History and Future of the Kerr Photographic Archive of Maya Ceramics

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Rollout Keepers: Papers on Maya Ceramic Texts, Scenes, and Styles in Honor of Justin and Barbara Kerr" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Kerr Archive constitutes the largest photographic collection of Maya ceramics, including rollouts and stills of more than 5,000 unique artifacts from museums, private collections, and archaeological excavations. Devising their own numbering system, Justin and Barbara Kerr created more than just an archive. “Kerr numbers” have become persistent identifiers for Maya ceramics and are today more widely used in the scholarly literature than the designations and collection numbers of the actual repositories. This paper will revisit he history of Justin and Barbara Kerr’s contribution and how the Kerr Archive became the framework for organizing our knowledge of Ancient Maya ceramics. We will provide an update on the work currently done at Dumbarton Oaks to preserve the data from the Maya Vases Book and Mayavase.com, while re-cataloguing the collection in HOLLIS Images and making the images searchable through the Dumbarton Oaks website. We will discuss implications from the Kerrs’ work for future generations of scholars and pose relevant questions to which the papers in this session will respond.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Rollout Keepers: Papers on Maya Ceramic Texts, Scenes, and Styles in Honor of Justin and Barbara Kerr   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39182.0