From Graphic Units to Unrecognized Landscapes of Expression: New Approaches on Amerindian Graphic Communication Systems

Many studies, even those conducted in the field of the Americas, still argue that graphic communication necessarily builds on coding units of speech. However, in recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the narrowness of this concept by focusing on Indigenous and pre-Columbian societies, who favore(d) non-glottographic systems over written speech. This paper concerns the development of a semiological multidimensional theory and methodology to analyze Indigenous Graphic Communication Systems (GCSs) in Mesoamerica, Amazonia, the Isthmo-Colombian Area and the Central Andes. The aim of this theory and methodology is to understand how and in what ways Indigenous societies communicate and encode knowledge using graphic units. Placing emic concepts and epistemologies increasingly at the center of the investigation comes with a rethinking of Western concepts of writing, and a change of perspective. The proposed model provides access to new analytical dimensions that have not been considered in an integrated way so far. Graphic units are not only studied in relation to each other and on the semantic level, but in the broader context in which they arise. Three examples are used to demonstrate the complexity of graphic communication based on semasiographic principles and test the proposed approach focusing on various forms of Yukpa graphic expressions in Colombia and Venezuela and framed graphic units of the Tiwanaku culture in the Central Andes, Peru.