Journal of World Prehistory, Vol. 14, No. 2, 2000

Into the Minds of Ancients: Advances in Maya
Glyph Studies

Stephen D. Houston

1

A decade of Maya glyphic decipherment creates many opportunities for
historical, linguistic, cultural, and archaeological interpretation. New evi-
dence points to improvements in understanding decipherment as a discipline
and social practice, the origins of Maya script, the use and meaning of glyphs
in ancient society, and the language and sociolinguistic implications of Maya
texts. The glyphs reveal information about Maya kingship and its relation
to supernatural forces along with cues to a synthesis of history during the
Classic period (A.D. 250–850). A test case from Piedras Negras, Guatemala,
relates such discoveries to the ongoing excavation of a Classic city with
abundant inscriptions.

KEY WORDS: Maya Lowlands; Classic period; decipherment; Maya archaeology.

‘‘Nothing will ever be attempted, if all possible objections must be first overcome.’’

—Dr. Johnson, Rasselas, 1759

Some years ago, I contributed an essay to the Journal of World

Prehistory that described the impact of hieroglyphic decipherment on
Maya archaeology (Houston, 1989a). An invitation to contribute another
essay on a half-period anniversary (half of the 20-year span beloved of
the Maya) is highly welcome. It also invites self-scrutiny: What did I
think then that I no longer believe or find useful and important? What
is commonly held today that never remotely entered my mind in 1989?
The objective of that earlier piece was to highlight contributions that
Maya glyph studies might make to archaeology. This article focuses

1

Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602, USA.

121

0892-7537/00/0600-0121$18.00/0

 2000 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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Houston

more directly on the rich epigraphic data, and relates them where possible
to archaeology, but as a secondary aim. The assertion here is that the
epigraphic evidence should first be understood on its own terms, before
premature correlations are established with material patterns. The task
is large, for the 1990s have been among the most important in the
history of Maya glyph studies.

Maya epigraphy made monumental advances throughout the 1990s.

Texts can no longer be regarded as an incidental instrument in illuminating
Classic Maya civilization (ca. A.D. 250 and 850, as found throughout the
Yucatan peninsula and adjacent areas of Central America and Mexico).
Rather, with decipherment, texts speak from the minds of ancients. Whether
the glyphs are ‘‘lying’’ (the common libel, as we shall see) or whether they
reflect only elite thoughts and preoccupations are almost beside the point.
The inscriptions crystallize representations of ancient realities from a period
in the New World when no other indigenous people left a clearly legible
record. It is seldom stated so bluntly, for fear of offending esteemed col-
leagues, but neither Zapotec texts nor Isthmian writing yield information
that can be regarded as completely or even partly deciphered (cf. Marcus,
1992a; Justeson and Kaufman, 1992, 1993). A good illustration is the Zapo-
tec calendar, which remains controversial (Urcid, 1992). Attempts to inter-
pret noncalendrical portions of Zapotec inscriptions demonstrate, despite
intensive and insightful efforts, a disquieting inexactitude about appropriate
word order, spelling principles, or linkages with Zapotec speech, the pre-
sumed but still unproved tongue of the texts (Marcus, 1992a; Masson and
Orr, 1998; Urcid, 1992, 1993b; Urcid et al., 1994; Whittaker, 1992). The
heavily logographic or word-based nature of this script continues to present
obstacles to even the most determined researchers. For example, specialists
have found no convincing instances of rebus, the cornerstone of many
decipherments (Javier Urcid, personal communication, 2000). More re-
cently, signal advances have been made in understanding other Mesoameri-
can scripts, to which Maya glyph experts can contribute their comparative
expertise in the future (Berlo, 1989; Chinchilla Mazariegos, 1996; Taube,
2000b).

What, then, did I (and others) believe in 1988, when the earlier

review of Maya writing and archaeology was written? Bloodletting was
thought to be a dominant theme of the texts. Polities of the Classic period
seemed to be relatively small, with only glimmerings of higher-order hier-
archies. Objects and buildings were known to be important in glyphic
nomenclature, but details were still lacking. There was little attention to
variability in the script. Grammar and syntax were assumed to involve
split-ergative languages of varying affiliation, Yukatekan to Ch’olan: Ch’ol,
spoken in the general area of Palenque, Mexico, seemed the most likely

Advances in Maya Glyph Studies

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language for many of the inscriptions.

2

Historical linguistics was still rela-

tively uninvolved with decipherment, not least because of controversies
about readings of particular signs. Precise translations were generally un-
available, and epigraphers relied heavily on paraphrases and loose semantic
equivalents in English or Spanish. Some influential monographs of the
1980s presented readings that diverge considerably from recent ones (e.g.,
Schele and Miller, 1983). Discussions of kingship and religious belief and
practice tended to follow evidence from Palenque, where such matters were
comparatively well understood. The underlying concepts of architecture
and indigenous notions of existence were only beginning to attract attention,
building on superb and deep ethnographic research by the Harvard project
in Chiapas (Vogt, 1994).

As of the year 2000, there is much that is new and different, although

resting on solid foundations fashioned since the 1960s. This paper divides
its subject into two major headings. The first discusses decipherment as a
process and social practice, with the objective of explaining the nature of
such issues, ethical and otherwise, to nonspecialists suspicious of epigraphic
craft. The attempt here is to improve self-understanding among Maya-
nists—namely, to forge what has been described as ‘‘sociological literacy,’’
which should, as in any healthy discipline, begin at home (Shapiro, 2000,
p. 68). The second heading advances the author’s views on improvements
in glyphic knowledge since the 1980s. Among these changes are more
developed understandings of the origins of Maya script, its role and use in
Maya society, the language of the inscriptions and its bearing on vertical
and horizontal social bonds (if such can ever be truly defined in the socially
asymmetric universe of the Maya), the nature of rulers and their relation
to divinity, ‘‘history’’ and ‘‘politics’’ as interpretive challenges, and the
nature of the ancient political economy. A final section reports on an
example of epigraphically informed excavations at a pivotal Maya city,
Piedras Negras. The tone of the essay is meant to be direct and provocative,
so as to rouse more focused discussion of the issues forced on all Mayanists
by glyphic decipherment.

2

A note for the linguistically averse: Ergativity refers to a system of transitivity. In ergative
systems, verbs attach prefixed (ergative) or suffixed (absolutive) pronouns for various pur-
poses: the prefixed pronouns mark the subject of transitive verbs (‘‘He scatters incense’’)
and the possessor of nouns (‘‘his stela’’); the suffixed pronouns serve as the subjects of
intransitive verbs (‘‘he dies’’) and the objects of passive verbs (‘‘he is captured’’). Split-
ergativity shifts this system slightly. Prefixed pronouns now mark the subject of transitives
and intransitives in what is called the incompletive aspect (i.e., the state of noncompleted
action). In contrast, suffixed pronouns are only used for passive verbs in the incompletive.
It is clear from comparative linguistics that split-ergativity came into existence after the
breakup of earlier forms of Mayan languages (Robertson, 1992, pp. 53–54).

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DECIPHERMENT AS DISCIPLINE AND SOCIAL PRACTICE

First I address Maya epigraphy as an academic field, which, for all its

esoteric content, involves more engaged amateurs than professionals: hand-
wringing about a lack of interaction with the public is moot in this branch
of archaeology (Fagan, 1993). It also focuses on the sociology of the field and
the difficult issues of disciplinary practice and moral obligation. Determined
efforts are now being made to involve Maya epigraphy and archaeology
in ethnic politics, with unclear results in the long term.

Decipherment: Practices, Practitioners, and Products

Since 1989, there have been great strides in decipherment, building

on techniques pioneered decades before by, among others, Hermann Beyer,
Heinrich Berlin, Tatiana Proskouriakoff, and the so-called Mesa Redonda
group, especially Linda Schele, Peter Mathews, and Floyd Lounsbury, along
with linguistically sophisticated scholars such as Victoria Bricker (1986),
John Justeson (1978; Justeson and Campbell, 1997), and Barbara MacLeod
(1987). We have come a long way from Gelb’s statement that the Maya
had no ‘‘full phonetic writing system’’ (Gelb, 1975, p. 82). Useful treatments
of the history of decipherment may be found in Stuart (1992), Coe (1992,
1999), and Houston, Chinchilla Mazariegos, and Stuart (2000); a full-length,
cross-referenced bibliography is also under preparation by Houston and
Zachary Nelson (for early sources, see Cazes, 1976; for a limited, working
bibliography, consult J. Harris, 1994; Bricker, 1995, provides a useful but
conservative review of recent decipherments). Stuart’s treatment presents
unmatched scholarship on the beginnings of Maya epigraphy, and Coe
offers a vigorous and entertaining narrative with a cast of heroes (Y. Knoro-
sov) and villains (J. E. S. Thompson), and, after publication, with its own
set of critics (Daniels, 1996, pp. 154–155; Hammond, 1993).

There is little doubt that Coe correctly perceived the problems in

Thompson’s career, which, after initial, brilliant work that focused on calen-
drical and rebus spellings, limited glyphic decoding for at least two decades.
To some extent this was attributable to Thompson’s unparalleled reputation
and force of personality, which brooked little disagreement. However, there
was also the effect of his idiosyncratic understanding of writing systems
and penchant for mystical exegesis—an example of interpretative virtuosity
gone sadly awry. Later works by Thompson left little sense of future direc-
tion or productive openings, although most epigraphers retain great respect
for his erudition, particularly with respect to the Maya calendar. [On scan-
ning Thompson’s (1950) opus for the first time, the author can attest first-

Advances in Maya Glyph Studies

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hand to feelings of futility and abject incomprehension. In contrast, Louns-
bury’s (1973) classic study of an important glyphic title showed with utmost
clarity the reasoning behind a particular reading.] In turn, Knorosov, whose
legacy of phonetic research in the 1950s stands untarnished, ended his
career in sad denouement, beating a full retreat from his most trenchant
conclusions, and with politicized and publicly voiced derision for epigraphic
advances made by North Americans (Victoria Bricker, personal communi-
cation, 1995; Knorosov and Yershova, n.d.). The next step in epigraphic
historiography is plain. We must go beyond review of published sources,
the gist of most studies of decipherment, to unplumbed stores of personal
correspondence, of which a central repository of letters, interviews, and
unfinished manuscripts is urgently needed, perhaps on the model of per-
sonal papers of scientists preserved by the American Philosophical Society.
David Lebrun of Nightfire Films, which is preparing a two-part documen-
tary on decipherment based on Coe’s book Breaking the Maya Code, has
compiled dozens of hours of interviews with active epigraphers.

The hallmark of current research is its strongly international flavor,

with vibrant groups in Germany (Colas, 1998; Gran˜a-Behrens et al., 1999;
Grube, 1999; Grube and Nahm, 1990, 1994; Nahm, 1994, 1997; Voss, 1995;
Voß and Eberl, 1999; Wagner, 1995), and smaller circles in Belgium (Lefort,
1998; Lefort and Wald, 1995), Canada (Zender, 1999), Denmark (Nielsen,
1998; Wichmann and Lacadena, 1999), France (Davoust, 1995, 1997), Hol-
land (Boot, 1997; Schele et al., 1998), Russia (Beliaev, 1998), Japan (Yasugi,
1999a,b), along with an especially active focus in Spain (Garcı´a Campillo
1992, 1995a, 1996, 1997, 1998a,b, 1999; Garcı´a Campillo and Lacadena
Garcı´a-Gallo, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992; Lacadena, 1992, 1994, 1995, 1997a,b,
1998). The limited job opportunities in Europe are a source of concern in
the long term, although there is now a vibrant annual meeting that parallels
self-consciously the growth of a pan-European identity (Colas et al., 2000).
The European approach tends to be strongly philological, humanistic, and
regionally oriented, without, for better or worse, the anthropological and
theory-building stance in some North American work. The United States
continues at a strong clip, with several recent dissertations and theses, of
which the majority come from art history departments (Christy, 1995; Her-
ring, 1999; Looper, 1995, 1999; MacLeod, 1990; Nelson, 1998; Newsome,
1991; Sanchez, 1997; Stuart, 1995; Vail, 1996; Villela, 1993). The recent
passing of Linda Schele, a key figure in Maya research, will surely have an
impact on epigraphy and its popular appeal in this country (England, 1998);
by unhappy coincidence, Knorosov and Lounsbury died within a short
time of their respected colleague (Grube, 1998a; Grube and Robb, 1999;
Houston, 2000). Unfortunately, the future of epigraphy in North American
departments of anthropology is murky because there seems to be compara-

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tively little institutional interest in supporting this research at the doctoral
or professional level. Harvard, Tulane, the University of California at River-
side, and Brigham Young are notable exceptions to a trend that sees epigra-
phy as regionally important but intellectually narrow and insufficiently
engaged in broader issues of social theory (see below). An example of this
might be a recent statement that Mayanists and their funding sources are
suspect because they largely address ‘‘the literate ruling classes of buffer
races,’’ a memorable if inaccurate summation (Patterson, 1995, p. 116).

From Mexico and Guatemala comes high-quality work from a few

energetic researchers (Arrellano 1998; Ayala Falco´n, 1995, 1997; Chinchilla
Mazariegos and Escobedo Ayala, 1999; Escobedo, 1991, 1992, 1997a; Es-
cobedo Ayala and Fahsen, 1995; Grube et al., 1992; Morales Guos, 1995;
Valde´s and Fahsen, 1995, 1998; Valde´s et al., 1994, 1999), yet general or
even academic interest in those countries seems, after a promising start, to
be limited, despite the presence of expert epigraphic instruction at the
Universidad Nacional Auto´noma de Me´xico, the Universidad Auto´noma
de Yucata´n, and the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. A few basic
texts on Maya glyphs exist in Spanish, but they are out of date, insufficiently
disseminated, or prepared by nonspecialists (Alaniz Serrano, 1999; Berlin,
1977). The large number of glyph workshops in the United States and,
increasingly, in Europe make the need for a textbook on ancient Maya
writing somewhat less pressing. A challenge in preparing such a volume is
our present difficulty in achieving consensus on the most basic of matters,
including spelling rules and grammar (see below). Unfortunately, the few
books on the market are now out of date or inaccurate (Harris and Stearns,
1997; Houston, 1989b).

In the past, one could speak of ‘‘schools’’ of interpretation, such as

that of Tu¨bingen or Yale and Leningrad (Barthel, 1977; Houston et al.,
2000). A sign of health in Maya epigraphy is a growing, collective awareness
that some directions have proved more fruitful than others, and that scholars
have now forged a common basis for discussion. In-bred ‘‘schools’’ can no
longer exist in our era of internet communication and a populous commu-
nity of independent-minded scholars. The ‘‘new synthesis’’ accepts syllabic
glyphs of consonant–vowel (CV) value (a sore point with some scholars
until the 1970s), promotes a clear understanding of the relation of language
to orthography, examines the biographies of historical actors, conceptual-
izes indigenous categories where possible, builds on a large number of
signs with commonly accepted readings, and operates according to shared
methods and principles of decipherment. Decipherment is held to be a full
explanation for a sign in terms of its iconic referents, its meaning and
sound, and its development through time. Of necessity, it must concern
the minutia of signs and their behavior. Not all specialists agree on this

Advances in Maya Glyph Studies

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point: one feels that such details can be bypassed in favor of a more
‘‘anthropological framework pioneered by . . . Thompson’’ (Marcus, 1992a,
p. xix), as though attention to spellings and language represent an optional
detour for students of ancient script. This is surely not the case, because
precise knowledge of glyphs allows us to mine anthropological meaning.

Peter Daniels distinguishes between primary decipherment, which pro-

poses entirely new principles, and minor ‘‘filling in’’ (Daniels 1996, p. 142),
as in the Maya case. Nothing could be less applicable to Maya glyphs.
Every new decipherment of a logographic or syllabic sign is as vital and
incrementally progressive as the last. Syllables have to be teased out one
at a time, as do logographs, which depend on individual semantic and
phonetic constraints for their elucidation. Thus, code breaking for Maya
glyphs comes, not rapidly, but in fits and starts. For some signs there
are insufficient contexts in which to test readings (the problem of hapax
legomena, ‘‘things said only once’’), or they may spell opaque terms that
seem not to have survived in daughter languages. This means that certain
signs will not easily deliver their sound or sense. Complete decipherment
is unlikely, given our tattered, if slowly expanding, epigraphic record (see
below), and scholars must, for reasons of truth in advertising, curb trium-
phalist declarations about the state of glyphic readings.

Aside from the celebrated ‘‘alphabet’’ of Bishop Diego de Landa (Coe,

1999, pp. 145–166), the key to decipherment has proved in large part to
be internal, consisting of distributional patterns with apparent substitutable
signs. The epigrapher can presume with a high margin of certainty that
such substitutions constitute equivalent glyphs or, at least, signs in close,
alternating relationship (Lounsbury, 1984, 1989); the most incisive demon-
stration of this approach was Stuart’s detection of large numbers of substi-
tutable u signs in a verbal expression meaning ‘‘it happened,’’ uti:y (1990b).
A distinction between logographs (word signs) and syllabic glyphs leads to
a more incisive understanding of patterns in such substitutions. Moreover,
by inserting signs of known or suspected reading, phonic or semantic values
can be tested repeatedly in different contexts. If there is a large set of
documented texts, defective readings become rapidly untenable, whereas
those with merit yield insights into hitherto unexplained sign clusters. Still
a milestone and the best example of this approach is Stuart (1987), a
study of enduring insight with interlocking conclusions that remain basically
unmodified despite 15 years of subsequent research (cf. criticism in Hop-
kins, 1997).

It is important to understand that broad consensus is not the same as

total agreement. An appropriate model for understanding Maya epigra-
phy—or any other rigorous discipline—is the tension between ‘‘core’’ and
‘‘frontier’’ knowledge (Cole, 1992, pp. 229–230). The core comprises a

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body of ideas and methods that are held by all members of the epigraphic
community; gains in the positivist sense of confident decipherment are
impossible without these joint ideas. The frontier embraces those ideas still
being probed and evaluated, with only a relatively small number ever likely
to pass from this tentative state to the security of the core; the core itself
may, however, undergo change as a result of some probing on the frontier.
Some scholars seem to believe that epigraphers do not distinguish between
the two, and that changing views reflect badly on the whole enterprise,
being little more than a reflection of dubious practices, self-delusion, and
reciprocal back-scratching (e.g., Baudez, 1999, p. 948; Porter, 1999). Such
criticisms are illogical, for what discipline, other than a doctrinal one, is
expected to validate itself by remaining the same? Maya epigraphy will
always be interpretive on some levels, as we organize glyphic evidence and
discern therefrom the society and underlying ideas that engendered it. It
would be wrong to deny the existence of what Brannigan calls ‘‘mediators,’’
dominant figures who socialize younger scholars and determine the nature
and importance of discoveries (Brannigan, 1981, p. 167). This essay is my
attempt at mediation in the special, hegemonic sense of this term. However,
certain readings are now set, regardless of personal whim and inclination,
as reconstructed confidently by us and as intended explicitly by the Maya.

