discovery in 1967 has remained the best-known astronomically oriented archaeological monument on this island. This chapter investigates the discovery of the winter solstice orientation at this key light-centred site. It proposes a possible new explanation for the astronomically oriented ‘roof-box’: that its origins can be found in…
Modalities of Meaning
Images do many things: they capture data, they analyse and explain it in very particular ways; they are used as evidence to give weight to arguments; they stand in for the original; they contain and convey information to specialists and the public alike and they do this by transforming vastly complex material into usable and visible form. But they are not neutral. All images are sign systems that are more or less effective for the uses they have …
Archaeology (34 works) · Art (28 works) · Geography (28 works) · History (27 works) · Computer Science (19 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Visual arts (14 works) · Aesthetics (13 works) · Historical and Architectural Studies (12 works) · Literature (11 works)