Every Picture Tells a Story - One That Stephen Houston Wants to Decipher

The Brown anthropologist is a leading expert on Mayan epigraphy.

by Deborah Goldstein

Stephen Houston admittedly leads a double life, of sorts.

While on the Brown campus, the professor of anthropology may be found tucked away in his Giddings House office. But as one of the world's leading experts on Mayan epigraphy, Houston's research often sends him into unsafe territory.

"People in my line of work have very exotic 'other lives' that our Ivy League colleagues may have a hard time imagining," Houston said. "But I enjoy my split personality disorder, you might say. It's huge fun."

"Fun," however, might not be the word others use to describe his time away from campus. Houston has worked extensively in Belize and Guatemala, focusing on the dynastic civilization of the ancient Maya, the comparative study of royal courts and body concepts, and the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic writing.

Just to find excavation sites, Houston and his team hack their way through remote Central American jungles in 100-degree heat and sweltering humidity. Once there, they spend the field season digging in areas swarmed with malarial insects and exotic poisonous snakes, not to mention guerillas and drug cartels.

Yes, it's dangerous, he says, but it's all worth it.

"Maya is a civilization that's endlessly rewarding. The more you know about it, the deeper the feeling of ignorance, the stronger the need to learn more."

The Maya lived in what are now Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize since at least 2600 BC. Their hieroglyphic texts were inscribed mostly from AD 250 to 900, known as the "Classic Period" of the Maya. Just in the last few decades, scholars, including Houston, have made major advances unlocking the codes of Maya hieroglyphs.

"It's a glorious time to be in [this field], because an abundant, well-documented writing system like this hasn't really been deciphered for a long, long time," Houston explained. "This is something that comes along once in a century."

The developments prompted Houston to get involved with the tremendous task of compiling a Maya glyphic dictionary, along with colleagues from the University of Texas and Brigham Young University. Fully funded by the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, the team is reconstructing the ancient language through thousands of picture-like texts.

"To put it in perspective, it's the only literate civilization with this type of hieroglyphic record anywhere in ancient America. There's nothing else like it."

In addition to the dictionary project, Houston is also involved with various fieldwork projects, including a massive "jigsaw puzzle" in the ruined city of Copan in Honduras.

There, he is working with Harvard colleagues on piecing together the longest Maya hieroglyphic inscription known to scholars. An estimated 2,500 hieroglyphs sprawl up the front of a five-story-tall stairway, but the text, which dates back to approximately AD 700, is jumbled and only parts are still intact. Some blocks have fallen during earthquakes and parts of the stairway have completely crumbled.

"It involves a lot of detective work," Houston explained. Once the puzzle is pieced together, then comes the task of interpreting the pictures, which tell stories about Maya royalty, deities, gods and ancestors.

Currently on a Cogut Humanities Faculty Fellowship, Houston has had the opportunity to travel during the spring semester to scout future fieldwork sites. He's hoping to start work next season at the site of El Zotz, in the Maya heartland near Tikal, Guatemala.

"It's a city that grew, we think, with enormous rapidity during a time when the greatest Maya city, Tikal, had dynastic troubles," he said. "Then, it just flashed out as quickly as it came."

Along with postdoctoral student Zachary Nelson, Houston mapped the area in January. The site is home to extremely rare inscriptions, as well as valuable Maya pots and jade. Houston says it's an ideal location to start training some Brown graduate and undergraduate students.

He began his archeological work as an undergraduate at University of Pennsylvania, and after twenty-five years in the field, it's obvious his enthusiasm hasn't waned.

"This work is always yielding more, it's always giving you more," he said. "Every time you go to a Maya dig, there's always something that surprises you. Something always knocks your socks off. And that, I love."