Present-day decipherment, then, has passed its physical. The represen-

tational context is becoming well known (Miller, 1999). The syllabic ‘‘grid’’
has been partly filled in by intensive work that peaked in the late 1980s
and early 1990s (e.g., Grube and Nahm, 1991), although certain glottalized
consonants and Ce syllables are still unattested or insecurely identified.
Common logographs continue to reveal their secrets, albeit at slower pace
than before: A recent advance is David Stuart’s important proposal of the
ch’e:n or ‘‘cave, rocky outcrop’’ glyph (Vogt and Stuart, 1999), now shown
to express a ubiquitous, indigenous concept of place (Stuart and Houston,
1994, Fig. 9; see also Boot, 1999) and the probable locus of pilgrimages
attested hieroglyphically (Stone, 1995). Spelling rules are coming into
clearer focus (Justeson, 1989b), although prompting further controversy.
For example, Bricker (1989) suggests that orthographic irregularities of
Yukatek Maya written in Roman script reveal hieroglyphic antecedents.
The difficulty with this intriguing hypothesis is that few of the proposed
patterns accord with present understandings of glyphic orthography: Colo-
nial ahau uob and mul lil, thought to be reflections of ‘‘logosyllabic rules
for word division’’ (Bricker, 1989, p. 41), correspond to no known pattern
in the hieroglyphs, which would have spelled such words AJAW-O:B’,
mu

ⴙ lu ⴙ IL, MUL-IL, and so forth. Nonetheless, the main and fully

valid point is that hieroglyphic and European literacies could overlap in
the same person. This was undoubtedly so in early Colonial Yucatan. More

Advances in Maya Glyph Studies

129

debatable is the proposition that Colonial documents represent direct trans-
lations of hieroglyphic originals (Tedlock, 1992, pp. 236–237, 1996, pp.
28–29). This idea has a strong allure to those who wish to see particular
documents as unadulterated, pre-Columbian productions that have shifted
into a new code, contents intact (see Miram and Bricker, 1996, for effective
counterarguments).

Another proposal concerns the syllabic hypothesis itself. Long ago,

Knorosov demonstrated the presence of synharmony, in which appended
syllables contain the same vowel as the syllable or logograph they modify.
What he could not explain, however, were instances of disharmony, in
which the vowels differ. Houston et al. (1998) make a case that disharmony
was a device signaling ‘‘complex vowels’’ (long, glottalized, or accompanied
by h) in preceding logographs or in words spelled by two or more syllabic
signs. There are suggestions that these rules can be further refined and that
certain instances of h may not have been spelled by Maya scribes (Alfonso
Lacadena and Søren Wichmann, personal communication, 1999). These
proposals are still being debated and require sophisticated explorations in
historical linguistics before they can be resolved. Some issues may never
be resolved because of gaps in our data. One development is Houston,
Stuart, and Robertson’s (2000b) proposal of a third category of sign, the
morphosyllable, namely, a set of postfixes of -VC form that convey both
sound and morphological meaning; their exact pronunciation or surface
expression remains in doubt, but they seem to trigger vowel harmony or
vowel variation with fixed consonants, rather like most signs in Egyptian
or Semitic scripts. The vocalic flexibility in these morphosyllables may have
accommodated Mayan dialects that handled vowels differently, a feature
also used to explain the vocalic imprecision in Egyptian script (Parkinson,
1999, p. 52). The presence of morphosyllables implies a rigorous gram-
marian tradition among the ancient Maya, perhaps along the lines of the
morphophonemic classes compiled by Pa¯n

˙

ini in his renowned grammar of

Sanskrit (Bright, 1990, p. 143). A crucial methodological advance has been
the palaeographic study of sign use through time and space, although such
studies are still incomplete (Lacadena, 1995, 1999; see also Satterthwaite,
1938). It has become apparent that such research will lead to refined under-
standings of grammatical elements and their spread (Hruby and Child,
1999) and the politically conditioned nature of sign use (Brewer, 1996). In
contrast, palaeographic attempts to revise the correlation between Euro-
pean and Mayan calendars—presumed, continuous rates of stylistic change
supposedly point to an abbreviated Postclassic period—have generated
disagreement (Lacadena, 1995, pp. 413–424) because such changes are
likely to involve many variables. The value of the palaeographic approach
is methodological in that it helps to combat what might be called the

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‘‘synoptic fallacy’’ in studies of Maya script—the presumption that we are
dealing with a single, frozen script that fails to change over space and
time (see below). Historical, linguistic, and cultural conclusions are also
described below, but suffice it to say that the dynastic reconstructions that
characterized much of the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Houston, 1993; Mathews
and Willey, 1991) have been revitalized by masterful historical syntheses
from Martin and Grube (1995, 1999) and close and effective correlations
between epigraphic and archaeological finds in large-scale archaeological
projects (e.g., Demarest et al., 1997; Escobedo, 1997a; Sharer, 1999).

Work on the four Mayan codices or screenfold books builds on a long

and distinguished foundation in glyphic studies, going back to the early
years of decipherment. For many years, Maya epigraphy was the study of
these books. Notable contributions throughout the 1990s include Love’s
(1994) treatise and facsimile edition of the Paris codex, a commentary on
the Dresden (Davoust, 1997), a series of edited papers on the Madrid
Codex (Bricker and Vail, 1997; see also 1994, and Lacadena, 1997a), studies
of evident Ch’olan and Yukatek bilingualism in the Dresden and Madrid
codices (Lacadena, 1997a; Wald, 1994a), and a plethora of articles on se-
lected topics (Bricker and Bill, 1994), many archaeoastronomical [e.g.,
Justeson, 1989a; Aveni, 1992; Bricker and Bricker, 1992, 1997; Love, 1995;
see also Malmstro¨m’s (1997) attempt to link the calendar with an origin in
specific sites]. This work, although addressing Postclassic materials, has
proved immensely useful in refining more ancient Maya concepts of eth-
noastronomy (Tedlock, 1999). It suggests new ways of understanding the
layout of buildings in Classic Maya cities. Architects at Yaxchilan, for
example, appear to have attended to solstitial alignments (Tate, 1992, pp.
111–115). An influential volume on ‘‘creation’’ and cosmology as docu-
mented in Classic Maya art and writing rests in part on zodiacal information
in the Paris Codex (Freidel et al., 1993, Fig. 2.33). Nonetheless, the opacity
of many texts in the codices, both in their reading and deeper, inferential
meaning, makes this work at once challenging and incomplete. A focus on
numbers and their properties cannot replace closer study of hieroglyphic
captions and glosses (Houston, 1997c).

Related to Maya decipherment is the recent work on Isthmian writing.

It must be addressed for two reasons: First, because Isthmian has been
regarded by some as a precursor to Maya script (see below); and second,
because the decipherment has been described as the most rigorous and
compelling work ever done on a New World writing system (Kelley, 1993,
p. 29). However, published reports raise concerns about the proposed deci-
pherment (Justeson and Kaufman, 1993, p. 1711; see also Justeson and
Kaufman, 1992). The decipherment rests on a number of premises: that
crucial signs are iconically transparent (‘‘hide, skin,’’ ‘‘boss, lord,’’ ‘‘in-

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131

cense,’’ ‘‘water,’’ ‘‘moon,’’ ‘‘liquid, drops,’’ ‘‘sky’’) and thus relatable to words
in the target language for decipherment (‘‘pre-proto-Sokean’’); that concepts
and signs from Maya writing also apply to this script (‘‘accede,’’ ‘‘let blood,’’
‘‘pierce’’); that quotative expressions and other aspects of speech should oc-
cur in a monumental text, often with a puzzling absence of references to the
agent; and that the resulting readings are inherently ‘‘complete, coherent,
and grammatical’’ (Justeson and Kaufman, 1997, p. 210).

Whether this is so can be judged against a recent translation: ‘‘Behold,

there/he was for 12 years a (title). And then a garment got folded . . .
‘What I chopped is a planting and a good harvest.’ (A) shape-shifter(s)
appeared divinely in his body’’ (Justeson and Kaufman, 1997, p. 210). It is
fair to say from this translation and the nonsequiturs it contains that there
are at least some grounds for doubt that progress has been made. Moreover,
such statements are unlike others from monuments in Mesoamerica. The
Maya themes introduced in the decipherment are arresting, for they appear
to reflect readings and emphases of the mid- to late-1980s, when the authors
were more intensively involved in Maya epigraphy. (For example, bloodlet-
ting signs are now thought to be rare in the inscriptions; a glyph for ‘‘shape-
shifter’’ was deciphered in the late 1980s but appears infrequently in monu-
mental texts, except as a root for an architectural term, Houston and Stuart,
1989.) A few years ago, Michael Coe called into question an attempted
decipherment of Indus Valley script, noting the absence in that writing
system of a large database, bilingual texts, well-understood cultural context,
and pictorial clues from images accompanying texts (Coe, 1995, p. 393).
None of these are present in the Indus Valley, nor, unfortunately, do they
characterize the archaeology of the Isthmian zone. Not even the local
artistic style—the iconographic ‘‘crucible’’ from which script emerged—is
abundantly documented or well explained. It is all the more striking that
Justeson and Kaufman have produced 21 syllables and dozens of logographs
from a total of 10 inscriptions, of which only 2 are long or clear enough to
be readily usable.

The Maya corpus is vastly larger as a testing ground for readings.

A reasonable estimate of the total number of texts, including those on
fragmented pottery from excavations, would exceed 15,000. The Maya
corpus can be augmented by three means: additional fieldwork and excava-
tion, devising tools for accessing data, and new imaging techniques. An
important epigraphic find is marked by three things: the preservation,
length, and content of the text. The longer the text, the more likely that it
will contain new information. Throughout the 1990s major finds have been
made at Palenque, in stuccos and a lengthy throne text found in Temple
XIX (Stuart, 2000b); finds from concentrated parts of the small site of
Pomona, Tabasco; a throne, panel, and hieroglyphic stairway from Dos

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Pilas (Palka et al., 1991; Houston et al., 1991a,b); Tikal Stela 40, a long but
slightly eroded text from the latter half of the Early Classic period (Valde´s
and Fahsen, 1998); a variety of ‘‘Terminal Classic’’ altars from Caracol
(Chase et al., 1991); fragmented but historically valuable stuccos and miscel-
laneous texts from the same site (Grube, 1994b); a new stela from Nimli
Punit with an unambiguous, local Emblem glyph (see also Wanyerka, 1996,
and Grube, 1994a); full publication of the painted (and now partly de-
stroyed) glyphs from the Naj Tunich ritual cave in Guatemala (Stone, 1995);
and a trove of stelae, monuments, and stuccoed texts from Tonina, Chiapas,
Mexico, that are both pivotal to decipherment and, to judge from available
evidence, inadequately documented (Yadeun, 1993). The Tonina work re-
ceives a medal of lead or tin; the gold must go to the sustained and meticu-
lous excavations at Copan, which have systematically recovered, reassem-
bled, and recorded texts, many now placed in the sculpture museum at the
site (Fash and Fash, 1996). The monuments at Copan, so long and recondite
in content, sparked major advances in understanding the names and titles
of monuments and the rituals used in dedicating them.

A smattering of new texts from La Corona have indicated the probable,

original location of unprovenanced monuments from the northern Peten
(Graham, 1997; Mayer, 1995, pl. 161; Schuster, 1997b). Challenging but
informative inscriptions from Calakmul have augmented in small measure
the large but lamentably eroded corpus of this, debatably the largest Maya
city of the Classic period (Martin, 1997, 1998; Pincemin et al., 1998). A
stunning altar in pristine condition has been excavated at the site of El
Cayo, Chiapas, and has just as quickly become mired in the chaotic and ugly
politics of that zone (Schuster, 1997a). Nearby, probably from Guatemalan
territory, comes a large set of looted lintels showing the subsidiary figures
and their overlord from Yaxchilan; they have been published in part, but
most still seem to be languishing in a bank vault in Europe (Schele, 1990).
More such sculptures are likely to appear as settlement burgeons in the
upper Usumacinta drainage. The discovery in 1999 of a new monument at
the Guatemalan border village of La Te´cnica suggests that many more may
yet be found. Even well-known sites such as Piedras Negras have yielded
new texts, as in the recent excavation of Panel 15 in the stairway debris of
Pyramid J-4: this inscription contains more than 150 glyphs and refers
largely to battles in the reign of Ruler 2 of that city. Another panel, of
supreme important to the history of the Pasio´n region, has been looted
from the area of Cancuen (Mayer 1995, pp. 167–169). Nearby, Aguateca
has delivered, as of 1999, several new stelae of unusually early and late
date for that city (Takeshi Inomata, personal communication, 1999).

From the Yucatan there are new texts, of great linguistic interest and

replete with secure Emblem Glyph, from the city of Ek Balam (Vargas de

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133

la Pen˜a et al., 1998; Vargas de la Pen˜a and Castillo Borges, 1999; Voss and
Eberl, 1999); in February 2000, the excavator of the site, Vargas de la Pen˜a,
reported the discovery of a royal burial with pottery texts, along with
a buried mural containing approximately 160 glyphs (Alfonso Lacadena,
personal communication, 2000). The Spanish project at Oxkintok uncov-
ered important new texts from this Puuc site and clinched its connection
to the so-called Chochola´ style of carved vessels, as have discoveries of
new ceramics at the ruins in 1998 (Garcı´a Campillo, 1992; Grube, 1990c;
Alfonso Lacadena, personal communication, 2000); other inscriptions of
that zone are finding their way to scholarly notice (Garcı´a Campillo, 1995a,
1998a). In the meantime, Justin Kerr continues to photograph pots passing
through his studio in New York City, organizing them in a relational data-
base that can be consulted freely (www.famsi.org). It is impossible to predict
the precise location of future finds, but we can be sure that they will arise
from three general contexts: large-scale excavations in site cores; illicit
plunderings of unprotected sites, either in remote areas or those in close
proximity to new settlements; and the discovery of new sites with monu-
ments on the surface. Financial circumstances will make large excavations
rarer, and diminishing areas without settlement will gradually do away with
unexplored zones, leaving the second the more likely, and lamentable,
source for new texts.

At the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project, housed at

the Peabody Museum, Harvard University, Ian Graham, David Stuart, and
their former colleagues, Peter Mathews and Eric von Euw, have worked
indefatigably to photograph and draw as many monuments as possible to
the highest standard. Looting lends urgency to their efforts. Plans are afoot
to increase computer access to these images, although this is made more
difficult by limited funds and staff time. So far, 15 definitive folios have
appeared. Most epigraphers follow Corpus drafting techniques, not least
because line drawings make clean photocopies—a great boon to epigra-
phers doing structural studies of texts. The technique is even more useful
because it requires no exceptional artistic skill and can be used by most
draftsmen with a firm hand. The impact of the Corpus on decipherment
can hardly be overstated, nor can Graham’s generosity in distributing draw-
ings well before their release in Corpus volumes (e.g., Tate, 1992, p. 194,
Fig. 89).

One Corpus project in preparation targets a Maya glyphic dictionary

that is lexeme- rather than glyph-based; until recently, such a project would
have been inconceivable, yet recent decipherments have made it both do-
able and necessary (Stuart and Houston, 2000). A federally funded project
by Martha Macri at the University of California, Davis, is about to release
an exhaustive relational database inventory of keyed texts and glyphic

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images (www.cougar.ucdavis.edu/NALC/SAA.html), although, in all can-
dor, the proposed indexing of Maya glyphs is unlikely to replace Thomp-
son’s compilation of signs (1962). There has also been an effort to compile
glyph readings in a single source (Kurbjuhn, 1989), a handy effort because
it helps establish authorship for certain readings. Nonetheless, it is safe to
say that Maya epigraphy and its tools of access are not yet near the quality
or refinement of those for Classical studies (Gordon, 1983; Keppie, 1991;
Tracy, 1990; Woodhead, 1981). In comparison, Maya epigraphy is still
immature: We need the indexes and prosopographies that Classicists take
for granted (e.g., Jones et al., 1971). There have been some improvements.
Merle Greene Robertson’s rubbings are now available on CD-ROM from
the University of Oklahoma Press (although expensively), and Karl Herbert
Mayer (1995) has produced a useful series of volumes recording monuments
with or without provenance (although opaquely organized). Mayer in partic-
ular has been assiduous in tracking down nearly inaccessible sculptures and
making them available to scholars; he has led and sponsored fieldwork
under the auspices of the journal Mexicon, a valuable source of fresh
information on Maya glyphs. American journals such as Latin American
Antiquity have tended to report on calendrical and codical research because
of their firm restrictions on the use of unprovenanced materials, a category
to which, regrettably, many texts belong (Anonymous, 1992, p. 261; but
see Palka, 1996, Fig. 2).

Another way of extracting glyphic evidence is through new imaging

technologies of painted texts. The Bonampak Documentation Project and
engineers at Brigham Young University (BYU) have pioneered field use
of high-resolution digital cameras, infrared videography and image capture
on Super-VHS tapes, computer enhancement of the resulting images, and
multispectral roll-outs of Maya vessels (Kamal et al., 1999; Miller, 1997;
Miller and Houston, 1998). At Bonampak, Mary Miller has led a team that
has looked comprehensively at documenting and interpreting this vastly
informative set of Pre-Columbian paintings (Miller, 1986). Many new texts
have been detected, included minutely sized hieroglyphs and crisp images
of glyphs that had been murky: within minutes of setting up videographic
equipment, glyphs spelling quantities of cacao beads were found on tribute
bundles under a painted throne in Room 1 of the murals building (Houston,
1997a; Ware et al., 1996). To date, the murals project has retrieved one of
the largest sets of names known from any Pre-Columbian site and deter-
mined the dynastic relations between figures in the paintings. Enigmatic
microglyphs, no more than 1–2 cm in height, embellish parts of the painting
(Fig. 1): only close-up viewing would detect such signs, hinting that the
murals were not meant to be seen from one vantage point, but from many.
The same team from BYU has also worked with James Brady in the painted

Advances in Maya Glyph Studies

135

Fig. 1. Microglyphs from the Bonampak Murals, Room 3 (courtesy Mary Miller, Bonampak

Documentation Project).

caves of Naj Tunich and Cueva de las Pinturas (Brady et al., 1997; Ware
and Brady, 1999), and improvements in equipment have led to markedly
superior images. Carbon underpainting, the usual outline of glyphs, come
out particularly well, but digital imaging is also discriminating between
slight shifts in red. Clearly, painted texts can no longer be viewed solely
by the naked eye, restricted as it is by inherent spectral limitations (e.g.,
Chase and Chase, 1987, Figs. 10 and 37). The technique should be extended
to all painted surfaces with hieroglyphs, such as the capstones and murals
from the Yucatan, Peninsula (Fettweiss-Vienot, 1981, 1984; Mayer, 1987,
1990) and the unparalleled richness and iconographic diversity of tomb
paintings from Rı´o Azul, Guatemala (Adams, 1999, Figs. 3-14, 3-17, and
3-44). The addition of generous funding from a new charity, the Foundation
for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc. (FAMSI), has begun
to have a profound impact on the direction and practice of Maya archaeol-
ogy and epigraphy because of its emphasis on ancient images and writing
(www.famsi.org); to an extent unacknowledged by many, research follows
funding. For the moment, the large amounts injected into Maya research
will play foil to the scientific and processual style of research associated

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with funding from the National Science Foundation. FAMSI has also been
instrumental in providing a digital platform for a joint bibliographic effort
with the library of the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania.

