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On Dragons, Whales, and Wits’
by Stephen Houston, Brown University Karlštejn castle, in the Czech Republic, guards a curious relic: the skull of a Nile crocodile thought by its owner, Emperor Charles V (1316–1378), to come from a...
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Getting Stoned (in the Grolier Codex)
by Stephen Houston, Brown University The celebrated Relación of Bishop Diego de Landa (1524–79) offers, in the edition by Alfred Tozzer—a volume in part ghosted, according to rumor, by many Harvard...
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A Note on the Sign for TZ’IHB, “Writing, Painting”
by David Stuart (The University of Texas at Austin) Figure 1. Spellings of tz’ihb, “writing, painting” (tz’i-bi and tz’i-ba) Many years ago I wrote on the decipherment of the word tz’ihb, “writing,...
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Secrets of the Painted King List: Recovering the Early History of the Snake...
by Simon Martin (University of Pennsylvania Museum) Twenty years ago, I wrote a commentary on an intriguing set of codex-style vessels known as the Dynastic Vases (Martin 1997). Twelve in number, each...
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Information Storage & the Classic Maya
by Stephen Houston, Charles Golden, and Andrew Scherer Of late, university libraries have tended to exile books and print journals to off-campus storage. The purge makes room, as at Brown University,...
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The Lizard King
by Stephen Houston (Brown), David Stuart (UT-Austin), and Marc Zender (Tulane) The Maya region abounds in reptiles: by one count there are as many as 240 distinct species in Guatemala alone. It would...
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The Fourth Wall
by Stephen Houston, Brown University A fraternity of animals awaits visitors to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. There, on a page of the Indian epic, the Rāmāyaṇama, monkeys and bears gather as part...
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Bamboo–A Neglected Maya Material?
by Stephen Houston (Brown University), Karl Taube (UC-Riverside), Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach (UT-Austin), and Timothy Beach (UT-Austin) Building sites in Hong Kong often show a collision between...
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A Universe in a Maya Lintel I: The Lamb’s Journey and the “Lost City”
by Andrew Scherer (Brown University), Charles Golden (Brandeis University), Stephen Houston (Brown University), and James Doyle (Metropolitan Museum of Art) The most complex images often require...
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A Universe in a Maya Lintel II: Mayuy and his Masterworks
by Stephen Houston (Brown University), James Doyle (Metropolitan Museum of Art), David Stuart (UT-Austin), and Karl Taube (UC-Riverside) The concept of an oeuvre, a body of works created by a single...
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A Universe in a Maya Lintel III: Configuring Color
by James Doyle (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Stephen Houston (Brown University), Beth Edelstein (Cleveland Museum of Art), and Brunella Santarelli (Metropolitan Museum of Art) When Teobert Maler...
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A Universe in a Maya Lintel IV: Seasonal Gods and Cosmic Kings
d by Stephen Houston (Brown University), James Doyle (Metropolitan Museum of Art), David Stuart (UT-Austin), and Karl Taube (UC-Riverside) As a form of authority, sacred kingship is both ubiquitous and...
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Conference: The 2018 Mesoamerica Meetings at UT-Austin
The 2018 Mesoamerica Meetings (Workshops and Symposium), will be held January 9-13, 2018, at the University of Texas at Austin. Forty years ago, in 1978, UT Austin hosted the first Maya Hieroglyphic...
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Forgetting Chocolate: Spouted Vessels, Coclé, and the Maya
by Stephen Houston (Brown University) The Romans and the Greeks before them cherished the taste of a particular resin. Tapped from silphium, a wild plant growing along the coast of North Africa, the...
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How to Identify Real Fakes: A User’s Guide to Mayan “Codices”
by Michael Coe (Yale University) and Stephen Houston (Brown University) Forgeries have long been a scourge to archaeology and art history alike, rearing up whenever money mixes with “excessive desire...
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The 2018 Mesoamerica Meetings
MESOAMERICAN PHILOSOPHIES: ANIMATE MATTER, METAPHYSICS, AND THE NATURAL ENVIRONMENT January 9-13, 2018 The 2018 Mesoamerica Meetings are coming soon! Please join us in Austin next month for our...
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Cotton, Snow, and Distant Wonders
by David Stuart (University of Texas, Austin) and Stephen Houston (Brown University) Dedicated to our dear friend, Alfonso Lacadena We seldom think of wintry wonderlands when considering mostly...
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New Book: The Gifted Passage by Stephen Houston
The Gifted Passage: Young Men in Classic Maya Art and Text by Stephen Houston Yale University Press, 2018 “Deep, smart, and thoughtful, this book should be read by every scholar of Mesoamerica.”—Mary...
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Finding the Founder: Old Notes on the Identification of K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’...
Figure 1. Name of K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’, from Altar Q of Copan (Photo by D. Stuart). by David Stuart (The University of Texas at Austin) One of the most famous of ancient Maya rulers is K’inich Yax...
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Tubing
by Stephen Houston (Brown University) and Joshua Schnell (Brown University) Maya ruins, if excavated well (and if preservation allows), yield a variety of bone tubes (Fig. 1). Some are only a few cm in...
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