Karl Nowotny
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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

* * * * * 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