Ethics, Standards, and the Public

Since the early 1980s, before her untimely death, Linda Schele orga-

nized and promoted an annual series of conferences and workshops at the
University of Texas, Austin (e.g., Schele and Mathews, 1993; Schele and
Grube, 1994). These have had an enormous impact on the general public
and on professionals, who could glean the latest decipherments and inter-
pretations within months (or days) of their formulation. Her own presenta-
tions were vivacious and at times non-academic, yet highly effective in
communicating the excitement of decipherment. Through Schele, the sub-
ject of Maya decipherment, inherently an esoteric discipline, achieved broad
and inclusive appeal, with the implicit promise that amateurs too could
make breakthroughs, just as Schele herself did soon after entering the field
in the early 1970s (Coe, 1999, pp. 201–203).

Understanding the general attraction of the Maya comes easily. The

visually stunning nature of Maya glyphs and their architectural setting,
along with the glamour of modern decipherment, contribute to popular
interest through books, television specials, and magazine articles (e.g.,
Lemonick, 1993; G. Stuart, 1997). More to the point, Maya ruins lie rela-
tively close to the United States. Tourists can travel inexpensively and in
tolerable comfort to savor the exotic and mysterious in photogenic settings.
However, in reaching out to the public (Fagan, 1993), we must be wary of
sensationalizing the ‘‘otherness’’ of the Maya, accentuating the peculiarity
of their glyphically attested rituals, or most crucial, glossing over interpre-
tive difficulties or disagreements. Public interest can even lead to odd
situations, so that, for example, scholars may find themselves conducting
simultaneous popular and academic discussions on the same topic. One of
my articles (1986) was prompted by seeing an Emblem Glyph I identified
but had not yet published in a map from a popular magazine. We have
many responsibilities—to a public that craves accurate information; to
colleagues that deserve a grace period to publish before their readings filter
into common knowledge (see below); and to the ancient Maya themselves,
through portraits and narratives that show them comprehensively and con-
textually, to the best of current abilities.

This raises the matter of ethics and standards. ‘‘Accountability’’ should

be our byword to fellow specialists, the modern public, the evidence, and
the texts as artifacts. In many cases, later viewers will not see the monuments

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137

in the same state of preservation as we do (Bell, 1987, p. 43). The texts
deserve the greatest attention. In recording and studying them, specialists
are morally enjoined to be accurate, to operate as physicians who, above
all, ‘‘do no harm,’’ and to disseminate their records as rapidly as possible.
Accuracy is necessary because monuments may be destroyed, stolen, or
effaced by forces of nature after the record is made, as has been the case
with an important altar recently found at Zacpeten, Guatemala (Don Rice,
personal communication, 1997). Incomplete or inaccurate documentation
actively prevents others from understanding the text. This means that in-
scriptions must be photographed and drawn according to the highest stan-
dards (Jones and Satterthwaite, 1982; Graham, 1975), not by an artist, but
by a trained epigrapher who can identify relevant information, and in such
a fashion as to anticipate epigraphic needs of the future (Bell, 1987, p. 44).
Unfortunately, drafting is a difficult and time-consuming skill that is rarely
taught formally in archaeological programs. It will soon undergo rapid shifts
as computer drafting and digital imaging grow to dominate epigraphy. The
time spent on renderings is rarely valued as a legitimate use of professorial
energy, and many if not most professional archaeologists leave their drafting
needs to specialists.

A final aspect of accuracy is that monuments should not be moved

before adequate account is taken of their archaeological context. Above
all, an inscription is an artifact as well as a text (Houston, 1993, p. 69).
Some accounts of new finds have, despite studio-lit photography, proved
unsatisfactory as archaeological records (Yadeun, 1993), with little sign
that further information is to come, as in the case of finds at Yaxchilan
(Garcı´a Moll, 1996, p. 39). This becomes a highly sensitive issue when
North Americans, the unwilling heirs of problematic political relations with
Latin America, criticize archaeological work by neighbors to the south.
Quite simply, the matter cannot be discussed without triggering historical
antagonisms, nor is prior work by North American archaeologists without
flaws or ethical lapses (Black, 1990). Justifiably, some Mexican archaeolo-
gists have questioned the use of archaeology in their country for professional
advancement in another (Lorenzo, 1981). Tact and more contact, not less,
is the solution to resolving such tensions because all share similar goals
of elucidating inscriptions, as facilitated by talents and resources from
many countries.

The second ethical duty is to do no damage. It is grossly negligent to

record a text at the expense of its long-term viability, through abrasive
rubbings, molds, and other methods of ‘‘direct reproduction,’’ or to fail in
preserving the text after discovery or documentation. Panel 7 at Piedras
Negras, Guatemala, has a coating of indelible epoxy left by a botched
attempt to cast the sculpture. To be sure, direct reproduction has its advo-

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cates (Gordon, 1983, pp. 30–31; Keshishian, 1988, p. 29; Woodhead, 1981,
pp. 78–83, 135–136; see also Greene, 1966) because it avoids the interces-
sions, interpretations, and errors of draftsmen. It has also served a vital
role in preserving information through, for example, the casts made by
Alfred P. Maudslay in the late 19th century, sometimes of monuments that
have subsequently eroded (Joyce, 1938). Nonetheless, preserving a text
after discovery and recording can be surprisingly difficult to accomplish,
and a good case can be made that most monuments, particularly stuccoed
or painted ones, should be reinterred or removed from contact with the
public and the elements (Valde´s, 1993, p. 96).

Every country with Maya remains must walk a difficult path as popula-

tions increase and open communication erupts in complaints about histori-
cal inequities. For example, in the aftermath of the Guatemalan ‘‘peace
accords,’’ local villagers have begun to lay claim to archaeological sites and
monuments in ways that countermand national law. The results, especially
in the Pasio´n drainage of Guatemala, have been calamitous, as villagers
hack monuments into pieces for sale and, in aggressive assertions of local
sovereignty, prevent government authorities from patrolling sites or pro-
tecting inscriptions. Political realities make any countermoves impractical
at present. In this light, Ian Graham’s intrepid efforts at removing sculptures
from danger deserve the highest commendation, as have subsequent efforts,
including mold-making, by the Institute of Anthropology and History in
Guatemala. The creation of the new sculpture museums at Tikal and Copan
(Fash and Fash, 1996) is probably the only solution to protecting important
sculptures from long-term damage. Yet, these buildings too will require
sturdy construction, especially in earthquake zones, along with government
commitments to continued maintenance and museum improvement. As
ethnopolitics intrude (see below), the removal of sacred objects from their
original settings may prove increasingly controversial.

The final injunction, rapidity of dissemination, poses a joint responsibil-

ity. As epigraphers, we are mere stewards of information, with no rights
to hoard evidence (Chippindale and Pendergast, 1995, pp. 45–46). The so-
called Copan Notes and Texas Notes, a series of photocopied manuscripts
distributed by the late Linda Schele, represented the most rapid if uneven
communications in Maya epigraphy; more finely crafted reports have come
from the editorial hand of George Stuart and his Center for Maya Research
in a series that is beginning again after a hiatus of some 8 years (e.g.,
Hammond et al., 1999). By the same token, those receiving unpublished
drawings or photographs must be sensitive to rights of first publication and
to legal sensitivities resulting from government permits in countries of
origin. The growing problems of ‘‘gray literature,’’ government reports
filed in limited-access archives, and of nonacademic, restoration-oriented

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139

attitudes toward excavation, do not bode well for the future. To some
Old World epigraphers (Caminos, 1976, p. 24), commentary must ideally
accompany drawings and photographs. Yet, that is inherently unrealistic
because of the delays that would result. Definitive publications of the
Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project will, because of their
elevated standard, inevitably appear at a stately pace (see above).

If commentary is to appear, then it must meet ever-higher standards.

These days, an acceptable transcription, transliteration, and translation
involves: (1) explicit acknowledgment of ideas and readings developed by
others; (2) competence in Mayan chronology, orthography, and grammar;
and (3), at the least, adequate drawings and photographs. Unfortunately,
these standards are not always met (e.g., renderings in Adams, 1999, Figs.
3-14, 3-17, 3-32, and 3-44; Marcus, 1987, Fig. 27; Pincemin et al., 1998, p.
323), and the field is of sufficient complexity and swift development to
demand full-time attention. Dabblers and dilettantes should beware: Maya
epigraphy is a treadmill set at high speed, very much intensified by samizdat
email correspondence and the tight-knit networks at the core of this re-
search. Formal publications often lie years behind the cutting edge, although
the opposite can be the case with workshops (see above). Another problem,
often discussed in private and infrequently in public (Justeson, 1995, pp.
xiv–xvi), is perhaps more acute in Maya epigraphy than any other domain
of archaeology. Credit for readings or interpretations can become an uneasy
issue. Three things make this so: the compact nature of individual decipher-
ments, which can be readily absorbed in ways that most archaeological
interpretations cannot; the public limelight in which glyphic studies operate;
and the inescapable fact that decipherment is a competitive race—a particu-
lar sign will, after all, be deciphered only once. This hothouse atmosphere
can lead to citational imprecision, or, because of the peculiarly public
discourse of Maya epigraphy, casual comments can be unconsciously assimi-
lated and reformulated as one’s own. Most such cases are unintentional,
coming from active discussions underway in our field, in which authorship
may not always be crystal clear as ideas ebb and flow. Yet, unless epigra-
phers are careful, a collegial atmosphere may be exchanged for one of
mistrust. Another ethical concern in glyph studies is the use of unprove-
nanced texts (Dorfman, 1998). A strong sentiment exists in archaeology
that ‘‘very little archaeological material has sufficient richness in itself to
be of any use without detailed information about context’’ (Wylie, 1995,
p. 19), suggesting, to some, ‘‘prohibition on the use of looted . . . material,
recognizing that this will have a cost in terms of loss of information’’ (Wylie,
1995, p. 21; cf. Donnan, 1991, p. 498). No one who has seen a trenched site
in the Maya region or shattered stelae destroyed by inept looters can
remotely approve of such activities, or mouth absurdities about looters and

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collectors as idealistic preservationists (Coggins, 1970; Griffin, 1989). At
the same time, there is probably no active epigrapher who fails to look at
such data, or who truly believes that texts on looted pottery or stone
monuments contribute little to decipherment (see Cook, 1991, p. 536, for
a parallel debate in Classics; cf. Coggins cited in Dorfman, 1998, p. 30).
The inconvenient truth is that looted texts unequivocally provide key data
(Wiseman, 1984, pp. 68, 77), particularly from the many vessels photo-
graphed in roll-out fashion by Justin Kerr (1990; www.famsi.org). In fact,
further study can lead to reprovenancing, repatriation, or creative ap-
proaches to joint ownership (Graham, 1988; Greenfield, 1996). Realistically,
exhortations from other Mayanists or critics of the art market to ignore
such data are unlikely to meet with enthusiastic cooperation. Yet, there
are difficult moral negotiations involved in using this material, and the
thoughtful specialist should, at a minimum, confront such matters of con-
science on a routine basis.

The Maya glyph scholar, then, must deal with a variety of responsibili-

ties—to the public, to the texts, and to other scholars. More recently,
another group has compelled our collective attention: the modern Maya,
especially the cultural activists among them (Fischer and Brown, 1996, pp.
2, 14). Increasingly the focus of Maya ethnographers (Fischer, 1993; Warren,
1998), cultural activism represents attempts by modern Maya to create or
reclaim cultural identities in opposition to dominant Ladino ones; from
this comes a tension with Marxist Ladino scholars who value, not indigenous
rights, but the awakening of mixed groups united in class struggle against
the ‘‘ruling class’’ (Vargas Arenas, 1995, pp. 62–63). A cultural as opposed
to a class activism draws on deep wells of indigenous tradition, particularly
in Highland Guatemala, and on essentialist, near-mystical notions of cul-
tural continuity (Fischer, 1999, p. 476), which may nonetheless be firmly
based not so much as ‘‘invented traditions’’ as traditions that are inventive
(Sahlins, 1999, p. 408).

We can be certain that the movement will continue to play a role in

Guatemalan and Mexican politics and, provided that compromises can be
found, in the study and management of what are described by activists as
sitios sagrados, or ‘‘sacred sites.’’ Increasingly, these centers include not
only the religious centers of the Highland but also the Classic Maya cities
of the Lowlands as well (Cojtı´ Cuxil, 1996, pp. 19, 43). In May 1998, I
witnessed a symbolic appropriation of the Tikal central plaza by a large
group of Highland Maya. The leaders wore traditional garments; those
following behind, dressed in polyester, carried boom-boxes and picnic bags.
All refused to pay the standard admission fee, evidently a symbolic gesture
stating special claims to the ruins. As the leaders, a group of six or so,
performed directional rites in the plaza, their followers wandered about as

Advances in Maya Glyph Studies

141

tourists, notably uninterested in the rituals that seem to have motivated
the trip. More recently, activists claiming to represent a ‘‘Council of Elders’’
have demanded the repatriation of Maya objects in North American collec-
tions, including some with inscriptions, to be returned, not to an ‘‘illegiti-
mate’’ Ladino government, but to their own care as the culturally appro-
priate custodians of [sic] ‘‘oxidian skulls’’ and ‘‘amethyst’’ artifacts (English-
language manifesto in possession of Houston).

Indigenist rhetoric triggers the question of who ‘‘owns’’ the past or,

more precisely, who possesses the authority to interpret antiquity (Deloria,
1992; Montejo, 1993). A reasonable opinion might be that anyone and
everyone ‘‘owns’’ the right to interpretation, but that technical or special-
ized training lends greater authority to the interpreter. To deny this is to
embrace a purely relativistic or faith-based notion of knowledge, a move
unlikely to attract most readers of this journal. Nonetheless, according to
two non-Maya scholars, our loyalty should adhere not to evidence or to
pretensions of scholarly apoliticism and objectivity, but to facilitating Maya
attempts to ‘‘regain control over their linguistic and cultural destinies’’
(Brown, 1996, p. 165) and to revitalizing ‘‘their ethnic identity in the most
politically effective and autonomously developed form possible’’ (Sturm,
1996, p. 129). Archaeologists should, according to one activist, ‘‘accomodate
[sic] themselves to the politics of the native communities they study’’ (Mon-
tejo, 1993, p. 16). In the interests of ‘‘rectifying the injustices of a colonial
past’’ (Sturm, 1996, p. 128), scholars will be asked to guide their studies or
interpret their results according to the needs of modern Native Americans.
Glyphs lie at the core of these discussions, consisting as they do of authentic
(if statistically skewed) voices from the Mayan past. A workshop format
has been used to teach modern Maya the nature and content of Maya
writing (Schele and Grube, 1996), and some Maya have eyen begun to
modify Lowland glyphic syllabaries to accommodate Highland Mayan
phonemes (Sturm, 1996, pp. 119–121), although this appears to be a passing
effort. As an aside, one must note that there is no evidence that Highland
Maya ever used Lowland Maya logosyllabic script (cf. Tedlock, 1996, p.
28); a tiny number of early, undeciphered texts from Kaminaljuyu, Guate-
mala, do not help in solving this problem (Coe and Kerr, 1998, pp. 66–67;
Fahsen, 1996).

Some epigraphers will wish to strengthen contact with activists beyond

the more traditional interaction that exists between glyphic scholars and
linguistic informants. Others will ask uncomfortable questions of their own.
For example, can we responsibly impart conclusions from epigraphic re-
search without explaining the contingent and evolving nature of glyphic
knowledge? Moreover, most Guatemalans are of Maya descent. Why, then,
should the majority be excluded from a cultural dialog about features of

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the Maya past? Some North American anthropologists and cultural activists
have a tendency to romanticize the modern Maya, as though these groups
represented ethnic isolates whose purity must be defended and refined.
This model of ethnicity derives unconsciously from North America, with
its federal reservations, legally acknowledged, card-carrying tribal affilia-
tion, and limited genetic input from the First Nations into the population
as a whole. Such conditions manifestly do not apply to the peoples of
northern Central America and southern Mexico. At the same time, there
is a tendency to construct a moralizing fable that disregards, devalues, and
detaches the Ladino world from any intersection with Maya existence.
(Some of these attitudes recall the leyenda negra, ‘‘black legend,’’ of the
evil, phobically cruel, and exploitative Spaniard; Elliott, 1970, pp. 95–96;
Merrim, 1993, p. 154.) This is in overreaction to what has been described
as the ‘‘constructivist’’ account of modern Maya society that ‘‘views Maya
identity as nothing more than the product of counterhegemonic resistance’’
(Fischer, 1999, p. 476). Nonetheless, on one point all can agree. More
epigraphic works must be translated into Spanish and contact reinforced
with interested people, regardless of ethnicity, in Mexico, Guatemala, Be-
lize, El Savador, and Honduras. In addition, the Maya as a congeries of
different peoples and interests, possibly condensing into a larger identity,
will not go away. In Guatemala, especially away from the capital, they
continue to insist on recognition of their cultural and linguistic rights (Feder-
ico Fahsen, personal communication, 1999). A congress on cultural patri-
mony convened in April 2000 by the Guatemalan Ministry of Culture and
Sport indicated that broader reconciliation between Maya activists and
other groups may still be within reach (He´ctor Escobedo, personal commu-
nication, 2000).

