Professor Stephen Houston
From AD 250 until 850 the Maya of the Yucatan peninsula developed one of the world’s great civilizations, with a sophisticated writing system, urban dwellings, courtly society, and an historical record that is unmatched anywhere else in ancient America. Classic Maya Civilization explores this lost world in detail, from the perspective of ancient politics, economy, political organization, and worldview. By the end of the course, students should have an in-depth familiarity with present evidence of this civilization, and with the latest interpretations of how the world of the Classic Maya developed, flourished, and collapsed. The organizing principle of the course will be a concern with categories, activities, and mentalities of people, including supernatural beings that were felt to be part of their communities.
These are a collection of word-signs or logographs that generally have a CVC (consonant + vowel + consonant) form. Often, they will take prefixes (coming before) or suffixes (coming after) that help to clarify the reading by offering some phonic clues. Thus, say, WITS would have a prefixed [wi] syllable. Many of these have only been deciphered within your lifetime.
These are a collection of glyphs representing various Mayan syllables.
This is part of a wooden lintel carved out of an extraordinarily hard and termite-resistant wood known as chicozapote. The lintel spanned the innermost doorway of the great "Temple of the Gran Jaguar," otherwise known as Temple 1, otherwise known as Str. 5D-1-1st. (This would be, the first building in grid '5D' of the Tikal map, and from the uppermost, latest building, thus '1st'.) Most of this lintel is now in the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Basel, another piece is in the British Museum (probably extracted by A. P. Maudslay), and a few fragments were found when the temple rooms were excavated. The lintel was carved prior to being put into place.
Word and syllable glyphs from Reading the Maya Glyphs, Second Edition by Michael Coe and Mark Van Stone (Thames & Hudson 2005). Tikal lintel image by William Coe, courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Tikal Digital Access Project.
Brown University Instructional Technology Group
Professor Stephen Houston