Karl Anton Nowotny (June 21, 1904 in

Hollabrunn Hollabrunn () is a district capital town in the Austrian state of Lower Austria, on the Göllersbach river. It is situated in the heart of the biggest wine region of Austria, the Weinviertel. History The surroundings of Hollabrunn were firs ...

– December 31, 1978 in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

) was an Austrian

ethnographer Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

, art historian and academic, specialising in the study of

Mesoamerica Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in southern North America and most of Central America. It extends from approximately central Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica ...

n cultures. He is most renowned for his analyses and reproductions of Mesoamerican codices, and his commentaries on their iconography and symbolisms. Nowotny was a pioneer and leading exponent of applying comparative ethnography to the study of

pre-Columbian In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era spans from the original settlement of North and South America in the Upper Paleolithic period through European colonization, which began with Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492. Usually, ...

and conquest-era texts and

codices The codex (plural codices ) was the historical ancestor of the modern book. Instead of being composed of sheets of paper, it used sheets of vellum, papyrus, or other materials. The term ''codex'' is often used for ancient manuscript books, with ...

. In this technique, the meaning and symbolism of the texts are analysed and compared with the cultural practices and beliefs of modern

indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology), presence in a region as the result of only natural processes, with no human intervention *Indigenous (band), an American blues-rock band *Indigenous (horse), a Hong Kong racehorse ...

Mesoamerican peoples whose traditions have been maintained. Nowotny used comprehensive ethnographic studies—such as those conducted by Leonhard Schultze in the 1930s among the

Nahua The Nahuas () are a group of the indigenous people of Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. They comprise the largest indigenous group in Mexico and second largest in El Salvador. The Mexica (Aztecs) were of Nahua ethnicity, a ...

s of the central Mexican ''altiplano''—as a means of garnering further insight into the ancestral practices and beliefs underpinning the codices and related iconographies. Nowotny also contributed extensively to the study and interpretation of pre-Columbian

Mesoamerican calendars Mesoamerican calendars are the calendrical systems devised and used by the pre-Columbian cultures of Mesoamerica. Besides keeping time, Mesoamerican calendars were also used in religious observances and social rituals, such as for divination. T ...

, their functioning and how they were used. Building upon work by earlier scholars such as

Eduard Seler Eduard Georg Seler (December 5, 1849 – November 23, 1922) was a prominent German anthropologist, ethnohistorian, linguist, epigrapher, academic and Americanist scholar, who made extensive contributions in these fields towards the study of ...

, Nowotny and his contemporaries like

Alfonso Caso Alfonso Caso y Andrade (February 1, 1896 in Mexico City – November 30, 1970 in Mexico City) was an archaeologist who made important contributions to pre-Columbian studies in his native Mexico. Caso believed that the systematic study of ancient M ...

and Paul Kirchhoff greatly added to the scholarly understanding of calendrical elements such as the central Mexican '' tonalpohualli'', ''

veintena A veintena is the Spanish-derived name for a 20-day period used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican calendars. The division is often casually referred to as a "month", although it is not coordinated with the lunar cycle. The term is most frequently used ...

'' and '' trecena'' cycles. Nowotny's analysis and exposition of the ritual and divinatory importance of the ''

tonalamatl The ''tonalamatl'' is a divinatory almanac used in central Mexico in the decades, and perhaps centuries, leading up to the Spanish conquest. The word itself is Nahuatl in origin, meaning "pages of days". The ''tonalamatl'' was structured arou ...

'' almanac has been regarded as of "critical importance" to the modern understanding of this almanac, and a significant development beyond the primarily astronomically based approach of Seler and other predecessors.Quiñones Keber 1995, p.156

Notes

References

* * * * * Rohrbacher, Peter (2019
''„Encrypted Astronomy” – Astral Mythologies, and Ancient Mexican Studies in Austria, 1910–1945''
In: Revista de Antropologia 62/1: 140-161 (Special Number – German and German-speaking Anthropologists in Brazil, Universidade de São Paulo)

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Nowotny, Karl Anton 1904 births 1978 deaths People from Hollabrunn Austrian people of Czech descent Austrian academics Austrian Mesoamericanists Historians of Mesoamerican art 20th-century Mesoamericanists