The past four decades we have witnessed groundbreaking developments in the field of Maya epigraphy. The information enclosed within these texts has fundamentally changed our understanding of the ancient Maya culture. To be able to read what the Maya themselves wrote about their affairs is an intriguing intellectual endeavor and a captivating window into a past culture – with repercussions into present-day realities in the Maya communities of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras. The objective of this workshop is to provide an intensive introduction to the study of Maya hieroglyphs. Participants will have a chance to decipher hieroglyphs on their own during the workshop with the assistance of the tutors. General tuition will be given in English but explanations can also be provided in other languages on an individual basis. No previous knowledge of Maya culture, Maya hieroglyphs, ancient scripts, or linguistics is required to attend the workshop. At the end of the three day workshop, participants will be able to understand the basic structure of a text, decipher calendrical information, reconstruct chronology, point at verbs and nominal phrases, and much more. The focus of the introductory level workshop is on the Late Classic history of Piedras Negras in the present-day Guatemala.

En el Taller se abordarán diversos aspectos sobre el desciframiento de la escritura maya, su funcionamiento, así como una introducción a la gramática de la lengua maya jerolífica. Con estas herramientas y trabajando con un amplio y variado repertorio de textos procedentes de inscripciones en monumentos de piedra, cerámica, concha y hueso, así como de los códices, los participantes podrán iniciarse en la lectura y traducción de los textos jeroglíficos, conociendo los principales géneros literarios y temas en ellos tratados.

The goal of this workshop is to explore the canvas of Classic Maya society by looking at carved stone monuments and other media. Since so much of what we know from written and pictorial sources was produced at and for the members of the royal courts, any discussion of the Classic Maya society from this perspective centers on those who made up these courts, from the pivotal figure of the ruler, the queen, other members of the royal family, to vassals and other subordinates of well-defined or vague functions. We are going to look at several representations of Classic Maya courts in action and also follow life trajectories of certain court members of different rank and status. This workshop will be based in particular on the inscriptions and imagery from the site of Piedras Negras and, to a lesser extent, from the Yaxchilan, Bonampak, Palenque, and Tonina areas because of the wealth of information on non-royal individuals at and around these sites. We are also going to consider a series of court scenes on polychrome vessels of Late Classic period.
This is an intermediate level workshop, so the participants are expected to have sufficient background knowledge of Maya writing. This includes calendar and distance numbers, basic sign inventory, reading order and grammar at a level of A Brief Introduction to Maya Writing in Texas Handbooks by Stuart or Reading Maya Glyphs by Coe and Van Stone. We also recommend Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs (available in English and Spanish at www.mesoweb.com) by Kettunen and Helmke. There will be no cutting and pasting of glyph blocks at this level. The organizers of the workshop are going to provide the participants with the required reading materials.

This intensive three-day workshop will cover three Maya hieroglyphic codices: Madrid, Paris and Dresden. The workshop combines lectures, exercises and student projects in an interactive hands-on forum. Contents of all three codices will be reviewed–including the astronomical pages–one codex for each day of the workshop. Tutors will place special emphasis on the 260-day divinatory almanacs (rain ceremonies, agriculture and planting, deer hunting, carving images of the gods, beekeeping), the Chahk pages, the K’uh pages of the Paris Codex, and the yearbearer pages, which are found in all three codices.

This workshop is designed for the intermediate to advanced students and assumes that participants have a basic knowledge of Maya hieroglyphic writing and the calendar. This workshop will be taught in English.