Contributions of the Kerr Corpus to Maya Paleography: Aspects of Sign Development, Regional Variation, and Idiosyncratic Style in Maya Writing

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.

Paleography (from Greek παλαιό- ‘old’ and γράφε ‘writing’) was long understood as the study of the origins and development of signs (e.g., De Montfaucon, Paleaeografica Graeca, 1708), but since the welcome focus on ductus (i.e., shape, stance, and stroke-order in sign-formation) pioneered by Mallon in “Paléographie romaine” (1952), paleography has instead come to be understood as the unconscious habit of scribes in revealing when and where their texts were composed on formal considerations alone. This study intends the term in both senses and seeks to cast light on the significant contributions that Justin and Barbara Kerr have made to present understandings of the origins and development of Maya writing through their assiduous compilation and remarkably unrestricted dissemination of a considerable corpus of Maya vessels. Close study of over 1,000 high-resolution images of hieroglyph-bearing ceramics in their corpus has provided considerable information on the iconic origins, formal developments, and regional variation of Maya writing across several centuries of use (ca. 250–900 CE). As will be seen, these precious records also make possible considerable nuance in the paleographic dating of undated inscriptions, and the identification of repainting and outright forgeries that might otherwise serve to mislead scholarship.

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)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39439.0