Maya Glyphs Workshops

Come to the Mexican Cultural Institute and learn about Maya Glyphs with our friends from the Boundary End Archaeology Research Center!

Meet and learn from area experts who have dedicated their studies to Maya script and the ever fascinating Maya history. David Stuart’s involvement with Cobá dates to his childhood.

Two interrelated workshops:

• 9:00 to 11:00 am Intermediate Workshop with Joe Hamilton & Charles Wortman

• 12:00 to 2:00 pm Advanced Workshop with David Stuart

You can choose one or attend both!

Reading Mayan Monuments - Intermediate Workshop 1: 

Participants will work on the basics of reading Maya stone monuments, especially stela.  Using inscriptions from Coba and other major sites as examples, we will concentrate on key verb phrases and syntax and how to reconstruct dynastic history from incomplete and eroded texts.  

Complementing the talk by David Stuart on Coba’s kings and queens, we will identify key dates and persons of Coba and its royal dynasty.  Coba is particularly interesting from a calendar perspective, and as part of the workshop, we will also delve into Coba’s Stela 1 recording the Mayan beginning of time and the Grand Long Count.  Participants should already have a basic knowledge of the Mayan calendar and the writing system.

Suns, Stones and Cornfields - New Insights into Ancient Maya Time - Advanced Workshop 2:

This workshop will introduce participants to the elegant structures of ancient Maya timekeeping and the important religious and observational concepts behind it. The days of the 260-day calendar were all gods. The intricate Long Count calendar, vast in scale, was based a numerological relationship between the numbers 13, 20, and 4. And basic to all these temporal elements was the agricultural cycle of maize and the parallel time cycle (the sun’s “path”) that defined the solar year. The year was embodied as tun, as stones, which comprised the substance of the earth, and of a metaphorical milpa, or cornfield. Mythic texts reveal how it these concepts originated in scientific, numerological, and metaphysical ways. Clues also reveal how the Maya were instrumental in the spread of calendar systems throughout the rest of Mesoamerica.

Join us on this great journey and learn about the Maya history and culture.