The Ancient Maya: Integrating Material, Text, and Image

Catalog description

Ancient Maya studies is one of the most dynamic and innovative fields in world archaeology today. Emerging as a true historical archaeology only in the past three decades, the decipherment of Maya script now provides a powerful complement and counterpoint to both traditional excavation data and new remote sensing technologies. Equally, the reading of images, and their interaction with texts and artifacts, forms a vital part of our interest in the broader humanistic concerns of worldview and the transcendent--where our primary interest lies in gaining access to past mentalities. This course will provide a comprehensive introduction into current knowledge of the Ancient Maya, with a recurring methodological focus on how different types of evidence are integrated to assemble a persuasive "portrait of the past." This scope of this process is unique in the ancient Americas, since only the Maya offer us the opportunity to read their own descriptions of the world two millennia or more in the past. Geographically, we will be looking at the greater Yucatan Peninsula, which today covers parts of southeastern Mexico, the whole of Guatemala and Belize, and the western extremities of Honduras and El Salvador. Since archaic times (before 1200 BCE) this has been occupied by speakers of the Mayan language group, and millions of people identified as Maya by that means continue to do so today (despite popular notions to the contrary, they have never "disappeared"). No prior knowledge of archaeology or art history is necessary. The course structure is one 3-hour session per week, consisting of a lecture followed by group discussion in seminar-style. Additionally, in Week 6 there will be a virtual tour of the new Mexico and Central American Gallery at Penn Museum. This will introduce the class to the issues of disseminating scholarship and building narratives that are accessible to the…