John Justeson

Biographic Data

ID219946
NAMEJohn Justeson
GIVEN NAMESJohn
FAMILY NAMEJusteson
SIGNATUREJUSTESON J
AFFILIATIONSAnthropology, State University of New York at Albany
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS10
TOTAL CITATIONS32
AUTHOR COUNT10
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1985
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX2

  • A Lunar Day Count at Monte Alban and the Chronology of Early and Middle Preclassic Zapotec Hieroglyphic Texts (ca. 496–221 BCE)

    Open AccessJohn Justeson, Justin LowryARTICLELatin American Antiquity2026

    This article identifies a lunar day count in Zapotec inscriptions at Monte Alban. The lunar records that are accompanied by dates in the Mesoamerican 52-year cycle make it possible to determine intervals between recorded events. Seven placements of the resulting series of intervals in absolute time are consistent with dates of the lunar crescent’s first visibility at Monte Alban between 650 and 50 BCE; just one is also consistent with the sevente…

  • The Environs of Tres Zapotes as the Find-Spot of the Tuxtla Statuette

    Open AccessJohn S Justeson, John Justeson et al.ARTICLELatin American Antiquity2020References: 9

    The famous greenstone figure known as the Tuxtla Statuette is one of only 12 objects known to bear an epi-Olmec inscription and was the first to become known to scholarship. For more than a century its original find-spot was imprecisely and erroneously identified as lying in the township of San Andrés Tuxtla or, more generally, in the Tuxtla Mountains. Correspondence in the National Anthropology Archives of the Smithsonian Institution documents t…

  • A Cyclic-Time Model for Eclipse Prediction in Mesoamerica and the Structure of the Eclipse Table in the Dresden Codex

    Open AccessJohn S Justeson, John JustesonARTICLEAncient Mesoamerica2017Cited by: 1References: 10

    This study describes, illustrates, and applies an “eclipse family” representation for the cyclic timing of eclipses in Mesoamerica. This theoretical construct is based on daykeepers’ approach to divination, anchored in the divinatory calendar (DC); empirically, it emerges from data on the timing of eclipses in Lowland Mayan1territory between 100b.c.e.and 1500c.e.drawn from Espenak and Meuss's (2007, 2009) eclipse canons.An eclipse family consists…

  • Early Mesoamerican Writing Systems

    John S Justeson, John JustesonCHAPTERThe Oxford Handbook of…2012

    From a comparative perspective, the early development of writing in Mesoamerica is poorly preserved. In Mesopotamia, more than six thousand tablets attest the first two centuries of the archaic, proto-cuneiform stage of the world's most ancient writing system. In contrast, the first few centuries of Mesoamerican writing, up to about 400 bc, are probably represented by fewer than a dozen texts. This article discusses Formative period scripts, rela…

  • Historical Linguistics and Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica

    Open AccessTerrence Kaufman, John S Justeson et al.ARTICLEAncient Mesoamerica2009Cited by: 8

    This article presents some of the authors' perspectives on the past 20 years of work that applies the results of research in historical linguistics to the understanding of the histories and cultural practices of pre-Columbian Mesoamericans. It focuses on major cultural transformations to which both historical linguistic and archaeological data can contribute, such as the spread of agriculture, and migrations in Mesoamerican prehistory. It also ad…

  • Eclipse Records in a Corpus of Colonial Zapotec 260-Day Calendars

    Open AccessDavid Tavárez, John S Justeson et al.ARTICLEAncient Mesoamerica2008Cited by: 2References: 2

    This paper translates and analyzes references to eclipses in two seventeenth-century Zapotec calendrical booklets.1These booklets are part of a corpus of 106 separate calendrical texts and four collections of ritual songs that were turned over to ecclesiastical authorities in 1704 and 1705 as part of an ambitious campaign against traditional indigenous ritual practices conducted in the province of Villa Alta in northern Oaxaca. Both of these book…

  • The History of the Word for Cacao in Ancient Mesoamerica

    Open AccessTerrence Kaufman, John S Justeson et al.ARTICLEAncient Mesoamerica2007Cited by: 21References: 14

    The word * kakaw ( a ) ('cacao', Theobroma cacao ) was widely diffused among Mesoamerican languages, and from there to much of lower Central America. This study provides evidence establishing beyond reasonable doubt that this word originated in the Mije-Sokean family; that it spread from the Mije-Sokean languages in or around the Olmec heartland into southeastern Mesoamerican languages; that its diffusion into Mayan languages took place between a…

  • Writing Systems: A Linguistic Introduction

    John S Justeson, John Justeson et al.ARTICLELanguage1988

    An examination, through a series of detailed case studies, of the different ways in which the world’s cultures have made spoken language visible and permanent

  • Linguistic Anthropology: Die Inschriften von Naranjo (Petén, Guatemala). Maria Gaida

    Open AccessJohn S Justeson, John JustesonARTICLEAmerican Anthropologist1986

  • Closed Models of Open Systems: Boundary Considerations

    Open AccessJohn S Justeson, John Justeson et al.CHAPTERThe Archaeology of frontiers and…1985