ADVANCES AND PROSPECTS

Origins and Change

Maya glyphs had a trajectory of use and development that ostensibly

lasted for nearly 1700 years, although, apart from calendrical glyphs and bar-
and-dot notation (recently found on a colonial manuscript; David Stuart,
personal communication, 1999), the system essentially died out by the late
16th century. The suggestion that one of the codices, the Madrid, is Colonial
in date is intriguing but inconclusive without physical dissection of the
manuscript (Michael Coe, personal communication, 1998). Yet, only the
Classic inscriptions represent a coherent, securely dated block of evidence
for examining changes in script. By now it is commonplace that glyphs come

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about through the ‘‘excising of visual forms from their normal relations to
pictorial art’’ and that they appear ‘‘to have evolved within the Olmec
iconographic tradition,’’ which approached ‘‘the verge of a rudimentary
logography’’ (Justeson and Mathews, 1990, p. 92; see also Prem, 1971; Coe,
1976). Others appear to see such juxtapositions less as linear sequencings
of, among other things, kinesic ‘‘manual actions’’ (Justeson et al., 1985, pp.
35–37; Justeson, 1986, p. 442; Justeson and Mathews, 1990, p. 91) than as
cosmic models whose disposition of internal elements was determined by
spatial rather than linguistic patterns (Reilly, 1996a, p. 38; cf. Justeson,
1986, Fig. 3). One supposed ‘‘text’’ of Early Formative date is almost
certainly iconographic, despite attempts to interpret it as early glyphic
writing (Kelley, 1966). Nonetheless, there can be little doubt that writing
came into existence, as it does in most societies, during moments of intense
transition or social rupture. Excellent examples of this are the ‘‘secondary
scripts,’’ such as the Cherokee syllabary or Silas John script, found in
colonial contexts and revivalist settings around the world. In Mesoamerica,
this moment of turbulence took place at the end of the Olmec civilization.
These early texts are nominal or titular, with little evidence of verbalization
or syntactic sophistication. They exist to specify people whose portraits, it
seems, had to accompany the text. As such, they probably had their roots
earlier still, among the iconic signs in headdresses that seem to have distin-
guished individuals in Olmec art. The difference was that, in Terminal
Olmec texts, such as on San Miguel Amuco Stela 1 and La Venta Monument
13, the names were physically detached from their owners and placed
elsewhere in the visual field. This is the first unambiguous writing in Meso-
america.

Other features of Maya glyphs date back to this Olmec crucible. The

pars pro toto principle, involving segments abstracted from and standing
for wholes, expresses itself in the form of progressively more schematic icons
in the Olmec system of conventions.

3

Later Maya glyphs make frequent use

of this principle because the eye of a feline or the ear of a toad can convey
the same reading as the head of such creatures

. An Olmec-era

linkage between stelae and polished stone celts (Justeson and Mathews,
1990, p. 125; Porter, 1992), perhaps with ultimate origins in corn-cob fetishes
(Taube, 1997, 2000a), continued well into the Classic period, when a celt
glyph unambiguously refers to stelae. Similarly, a glyph for ‘‘cloud,’’ read
muyal in Classic Mayan, appears with a similar meaning in Olmec settings
a millennium before (Reilly, 1996b). Whether the top-to-bottom; columnar

3

Attempts to see Olmec icons as purely local motifs rather than as constituents of a coherent,
pan-regional system are still favored by some scholars (e.g., Flannery and Marcus, 1999, p.
13). Recent studies of Olmec material tend to reject this notion, which appears to be based
on a flawed categorization of iconographic elements (Taube, 1995).

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format of most Mayan glyphs comes from these elongated forms is untest-
able (Justeson and Mathews, 1990, p. 94), but one wonders whether textual
layout followed the shape of organic, perishable precursors. Gaur (1992,
p. 5) made this argument for the columnar format of Chinese writing,
proposing its origin in notations on bamboo sticks, but this too is hypotheti-
cal. Some writing systems, such as oracle-bone script and runic, have an
angular, pointed quality that may come from their use on rough or irregular
surfaces of wood and, in the earliest known runes, stone and metal (Fu et
al., 1986, p. 17; Moltke, 1985, p. 32; Snædal, 1994, pp. 9–11). In contrast,
Maya glyphs are highly calligraphic. This hints at a painterly origin mirrored
in the close relation between terms for writing and painting in Mayan
languages (Kaufman and Norman, 1984, p. 134; Tedlock and Tedlock, 1985,
p. 124).

The most valuable account of Maya script development comes from

Grube’s doctoral research (1990a, 1994d; see also Chinchilla Mazariegos,
1990, 1999). His main arguments are: (1) that the writing system should
not be viewed synoptically, as a single, synchronous system—in fact, no
more than 400 signs were used at any one time; (2) that the period after
about A.D. 650 witnessed a sudden influx of new syllabic signs, apparently
as an impulse to greater phonic clarity; and (3) that ‘‘the basic principles
of Maya hieroglyphic writing remained unchanged over the entire time of
its use’’ (Grube 1994d, pp. 184–185). For much of the Classic period his
observations are probably correct. Unfortunately, the earliest years—those
most relevant to the origins of Maya writing—cannot be linked to firm
dates, nor is the sample large enough to discern precise patterns. As with
many early writing systems, there appears to have been a period of initial,
intransigent opacity, at least from the vantage of modern attempts to read
the texts. Glyph-by-glyph connections with another Preclassic script, Isth-
mian, are likely to be spurious and seem to rest on eye-of-faith suppositions
(cf. Justeson and Mathews, 1990, Fig. 8; see above). Nonetheless, the Isth-
mian script is, to judge from our tentative inventory of signs, likely to be
logosyllabic, like Maya writing.

The earliest Maya texts are datable by their style and accompanying

iconography. Few have any good evidence of provenience (Hansen, 1991;
Thompson, 1931). Hieroglyphs tend to fill an entire glyph block, with rela-
tively little suffixation (Coe, 1973, p. 25). ‘‘Head variants,’’ signs represent-
ing heads, occur in great diversity. Possibly the heads represent lists of
gods, brought together as patrons of a particular site (see below; Easby
and Scott, 1970, Fig. 26; Gibson et al., 1986; Schele and Miller, 1986, pl.
10a). With the exception of some signs, most glyphs are not readable and
do not follow any clear syntactic pattern (e.g., Thompson, 1931, pl. 33),
although two may show dedicatory phrases known as the ‘‘Primary Standard

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Sequence’’ (Coe, 1973, p. 26; MacLeod, 1990; Schele and Miller, 1986, p.
120). This suggests an early concern with the presentation of objects because
this was the primary function of the Sequence. Logographs were certainly
present in the late Preclassic period (ca. A.D. 1–150), during a time of
script development that might be called Period IA, just after the inception
of Maya writing (Table I). However, it is only in slightly later texts that
ergative (prefixed) pronouns emerge, a sure sign that we are dealing with
Mayan languages (e.g., ya-AK’AB’

⬎ y-ak’ab’; Schele and Miller, 1986, pl.

33). By the end of the Preclassic, Period IB in the sequence of glyph
development, texts are recognizably close to later examples.

The difficulty of reading these texts requires some comment. It is

possible that the inscriptions reflect, as do many early writing systems, a
looser relation to language and syntactic ordering. This is what makes them
inherently more resistant to study (Nissen et al., 1993, p. 20), and most
early scripts, Egyptian and cuneiform included, become syntactically and
morphologically clear only several generations after their inception. [Such
clarity may have resulted from the influence of bilingual conditions, as in
the joint use of Semitic and Sumerian languages by writers of cuneiform
(Cooper, n.d.); perhaps the changes came about when the original scribes
died and could no longer be asked to clarify particular documents, or when

Table I. Periods of Maya Writing

Period

Features

Period IA (A.D. 1–150)

Glyph

⫽ glyph block; minimal suffixation; lists of head

signs; minimal syntactic transparency; lack of monu-
mentalism; emphasis on portable objects; inception
of codification, alongside great variety of signs

Period IB (A.D. 150–250)

Enhanced grammatical transparency; slight increase of

monumentalism

Period IIA (A.D. 250–550)

Full range of use; heightened glyphic monumentalism

Period IIB (A.D. 500–550)

Innovation of signs; cross-script transfer, from Teotihu-

acan contact (?)

Period IIIA (A.D. 550–650)

Inception of heightened epigraphic legibility; advent of

pseudo-glyphs

Period IIIB (A.D. 650–700)

Period of innovation; enhanced complementation; full

syllabic substitution for logographs; increased range
of content; influenced by operation of Calakmul he-
gemony

Period IIIC (A.D. 700–800)

Greatest number of Maya texts

Period IIID (A.D. 800–900)

Pronounced regionalisms; localized disintegration and

grapholectal innovation; cross-script transfer

Period IV (A.D. 900–1600?)

Codical and painterly emphasis; near-absence of monu-

mentalism; content largely nonhistorical?

Period V (A.D. 1600–?)

Script death: sudden or gradual depending on region,

as literates died or discontinued glyphic craft (Camp-
bell and Muntzell, 1989, p. 181)

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burgeoning legal and administrative systems found it necessary to achieve
greater precision in their accounts and precedents.] It may also be that in
Period IA the script was a highly localized phenomenon, with small script
communities and restricted zones of mutual intelligibility. If writing began
as a priestly skill, then esotericism may have been prized as well (Harbs-
meier, 1988, pp. 256–259). It is noteworthy that depictions of kings long
preceded explicit, monumental, textual descriptions of them (McAnany,
1998, Fig. 5). Complex societies, even states, flourished centuries before
writing in the Maya Lowlands, and writing does not seem to have been an
indispensable resource of early royal representations. The first, datable
stela with unambiguous royal names—in this instance, within the headdress
of a floating ancestor—remains Tikal Stela 29, at A.D. 292, some consider-
able time after the development of acute social inequality and preferential
burial practices at that site. Syntactic and phonic clarity improved greatly
by the beginnings of the Early Classic, Period II in script development (ca.
A.D. 250–550). At this time, syllables of CV (consonant–vowel) come into
existence. (An early date for the so-called Hauberg stela, which has such
signs, is not credible on stylistic grounds; cf. Schele, 1985; independently
noticed by Alfonso Lacadena.) In part, their innovation may have come
from a need to record complex vowels (Houston et al., 1998a). What is
likely is that they were created in sudden episodes of scribal innovation,
one basic syllabary at the beginning of the Classic period, and another
somewhat after the initial years of the Late Classic (Grube, 1994d, Fig. 3).
This later episode might be labeled ‘‘Period III,’’ by far the time with the
most legible inscriptions. When large claims are made for the number of
signs deciphered, it is almost always in reference to this period of Maya
script. It is logical to extend understandings of that period to earlier exam-
ples of Maya writing, but the results can be mixed.

Elsewhere, the concept of an ‘‘adapter’’ or ‘‘innovator’’ has been sug-

gested for the alphabet and other scripts (Powell, 1991, pp. 10–12). Such
individuals are known historically, ranging from King Sey-kong of Korea
to Sequoyah and Silas John in North America (Walker, 1981; Walker and
Sarbaugh, 1993). In contrast to the gradualist models of script development,
which favor long-term, cumulative changes, a credible case can be made
that rapid innovations are the norm and that they imply the existence of
individuals or groups responsible for such innovations (e.g., Boltz, 1994, p.
39; S. Fischer, 1997, pp. 367–376). For example, logographic scripts can
be incremental and accretional, because a writer can devise word-signs
according to need, provided that a collective acceptance of that innovation
is forged within a particular script community. (Innovations without conven-
tional acceptance operate as little more than private codes.) However,
syllables encompass an overall sound system. Just as alphabets expand to

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147

cover consonants and vowels, so do syllabaries, once conceived, logically
expand to record all of their CV or VC possibilities. A slowly accreting
syllabary is no more believable than an accretional alphabet. This makes
it likely that the creation of the initial syllabary (other elaborations took
place later) was an event rather than a slow process. To a striking extent,
all known glyphic syllables are explicable in terms of Mayan and even
Ch’olan words (Houston et al., 2000), demonstrating that non-Maya origins
for the syllabary are implausible, although, to be sure, the idea for syllables
may have come from Isthmian script. In addition, morphosyllables represent
a fine-tuned analysis of morphophonemic and inflectional categories and
strongly hint at a breakthrough understanding of linguistic structure. The
identity of glyphic innovators is irretrievable on present evidence, although
the Maya may have conceptualized them retroactively as euhemerized
deities (see below). What is more pressing is understanding the social
conditions in which inventions were adopted and disseminated. In this we
approach the paradox of Maya civilization: of distinct dynasties and holy
lords that nonetheless shared similar beliefs and practices (Sabloff, 1986,
p. 110). One imagines that similarities were reinforced by conflict and the
subsequent enslavement of foreigners, court exchanges (including page
systems, visits, and marriages), and the key contribution of scribes and
sculptors, whose large glyphic and iconographic repertory suggests training
in only a few centers capable of assembling such knowledge. As for changes
in writing, it is likely that innovations were regarded as in part revelatory
(Basso and Anderson, 1975, pp. 8–9; Harbsmeier, 1988, p. 272), introduced
in conditions that were not merely technical but supernatural in inspiration.
There is some evidence that later scribes no longer understood the original
motivation for a glyph (e.g., the WAY glyph), and so stylized it into a form
that departed dramatically from its initial, iconic referent. Such reinterpreta-
tions suggest that glyphic literacy was not an entirely continuous tradition.
Rather, it experienced significant breaks and disruptions as hieroglyphic
knowledge passed from site to site and generation to generation.

Maya Writing and Society

Another recent development has been a more complete understanding

of the social context, use, and ideology of Maya script (Garcı´a Campillo,
1995b). Coe (1978) demonstrated some time ago that Maya script had a
close linkage to supernatural monkey beings, or its’a:t, ‘‘sage,’’ the dextrous
simians linked throughout Mesoamerica with scribes (Stuart, 1989). This
has been demonstrated with additional data that link writing to a variety
of supernaturals and courtiers, some female, but mostly male, with brushes

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and quills of sundry width stuck in their headdresses (Coe, 1977; Coe and
Kerr, 1998, pp. 90–110). An important feature of these indigenous concepts
of notational systems is that the Classic Maya appear to have distinguished
between ‘‘writing’’ in the sense of phonic records and ‘‘numbering,’’ a point
made also for early cuneiform by Michalowski (1990). That is, writing was
not so much a unitary graphic system as a packaging of different elements,
something that may even have been true of Inka khipu (Urton, 1998).
Metaphorically, one can see it less as a single cord of fused parts than a
coaxial cable of discrete elements, its strands woven together yet originating
in distinct kinds of records. The use of the same numbering system in
different scripts throughout Mesoamerica points strongly to the separability
of phonic signs from numeric systems of graphic encoding. Most likely,
numbering preceded ‘‘true’’ writing that recorded language. Maya numbers
themselves appear to consist in their most basic form of, quite literally,
‘‘sticks’’ and ‘‘stones,’’ even of shells and single fingers, perhaps a distant
recollection of their origin as concrete, manipulable objects or body parts
used in counting (Lounsbury, 1978; Lambert et al., 1980). The connection
throughout Mesoamerica between the casting of stones, divination, and
acts of reading may hint at further nuances behind the use of numbers in
Maya civilization (Monaghan and Hamman, 1998).

There is compelling evidence that the Maya observed a distinction

between two kinds of code. One ceramic vessel appears to show a scene
in which deities offer the gifts of civilization to a primordial couple emerging
from a hole or altar, in turn under a tree and stylized incense burner (Coe,
1978, pl. 16). Seated nearby is an elderly creator couple, the female a
goddess (conventionally labeled ‘‘Goddess O’’) associated with midwifery
(Taube, 1994, p. 657). The monkey scribe takes pride of place, but behind
him is a deity connected with numbers on vegetation, which sprouts from
his sides (Fig. 2); another object from the area of Tikal shows this same
deity writing with a stylus on leaves (Berjonneau and Sonnery, 1985, pl.
364). It is tempting to view this as a representation of highly perishable
writing on bark and palm leaves, of the sort well attested in other parts of
the tropical world (Gaur, 1992, pp. 50–51). The monkey scribe pertains to
one kind of notation, the glyphs or woj (a sign deciphered by David Stuart),
and the ‘‘accountant’’ scribe to another. Moreover, this script may have
been largely dedicated to ephemeral transactions and numeric tabulations
with limited shelf-life. One is reminded of Linear B. Examples survived
because of the fortuitous burning of archives, which baked the clay tablets
in Mycenaean archives into a more permanent form (Bennet, 1988, p. 23;
Chadwick, 1976, p. 18). The Maya evidence is both tantalizing and frustrat-
ing, for it hints at the existence of economic or numeric records that have
not survived to the present. Poor conditions of preservation in the Maya

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149

Fig. 2. Deities associated with two kinds of notation (after Coe, 1978, pl. 16).

Lowlands intimate that such notations will not easily be found. Nonetheless,
it is advisable to avoid unproductive speculation about the contents of lost
records. Elsewhere, sampling arguments have led to overstated claims about
the purely utilitarian function of early writing, as in a recent comparison
of scripts in China, the Near East, and Mesoamerica (Postgate et al., 1995).

Tangible evidence of scribes is stronger than ever before (see also

Wyllie, 1994). In spectacular finds at the Terminal Classic city of Aguateca,
Takeshi Inomata has found a building, Structure M8-10, with a full range
of in situ scribal equipment, including implements for grinding pigment,
sectioned conch shells used as ‘‘inkwells,’’ and rich regalia of scribal status:
one incised shell reveals that a scribal ‘‘sage’’ was a junior or youthful
member of the royal family (Inomata, 1995, Figs. 8.31–8.40; 1997, Fig. 14;
Inomata and Stiver, 1998). ‘‘Bark-beaters’’ used in making paper may
indicate the presence of book production (Sharer, 1994, pp. 599, 708),
although it is well to remember that paper had many functions in Mesoamer-
ica, including service as a material for absorbing blood and as an offering
for sacrificial fires (Wyllie, 1994).

A number of buildings at Aguateca and other sites were almost cer-

tainly ‘‘houses of writing’’ (ts’ibal na:h), perhaps the official residences or

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Houston

receiving quarters of scribes, or buildings dedicated to training in script,
rather like the Egyptian ‘‘houses of life’’ (Roccati, 1990, p. 75; Fash, 1991,
p. 120; Kerr, 1990, p. 255). One pot may even show a probable mythologic
‘‘charter’’ in Malinowski’s sense of a myth that provides a model and
explanation for current practices (Strenski, 1992, pp. xviii–xx): God D, a
prominent Maya divinity, provides instruction in the ways of numbers to
a group of deferential youths (Coe and Kerr, 1998, Fig.70). Unpublished
drawings by the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Project of a
glyph band on the Osario building at Chiche´n Itza´ suggest that it, too, was
a ‘‘house of writing’’ (Fig. 3). This band may represent the only known
explicit inventory of Maya phonetic syllables. It is organized into minimal
pairs that share a vowel but differ in their consonants (nu/k’u, cha/b’a, but
also nu/b’i, ?/wa, lo/?; cf. the Akkadian ‘‘Syllabary A,’’ Cooper, 1996, Table
3.2). Preservation is poor, yet the frieze retains great value as the possible
remnants of a Maya syllabic primer. More important still, it offers a glimpse
into indigenous concepts of linguistic form. Finally, a small group at Copan,
9M-22, near the renowned ‘‘scribe’s house,’’ Group 9N-8 (Webster, 1989;
Fash, 1989, 1991), offers evidence that it was a ‘‘house of sculpture,’’ because
a carving on it shows the use of a sculpting tool and an emblem for sculpture
(k’an tu:n) (Karl Taube, personal communication, 2000; see also Sheehy,
1991, Fig. 6). This may be one of the few such structures ever identified,
and it is noteworthy that its quality of architecture is substantially less than
that of the scribe’s house (Karl Taube, personal communication, 2000).
Another example may have been detected by Kazuo Aoyama at Structure
M8-8, Guatemala, a building containing a set of 18 polished axes with use-
wear indicating stone carving (Aoyama, 1999).

