Volume 27 : Articles
Lords of the Northern Maya
Dynastic History in the Inscriptions of Uxmal and Chichen Itza
By: Jeff Karl Kowalski
During the past thirty years significant advances have been made in the interpretation of Maya hieroglyphic writing. The glyphic inscriptions, formerly thought to pertain exclusively to calendrical, astronomical, and ritual matters, are now recognized to he also records of human history, recounting the principal events in the lives of the rulers of the Maya cities […]
Mary Louise Baker and the Maya
From the Archives
By: Caroline G. Dosker
An interview in 1908 with Dr. George Byron Gordon, Curator of North American Archaeology at The University Museum, began Mary Louise Baker’s 30-year association with Maya art. Her first assignment for the Museum was to draw the Maya pots in the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. Later she traveled to Europe and Central America to […]
Rebuilding the Ruins
Making a Scale Model of the Ancient Maya City of Tikal
By: Chris Ray
On February 1984, Dr. Gregory Possehl (Associate Director of The University Museum) asked me if I could make the Museum a scale model of the Maya city of Tikal. It was to serve as the centerpiece for an exhibition on Maya art funded by NEH and curated by Dr. Arthur Miller, a Consulting Scholar of […]
Population and Social Dynamics
The Dynasties and Social Structure of Tikal
By: William A. Haviland
When dealing with a complex society, whether your own, that of the Maya, or any other, scholars generally adopt one of two approaches: they look at the society from the top down, or from the bottom up. Although there are exceptions, historians, in their fascination with the doings of kings or other ruling aristocracies, have […]
Send Me Mr. Burkitt…Some Whisky and Wine!
Early Archaeology in Central America
By: Elin C. Danien
At the end of the last century, the pre-Columbian ruins of Mexico and Guatemala attracted adventurers and archaeologists whose names are known to every modern student of the Maya. Maler . . . Morley . . . Maudslay . . . Thompson . . . these men helped write some of the most important chapters […]
Maya Hieroglyphs
A History of the Decipherment
By: Christopher Jones
To those familiar with the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs and Babylonian or Assyrian cuneiform, the lack of progress in the reading of Maya hieroglyphs must seem strange. The language has not died out: it is still the native tongue of more than a million people in Mexico and Central America. Moreover. Maya vocabulary, grammar and […]
Archaeology and Epigraphy Revisited
An Archaeological Enigma and the Origins of Maya Writing
By: Robert J. Sharer
In a previous paper (Sharer in press), I discussed the question of the origins of Maya civilization and one of its principal hallmarks, Maya writing, as viewed from the perspective of current archaeological evidence. One of the themes touched on involved the fundamental changes occurring within Maya archaeology, as it is being transformed from a […]
Introduction – Winter 1985
By: Robert J. Sharer
The civilization created by the ancient Maya is recognized throughout the world as one of the most notable achievements of pre-industrial human society. But while many ancient civilizations in the Old World have long been known arid investigated, knowledge of the ancient Maya is a relatively recent phenomenon. The study of this brilliant civilization, centered […]
Tikal, Guatemala
A Rationale for the Placement of the Funerary Pyramids
By: Mary Ellen Miller
For more than a hundred years, the towering pyramids at Tikal, Guatemala, have captured both popular and scholarly fancy. They form the very basis of our notion of a Maya pyramid, and since they appeared on the secret enemy planet in “Star Wars,- the Tikal pyramids have entered the consciousness of countless people. Six great […]
The Game of Trigon
By: Donald White
From Roman Athletics: Classical Antecedents to the National Mania “All at once we saw a bald old man [Trimalchio–Ed.] in a reddish shirt playing at ball with some long-haired boys. It was not the boys that attracted our notice, though they deserved it, but the old gentleman, who was in his house-shoes, busily engaged with […]