Karl Anton Nowotny (June 21, 1904 in
Hollabrunn – December 31, 1978 in
Vienna) was an Austrian
ethnographer,
art historian
Art history is the study of aesthetic objects and visual expression in historical and stylistic context. Traditionally, the discipline of art history emphasized painting, drawing, sculpture, architecture, ceramics and decorative arts; yet today ...
and academic, specialising in the study of
Mesoamerican 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 and
conquest-era texts and
codices. In this technique, the meaning and symbolism of the texts are analysed and compared with the cultural practices and beliefs of modern
indigenous Mesoamerican peoples whose traditions have been maintained. Nowotny used comprehensive ethnographic studies—such as those conducted by
Leonhard Schultze in the 1930s among the
Nahuas 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, their functioning and how they were used. Building upon work by earlier scholars such as
Eduard Seler, Nowotny and his contemporaries like
Alfonso Caso and
Paul Kirchhoff
Paul Kirchhoff (17 August 1900, Halle, Province of Westphalia – 9 December 1972) was a German-Mexican anthropologist, most noted for his seminal work in defining and elaborating the culture area of Mesoamerica, a term he coined.
Early lif ...
greatly added to the scholarly understanding of calendrical elements such as the central Mexican ''
tonalpohualli'', ''
veintena'' and ''
trecena
A trecena is a 13-day period used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerican calendars. The 260-day calendar (the '' tonalpohualli'') was divided into 20 trecenas. Trecena is derived from the Spanish chroniclers and translates to "a group of thirteen" in the ...
'' cycles. Nowotny's analysis and exposition of the ritual and divinatory importance of the ''
tonalamatl'' 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
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* 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
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{{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