The proximity of scribal skills to royal courts, both physically and in

terms of overlapping personnel, argues that written productions were only
partly like the ‘‘craft literacy’’ described for the Classical world by Eric
Havelock (1982, pp. 187–188), who saw reading and writing, particularly
for logosyllabic systems, as a skill mastered by a few specialists under elite
control. However, for the Maya, it would seem that the scribes and sculptors
were members of the elite (Stuart, 1989; Reents-Budet, 1994, pp. 55–56). An
unsubtle view—the insistence that humans operate only as self-interested
strategists—would perceive hieroglyphs as little more than instruments for
producing ‘‘wealth finance,’’ or as propagandistic bombast and reservoirs
of symbolic capital (Earle, 1987, pp. 68–69). Clearly, the restriction of
writing marked it as special and thus desirable, so one cannot pass over
the competitive aspects of glyphic use. The pseudo-glyphs, or sign-like
forms painted or incised on some Classic pottery, are a case in point:
They represent evocations or simulacra of luxury, much like the painted
imitations of jaguar hide or the colors and textures of valuable textiles

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151

Fig. 3. Possible glyphic syllabary from the Osario, Chiche´n Itza´. Blocks are approximately
10–15 cm high (after sketches from the Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Peabody
Museum, Harvard University).

that occur on Maya ceramics. However, the obsession with finery existed
alongside jockeying for status and Veblenesque excesses of consumption.
That appetite reflected aesthetic and sensory preoccupations, with pottery
scenes that show lords sniffing bouquets of flowers or surrounded by plates
heaped with food (Houston and Taube, 2000). Conceptually, many Maya
tombs were banqueting chambers with an ‘‘eternal’’ supply of food and
drink (cf. Coe, 1988, pp. 234–235), and glyphs for feasts—essentially mouths
gulping food and drink—have been found by Stuart in the inscriptions
(Houston and Stuart, 2000), including a few in door jambs or capstones in

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Yucatan, presumably a clue that certain rooms or buildings were feasting
chambers (Garcı´a Campillo, 1998b). The Colonial Spanish motto had it,
Ma´s y ma´s y ma´s y ma´s, ‘‘More and more and more and more’’ (Elliott,
1970, p. 53), but for the Maya there was also a sense of restraint and
exacting decorum rather than any pronounced indulgence of extravagance
for its own sake. (Interestingly, displays of affect and abandon are notewor-
thy for their rarity, and occur thus far only in images of ritual drunkenness
or mourning, Barrera Rubio and Taube, 1987.) There is ample evidence
that Classic courts emphasized sensory pleasure, eloquence, and hyper-
refinement (Houston and Taube, 2000), just as courts do in many parts of
the world (Elias, 1983; Inomata and Houston, 2000). An approach that
ignores the conceits and strivings of societies with ‘‘high culture,’’ defined
by Baines and Yoffee as the ‘‘production and consumption of aesthetic
items’’ (1998, p. 235), misses a large part of past motivation. Coe and Kerr
(1998) are entirely correct in locating Maya writing within a calligraphic
sensibility that was as much aesthetic as practical.

The epigraphic record contains many references to Maya literati (Stu-

art, 1989). Despite the calligraphic excellence of the Maya, however, scribal
signatures are comparatively rare. Only a few are known (Fig. 4), and those
that have solid historical information point to find-spots in a small part of
the department of Pete´n, Guatemala, centered on the site of Naranjo and
other cities to the west and south. The dates are highly limited, bracketing
a period of little more than a century. The paucity of references at other
sites cannot be readily explained. Did scribes in this area enjoy unusually
high status, or were there other restrictions on mentioning scribes that we
do not yet understand? Sculptor’s signatures are far more common (Stuart,
1989), and have been studied by several scholars, most exhaustively by
Montgomery (1994, 1995). A plotting of their distribution places them in
the very center of northern Guatemala and the southern Yucatan peninsula,
wiht a preponderance in the Usumacinta and Pasio´n areas (Houston, 1993,
p. 135). It is possible to chart their productive lifetimes because the names
occur on several carvings, particularly at the site of Piedras Negras (Fig.
5), with rather more limited data from Yaxchilan. Not surprisingly, a few
sculptors were active for more than 20 years. This may express a relatively
short ‘‘professional’’ life, because training and initial work are likely to
have begun at a relatively young age (cf. royal lifespans, Houston, 1989a,
Table 1), with the proviso that the historical record of such activities may
be incomplete. For some time, epigraphers have known that many sculp-
tures were joint productions, involving eight or more sculptors (Stuart,
1989, Fig. 18c). This fact casts doubt on any incautious attempt to detect
‘‘hands’’ or individual styles in Maya carvings. A final detail is the evidence
at Piedras Negras that one sculptor was known as the ‘‘head’’ or ‘‘foremost’’

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153

Fig. 4. Scribal signatures, organized by approximate date.

Fig. 5. Sculptor’s careers, Piedras Negras, Guatemala.

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carver, possibly the term for the leader of the local atelier (Houston and
Stuart, 1998).

Piedras Negras is one of the few cities with remains of ‘‘practice pieces’’

by apprentice sculptors (Satterthwaite, 1965). The stones were found as
building material in the Acropolis, or royal palace, and the recent Brigham
Young/del Valle project has uncovered nonglyphic carvings on deeply bur-
ied stones nearby, in Structure J-7. The discovery of such pieces away from
workshops is regrettable, but it may be that such activity zones were never
fixed in one location. They may have materialized in an ad hoc fashion,
near the place intended for the sculpture. David Stuart points out that
Machaquila Stela 3 refers to the dedication or ‘‘wrapping’’ of a monument,
which, 220 days later, is ‘‘seen’’ (ilaj); another sculpture at the same site,
Stela 7, is similarly ‘‘wrapped,’’ and within 35 days the ruler ‘‘sees himself’’
(ilba; Houston and Stuart, 1992, p. 591). These inscriptions may record the
amount of time elapsed between the in situ placement of a roughed stone
and its final presentation as a finished piece to the ruler, who ‘‘saw’’ his
portrait in something like an unveiling ceremony. Secondarily, the texts
reveal some sense of carving time, in this instance, 220 and 35 days, respec-
tively.

Patterns in sculptors’ names are not entirely clear, but there does

appear to be a large sample with Cha:k names, after the rain god who
wields an axe (Taube, 1992, p. 22). The connection between sculptors and
a deity clutching a cutting tool is unlikely to be fortuitous. Little has been
published about the lithic technology involved in producing hieroglyphs.
The marks of chisels, perhaps of peccary tusk, are plain to see, as are
polishing marks (Stuart, 1990a, p. 13). Proportions generally followed
finger- or handwidths, and colors were applied broadly, like the daubing
on figurines rather than the delicate paintwork evident on Maya murals
and ceramics. There seems little doubt that carvers were also painters, to
judge from names (ts’i-b’a-CHA:K-ki

⬎ ts’i:b’ cha:k, ‘‘painting (?) Cha:k)

and the presence of painted guidelines for carvings at Palenque. What is
still unclear is whether the sculptors could move from site to site, rather
like ‘‘free agent’’ Leonardos or Michaelangelos lured by promises of wealth
and fame, or whether they operated within systems of tight personal control
and patronage. The second seems likely. Several references in the area of
Bonampak and Yaxchilan suggest that sculptors were loaned or bestowed
by foreign lords (the expression in question reads ya-na-IB’-IL, ‘‘his anab’’),
either from subordinates to overlords, as at Yaxchilan, or from the overlord
to underlings; the same has been found in the area of Piedras Negras
(Houston, 1993, p. 135).

The problem of literacy is difficult to address, although a preliminary

effort has been made in another publication (Houston, 1994; see also Re-

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stall, 1997a). At the outset, it is useful to understand that literacy concerns
two things, ‘‘production’’ (the creation of writing) and ‘‘response’’ (its
reception and exegesis). In some parts of the world, as in the Fayum Basin
in the Roman period, production values can be high and response low
because the scribes were mere copyists. The ‘‘mandarin’’ emphasis on
exquisite calligraphy and textual parsing lies at another extreme, or an
individual may traverse this range of effective production and response
within a single lifetime (Houston, 1994, pp. 28–29). The Maya tradition of
literacy accords with what has been called recitation literacy, in which oral
performance of texts was taken as a given: here, the oral and the written
are not so easily distinguished (Havelock, 1982, pp. 5, 45; Stoddart and
Whitley, 1988, pp. 762–763). Estimating the number of literate Maya in
the Classic period is fraught with uncertainty, as it is in other parts of the
world (Baines, 1983). Comparative data show that rates above 10–15% of
the population occur only when there is considerable state or philanthropic
involvement in pedagogy, printing presses, and rural schooling (Harris,
1989, p. 15), none of which seem conceivable in the Maya case. Moreover,
there is likely to be considerable variability across the landscape. Literate
graffiti suggest exceptionally low rates at Becan and relatively high rates
at Tikal (Houston, 1994, p. 39). Quantifying such impressions is virtually
impossible, and we are left only with the probability that literacy in the
full sense of effective production and response was low. Limited response
may have been higher, enabled in part by the hieroglyphic, iconic nature
of many signs (Houston, 1994, p. 40).

A final point in reception concerns subtler shadings of ‘‘response’’ in

glyphic literacy. A useful distinction is drawn in discourse analysis between
‘‘transactional,’’ or content-oriented approaches, and ‘‘interactional,’’ or
relational modes of study (Brown and Yule, 1983, pp. 1–4). The first trans-
mits facts and propositions; the second touches on interactions between
people in a social setting that is intended to be reinforced or subverted.
The pivotal importance of context for the speaking or reading act involves
what linguists call pragmatics, and this in turn addresses intentions, implica-
tions, audience, message-form or genre, ‘‘code’’ or language style or dialect,
and evaluation as to the quality of the performance. Only one study so far
has begun to deal with the interactional properties of Mayan glyphs (San-
chez, 1997), but there is much that remains to be done, especially in terms
of the physical placement and accessibility of texts. Here, the archaeologist
and epigrapher must work in collaboration because an interactional empha-
sis requires that inscriptions be seen as part of an overall system of architec-
turally framed monuments at a particular site, and not as discrete or isolated
texts. The carefully delimited courtyards and viewing lines in Maya sites
clearly relate to perceptual fields identified in the glyphs as yichnal (Stuart,

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1987), to which the Classic Maya attached great hierarchical meaning
(Houston and Taube, 2000).

It is obvious to most epigraphers that small texts had different audi-

ences from stuccoed glyphs on building facades, but other examples must
be understood text-by-text and city-by-city. One text, inscribed on the rim
of an alabaster bowl from Yaxchilan, is 4 mm high and could only be
read with extreme difficulty (David Stuart, personal communication, 1992),
others painted on tomb capstones seem to have been designed for a super-
natural audience. In such cases, especially in the hurried tomb paintings at
Caracol, writing-as-process was more important, perhaps, than writing-as-
product, as though the painting were itself a ritual of entombment (Chase
and Chase, 1987, Fig. 14). By walking up certain hieroglyphic stairways,
readers figuratively tread backwards in time, in a kinetic respooling of
dynastic succession; glyphs would be reversed from their normal orientation
because they needed to ‘‘address’’ or face a reader entering a room (Hous-
ton, 1998, 356–357, Fig. 10). The performative, oral dimensions of literacy
discussed above underscore the social nature of reading, just as the creation
of images and texts can be seen cross-culturally as a magical or fetishizing
act that accords rare powers to sculptors and scribes (Kris and Kurz, 1979).
The ontology or ‘‘being’’ of Classic sculpture and hieroglyphs, which had
for the Maya near-vital and animate qualities, must also form part of this
discussion (Houston and Stuart, 1998). If an image shares in the identity
of the thing it represents, then conventional divisions between objects and
interlocutors, animate beings and inanimate forms, become less meaningful,
at least to Maya minds.

The world of objects and material things was keenly important to the

Classic Maya, as was shown a decade ago by collective work on the ubiquity
of ‘‘nametags’’ or statements of possession in Maya texts (e.g., Houston,
1989a, pp. 12–15; Houston et al., 1989; MacLeod, 1990; for fuller review,
see Coe, 1999, pp. 244–252). The number of terms for things in the Maya
world is now large (Grube, 1990b; Stuart, 1998): stela, u lakamtu:nil; bone,
u ba:k; drinking vessels, yuch’ib’ (?) and u ja:y; plates, u lak; tripod plates,
u jawte’; clothing, u b’uk; collar ornaments, yuhil; earspools, u tu:p; lintels,
u pakb’utu:n or u pakab’; doorways, u pasil; thrones, u te:m; ballcourt rings,
u chi-? tu:n; quills, che:b (Boot, 1997); stairways, ehb; portable altars, u
hachb’utu:n? (David Stuart, personal communication, 2000); tombs, u mukil
(distinguished from muknal, ‘‘cemetery’’?); temples, u wayib’il, and other
terms, including some that can be interpreted semantically but not deciph-
ered. Many of the objects were important in a partial gift economy that
involved feasting with tamales, chocolate drinks, and pulque, the fermented
sap of the maguey plant, which was probably more commonly consumed
than Mayanists believe (chih, David Stuart, personal communication, 1996;

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see also Parson and Parsons, 1990, pp. 2–3, 294–297). Classic-era chocolate
recipes have been studied by MacLeod (1990), and there is some evidence
that connoisseurs named varieties of cocoa bean by location, rather like
the fine wines in France (one kind of chocolate bean was apparently grown
in the area of Naranjo, Guatemala, yutal-‘‘Naranjo’’-kakaw; see Kerr 6813,
www.famsi.org). Some labels or nametags were used as personal names for
buildings (Stuart and Houston, 1994), and recent excavations at Copan
have shown the stunning continuity of semantic themes and, one presumes,
building designations through time (Taube, 1999). Glyphic terms indicate
that another class of objects related to ‘‘wind jewels’’ worn as pectorals
and to physical tokens of ancestral presences (Houston and Taube, 2000;
see below).

Language of the Classic Maya

In recent years a growing body of research has led to a more refined

understanding of language in the Maya inscriptions, with important
implications for understandings of ancient Maya society and its discourse.
A history of this work is presented elsewhere (Houston et al., 2000),
but suffice it to say that the modern linkage of language to writing
conforms to two general stages: (1) a ‘‘prelinguistic’’ or ‘‘presyntactic’’
period, and (2) a set of ‘‘affiliational’’ arguments, some in wide disagree-
ment with one another. Moreover, the two stages make use of several
lines of evidence, one external and two internal. The external data are
‘‘distributional,’’ namely, where the glyphs occur should determine what
language was being recorded; if in a region where Yukatek Maya or
Ch’olan occurs today, then that was the local language in the past, too.
The two internal approches are ‘‘lexical,’’ in which words specific to
a particular language or group of languages establish affiliation; and
‘‘morphological,’’ involving elements of grammar, such as inflection and
syntax. It has become fairly clear that the last approach is by far the most
powerful in settling the question of language affiliation. Distributional
arguments assume little to no language movement over the past millen-
nium, an unlikely claim given, for example, the extraordinary homogeneity
of Yukatek across its broad zone of use (thus implying relatively recent
and rapid diffusion), or the fact that many social crises and displacements
have convulsed the Maya region over the past 1000 years. Nor are
lexical data intrinsically decisive as evidence: words often transgress
language boundaries as loan terms (cf. Chase et al., 1991, pp. 7, 14), a
fact even true for use in English of Mayan terms like ‘‘shark’’ (xok),
‘‘cacao’’ (kakaw), ‘‘cockroach’’ (xk’uruch), and probably ‘‘cigar’’ (sik’al)

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(Jones, 1985; Stuart, 1988; Pierre Ventur, personal communication, 1982).
In contrast, morphology pinpoints features that are found only in certain
languages, as shared innovations that can be understood through the
rigorous methods of the comparative historical method (Robertson, 1992).
This method has been considerably enhanced in recent years by the
preparation of invaluable new resources on Mayan languages (Bricker
et al., 1998; Hofling and Tesucu´n, 1997; Josserand and Hopkins, 1988;
Wichmann, 1999).

Until recently, most proposals have combined distributional and lexical

arguments (e.g., Ayala Falco´n, 1997, p. 75, commenting on ‘‘Tzeltal’’ terms
at Tonina, Mexico), along with a trust in glottochronology, a statistical
means of dating language change according to several questionable assump-
tions (Justeson et al., 1985, pp. 14, 58, 61–62; Grube, 1994d, p. 185). Archae-
ology, too, is often thrown into the mix, as correlations are sought between
cultural periods and language change, particularly for shifts before, during,
and after the Classic period (e.g., Josserand, 1975; Kaufman, 1976). Method-
ologically, there seems an increasing possibility that such correlations are
tautological. In any attempt to date such shifts, hieroglyphic texts must
assume a position of interpretative priority because, to an extent unique
in ancient America, they provide direct evidence of language change. So
far, the results do not appear encouraging for glottochronological estimates,
which seem generally to be far too ‘‘short’’ or compressed for key develop-
ments such as splits in the Mayan family tree. Glottochronology, for exam-
ple, indicates that Ch’olti’ (‘‘Eastern Ch’olan’’) split off from ‘‘Ch’olan–

Tzeltalan’’ at the end of the Early Classic period (Justeson et al., 1985, p.

5), and yet all available data from hieroglyphs affirm a split many centuries
before, if not well into Preclassic times. The tenacity of glottochronology
in Mayan linguistics, long after its repudiation elsewhere (Nurse, 1997, p.
366), is perplexing. It probably stems in part from the formative role that
Swadesh, the innovator of glottochronology, played in Mesoamerican lin-
guistics (Swadesh, 1967); the pree¨minent reputation of glottochronology’s
most eloquent and forceful advocate, Terrence Kaufman (see Kaufman,
1974); and an understandable need to relate Mayan languages to the mate-
rial remains of their speakers. Despite calls for caution in the past (e.g.,
Campbell, 1984, p. 4), scholars must still recognize that, for all its seductive
allure, glottochronology is more likely to be misleading than helpful.

Prelinguistic or presyntactic models reflect a largely discredited mind-

set that Maya glyphs are merely collections of symbols that, if they reflect
words at all, do so in rough orderings that owe little to Mayan syntax. In
large part, such research belongs to earlier stages of decipherment, when
Mayan languages and their historical relationships were poorly known or
to a time when scholars were hardly aware of the problem of determining

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159

which languages were recorded in script; it may not even have been clear
that glyphs did reflect language. Examples of this period include works
by Rafinesque-Schmaltz, who, in 1827, stated that the script recorded
‘‘TZENDAL, (called also Chontal, Celtal, &c)’’ (Stuart, 1989, p. 16). This
was a perceptive remark, close to current ideas, but Rafinesque also located
‘‘Tzendal’’ as far south as Panama (!), declaring it to be ‘‘the ancient
speech of Otolum’’ (Palenque), from which derived the ‘‘dialects of Chiapa,
Yucatan and Guatimala’’ (Stuart, 1989, p. 16), an interpretation that laid
comprehensive (and, in retrospect, ludicrous) claim to virtually all Mayan
languages. For Rafinesque, clearly, these were mere labels, not languages
with specific features to be isolated and studied by philogists. Ideographic,
nonlinguistic interpretations of glyphs continued in subsequent generations,
so that, as late as 1945, Paul Schellhas could declare that the script contained
little grammar and ‘‘no verbal ideograms representing actions.’’

