Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology

Part of: Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Stephen Houston made his first trip to the Maya area to document stelae in 1981. On the occasion of his 60th birthday—3 k’atuns of 20 years in the Classic Maya system of counting—his colleagues are gathering to celebrate his nearly 40 years of research on the Maya. With 350 publications, including 31 books and edited volumes, Houston has been a driving force during a period of prodigious advancement in Maya archaeology. Best known for his contributions to the understanding of Maya writing, Houston was a key player in the decipherment of the script, notably leading a collaboration that identified the language of Classic Maya writing. He has also studied text and imagery at a deeper level, making nuanced interpretations of Maya identity, body, and materiality, which contributed to his being named a MacArthur Fellow in 2008. Houston has also led a number of influential field projects in Maya archaeology, including major research programs that he initiated at Dos Pilas, Piedras Negras, and El Zotz. These projects have contributed data to numerous academic debates within the discipline, while providing training for a new generation of Maya archaeologists, many of whom have gathered to celebrate his career at these meetings.

Other Keywords
Maya: Classic • Iconography and epigraphy • Iconography and Art • demography • Geoarchaeology • Architecture • History Of Archaeology • Survey • Theory • Exhibitions

Geographic Keywords
United Mexican States (Country) • North America (Continent) • Yucatan (State / Territory) • Belize (Country) • Corozal (State / Territory) • Quintana Roo (State / Territory) • Campeche (State / Territory) • Peten (State / Territory) • Orange Walk (State / Territory) • Cayo (State / Territory)

Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-12 of 12)

  • Documents (12)
Documents
  • Ancient Maya Water Control, Wetlands, and the Fiery Pool (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Timothy Beach. Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach. Nicholas Dunning.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One of Steve Houston’s sublime volumes is The Fiery Pool, which was also a groundbreaking exhibit. These explored the themes of the Maya and their relationships with water. Here we consider the themes from The Fiery Pool from the perspectives of ancient Maya Wetland fields, "creatures", and...

  • Beheading Bugs and Spearing Stags: Depictions of Animal Sacrifice in Mesoamerica (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Sarah Newman.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The practice of human sacrifice is one of the defining traits of ancient Mesoamerica, at least according to the modern imagination. But painted objects, carvings, and codices reveal that nonhuman animals often served as sacrificial victims as well. Were some classes or species of animals...

  • Bonampak Will Never Be Finished: Some Remarks in Honor of Steve Houston (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Miller.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. One might think that the 2013 publication of Miller and Brittenham on Bonampak would have closed discussion of these paintings for a few years. But the complexity and richness of the subject continues to yield both details and to add to the big picture of the three-room program of late 8th...

  • Contributions of a Three-K’atun Archaeologist to Theorizing the Classic Maya Past (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Patricia McAnany.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Theory—the workhorse of evidence—is a powerful engine that can revolutionize understanding or create a huge misstep. To theorize the past is to generalize principles and processes of human practice that surpass cultural boundaries. By participating in these larger networks of meaning,...

  • The Death Within: Bone as Material among the Maya (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Andrew Scherer.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Houston’s "The Life Within" is among the most perceptive and nuanced statements on Classic Maya materials and the animate quality of things. Here, I draw inspiration from this future-classic work to more deeply probe Maya understandings of bone – a material most generally treated by...

  • Demographic Scale of an Early Classic Maya Regional Conflict (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Webster.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Recent projects in the Buenavista region, some 25 km to the east at Tikal, reveal a landscape of probable Early Classic conflict. What seem to be large defensive features are positioned on a frontier between El Zotz and the Tikal polity. Despite the impressive size of these features, which...

  • Making Sense and Divining Senses: Maya Royal Courts and Communities (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Charles Golden. Takeshi Inomata.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Throughout his decades of scholarship, Stephen Houston has fundamentally changed our understanding of Maya courtly life and community. He synergistically weaves results from groundbreaking decipherment and archaeological excavations like no other scholar in the field. His many publications...

  • The Moral Community of Pa’ka’n during the Classic Period (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Edwin Roman-Ramirez.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stephen Houston’s collaborative article on the moral community and changes in settlement at Piedras Negras, Guatemala proposed that long-term Precolumbian settlement changes should not simply be analyzed in terms of "agricultural potential, land tenure, and natural increase," but should...

  • The Olmec "Double-Merlon" Motif and the Origins of Color Directional Symbolism in Formative Mesoamerica (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Karl Taube.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Among the most striking signs of Olmec iconography is the "double-merlon," this being a horizontal form supporting two parallel, upwardly projecting tabs. This presentation examines and discusses where it appears in Olmec imagery during the Middle Formative period (1000-400 b.c.), stressing...

  • Proper Names and the Development of Early Writing Systems (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only David Stuart.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The 1980s saw dramatic new insights into the decipherment of ancient Maya writing, much of it spurred by collaborations with my friend and colleague Steve Houston. One of these was the recognition of inscribed "name-tags" on various types of portable objects and monuments, serving to specify...

  • Stephen D. Houston’s Bloody, Courtly, Fiery, and Luxurious Contributions to Exhibitions of Maya Art (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only James Doyle.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. As a graduate student, Stephen Houston contributed references as well as two personal communications to the catalogue for The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art, including drawing Linda Schele and Mary Miller’s attention to key details of an exhibition centerpiece: the Kimbell Art...

  • Stephen Houston's Impact on Maya Archaeology: Celebrating His Completion of 3 K'atuns (2019)
    DOCUMENT Citation Only Thomas Garrison. Andrew Scherer.

    This is an abstract from the "Decipherment, Digs, and Discourse: Honoring Stephen Houston's Contributions to Maya Archaeology" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Stephen Douglas Houston was drawn to archaeology and ancient scripts from a young age, fascinated by the rune stones of his mother’s native Sweden. While he is most widely seen as an epigrapher to outsiders, Mayanists recognize that he is, in fact, a world class field archaeologist that knows...