Discovering two royal tombs at El Perú-Waka’ Excavations at the Maya city of Waka’ in Guatemala revealed a stone gallery buried within the palace acropolis. Inside its rooms were relics that told the extraordinary story of its construction, destruction, and reuse as a chamber for subterranean fire rituals. David Freidel, Griselda Pérez Robles, and Juan […]
Maya
Copan
Excavations beneath Copán have unearthed unexpected information about this powerful Maya site.
Deciphering the Ancient Maya
Simon Martin on cracking the all-important Maya code
The Ancient Maya
The Maya civilization of Mesoamerica encompassed the entirety of what are now the countries of Guatemala and Belize and large parts of adjoining Mexico, Honduras and El Salvador. The romantic vision of mysterious jungle-shrouded ruins and glyphic texts that withstand decipherment is dispelled by the most recent sixth edition of The Ancient Maya. The book […]
The Maya Vase Conservation Project
Classic Maya ceramics are among the most intriguing and valuable sources to reconstruct Ancient Maya society and life. No books have survived from the Classic times (AD 300-900), and many public stone monuments are eroded or only provide limited information. Ceramics, on the other hand, paint an intricate picture of Classic Maya royal courts, warfare, […]
Mesoamerican paint
The formula used to create ‘Mayan blue’ used in ritual practice has finally been revealed
Review: The Maya
This is the seventh edition of Coe’s Maya, a readable and enjoyable richly illustrated introduction to the New World civilisation. Here, the Yale Professor of Anthropology presents an updated text that offers new evidence, gleaned over the past decade, since, as Coe points out ‘hardly a week goes by without the announcement of a new […]