The next phase of research was the ‘‘affiliational,’’ when linguistic and

epigraphic tools began as dull instruments that later sharpened to surgical
precision as scholars became aware of possibilities inherent in full, linguisti-
cally sophisticated decipherment. The intellectual culmination of the early
‘‘affiliational’’ period was the long and distinguished career of J. Eric S.
Thompson, who was among the first to articulate what might be described
as a ‘‘distributional’’ argument for language affiliation. (In fairness to
Thompson, it was ‘‘distributional’’ thinking that led in the first place to the
correct connection between the hieroglyphs and Mayan languages of the
Yucatan pensinula and adjacent regions.) That is, the location of glyphic
texts implicated groups ‘‘very close to (the) modern Yucatec and . . .
Chol-Chorti-Mopan’’ who now occupy such lands (Thompson, 1950, p. 16).
Later, perhaps, the script began to spread ‘‘to the territories in which
Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and Chaneabal now live, and never reached the highland
peoples’’ (Thompson, 1950, p. 16; see also Campbell, 1984, p. 5).

However, people often forget that Thompson’s long career, still a

model of intellectual catholicity and interdisciplinary enterprise, showed
not so much intellectual ossification as development and change, including
swings between what seem to be contradictory points of view. For example,
he later refined his views by limiting the glyphs to ‘‘Choloid’’ and Yucatec
speakers (1972, pp. 23–24), but could also state that no ‘‘tense’’ markers
were represented in the Mayan script (Thompson, 1972, p. 55). For Thomp-
son, who had relatively little control over Mayan languages in their total-
ity—he seems to have relied strongly on the Yukatek specialist Ralph
Roys, in a collegial relation that requires further study by historians of
Maya decipherment (Ventur, 1978, pp. 23, 60–61, 74)—this might have
been a comforting claim because it effectively absolved epigraphers of
attaining linguistic expertise or of looking for things that, after all, were

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unlikely to be present. Yet Thompson was also one of the first to use
internal evidence, both lexical and grammatical, which suggested to him
that ‘‘the inventors of glyphic writing spoke a language closest to sixteenth-
century Yucatec’’ (Thompson, 1950, p. 16). The Yukatek school has long
dominated Pre-Columbian Maya studies (as, separately, have ethnog-
raphies of Highland Maya), because of the richness of its historical and
linguistic sources and its long and excellent tradition of study.

Recent advances in affiliational research rest on two fundamental

premises: (1) that the script recorded many elements of language, including
features we may call ‘‘verbs,’’ ‘‘pronouns,’’ ‘‘nouns,’’ and ‘‘adjectives,’’
although in Mayan languages these categories share overlapping qualities
unfamiliar to speakers to Indo-European languages [for example, the noun
ba:k-ø (

CAPTIVE

/

BONE

-

ABS

3

SG

) can be translated, ‘‘It is a captive/bone’’];

and (2) that these elements can be placed in an historical and comparative
framework that highlights certain Mayan languages and excludes others
because of their distinguishing properties. There is little doubt, too, that
this research could only have matured in the 1990s, after epigraphers had
achieved convincing decipherments of signs used as morphological particles.
Such began with the crucial discovery of prevocalic pronouns by Bricker
and Stuart (Bricker, 1986, pp. 63–83; Stuart, 1987; cf. Hopkins, 1997, p.
82), a probable completive (now thought to be a tense) ending by Stuart
(1987, p. 42), prepositions (Macri, 1991, pp. 271–272; Mathews and Justeson,
1984), and positional endings by MacLeod (1987, p. 16; see also Bricker,
1986, p. 186; Garcı´a Campillo and Lacadena Garcı´a-Gallo 1990, p. 164), but
has since extended to work on verbal suffixes and their various permutations
(Lacadena, 1997b, 1998, in press; Houston et al., 1998a, pp. 292–293), along
with a wide variety of discourse particles and rhetorical devices (Grube,
1998b; Stuart et al., 1999). (Contributions by Josserand to discourse analysis
of Maya texts were a welcome development but suffered from the inexacti-
tude of readings at the time: in effect, her analyses were of English-language
paraphrases rather than of the Maya itself; Josserand, 1997.) If ‘‘God is in
the details,’’ then persuasive linguistic arguments rely utterly on these
decipherments and the precise sounds they convey, many of which are still
undergoing detailed review (Wald, 1998; Wald and MacLeod, 1999). This
research has also led inevitably to the imposition of higher standards for
epigraphers. Specialists can no longer ignore language or ‘‘read’’ the glyphic
texts as loose paraphrases or ad hoc and ungrammatical conjunctures of
words, some taken from disparate Mayan languages (e.g., Folan et al., 1995,
p. 324). A translation must now imply a particular model of language
affiliation and defend its precise, language-specific claims on data. Hiero-
glyphic research has reciprocally influenced historical linguistics, and some
long-accepted views of Mayan language descent are now under intensive

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161

debate: One possible conclusion would be the inclusion of Chontal as an
offshoot of so-called ‘‘Eastern Ch’olan’’ languages (Ch’olti’ and Ch’orti’)
and the removal of Ch’ol to a remote, highly innovative branch of its own
(Stuart et al., 1999, p. 39).

More recent ‘‘affiliational’’ arguments thus exist in a more exacting

atmosphere of proof and disproof. Several kinds of argument are now on
the table. The first is the ‘‘unitary’’ claim—that one language is recorded
in the script, be it an early form of Ch’olan prior to its differentiation into
daughter languages (Justeson et al., 1985, Table 17) or a single line of
descent in the Ch’olan or Yukatekan branches. Few specialists today believe
that Highland Mayan languages, those spoken in the upland and mountain-
ous zones to the south of the Yucatan peninsula, had much of a direct
involvement in glyphic writing (Justeson and Campbell, 1997; cf. Justeson,
1978, pp. 245–273; Lounsbury, 1989, pp. 88–89, 1997; Macri, 1983, p. 56).
A subspecies of the unitary claim is the ‘‘prestige’’ or ‘‘diglossic’’ model,
which allows for multiple vernaculars but only one language in script (Macri,
1988, p. 33; Houston et al., 2000). The second claim is for a scribal ‘‘mosaic’’
or ‘‘multiple’’ model that sees many languages in the script, including Ch’ol
and Yukatek, or all branches of Ch’olan (Schele, 1982).

The multiple model has prevailed until recently (e.g., Bricker 1986,

1995). It carries the undeniable appeal of preserving the direct relevance to
decipherment of all so-called Lowland Languages (named for their general
occurrence in low-lying areas of the Yucatan peninsula and neighboring
zones). This multiple focus, which countenances many languages in script,
is quite distinct from a method that uses such languages for comparative
and historical data. It is certain that debate will continue for some time to
come, perhaps discordantly. However, there is a strengthening movement,
gathering speed throughout the 1990s (and before) in work by Houston
(1997d), Lacadena (1997b, 1998, in press), Robertson (Houston et al., 1998,
2000; Robertson, 1998; Stuart et al., 1999), Stuart (Houston et al., 1998,
2000; Stuart et al., 1999), and Wald (1994b, p. 88), that proposes one princi-
pal language in the inscriptions. This was, in the opinion of Robertson, an
ancestral form of Ch’olti’, a Colonial language that is now extinct, and its
probable descendant, a living language known as Ch’orti’ (Robertson,
1998), now spoken by some 52,000 people in and around the Departments
of Chiquimula and Zacapa, Guatemala (Warren, 1998, p. 16). Alternative
proposals for heavy use of Yukatekan cannot be sustained because of
weaknesses now apparent in the glyphic evidence used to support such
claims (e.g., Bricker, 1986, p. 125; Closs, 1987; Justeson et al., 1985, p. 13;
see also Houston et al., 2000, for further discussion). Nonetheless, Yukatek
words do percolate up into the scribal language, alongside words of demon-
strable Ch’olti’an provenance (Houston et al., 2000; Stuart et al., 1999, p.

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38). Moreover, as Wald and Lacadena show (see above), the language of
the Postclassic codices is a strange, possibly creolized admixture of Ch’olan
and Yukatekan.

Houston, Robertson, and Stuart call this glyphic language Classic

Ch’olti’an and identify it as a prestige language spoken or written through-
out the area of Maya inscriptions by elites, and by elites and nonelites alike
in its homeland, an area linked speculatively to Peten, Guatemala, and
surrounding areas. There are indications from the inscribed texts that,
during the Classic period, the script expressed a living language undergoing
regular changes, such as vowel shortening and ‘‘simplification’’ (Houston
et al., 1998, pp. 284–285), a systematic shift in some contexts from e to i
(Stuart et al., 1999, p. 37), and the loss of velarization in some aspirates,
possibly at different times in the Late Classic period (Nikolai Grube, per-
sonal communication, 1999). By the Terminal Classic to Early Postclassic,
the language most likely became rather like Sumerian, Middle Egyptian,
or post-15th-century Coptic, a written, almost liturgical language that osten-
tatiously preserved archaic features, especially ‘‘complex vowels,’’ and dif-
fered strikingly from vernaculars. To judge by Egyptian parallels, the rela-
tion of written language to vernacular is likely to have been quite complex
historically (Parkinson, 1999, pp. 48–49; Vernus, 1996), and details of this
are being researched by a number of epigraphers, who have begun to
discern possible dialect zones (Lacadena and Wichmann, 1999). Data on
this language, although spectacular and unparalleled for the New World,
do not match the long-term evidence from Egyptian or Mesopotamian
languages. For example, forms of Middle Egyptian were used over a 2,000-
year span, whereas Maya glyphs in securely dated, monumental contexts
occur over less than a 600-year period, and the majority of those date to
a time of less than 200 years’ duration.

A striking feature of Mayan writing is how closely it records the nuances

of language, to a degree unimaginable even a decade ago. In the first place,
and contrary to earlier expectations, the script apparently transcribes not
a ‘‘split-ergative’’ language in the incompletive aspect, the pattern in some
Lowland Mayan languages (see above), but a ‘‘straight ergative,’’ in which
intransitives do not take an ergative, or prefixed, pronoun (Bricker, 1986,
Fig. 142; Macleod, 1982, pp. 420–421; Schele, 1982, pp. 9–10). The split-
ergative itself now appears relatively recent, a linguistic offspring of the
progressive in verbs (Robertson, 1992, p. 145). A full range of transitive,
intransitive (both root and derived intransitives), and positional verbs oc-
curs in script, including passives (MacLeod, 1984, 1987; Lacadena, in press),
antipassives (Lacadena, 1997b, 1998), mediopassives (Houston, 1997d),
‘‘causatives’’ on positional verbs (Stuart et al., 1999, p. 32), and active
transitives. All ergative (prefixed) pronouns are attested, among them first-

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163

or second-person references in records of putative conversations (Houston
and Stuart, 1993; Stuart et al., 1999, pp. 18–21), as well as some rare
absolutive (suffixed) pronouns [a-winak-e:n, ‘‘I am your servant’’ (Stuart
et al., 1999, p. 22)]. Quotative expressions alternatively precede and follow
such statements (Grube, 1998b; Houston and Stuart, 1993). Clearly, several
distinct registers existed in Mayan script. Some are almost folkloric in their
tales of trickster rabbits and bamboozled trader gods (Stuart, 1993).

But for all such evidence, disagreement persists to a disturbing extent

about the most basic of topics: How the script communicated tense (the
relation of an act to the ‘‘here-and-now’’) and aspect (the state of ongoing
or completed action). There are two opposed views: (1) that the default,
‘‘foreground’’ of glyphic texts record the incompletive aspect, ‘‘back-
ground’’ restatements occur in the completive (Houston, 1997d; Stuart et
al., 1999, p. 28); and (2) that all texts are in the completive aspect, but
some verbs—‘‘background’’ retrospections—discursively mark changes in
narrative time (Wald and MacLeod, 1999, pp. 88–96). This issue is crucial
to translation, but epigraphers have yet to shape a consensus. The advantage
of the second hypothesis is that it accords with patterns in modern Mayan
discourse and with certain interpretations of glyphs; the advantage of the
first (I must express an open predilection here) is that it accounts more
effectively for glyphic orthography and historical linguistics. Moreover,
Robertson recently made a compelling case that the Classic period experi-
enced a dramatic shift in verb morphology that accounts both for historical
antecedents and daughter languages. It is highly probable that, during
Classic times, the script reflected a language in which an adverbal tense
system had displaced a verbal aspect system (Robertson and Houston,
2000). Whatever the eventual outcome, this debate will be helpful in refining
our understanding of script and Mayan languages. To judge from some
linguists’ reactions, the coming years will see much vigorous discussion
(e.g., comments to Houston et al., 2000, pp. 338–341).

A question for archaeologists might be: Why should we care about

the problem of language affiliation? For epigraphers the problem could
hardly be more pivotal, because it places parameters on future decipher-
ments and points to certain languages and lexical sets as being more useful
than others. Changes did occur in these languages, but they have now
been dated and can, with suitable reserve, be correlated with larger events
reflected in archaeology; dramatic changes in the vowel system, for instance,
seem to occur just prior to the Maya Collapse, perhaps as part of larger
shifts in speech and scribal communities. Resolving the issue of affiliation
will also result, for the first time, in highly accurate translations that capture
nuances of what the Maya wished to say and how they wished to say it.
Historical linguists also have much to gain, for in Maya script they recover

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Houston

a research tool roughly equivalent to the discovery of Hittite and Tocharian
for Indo-European studies: a language from at least 1200 years before
the Spanish conquest and, along with checks on historical reconstructions,
challenges aplenty in the form of unexpected patterns that should stimulate
comparative review of Mayan languages. What archaeologists gain, as stu-
dents of Maya society, is a glance into the hierarchical nature of script use,
in which certain registers that pertain to Maya courtly and temple practice
dominate (unsurprisingly) the most enduring records of speech. The exis-
tence of such a language undergirds and favors lateral bonds between elites
over vertical bonds between elites and nonelites. The increasingly esoteric
nature of the writing would have positive implications for scribal status
and reinforce the transcendent courtly culture of the Classic period (e.g.,
Sabloff, 1986, p. 110).

Kings, Gods, Ancestors, and Ontology

Another development in Maya epigraphy involves a deeper under-

standing of the relation between ontology (the nature of ‘‘being and exis-
tence’’) and the practice of power by Maya royalty (Houston and Stuart,
1996, 2000). It has been known for some time that Maya rulers were labeled
as ‘‘holy’’ (k’uhul) lords of particular locations (Mathews, 1991). This de-
scriptive adjective was usually applied to one person in every generation.
It seems likely the title of lord similarly applied only to offspring of a
‘‘holy’’ lord, with a self-conscious link, affirmed hieroglyphically and icono-
graphically, to one of the so-called Hero Twins of Maya myth (Coe, 1989).
The notion of ‘‘eliteness’’ in Classic Maya society hinged on recognizable
descent from holy lords through complex, ramifying networks. Simple, two-
class, endogamous models do not capture the complexity of such variable
systems of status as determined by genealogic distance (cf. Marcus, 1992c,
p. 221; see Stuart, 1997a, for a full discussion of kinship terms in the
inscriptions). There is a little evidence that social groups were organized
into vaguely defined ‘‘houses’’ or ‘‘great houses’’ of the sort described by
Le´vi-Strauss (1987; see also Carsten and Hugh-Jones, 1995, pp. 8, 10; Hous-
ton, 1998b, p. 521; Inomata and Houston, 2000; cf. the Aztec calpolli, ‘‘big
house,’’ Lockhart, 1992, pp. 16–20) and attested ethnographically among
the localized patrilineages of the Tzotzil Maya (Vogt, 1983, Fig. 6.4). Such
concepts may have included people with fictive descent or other, looser
ties and organized spatially as distinct or contiguous mound groups known
as plazuelas. The royal court itself may have been conceived as a distinct
kind of ‘‘great house,’’ but with more varied membership than those at a
lower level (Inomata and Houston, 2000).

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The ruler then was not so much a divine king as a sacred one, with a

status unique to his person during his lifetime. (But note that one site,
Caracol, has strong evidence of pree¨mptive accessions and co-rule during
the latter years of certain rulers; see Structure B-19 stuccos excavated by
the University of Central Florida team.) A very few queens are known to
have had this status, and seem to have played a role principally at moments
of dynastic rupture (Martin, 1998b), as in the well-known instance of the
‘‘Lady of Dos Pilas,’’ who married into the royal family of Naranjo. Rulers
could absorb divinity in three ways. One was by taking the names of
verbalized aspects of gods, in epithets that could be consistently held within
a single family (Houston and Stuart, 1996, p. 296; a pattern extended by
Grube, n.d.). At Naranjo, most rulers were variants of Cha:k, the storm
and rain god; at Tikal, they expressed connections to K’awi:l, an enigmatic
deity that is both complex and poorly understood. A second tactic was to
conjure or summon deities through certain rituals. The Maya rulers appear
to have had intensely personal relations with certain deities, connections
that they commemorated in many texts (Houston and Stuart, 1996). The
third stratagem was more episodic, through impersonations of gods in
masking and dance ceremonies that probably took place in the large plazas
at the center of Maya cities (Grube, 1992; Houston and Stuart, 1996). These
impersonations could also involve subordinate lords, and it could be that
the masking ceremonies formed part of elaborate tableaux and reiterations
of mythical events, or of recapitulations of historical episodes commemo-
rated in song and dance (Houston et al., 1991b).

The interpenetration of mythic and historical worlds with present ones

reveals that, for the Classic Maya, those best documented by hieroglyphs,
the civic community of a Maya center involved personages of varying
sorts, including deities, ancestors (the mam, ‘‘grandfathers’’; David Stuart,
personal communication, 1996), and flesh-and-blood actors (McAnany,
1995, 1998). At times the glyphs tell us that deities could be ‘‘lost’’ or their
cults interrupted by war (Grube, 1996). It is probable that further research
at Maya sites will find increasing evidence of such dynastic reversals, as
seems to be the case at Dos Pilas (Houston, 1993; Martin and Grube, 1999),
more speculatively at Yaxuna´ (Suhler and Freidel, 1998), and possibly at
Piedras Negras, where glyphic and archaeological evidence show major
burnings and disruptions at the end of the Early Classic period, followed
by strong recovery. (Piedras Negras Stela 12 hints that the antagonist was
Pomona, with whom Piedras Negras and its proxies again battled at the
end of the Late Classic, this time successfully.) As Freidel and colleagues
suggest (1998, p. 135–136; see also Suhler, 1996), most large Maya sites
experienced significant disruptions throughout their existence. One suspects
that Late to Terminal Classic period warfare left a more obvious record,

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not so much because hostile acts became more intense at that time, but
because, in contrast to earlier phases, fewer people remained to clean up
the destruction (cf. Demarest et al., 1997). Whatever mechanisms restored
and healed Maya cities after earlier wars no longer operated by the end
of the Classic period.

