Getting Stones to Speak: The Decipherment of Maya Script and What It Has to Tell Us

Ancient Maya inscriptions, which appear on numerous stone monuments as well as more portable items of clay, shell, bone, and stucco, long presented a seemingly irresolvable puzzle to epigraphers. But insights gained from data in Spanish colonial documents, original bark paper books carried away to Europe in the sixteenth century, and, most of all, accurate renderings of the script from the field eventually provided the necessary keys. Beginning in the 1990s, the decipherment of individual signs came rapidly, and the underlying language of the inscriptions became clear. The result was an explosion of new evidence and answers to a great many questions about this remarkable ancient American culture. This talk describes both the process of getting mute stones to speak and the transformative impact of such research on the archaeology, anthropology, art history, and linguistics of the region.

Simon Martin gained his PhD in Archaeology at University College London and is currently an Associate Curator and Keeper at Penn Museum and Adjunct Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a political anthropologist and specialist in Maya hieroglyphic writing, with a particular interest in the history, politics, and religion of the Classic Period (150–900 CE). His most recent book, Ancient Maya Politics (Cambridge University Press), won prizes from the Association of American Publishers and the American Historical Association.

Sponsored by Penn's Workshop in the History of Material Texts. Kislak Center, University of Pennsylvania Libraries

Dr. Martin's talk is open to the public, both in-person in Penn's Kislak Center (sixth floor of Van Pelt) and also on Zoom