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The Queen’s Tomb at El Peru
The discovery of a major royal tomb at El Peru hit the news yesterday. Congratulations to the project and all the team members. Details and the official announcement of the find can be found here, on...
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Diadems in the Rough
by Stephen Houston The ritual role of paper is by now a commonplace in studies of Classic Maya royalty. Kings show their station by wearing headbands, presumably made from the cortex of the strangler...
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Sihyaj K’ahk’ at La Sufricaya?
by Bruce Love At the European Maya Conference in Copenhagen in 2011, I sat in for a time in Sven Gronemeyer’s and Dmitiri Beliaev’s workshop “From Ochk’in Kaloomte to Dzuloob: Mesoamerica in the Maya...
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The 2013 Maya Meetings in Austin
The Art of Maya Architecture: Cosmology and Dynasty in the Built Environment January 15-19, 2013 The University of Texas at Austin The Maya Meetings return to Austin in January 2013 for five days of...
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New Book: Dancing Into Dreams
Dancing into Dreams: Maya Vase Painting of the Ik’ Kingdom Bryan Just; with contributions by Christina T. Halperin, Antonia E. Foias, and Sarah Nunberg Yale University Press, 2012 Dancing Into Dreams...
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Maya Spooks
K’ahk’ U Ti’ Suutz’, “Fire-Mouthed Bat,” a common wahy demon on Classic Maya vases (Drawing by D. Stuart). Around this time of year I often give my “Maya Spooks” lecture to students here at UT-Austin,...
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The 584286 Correlation
Simon Martin and Joel Skidmore have recently published in The PARI Journal and posted on Mesoweb their intriguing new analysis of the age-old correlation question — that is, how we best reconcile the...
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A Vessel from La Corona?
by David Stuart On the Kerr database of Maya vessels appears a colorful polychrome, K4020, depicting two repeating scenes of K’awiil seated upon a throne or bench (Figure 1). Figure 1. Rollout of...
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A Podcast on 2012, from The Academic Minute
A brief take on the 2012 business, recorded for The Academic Minute, a podcast from WAMC radio distributed on a number of college and NPR stations here in the US....
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Portraits of Yuknoom Ch’een
by David Stuart Many interesting historical and artistic details are emerging from Hieroglyphic Stairway 2 from La Corona, Guatemala, just discovered this past April by the Proyecto Arqueologico...
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Bak’tuns and More Bak’tuns
by David Stuart As many know, the upcoming completion of the 13th bak’tun on December 21 is represented in the Maya Long Count as 13.0.0.0.0. It’s an important day in the Maya calendar, to be sure, but...
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Panel 1 from Piedras Negras
by David Stuart Panel 1 from Piedras Negras, Guatemala. Photo by D. Stuart Hanging on my living room wall is a plaster cast of a small but beautiful fragment of a Maya relief panel, Panel 1 from...
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New Drawing of a La Corona Panel
La Corona, Panel 6. Drawing by David Stuart. Presented here is a new drawing of Panel 6 from La Corona, Guatemala. Its elaborate scene and lengthy hieroglyphic text commemorate the fascinating history...
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Leaf Glyphs: Spellings with yo and YOP
by David Stuart Figure 1. The sign yo or YOP. (Drawings by D. Stuart) Decipherment’s progress isn’t always measured by big leaps forward, nor marked by completely new readings of signs or radically new...
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New Book: Maya Archaeology 2
Maya Archaeology 2, edited by Charles Golden, Stephen Houston and Joel Skidmore. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press, San Francisco. Precolumbia Mesoweb Press has just published Maya Archaeology 2, a beautifully...
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Radio-carbon and the Long Count
New carbon-14 tests of one of the famous carved wooden lintels from Tikal generally confirm the long-established GMT correlations of the Maya Long Count calendar, as explained in a new press release...
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NEWS: Very Early Maya Ceremonial Architecture at Ceibal
The most recent issue of Science includes an article on the remarkable finds recently made at Ceibal (Seibal), Guatemala. Excavations there have revealed very early evidence of Maya ceremonial...
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ARTICLE: A New Assessment of Palenque’s Palace Tablet
The name glyph of Ux Yop Huun The new publication Maya Archaeology 2 includes my article “The Name of Paper: The Mythology of Crowning and Royal Nomenclature on Palenque’s Palace Tablet.” This piece...
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ARCHIVES: Web Image of Palenque’s Tablet of the Cross
The website for INAH (Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia) contains a very useful and detailed zoom-able image of Palenque’s Tablet of the Cross, the original of which is now...
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ARCHIVES: Daniel Brinton’s Letter on Landa’s Alphabet
Most readers of this blog are probably aware of the fundamental insights of Yuri Knorosov, who in 1952 first published his breakthrough observation that Maya writing was in part phonetic, employing...
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