The Beginners Workshop is open to all participants with no prior or little knowledge of Maya writing.
This workshop does not have a regional or thematic focus but concentrates exclusively on teaching “newcomers” in a structured and didactic way how to read Classic Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions.
Every participant will be provided with a special beginners booklet – in addition to the official EMC workbook – that contains several inscriptions from various Classic sites. The selected texts exemplify the basic grammatical structure of Classic Maya writing. Participants will learn how to read hieroglyphic inscriptions by being introduced to the language and syntax underlying these hieroglyphic texts. As such, the course is designed to teach beginners with no prior knowledge or beginners with very little knowledge, who wish to improve upon their reading ability of Classic Maya inscriptions.
The Beginners Workshop will comprise several workshop groups. The tutors will give step-to-step guidance in how to analyse the syntax of Maya inscriptions in form of general lectures to the entire Beginners Workshop.
The general tuition in this workshop will be in English, but individual tuition will also be available in Spanish, French, and German.

The glyphic inscriptions of Caracol testify to the diversity of relations maintained with neighbouring dynasties. As such a key element of this workshop will be the elucidation of intersite relations and the place held by Caracol in the Mundo Maya from the point of view of the inscriptions.
This Workshop is designed as an introduction to the site of Caracol and its hieroglyphic texts and is aimed particularly at entry-level intermediates. We will focus on the better-preserved texts stemming from the reigns of K’an II (AD 618 – 658) and K’inich Johyaj K’awil (AD 799 – c. 810). However, materials available for study include the entire corpus of Caracol, as well as all texts from other sites making mention to Caracol.
Some general background in Maya calendrics and glyphs is preferred. Students who have already taken this workshop are welcome as you will be provided with alternate texts and guidance to further their knowledge. Alternatively this workshop may serve as an apt refresher course to those who have already taken beginners’ workshops. We are happy to accommodate more advanced intermediates to study texts of greater difficultly (e.g. Stela 16 or the Hieroglyphic Stair of Naranjo). Focus will be placed on structural, syntactical, and calendrical analyses, as well as the identification of agents, their names, titles, and deeds.

The ancient royal scribes of Palenque have left to us the most detailed mythological accounts known from the ancient Maya. Two important texts discovered in recent years, the sculptured platforms found in Temples XIX and XXI, have not only added further mythological information, they also demonstrate how certain mythological events were re-enacted and tied to royal ritual. Each one of these platforms, commissioned by K’inich Ahkal Mo’ Naab III, bears a long hieroglyphic text that accompanies complex scenic depictions. The inscriptions and imagery are well preserved, the texts have a clear structure, and both monuments are beautiful examples to show how text and image complement each other.

This year the workshop on Classic Maya ceramics will be focussed on the regional variation of primary and secondary hieroglyphic texts. Already in the earliest research on Maya ceramics regional variation was identified. It is the goal of this workshop to not only identify these various regional variants, but also the sign inventory regional variant schools of production developed and maintained. Through the method of comparative analysis patterns of substitution can be discerned and regionally different sign inventories can be produced. At the same time, regionally different grammatical and morphological patterns can be identified through rare and sometimes even unique primary and secondary texts. A CD-Rom with basic illustrative material and a selection of papers on the subject will be made available to participants. It is recommended to bring your laptop.
Basic Literature and Sources of Illustrations:
Coe, Michael
1973 The Maya Scribe and His World. New York: The Grolier Club.
1982 Old Gods and Young Lords. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum.
Coe, Michael, and Justin Kerr
1999 The Art of the Maya Scribe. London and New York: Thames & Hudson Ltd.
Kerr, Justin
1989-2000 The Maya Vase Book, Vols. 1-6. New York: Kerr Associates.
n.d. The Maya Vase Data Base, An Archive of Online Rollout Photographs. URL: <http://research.famsi.org/kerrmaya.html>
Robicsek, Francis, and Donald Hales
1981 The Maya Book of the Dead: The Ceramic Codex. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Art Museum.

Advanced participants are welcome to join all intermediate workshops !!!

Have you ever wondered why and how Palenque’s Saak Nuhk(ul) Naah, once confidently translated as “White Great House,” came instead to be reanalyzed as “White Skin(ned) House”? Or why the quotative expression che’-een is more likely to mean “I say” then “he says”? Or, most vexing of all, why and how aj k’uh(ul) huun “He of the holy books” became ajk’uhuun “worshipper”? Well wonder no further!
This workshop focuses on new or timely aspects of Classic Maya grammar, including recently uncovered verbal morphology (e.g., the -l-aj affective, the -VVn transitivizer, the -Vy ending of non-CVC intransitives), the bound and and independent pronouns (particularly second-person -at and hat, and first-person -een and hiin) and adjectival syntax (the rules behind the ordering of adjectives and nouns). The main objective is to illustrate the way in which epigraphers relate the patterns of Mayan inscriptions to the grammars of modern Mayan languages, and the increasingly important role of Classic writing in clarifying the reconstruction, linguistic history and relationships of those languages.
No one will be excluded from this workshop because of lack of experience, but participants will definitely have more enjoyment and understanding of the material covered if they already have some background in Mayan writing.