Gods had both pan-Maya and highly localized characteristics. Each

site appears to have possessed distinct gods or sets of gods venerated
and housed, as effigies, in temples known as wayib’, or ‘‘sleeping places’’
(Houston, 1996; Stuart, 1998). Some of these gods could be linked
personally to rulers: at Copan, Honduras, kings had gods who were
‘‘seated’’ or enthroned on the same day as the ruler, or who might be
taken captive, as apparently happened when 18 b’a:h k’awi:l was seized
by Quirigua (Houston and Stuart, 1996, Fig. 15; Stuart et al., 1999).
Others, such as those at Palenque (Stuart, in press b), transcended
particular rulers and may have helped shape the singular ‘‘ethnic’’ identity
of individual Maya polities. Communities appear to have been consecrated
to certain deity cults; contrasts in belief and ritual practice would have
been as effective a mechanism as any in distinguishing such communities
from their neighbors; the notable variability in Maya elite culture may
have existed both for historical reasons and as a means of reinforcing
such differentiation between dynasties. The civic relationships at the
core of these societies can be understood as ‘‘covenants,’’ binding,
supernaturally charged agreements in which ‘‘ritual,’’ as conceived by
the ancient Maya, negotiated interactions between distinct ontological
orders within the community (Fischer, 1999; Monaghan, 1995, in press).
(It is important to emphasize the term negotiated, for factions and distinct
interest groups undoubtedly existed within an ancient Maya community.)
Ancestors could be accessed, too, through tomb-openings and ancestral
cults that configured most of the epicentral, built environment in Maya
cities (McAnany, 1998); in this manner, the temples, palaces, tombs, and
processionals served as the essential equipment of an ontologically varied
but bonded community. Even much Maya jewelry can be identified as
embodiments of ancestors reified in material form and suspended as
bodily displays (Stuart et al., 1999, p. 63). The images in Maya representa-
tions, known as ba:h, ‘‘self, forehead, person, image’’ (Houston and
Stuart, 1998), extend the notion of personal essence to depictions of
people, suggesting that stelae were in part set up as permanent presences
of rulers.

A difficult question is resolving the linkage between rulers and ruled,

for there are precious few data about the processes of governance. One
trope likens the business of rulership to that of tilling, manuring, or tending
fields (Houston and Cummins, 1998), an appropriation of common, every-

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day activities of the sort documented for royal rituals elsewhere in the
world (Bloch, 1985). However, the nature of kings was clearly different
from other mortals, and some use what appears to be term for pure ‘‘force’’
or ‘‘power’’ in their names (ip, Houston and Stuart, 2000). A few dynastic
founders have names that suggest supernatural or stellar origins, as at
Naranjo and Tamarindito (Hieroglyphic Stairway 3, Step VII:B1, Houston,
1993, Fig. 4-17), although this is not always the pattern. A more typical
device is to emphasize Maya rulers as ‘‘stranger kings’’ in the Polynesian
sense described by Sahlins (1985, pp. 73–103). These are lords who are
both within society and outside it, as introduced royalty, and the ultimate
justification for the separation of rulers from subjects (Houston and Stuart,
1996, pp. 289–290). This essential ‘‘otherness’’ of Maya rulers has been
discussed by Stone (1989) with respect to evocations of distant, founding
civilizations, especially that of Teotihuacan and, for earlier Maya perhaps,
of the Olmec. The idea here is plainly that of a pan-Mesoamerican notion
of ‘‘Tollan,’’ a place of civilizational genesis (Freidel, 1999), as much a state
of mind or timeless locus as an historically situated location. At Copan,
Honduras, there seems even to be a Maya–Teotihuacano ‘‘biscript’’—a
text in two different writing systems—on Temple 26, a building associated
with the succession of rulers, although a better description might be that
the second text is Teotihuacano in ‘‘font’’ but fundamentally Mayan in
structure (Stuart, 1997b). However, the ‘‘biscript’’ has not yet thrown much
reciprocal light on writing at Teotihuacan (Taube, 2000b).

However, that is not to say that the connection was solely conceptual.

Stuart (2000a) argues that the Tikal dynasty was both disrupted and partly
replaced by exalted personages from Teotihuacan or Kaminaljuyu, and
similar evidence has been presented recently for the founder of the Copan
dynasty (Sharer, 1999). The interplay of structure, event, process, and
myth is extremely complex, but there is a strong sense that dynastic
foundations, particularly those of later, Early Classic date, were ‘‘epitomiz-
ing events.’’ They served as reference points for change and frameworks
for actors who filled and discharged mythologic roles (Fogelson, 1989;
Rappaport, 1994, p. 170). It is doubtful that any Maya ruler would have
been seen outside of this mythic frame, as much as scholars try to
separate political realpolitik from indigenous understandings of those
maneuvers. Founder’s buildings, evidently known as wi-TE’-NA:H (‘‘root
house’’?, Stuart, 2000a; cf. Schele, 1992) and, to judge from iconographic
substitutions, regarded by the Maya as houses of kindling and fire, seem
to occur at sites with specifically Teotihuacano connections. The person
identified by Stuart as a ‘‘stranger’’ was known to the Maya as siyaj
k’ak’, ‘‘(he is) born from the fire,’’ and there are strong indications that
Teotihuacano ritual involved a robust fire-making component (Karl

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Taube, personal communication, 2000), a theme elaborated in abundance
by Classic Maya lords (Stuart, 1998; Taube, 1998).

‘‘History’’ and ‘‘Politics’’

The nature of Classic Maya historical records has prompted much

discussion in the last few years. There is a committed undertone to some
of these debates. Epigraphers naturally wish to see faithful accounts of past
activities in hieroglyphic inscriptions, whereas archaeologists unschooled
in, or critical of, epigraphy are comfortable dismissing these accounts as
‘‘propaganda’’ and therefore irrelevant to their investigation of an ‘‘objec-
tive’’ past. Conceptually, these discussions are complicated by intellectual
orientation. One tendency is concerned with finding ‘‘truth’’ and ‘‘facts.’’
This can be done directly, by accepting the total veracity of ancient records,
or more cautiously, by using the procedures of ‘‘historiography,’’ the careful
weighing and evaluation of authors and sources (Nicholson, 1971). From
this process comes ‘‘history’’: an interpretive narrative by Western scholars
that is molded into an authoritative, professional account stripped free of
the propagandistic representations that discredit indigenous documents
(Marcus, 1992a, p. 7, 1995; Price, 1980, pp. 159, 177). Hard effort alone
ensures that ‘‘truth’’ emerges from native distortions (Michalowski, 1983,
pp. 237–238; Vansina, 1985, pp. 129, 199–200). Yet even that goal may be
unreachable: The only real objectivity, some assert, comes from archaeolog-
ical data and its processing by trained, dispassionate scientists working with
hard facts extracted from the ‘‘point of a trowel’’ (Marcus, 1992a, p. 445).

There is much that is questionable in these views, as pointed out by

modern historians of post-modernist bent. Consider the following rejoin-
ders: Many accounts of the past are possible; historical accounts are always
tentative, personal constructs; no direct engagement with the past is possi-
ble, nor is empathy with past mindsets (cf. Collingwood, 1946); descriptive
categories are inherently those of modern analysts (‘‘states,’’ ‘‘kingship,
‘‘chiefdoms’’), who are writing for someone and for particular reasons; bias
is unavoidable; and all interpretation must be ideologically positioned, thus
tossing ‘‘objectivity’’ and its pretensions into well-deserved oblivion (Gell,
1992, pp. 10, 267; Jenkins, 1991, pp. 7, 9, 10, 12, 17, 44, 70). Yet these post-
modern positions can also become outlandish, insofar as they reduce the
truth claims of history to a set of privileged positions that shift only ac-
cording to power relationships and viewer bias. For the pure post-modernist,
knowledge becomes little more than an internal projection of the self-
absorbed researcher, or some fuzzy by-product of hermeneutic ‘‘dialogism’’
that blurs past and present (Outhwaite, 1985, pp. 29–31). Empathy with

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past people may be impossible in a direct sense, nor can we hope for any
full knowledge of what it was like to function in Classic Maya society—

inevitably, we bring ourselves to that experience as clumsy, uninvited guests.

However, anthropology in general has demonstrated that beliefs and prac-
tices are accessible to structured explanation (e.g., Sahlins, 1985). The
question for epigraphers is how to address historical evidence in an open-
minded, methodologically sophisticated manner. Conventional categories,
such as ‘‘history,’’ ‘‘religion,’’ and ‘‘politics,’’ carry associations that veer
away from the finer shadings of Maya views. If epigraphy is in part about
engaging ancient minds or understanding ‘‘the history of mentalities’’ (l’his-
toire des mentalite´s, a genre distinct from the ‘‘high road of intellectual
history,’’ Darnton, 1999, p. 3), then those shadings must be our interpreta-
tive preference.

David Stuart (1995) has shown that Maya texts emphasize not genea-

logical information or interdynastic interaction, as some Mayanists seem
to believe, but esoteric rituals such as the dedication of sculpture or comple-
tion of calendrical events (see also Stuart, 1996). Time itself could be
embodied in stone, as reifications of a phenomenon that we regard as
experiential but not concrete. Texts fall into distinct genres (‘‘death texts,’’
‘‘accession texts’’) that reflect higher-order selections and reworking of
day-by-day accounts that the Maya must have kept. The only surviving
instance of such a ‘‘day-planner’’ comes from an unusual context, a wall-
painting from Structure B-XIII at Uaxactun (Smith, 1950, Fig. 47): a hori-
zontal sequence of day signs attaches an occasional historical notation,
suspended in vertical texts, but mostly it displays blank spaces. Presumably,
those were the days in which nothing of interest happened.

The very notion of ‘‘propaganda,’’ treated by some scholars as an

appropriate description of Maya texts, reflects a modern mindset that recalls
the blatant manipulations of Goebbels, Lord Haw Haw, and Tokyo Rose.
We can not know for certain, but it is more likely that Maya elites and
nonelites shared a collective worldview (Houston, 1999). The calculated,
tactical duplicity implied by a term like propaganda is prone to be anachro-
nistic when applied to the ancient Maya, for whom even mythic events
rang as true and valid (Boone, 2000, p. 15; Veyne, 1988, p. 22). In a Western
setting, when propaganda was held to be an expression and divulgation of
essential truths, as in the works of the Roman Catholic Congregatio de
Propaganda Fide, or Lenin’s What Is to Be Done?, the intention was always
to counter something else of equal, compelling force, be it Lutheran hetero-
doxy or capitalistic mystification. Propaganda operates when there is the
possibility of choice between different systems, or at least the threat of
opposing systems. Moreover, it is difficult to understand what political
advantage would accrue from changing the date of a stela dedication or

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from blatantly falsifying parentage (a system so focused on blood pedigree
probably had little room for Roman-style, imperial adoption that might
distort such statements). Even defeats are known in the epigraphic record,
as of Dos Pilas by Tikal, or of Caracol by Naranjo, if usually in terms of
some later, more glorious success (Nikolai Grube, personal communication,
1992); indeed, the sense one gets is of almost Sicilian vendetta and blood
feud. The historical sins seem more to be sins of omission than commission,
in which inconvenient events are either passed over in silence or framed
in narratives of ultimate victory. The cross-ties between dates, names, and
archaeology are, at sites with extensive textual records, so elaborate as to
defy large-scale fabrication. The positing of a dynastic founder at Copan
(Yax K’uk’ Mo’) and the subsequent discovery of his tomb vindicate the
view that the texts are, within their limits, relatively accurate (Sharer, 1999;
Stuart, 1997).

In no instance can it be proved that the texts are ‘‘lies’’ in the sense

of bald fabrications. Some scholars have suggested that such evidence
might come from discrepancies between the hieroglyphic dates of Pakal
the Great at Palenque and his purported age as determined by physical
anthropology (Marcus, 1992c, pp. 235–237). Nonetheless, the original
assays have now been discredited (Hammond and Molleson, 1994; Urcid,
1993a), and this critique is no longer taken seriously by epigraphers.
Much of its initial impulse seems to have come from the patent animosity
that Alberto Ruz, the excavator of Pakal’s tomb, felt toward younger,
upstart epigraphers who had questioned his reconstruction of certain
glyphic dates. (Generational tensions are doubtless inevitable in any
rapidly advancing discipline.) Accounts of dynastic founders and the
‘‘creation’’ events at the beginning of the Long Count may seem like
obvious inventions (Schele, 1992; Freidel et al., 1993), yet to the Maya
they were probably as believable as the book of Genesis to a fundamental-
ist Christian or a territorial irredentist in the Holy Land. At the same
time, there is evidence for the obliteration of historical accounts, a
process well known in Classical archaeology as damnatio memoriae, in
which the reasons for disfigurement could be varied and difficult to
reconstruct (Keppie, 1991, p. 22). Most of the Tikal’s early monuments
have been smashed or reset, possibly as part of a dynastic disruption
in the later years of the Early Classic period (Martin, 2000). Other sites
have many examples of shattered monuments retrieved from fill (Grube,
1994b, Fig. 9.14), recarved at a later date, as with Yaxchilan Stela 27
(Martin, 2000), or set into buildings as decapitated fragments (Houston,
1993, Fig. 3-5). It is not possible to establish how some of these
pieces found their way into such locations, but some, such as Naranjo
Hieroglyphic Stairway 1, may have been transported from Caracol, some

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43 km away, as apparent war booty (Martin, 2000); Ian Graham found
another fragment of this stairway at Ucanal (1980, p. 153).

The most convincing case for the general veracity of Maya texts is the

remarkable historical synthesis prepared throughout the 1990s by Martin
and Grube (Grube, 1996; Grube and Martin, 1998; Martin, 1996, 1997,
1998c, 1999; Martin and Grube, 1996, in press; see also Looper, 1996).
Studies of Maya political organization have veered between two positions,
with various shadings in between: the first is the ‘‘large polity’’ model,
the second a ‘‘small polity’’ perspective (Escobedo, 1991; Houston and
Escobedo, 1997). (Readers should keep in mind that even ‘‘large polity’’
models involve areas at most 250 miles across, and usually less than that.)
Histories of these discussions may be found elsewhere (Grube and Martin,
1998, pp. 1–19; Houston, 1993, pp. 141–148, 1997b; Houston and Escobedo,
1997; Lucero, 1999, pp. 211–216). At present, there is complete consensus
among epigraphers that conflict and alliance between royal dynasties took
place against a backdrop of long-standing enmity between Calakmul and
Tikal, two centers of great age, sustained growth, and unusually large size.

Of the two, Calakmul comes across as the most aggressive and inven-

tive, orchestrating wars by proxy against the interests of Tikal, overseeing
accessions and other activities through formal visits, taking the children of
subordinate lords as court pages and hostages (Houston and Stuart, 2000;
see also Webster, 2000). During most of the latter half of the Classic
period, the result was encirclement of Tikal’s domain by Calakmul through
campaigns of concerted pressure against an ancient but embattled rival;
Calakmul’s strategies seem to unravel only when one of its rulers submitted
to Tikal as the result of a conflict. Martin and Grube’s narrative is compre-
hensive and its patterns evident at a large-scale level. [Earlier large-scale
studies by Marcus were useful at the time, but do not, because of their
early date, benefit from more recent readings that elucidate the content
and context of historical statements (Marcus, 1976); for another example
of this ‘‘top-down’’ approach, see Marcus, 1992b, pp. 406–409]. From that
broad perspective, it effectively explains isolated events that would other-
wise seem random. There is another advantage to this integrated approach.
Ordinarily, the absence of corroborative information would undermine
assertions that a particular battle or war or royal visit must have taken
place—declarations of faith carry little weight with critics of Maya epigra-
phy. Yet the overall configuration of hegemonic interaction, only vaguely
noted until recently (Houston and Mathews, 1985; Houston et al., 1991b),
justifies an historiographic approach because the patterns can only be in-
ferred from competing records at antagonistic centers.

Debate still exists, however, as to the nature of these hegemonic struc-

tures (Houston, 1997b). Local dynasties seem to have been left intact,

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somewhat on the model of the informal incorporation described by
Doyle for empires, in which a controlling polity dominates decisions
made by a subordinate one, whatever the purported status of that
subordinate as a politically autonomous entity (Doyle, 1986, p. 8; Hassig,
1988; Smith and Berdan, 1996, p. 8; see also Luttwak, 1976, Fig. 1.2).
In this schema, Calakmul and Tikal were true ‘‘metropoles’’ at the center
of hegemonic rather than ‘‘territorial’’ polities, which involved far closer
control of subordinates. They would have been organized on different
orders of complexity and size from smaller, ‘‘client’’ sites, with, for
example, a contrasting signature in terms of the number and elaboration
of palaces (Martin, 2000). Epigraphers remain unsure what was at stake,
however: Was Calakmul’s hegemonic polity extractive of resources, or
did it simply curry political allegiance?

Answers to these questions remain unclear. In some regions, such as

the Usumacinta, Calakmul’s imprint is faint at best, and the principal axis
of conflict appears to be between the dynasties of Piedras Negras and
Yaxchilan, its smaller neighbor to the south. In all areas, the hegemonic
patterns beg a pressing question: namely, the degree to which ‘‘clients’’
sought ‘‘patrons’’ rather than the other way around, through alliances of
mutual convenience. A schoolyard analogy is apt: A large bully or ‘‘en-
forcer’’ might be sought outside a particular playground so as to confer
some material advantage in local struggles. The evidence from the Pasio´n
and Petexbatun regions underlines the nuances and local scale of these
conflicts, albeit as part of a long-term cycles of antagonism and incorpora-
tion, tempered by the intrusion of an aggressive dynasty (Houston, 1993;
Escobedo, 1997a). Most fortifications in the Petexbatun are clearly quite
late, as I discovered in my fieldwork in 1984 and 1986 sponsored by Yale
(1987, pp. 384–392) and as confirmed by subsequent excavations (Demarest
et al., 1997). Nonetheless, there are grave doubts as to whether the massive
Punta de Chimino moat is as late as its excavators claim, because its more
likely date is Late Preclassic (cf. Demarest et al., 1997, pp. 238–242; see
Escobedo, 1997b, p. 392). A single posthole well-removed from the base
of the defensive ditch is treated as firm evidence, when the strong presence
of Late Preclassic materials at the site points to its true date, in accord
with similar features elsewhere in the Maya area (see Webster, 1999, p. 344).

In all likelihood the interactions involved complex motives and dynastic

calculations, and there is small evidence that all clients were conquered or
vanquished by Tikal or Calakmul. The basic component of the Classic
Maya political landscape remains the dominion of a ‘‘holy lord’’ (Mathews,
1991). Certain dynasties emphasize exceedingly long lines of holy lords
(e.g., Altar de Sacrificios, Naranjo, Tamarindito, Tikal); others have far
shallower roots or elect not to record notations of succession. It is possible

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that these comparatively late dynasties ‘‘hived off’’ or were ‘‘seeded’’ as
cadet lines from older, more established dynasties, a process well attested
at Dos Pilas (Houston, 1993) and perhaps at Yaxchilan, whose dynasty
may have come from the area to the southwest of Tikal (David Stuart,
personal communication, 1995). In a few instances, such as at Altar de
Sacrificios, royal titles appear to change, hinting at subtle adjustments of
status (see Stela 10:C9, Stela 11:C11, J. Graham, 1972, Figs. 31 and 32).
Terms for ‘‘kingdoms’’ or polities continue to be elusive, although an ex-
pression for ‘‘earth-cave’’ (kab, ch’e:n) apparently refers to land or even
the property of rulers (Yaxchilan Lintel 25:V1; Vogt and Stuart, n.d.); it
is possible that the concept relates to the Mexican sense of an ethnic polity,
an altepetl, or to the Yucatec notion of the cah, which defines identity and
serves as an arena of local and regional politics (Restall, 1997b, pp. 13–19).
A good deal is now known of Classic Maya geographic terms but relatively
little of polity borders or their spatial extension (Stuart and Houston, 1994).
Rather, the focus seems to have been on the person of the ruler and the
royal court that surrounded him (Inomata and Houston, 2000). As places,
Maya cities were organized as locations dedicated to ancestor veneration,
housing royal courts (in palaces) and god effigies (in temples, or wayib’),
accommodating the services and people necessary to their maintenance,
and performance of political theater, including the reception and display
of captives and tributes (see above; Houston and stuart, 1996; McAnany,
1998; Stuart, 1998).

A recent discovery has been that hieroglyphs refer to a tributary econ-

omy in which goods of a special sort flowed into the royal court, and
probably into lower-level courts as well (Stuart, 1998; see also Houston
and Escobedo, 1997; Le Fort and Wald, 1995, for work that amplifies
Stuart’s breakthrough, first developed in the early 1990s). Tribute was
shown as heaps of textiles or neat packages that contain green feathers
(usually bound as single fistfuls), paired Spondylus shells, and bundles of
chocolate beans. These last were first detected at Bonampak, where a
bundle painted on the west wall of Room 1 exhibits a text saying 5 pih
kakaw (Houston, 1997a). According to David Stuart, the pih glyph refers
to units of 8,000, a common sum for chocolate beans in Mesoamerica:
thus, 5 pih kakaw equals 40,000 beans. Other bundles, as on K5453 in the
Kerr catalog of Maya pots (see above), show numbers such as 3 pih, for
24,000 beans. Although much fainter, bundles with Spondylus shells occur
to the side of the Bonampak reference, just under a throne where the ruler
sits. A distinctive tributary garment seems to be worn by those offering
such items. At Bonampak they consist of white cloaks and Spondylus
collars; similar costumes occur on Yaxchilan Stela 7 and a painting on a
ceramic from Tikal Burial 116 (Fig. 6; Culbert, 1993, Fig. 68a). Although

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Fig. 6. Tributary scene from Tikal (Culbert, 1993, Fig. 68a; courtesy of the University Museum,

University of Pennsylvania).

the image would seem slightly comical, these figures appear quite literally
to be walking tribute bundles, including cotton cloth or mantas with richly
embroidered selvage, feathers in the headdress, and shells. The demands
of growing cotton and the effort in weaving it represented a considerable
outlay of energy. On another monument, from the Guatemalan side of the
Yaxchilan polity, a lord receives captives as tribute from a subsidiary lord
(U-BA:K-ki/ti-ya-AJAW, u ba:k ti yajaw, ‘‘his captives for his lord’’; Schele
and Miller, 1986, pl. 86).

On the Tikal pot it is as if two of the lords have divested themselves

of these treasures; they then kneel to present them to the overlord. Other
tributary items were known as ika:ts, usually possessed as y-ika:ts, ‘‘his
burden,’’ and could consist of jade objects or other bundles. The principal
location for such tributary displays were the massive stairways that occur
in most Maya sites (Stuart, 1998). These were less about movement up and
down the stairway than dramaturgical pageants of wealth and tributary
clout: stairways were more stationary points than mere routes of ingress
or egress. The description of these lords seems to have been y-ebe:t
(ye-b’e-ta [early] or ye-b’e-te [late]) or ‘‘his messenger’’ (David Stuart,
personal communication, 1997), implying that they were sent by another,
unseen and higher-ranking tributary who wished for some reason (perhaps
self-preservation!) not to be present at the rendering of objects. The term
for ‘‘messenger’’ may also have applied to deities with avian characteristics,
rather like a Mercury concept of a winged emissary. Some supernaturals
of this sort were likely to have been way or ‘‘companion spirits’’ (coessences
or shared souls) of gods who did not ordinarily sprout wings. The connection

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between these spirits and ‘‘sleep’’ (way) and dream visions reveals some-
thing of how the Maya understood the mechanism of communication be-
tween gods and humans. It is possible that another glyphic term used by
messengers, mu:t or ‘‘bird’’ (a term in Yukatek for ‘‘fame’’ or ‘‘news’’),
expresses an overlap between the notion of winged news, the motion of
birds as metaphors for long-distance speech, and tribute embassies.

The subject of tributaries raises the question of subroyal elites. This

has been dealt with in other work (e.g., Villela, 1993; Houston and Stuart,
2000), but suffice it to say that there is now solid epigraphic evidence for such
elites at many sites, especially in the western part of the Maya Lowlands. The
sajal title is well-documented at this point (Schele and Freidel, 1990, pp.
262–305), yet it has been noted that the behavior of such individuals varies
by kingdom: At Yaxchilan, the sajal seem more tightly bonded to their
overlord, who often makes an appearance on monuments at subsidiary
centers; in contrast, the sajal at Piedras Negras are more distant rhetorically
from their lords, suggesting greater degrees of independence (Chinchilla
and Houston, 1993). Research by Charles Golden indicates very different
patterns of settlement: La Pasadita, patently under the control of Yaxchilan,
appears to have been settled in deliberately defensive positions, spread
over hilltops, possibly in response to its location close to a political border,
whereas El Cayo and similar sites were more vulnerable and probably older
in age (Golden et al., 1998; Lee and Hayden, 1988; Mathews and Aliphat,
1997). It may be that the heavy concentration of these titles in the Usumaci-
nta drainage somehow reflects the folded, karstic landscape of the region,
with its difficult routes of communication (Aliphat, 1994, pp. 176–185, 1996,
pp. 28–29).

Another site with an unusual abundance of identifiable secondary lords

is Palenque (Schele, 1991). Excavations at the site, including some in the
1990s, have retrieved a number of stone supports for incensarios, many
from the Temple of the Cross (Easby and Scott, 1979, pl. 175; Mayer, 1997;
Schele and Mathews, 1979, pp. 281, 282, 303, 391). They show portrait
heads with glyphs on stone flanges to the sides or on the back. Those texts
that are complete refer without exception to subordinate figures and usually
to their deaths. In addition, they seem to have been called portable stones
(the exact translation still eludes us, but a causative suffix on a positional
root is surely present), and may be paralleled by small altars found at
Edzna and, possibly, at Piedras Negras (Mayer and Garcı´a Campillo, 1997).
It is probable that these monuments represent death cults associated not
with rulers, but with lesser figures at court, much like smaller mortuary
altars documented at Tonina (Graham and Mathews, 1996, p. 103; Yadeun,
1993, p. 92). The portability of these monuments is intriguing, as is their
connection to death and fire rituals. Subroyal elites may have been vener-

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Houston

ated through censing (a form of food for the dead? Stuart, 1998), in monu-
ments that lend themselves to flexible use, in shifting settings. At Palenque,
the monuments were probably placed on terraces in the Cross group, look-
ing outward to the plaza below, as extensions of the perceptual fields known
to have been identified and valued by the Classic Maya for their kings
and lords (Houston and Taube, 2000; see also Hanks, 1990). They were
deliberately situated in a context linked to the patron deities of Palenque,
at some distance from the royal mortuary structures to the west (Schele
and Mathews, 1998, pp. 95–132).

This is not the place to present an overall synthesis of Classic Maya

history, which has been attempted elsewhere (Culbert, 1991; Martin and
Grube, in press; Proskouriakoff, 1993; Schele and Freidel, 1990). A related
topic that is not yet settled to satisfaction is a distinct historical tradition
connected to Yucatan and adjacent Mexican states (e.g., Garcı´a Campillo,
1998a, on Jaina; Voss and Kremer, 1998, on a singular sculpture with
text and hunting scene). In the 1990s, much work has been done on the
inscriptions of this zone, especially at Chiche´n Itza´ (e.g., Garcı´a Campillo,
1995a, 1996, 1997, 2000; Gran˜a-Behrens et al., 1999; Grube, 1994c; Krochok,
1991; Ringle, 1990; Schele et al., 1998; Schele and Mathews, 1998, pp.
197–204). Efforts have been made to link some of these Late to Terminal
Classic dynasties to the central Peten of Guatemala. The reason, often
explicitly stated, is to confirm continuities between the rich historical tradi-
tions of Classic sites in the southern Lowlands and records to the north,
in an area that continued to maintain indigenous historical notations
through the Postclassic, Colonial, and Modern periods. There is some merit
to the suggestion that continuities and connections exist. For example, a
term closely associated with a group of later migrants to Yucatan, Itsa,
seems to occur far earlier in the central Peten, within an Emblem glyph
title (‘i-tsa) used near Lake Peten Itza. Does this indicate, as some would
suggest, that the Itsa of Chichen Itza came from the central part of the
southern Lowlands? Should much later accounts of the Itsa be tied to
Classic histories of that area? The Peten also has Classic-era instances of
the name Kanek’. This epithet, too, is well documented in early Colonial
sources that relate to the Yukatekan-speaking Itzaj of the central Peten—a
people, incidentally, that surely came as late immigrants from a homeland
to the north (Jones, 1998, pp. 89–96; Schele and Mathews, 1998, p. 203).

Nonetheless, the results thus far of attempted correlations between

Yucatec and Peten epigraphy and the Colonial-period Books of Chilam
Balam (prophetic and historical documents) seem too loose to inspire great
confidence. Often, names are repeated in Maya inscriptions, without clear
evidence of contact between particular sites. For example, the term itsa
may be one of many such terms attested in different parts of the Maya

Advances in Maya Glyph Studies

177

Lowlands, of which another example would be the name Ek’ B’ahlam,
attached in the Colonial period to a site in northern Yucatan but also found
in a southern painted text from the area of Tikal (Tozzer, 1941, p. 60).
There have been compelling studies pointing to similarities between later
collective systems of rule—the so-called multepal pattern—involving co-
equal lords, perhaps some as primus inter pares (Schele and Freidel, 1990,
pp. 346–376). The problem, however, is the recent discovery by Stuart that
many of these ‘‘historical personages’’ appear to be deities (Stuart et al.,
1999, p. 61). Some names are clearly the same as historical figures attested
in later, Colonial-era documents, such as Koko:m and Hun Pik To:k’ (Grube
and Stuart, 1987), but what is most striking is the difficulty of linking such
promising data to what should be ready and easy fits. These difficult texts
will continue to puzzle researchers. The enormous variability of glyphs and
expressions, not all capable of being linked to better-understood southern
texts, will make this the vanguard of Maya epigraphy in coming years.

Glyphs and Archaeology at Piedras Negras, Guatemala

Many archaeological projects at larger centers are operating with a

historical sensibility, especially those at Caracol, Copan, and the Petexbatun
region. Another such project is the Brigham Young/Universidad del Valle
work in and around the city of Piedras Negras (Escobedo and Houston,
1997, 1998, 1999; Houston and Escobedo, 1998; Houston et al., 1998a,b,
2000). This work was inspired in part by earlier excavations by the Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania (Satterthwaite, 1937, 1943, 1954), Proskouriakoff’s
(1960) epochal work on Maya history, which owed much to the close
correlations between dates, stelae, and buildings at Piedras Negras, a useful
ceramic study prepared long after the close of excavations (Holley, 1983),
an excellent historical study of Piedras Negras’ neighbor and continual
antagonist, Yaxchilan (Mathews, 1988, 1997), and some innovative archaeo-
geographic studies of the upper Usumacinta basin, where Piedras Negras
lies (Aliphat, 1994, 1996). Finer studies of the ceramics now suggest that
smaller phases can be linked with fair certainty to particular reigns, with
implications for linking buildings and archaeological strata to royal patrons,
or at least to particular reigns (Houston et al., 1998b). Building programs
and urban expansion indicate counterintuitive patterns: The city as a dynas-
tic seat seems to have come into existence before the development of a
heavily settled landscape (Houston et al., 1999). This population is likely
to have come from elsewhere, rather than as a reduction of preexisting
local settlements, as part of a strategy of deliberate urbanization. Moreover,
the city experienced massive leveling and platforming events that connect

178

Houston

with Rulers 1 or 2: What had been individual platforms or buildings at the
site, often perched on or near exposed bedrock, were articulated into a
single flowing mass over a relatively short interval (Houston et al., 2000,
p. 11). Child (e.g., 1998) found analogous evidence of systematic royal
patronage in his studies of sweatbaths at the site.

More detailed correlations between historical figures, events, and ar-

chaeology are also becoming clear at Piedras Negras. Certain buildings,
such as Structure O-13, are described in a manner that explains enigmatic
deposits. In this light, Burial 13, located in a plaza directly on front axis
with the pyramid, can be seen as the reentered and burned tomb of Ruler
4, discussed in terms of fire-rituals and subsequent architectural modifica-
tions on Panel 3 from the site (Barrientos, 1997; Escobedo and Alvarado,
1998). Another royal tomb identified by glyphs was excavated in 1991 under
Structure L5-1 at Dos Pilas. Despite spirited publicity, evidence from the
tomb itself proved to be inconclusive hieroglyphically, although there re-
mains a good chance that it contained the remains of Dos Pilas’ Ruler 2
(cf. Demarest et al., 1991); other royal tombs cued by hieroglyphic refer-
ences occur at Copan, under Temples 16 and 26 (Sharer, 1999; Stuart,
1997b). The end of Piedras Negras can equally be understood in epigraphic
terms. A reference to the capture of Ruler 7 of Piedras Negras by a ruler
at Yaxchilan may explain the destruction of much of the palace, including
the shattering of monuments commissioned by Ruler 7 (Houston et al.,
1999). Chronological information is still under review, but there is reliable
evidence that the city as a dynastic center came to an end as a result of a
destructive, intrusive battle, to be resuscitated a generation later by squat-
ters with distinct material culture. In short, the greater the degree of histori-
cal data, the more likely archaeologists are to see not gradual processes,
but rapid shifts, growth, and dislocations. The historical filter paces change
in ways that emphasize the workings of actors and specific decisions. The
risk of historical evidence is that it may overdetermine explanation, involv-
ing as it does a strong ideological commitment to the ruler as individual
and to his potentialities as an agent.

REFLECTIONS

The 1990s have been a decade of advance and consolidation on a scale

of research unprecedented in glyphic scholarship. Major players in these
discussions have passed on, and new ones arrived within an international
community bonded by meetings and internet dialog but occasionally riven
by tensions in a field influenced by intense public interest. Relations with
archaeology have matured, despite a preoccupation with texts as propa-

Advances in Maya Glyph Studies

179

ganda and an intermittently agonistic view of the methods and results of
epigraphy (e.g., Henderson and Sabloff, 1993, pp. 457–459). The ‘‘conjunc-
tive approach,’’ much lauded by Mayanists (Willey, 1982), has involved the
combining and weighing of different categories of evidence, each with its
own challenges. The conjunctions have not and will not always be successful,
nor can epigraphy be expected to solve all archaeological mysteries, because
the experiences related in glyphs may not be commensurate with the finds
retrieved and studied by archaeologists. To insist that glyphs explain all
material remains is to presuppose royal or elite control over most aspects
of ancient Maya society. That circumstance would be most unlikely, given
what we know of Maya polities and their apparently amorphous and indirect
grip on ancient economies.

Epigraphy is a social practice as well as an intellectual one. Anthropol-

ogy departments in North American universities may perceive epigraphers
as ‘‘overspecialized’’ with negative consequences for employment. This is
exacerbated by the esoteric nature of glyphic evidence in relation to the
philosophical and evolutionary materialism that predominates among an
older, more established generation of gatekeepers in anthropological ar-
chaeology (Little, 1991, pp. 114–135). In Maya studies, ceramics and settle-
ment patterns traditionally carry high prestige, and the leading practitioners
have chosen these specialities as their focus. In Oaxaca and central Mexico,
mediators in a hegemonic sense are more likely to be settlement pattern
theorists, or those with explicitly scientific and theory-building orientation.
Prestige systems operate differently in other countries with Mesoamerica-
nists and Mayanists, but it will be interesting to see how institutions and
departments nurture glyphic research over the next decade. A far-sighted
view would see Maya glyphs as another valuable category of evidence, to
be challenged and probed as students of the past prepare to engage the
minds of ancients.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As ever, I owe much to Dave Stuart for a decade of collegial and

productive collaboration. My thanks go also to Federico Fahsen, Takeshi
Inomata, Alfonso Lacadena, Patricia McAnany, John Monaghan, John
Robertson, Andrew Robinson, Karl Taube, David Webster, Norman
Yoffee, and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments. Jerry
Sabloff helped with permissions. Because this is an essay of personal opin-
ion, no one but the author should be held responsible for its judgments
and idiosyncratic perspectives. Angela Close deserves gratitude for her
editorial comments and patience with an overtardy submission. The excava-

180

Houston

tions at Piedras Negras were codirected with my close colleague, Dr. Inf.
He´ctor Escobedo of the Universidad del Valle, under a permit authorized
by the Instituto de Antropologı´a e Historia de Guatemala and its various
directors, including Dr. Juan Antonio Valde´s and Licenciada Liz Lemus.
Funding came from the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican
Studies, Inc. (Chairman, Mr. Lewis Ranieri); generous private donors (Mr.
Ken Woolley and Spence Kirk of Salt Lake City); the Ahau Foundation
(Dr. Peter Harrison, President); the National Geographic Society; the Rust
Trust; the Heinz Foundation; the National Science Foundation (for funds
to Dr. Richard Terry for soil analyses); Brigham Young University, as
processed by Vice President Gary Hooper; and sources from other partici-
pating universities. Funds from Dean Clayne Pope of the College of Family,
Home, and Social Sciences at Brigham Young University facilitated the
preparation of this manuscript.

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